What there was a lot of?

Mobiles, mobiles, mobiles – Numerous sessions focused on mobile devices and their #nextbestthingsinceslicedbread and #theywillchangetheworldofeducationasweknowit uses. Some were led by vendors, some by educators. A lot of people are thinking about mobiles and ‘mobile learning’ (whatever that is). The promise (as I understand it) is learning anytime anywhere (or as I heard it put at least once ‘all the time everywhere’…).

Really?

I get some of that – ability to look up factoids at a moment’s notice. I wonder about how that should be positioned alongside opportunity for deep attention : “…How can the considerable benefits of deep attention be cultivated in a generation of students who prefer high levels of stimulation and have low thresholds for boredom? How should the physical layout of educational environments be re-thought? With the trend toward hyper attention already evident in colleges and universities, these issues are becoming urgent concerns…” Katherine Hayles (2008) Will/can deep attention happen with mobile devices…or should we even be thinking/concerned about that? Is there an app for that?

Analytics, analytics, analytics – Same as for mobiles…much conversation about. I’ll confess I did not choose to attend sessions on either of these (mobiles or analytics). So I won’t say much about it. I am just observing that there is a good deal of conversation about analytics. I worry that in the fervor to analyze that narratives are not being included in the mix. I’ll say a bit more about that below.

Clouds of virtualization…Not going to even try.

What do I wish there had been more of?

I wish there was more conversation about the essences of things that technology can do…the ‘why’ part – especially in education. Sure, I love shiny new packages as much as the next person, but it is my opinion (fwiw) that until we explore the deep underpinnings of the RELATIONAL nature of education and the role technology has to play in that we won’t ‘get it’ at all. Okay, so maybe there were sessions where essences were shared…maybe I did not choose wisely. It is just my general impression that we continue to get lost in the bells and whistles, pointing and clicking and touching…and in the process miss the why. I wrote about some of this back in April. I won’t repeat myself more.

Along similar lines, I’d like to hear more about capturing the narratives of user experience. It is again my general impression that narratives of experience are mostly missing from analytics discussions. I’ll point to this wonderful exemplary work shared this week by Jon Becker at his Educational Insanity blog a work he calls The Best Dissertation Ever: Rethinking Girls. Stop reading….go over there and look. Read it. THIS is the kind of ‘essential’ work I mean when I say we need to be attending to… and capturing… this sort of narrative about the difference technology added to the educational encounter can and does make. Dr. Hughes-Decatur opens by noting that the paper is “…a compellation of what could be, of what is possible.” Indeed. I want to be clear here. The formatting is novel and interesting and structures our consumption of the work…but it is the essences that are captured that are so very powerful. We need similar works about teaching and learning with technology.

Which brings me to the next thing I wish I would see/hear more of in our ed-tech conferences: and that is the importance of ‘design’ thinking. Surely we all get that design affects use and consumption and interaction. And design of the educational experience – and I mean here the learning environment in the very broadest sense including not only the tangibles and materials and manipulatives – but also the how we (we=teacher and learner in community with one another) ARE WITH each other in the learning space and encounter…all of it…as well as the goodness of technology fit in a design. Thoughtful technology inclusion should be carefully considered. Use mobile devices if they fit into a thoughtful educational design….not because using a mobile device is the shiny trendy thing to do and everybody else is doing and if we don’t we are behind. Ask students to write in a blog – if that fits well into a good instructional design. Thoughtful, mindful design gets at those essences I mentioned above.

Okay, this is getting WAY longer than I intended. So, what was the best part of the conference for me? Predictably, it was the people. You know, the opportunity to meet new people and reconnect with friends that happens between the ‘official’ sessions you go to a conference to hear? I met Twitter friends irl for the first time…always so very much fun. I visited with old friends.

Conversations are always the best part, aren’t they?

CC Licensed (Attribution) flickr image shared by brendan-c

This week I am thinking about habits. You know – that ‘old habits die hard’ thing? We have the option here at my workplace to elect a ‘summer hours’ schedule: 4 10-hour days to yield an ‘extra’ day off each week. The option started back in May. I didn’t begin my change-over until a couple of weeks in (waiting for my household to stabilize from the reintegration of the 2 kids home from college – complete with the graduation festivities of one of them – a whole ‘nother story of habits).  

Wow, have I ever struggled to reach a new level of habituation in my morning routine. Trying to leave home and arrive at the office an hour earlier than I usually do has proven to be much more of a challenge than I ever imagined it would be (we won’t even talk about how long the afternoons stretch out with the staying the added afternoon time).  

I think the issue is altering my habits. I strive for healthy/positive/green/mindful habits every day. (I enjoy Leo Babauta’szenhabits blog on the subject of habits). I get up early enough to crank out the exercise routine (because if I don’t ride that obnoxious stationary bike early, it just won’t happen). Then there is the struggle to make myself at least presentable (increasingly challenging as the yeas advance)/do the day’s measure of laundry/plan dinner/make breakfasts/pack lunches/check my calendar for anything that might require something from home, etc. All this before I can ever leave the house. Whew, I am tired just thinking about it. So, think about backing all of that up to make it possible to arrive an hour earlier than I was a week ago.  

Yes gentle reader; there is a point to this story. As I was feeling triumphant one morning at arriving in my office 10 minutes EARLY (at 7:20 a.m.);  I thought about what it means to faculty colleagues to alter teaching habits they have formed and practiced for years unchanging. That point alone explains why thoughtfully embracing and integrating a technology into the mix (for whatever reason)– until that use becomes a habit – can be quite a challenge. Learning what the new habit will mean and making it familiar is no small feat. How technology can change ways of learning and ways of knowing and ways of being is not a trivial thing.  

I appreciate that I have been allowed a bit of latitude to find the new equilibrium I need to make this new schedule work this week. I’ll need some planning to make it work all summer. And so it is with learning and integrating a new technology – think. It takes time to make it work and the transition might be rocky until the new becomes an actual habit.  

Okay, before you slam be about how very much more complicated decisions and adoptions of technology are, and that maybe thinking of use as a habit a bit too simplistic – I get that. I am just thinking I need to be a little more patient and understanding as I stand by to help. 

“Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.”  Mark Twain

Back in January I read about the release of ‘Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa described as a ‘must-read-most-important-book-on-higher-education-written-in-recent-years’ (at least according to Richard Vedder over at the Chronicle). I’ll admit I have not read the book…only reviews. I can’t critique methodology or quality of the evidence that might be presented to support the assertions the authors make. But the review and descriptions have me thinking – a lot – about narratives of declining rigor and detached and disinterested students and faculty who do anything to win the beauty contest that is on many campuses the student evaluation process; including but not limited to grade inflation. Really?

I have had a search column running in my twitter desktop app all semester following the DS106 phenomenon. (If you have not looked in there, you should. What a creative and powerful model of ‘collaborative learning’ – disparaged by some as a weak sister to individual effort and thought and study…).

One of the assignments for DS106 included this talk from my good colleague Gardner Campbell: ‘No Digital Facelifts’.

Take a break and listen – really listen….to Gardner’s passion for what he is telling us.  There is so much in there it is difficult to distill down into one or two most important points, but suffice it to say that the thoughts in that presentation lead me back to a book by Parker Palmer: To Know as we are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. I have a whole set of blog posts brewing about my current re-reading of this book and its alignment with my observations of DS106 and Gardner’s ideas, but some things stick out right now in the context I am describing. Okay, full disclosure here. I greatly admire the work of Parker Palmer. I have for a while now. To say his books have been transformational for me and my teaching practice would be an understatement. I am going to borrow some quotes from To Know as We are Known that I think are of critical importance to conversations about teaching and learning….most especially where we talk about lack of rigor, or ‘game changing’ technology like mobile devices or whatever. Here they are:

• “…what good teachers have always known – is that real learning does not happen until students are brought into relationship with the teacher, and with each other, and with the subject. We cannot learn deeply and well until a community of learning is created in the classroom.”
• “We do not learn best by memorizing facts about the subject. Because reality is communal, we learn best by interacting with it…good teachers bring students into living communion with the subjects they teach.”
• “…the practice of intellectual rigor in the classroom requires an ethos of trust and acceptance. Intellectual rigor depends on things like honest dissent and the willingness to change our minds, things that will not happen if the ‘soft’ values of community are lacking.”

Fast forward to this week and following the tweet stream from the #EDUsprint hashtag. Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE this week-long immersion in a topic idea. And a whole lot of great conversation is going on. But I can’t help feeling that it is yet another cause celeb: that if you aren’t doing mobile stuff on your campus you are missing the boat because everybody’s doing it and students have these devices and so we should be using them and …on and on…

Yes gentle reader, I am coming (albeit slowly) to a point. Here it is. The ‘truth’ here that is easily missed is the relational nature of teaching, and learning, and knowing, and ‘education’ in general. The absolute crux of the matter is that ability of a teacher to create safe places and relations with learners where the kind of deep consideration of the subject – whatever it is – can happen. The one and only point for using technology – mobile, collaborative, social, whatever – at all and ever is the extent to which it helps to accomplish that relation-building. Yes, mobile devices might be the latest possible tool for facilitating that process. But observe: Appreciate the passion with which Gardner speaks about his ideas for teaching and learning. He has been described by some as ‘electric’. Think of what it would be like to be a student in his class. Think he works to build relationships with students and the subject matter they consider together? How about with colleagues? And how about DS106? What’s important there? Was it the tools the distributed community used/played-with? Nope. Again, it was the incredible learning community Jim Groom and other course builders created and nurtured. Gardner and Jim are master teachers. Not measured by usual pedigree or traditional academic accomplishments (although they both have plenty of those). It is because of the gifted way in which they bring learners into relation with each other and with the subject matter they consider. Is there rigor? Very high expectations in fact. Is technology affordance brought to bear? In very novel ways – but focused on the relationships….with the subjects/ideas and with fellow learners.

So to me the point is not what standardized tests say students don’t learn, or whether we are catching the wave of the latest trend – like mobile devices. It is well said in today’s video installment for the Mobile Computing Sprint, by Shelli Fowler  from Virginia Tech (at about 1:47):

“…Pedagogy’s still the driver…we need to help faculty get comfortable in their teaching self with learners and all these devices…”

Until we are all comfortable with our teaching selves – and our ‘situated-ness’ between and amongst students, our disciplinary contexts and whatever devices are in question at the moment, none of the rest of this stuff matters – at all.

Well, the realities of January 2011 are setting in. (And honestly, I don’t even know why I am posting about this – as there are upwards of 200-some-odd highly motivated story crafters already in there. I am quite sure I will not be missed). I feel a need to explain nonetheless. You see, it is all about hats – not for sale, but hats I wear. Here goes my list:
Hat #1 – the ‘wifely’ hat. I have been married upwards of 30 years. Mr. odnett expects a certain amount of time on a daily basis. I think I’ll keep working on making sure that happens.
Hat #2 – the ‘motherly’ hat. I have 2 children in college. One is about to graduate…is DEEPLY in the throes of what to do next. She is applying to grad schools all over the place, trying for a Fulbright – a driven young woman. Very high maintenance. One is a freshman barely finding his way. He is in danger of losing his scholarships. Need I say more?
Hat #3 – the ‘teacherly’ hat. I am teaching an online course in information literacy for nurses. This is a regular assignment. It is one I really, really like. Because I like it – a LOT – it takes a good bit of time.
Hat #4 – the ‘student’ hat. I am actually enrolled in course work for credit towards another master’s degree. I know, don’t say it. But…I like that too. BEING a student/on the receiving end is a good experience to inform the teacherly hat.
Hat #5 – the ‘geekytech’ hat. I DO have a job. I work daily bringing opportunities to colleagues to learn about teaching and learning with technology at my institution. I REALLY, REALLY like this hat too. It is another one that takes a lot of time and energy to balance on my head.
There are some others – these are the main ones.
Now…full participation in #ds106 starts off with the acquiring of a domain. I just can’t. I just can’t take on something else that will require care and feeding. I already have sites all over the place to support all of the various things I  do above. Some of them are nearly orphans as it is (like this blog, for instance). I just will not add to my guilt load one more thing that needs regular attention. I know, if I were a better ‘manager’ of my ‘personal cyberinfrastructure’ maybe I wouldn’t be writing this. But there it is.
So, I’ll opt for lurking and learning – something that I am a master at. I won’t apologize for it. Someday, when my neck is not breaking from the weight of the above, maybe I’ll be more apt to share. For now, I’ll content myself with watching the happenings and learning vicariously. But, hey – vicarious/observational learning is quite legit.

Okay, seems my blog sits here expectantly …ready to be tuned up any time while I mostly ignore it. Here I am back again at last – because of joining in the “Awakening the Digital Imagination…Networked Faculty Seminar via Gardner Campbell at Baylor and Alan Levine at NMC. Details are published elsewhere. This post will serve as my first reflection on this experience and one of the first readings for the seminar.

To get to where I want to go in this first post, I need to back up a little to when it was my good fortune to be given the opportunity to form a new ‘instructional technology’ department on my campus as its first director – just a little over 2 short years ago. Details of what I did in higher education before that and how this appointment happened do play a part – I have been around for a LONG time! But, they are not as important as what happened to me as I began to shepherd my little area and ‘learn the ropes’ in IT after having been faculty or administrator for a long time. My (quite visionary) department head did something extraordinarily wise in my first month on the job….and that was to send me to the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) annual meeting.

That is where the sprouts started. I listened to Mike Wesch there. I listened to George Siemens there. I sat in a session with Gardner Campbell (he probably does not even know I was in the room) and got a little dose of Gardo magic as he helped our (rather large) session assemble ourselves into a circle to better enable our conversation. There were many more important moments at that conference – too numerous to recount here. One of the striking things about this whole conference experience was the extent to which this group of people treated each other as colleagues and were willing to share (heaven forbid) – well, just about everything. Ideas, suggestions, experiences, – the whole thing was wide (and gloriously) ‘open’. I heard about Twitter for the first time there.  I came home, set up an RSS reader and dived in. (Twitter cam a little later – another story).  I subscribed to blogs of all of these people and ‘followed’ them and followed trails to other people and….well….I opened up that reader headline page everyday to find more ‘personal learning’ opportunity than I  could have ever imagined possible. The links took me to people and places I would never have been able to know about before. I read blogs, I subscribed to newsfeeds, I drank it all in.  A ‘network’ began to emerge as I noticed how a lot of these folks were already connected and conversing with one another.

Now I am joining in a distributed conversation (that includes colleagues from my own institution). This conversation is a real and tangible outcome of those connections begun at ELI. Let me try to explain.

This post is about the connections/roots/networks/rhizomes (hat tip to Dave Cormier who writes about rhizomatic learning- I learned that following one such root)/sprouts/buds (or even rabbit holes ‘cause sometimes when I step back to marvel at some of the things that happen as the result of sheer serendipity (I’ve written about that before) it really is ‘curious-er’ and ‘curious-e’r…and happen without warning or advanced planning).  Yes, I really am approaching a point about the seminar readings.  My ‘nugget’ to share is from the Murray essay (p. 8-9 of the New Media Reader)….where in setting the table for us to dine on the essays in the volume she talks about a “…new idea form…the rhizome” and “…a root system that offered a metaphor of growth and connection…”(from the Deleuze and Guattari essay).  Here’s a gem from that section:  “The potato root system has no beginning, no end, and grows outward and inward at the same time. It forms a pattern familiar to computer scientists a network with discrete interconnected nodes. Here was a way out of the pullulating paralysis…” Yes, I have taken these snips a bit out of context, and I encourage reading the entire piece. What I am after is illustrating how these readings resonate with me given my experience of what Murray calls the ‘pullulating consciousness’.  I have to admit here that ‘pullulating’ is not a word I often use in conversation. I had to whip out the trusty dictionary …well online….to look it up. And POW….there it was – perfectly beautiful and elegantly expressing an idea so difficult to name with words.  Murray calls the root metaphor a gift. Indeed.

This post is growing long, but I’ll try to share just a snippet of my recent experience of being rooted in a network – that I build myself. The networked faculty seminar is an amazing example in itself.  Me connected to the first seminar iteration in spring connected to a group of colleagues here on campus now who are connecting themselves to the fall seminar because I happenstance chose Gardner’s session at ELI 2 years ago and then came home and read his blog and found Alan Levine’s 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story online when I was looking for something else and then subscribed to his blog…..You can’t make this stuff up.

Just yesterday Gardner shared a link to this article from the NYT. I followed an amazing educator Christian Long (@ChristianLong on Twitter) all year last year as he shared his wonderfully creative teaching on Twitter (I started following him because Alec Couros (@courosa followed him). Christian shared about his move to Ohio and his new endeavors and his new blog Be Playful…(his blog is in my reader). I mentioned on Twitter that the essay on Learning by Playing made me think of Christian and his work. He saw the tweet and passed it on to his network….

What I am trying to describe here – as a reality…as MY reality with the ‘pullulating consciousness’ – is how sharing begets connecting & learning begets more sharing begets more connecting & more learning. It’s the whole idea that the essence of ‘new media’ is the connecting part. Putting that into words – even one word – like pullulating – is tricky. Forgive me a rather crude and simplistic example:  It’s like way back in a past nursing life when I tried to teach little kids how to swallow pills….with words. Sometimes experience is the best teacher.

Anyway, what fun to read the visions of folks who helped to make connections and networks and all this pullulating possible!

More to come…..

But, here I am fresh back from #ELI2010 with renewed commitment to writing and posting with greater regularity …and I’ll begin that with a bit of a debrief of the meeting in Austin. 

 As expected, sessions were excellent and I learned many new things to bring back and share.  (In fact, I’ll be providing a de-brief for my campus in our departmental newsletter complete with links to the archives…very soon!).  :-) 

 In here I’ll take the more reflective tack about being with and in this professional community.  This was my second ELI annual meeting.  I was first fortunate to attend 2 years ago as a total newcomer, fresh from my brand new appointment as director of instructional technology on my campus. My quite visionary vice chancellor knew what connecting me with this group would do to help me appreciate HER aims for my newly formed department (that’s another post for another time). And this year was very similar in that I experienced in this meeting of like-minded instructional technologists a colleagueship like no other I have ever encountered.  It was wonderful to renew old acquaintance and meet new folks. And a highlight for me was meeting f2f some folks I have been following ‘virtually’ on Twitter (like @brlamb and @sleslie, to name a couple) and elsewhere for a while.  MUCH fun!!  I am an unashamed fan-girl!

 But…all that said, this year, I experienced something else much unexpected. This was NOT in keeping with the spirit of sharing and collaboration typical and in fact the hallmark of this conference and this professional community.  What I experienced…up close and personal…was snark.  Yep…there it is (or was). Not pretty & most unsettling to me. The Urban Dictionary provides a variety of definitions of snark.  I am rather partial to #4 as it applies to the particular situation in question.  There is even a book on the subject by David Denby. Who knew…that there is enough snark around to make such writings possible?

 Well, snark in this particular professional community is in fact quite unexpected and biting.  There were a couple of borderline instances during the week where I had to back up and say…’Did that person intend for that to come across in that way’?  Did they realize how that comment would be received?” And a couple of instances I could excuse.  But…the particular instance in question here occurred in a conversation predicated on the assumption that all participants and thus all opinions were welcome; in fact were being solicited and would be considered equally.  I am not going to describe the incident in more detail or identify the perpetrator.  Just suffice it to say that the one-line-zinger-dismissive was delivered by someone who surely had more to contribute to the conversation than the snarky comment thrown into the circle.  The comment added absolutely nothing to the dialogue and as far as I could tell accomplished nothing except perhaps attempting to establish the deliverer as a superior intellect…or something. And no, I did not misinterpret him. Frankly, I am still not quite sure WHAT the motivation was….as this person was and still is a stranger to me and the comment wholly unwarranted.  I was left speechless in the remainder of the conversation, trying to mull over what exactly that person intended the effect of the comment to be.  But, you can bet I know who this person is now, and he will have work to do to gain my trust and respect. 

Yes I should have called him on it immediately.  I was just so taken aback by the incivility I could not think….So, why mention this at all?  About now you are thinking… ‘Oh come on now. I am sure he was just kidding. Why don’t you just grow up?’ In the overall scheme of things, this is really not such a big deal deserving of a blog post and so much rumination, now is it?  

Well, it is precisely because we increasingly accept such behavior as par for the course – acceptable – that I write.  We see this sort of stuff (and much more disturbing and vicious) online all the time in troubling comment streams where folks deliver up their meanness with impunity hidden behind avatar alter-egos. So, why not have such bleed over into our ‘real’ world and conversations? Even in just minor little ways? That just means we’re just hangin’ with the cool kids, right?  And sure, people joke with each other using feigned snark when they already HAVE relationships and know each other well enough to deliver snark in jest. I can assure you that in this particular instance, the commenter was NOT kidding with me.  And I told you already, we had never met before.

 Really, I am just consciousness-raising here folks and asking you to check yourself when you are participating in conversations both online and in person. If you want to be a part of a community you need to behave in a collegial fashion…even when you disagree with someone.  Instances of incivility abound and such behavior is certainly not new. 

 Okay, so aside from the rant, all of the above drills down to this:  after this experience, I am reminded of the work of P. M. Forni.  I read his book, Choosing Civility a while ago and here is Dr. Forni’s Civility website at John’s Hopkins.  There is a recent podcast with Dr. Forni available from his site here.  I would also invite consideration of David Bohm’s  On Dialogue – a work I have not visited in quite some time.  I pulled my weathered copy off the shelf today and am determined to re-read it.  Scott London’s post on ‘The Power of Dialogue’ is also useful to help frame and inform about collegial exchanges. I’d like to think that this is the type of discourse we are after.

 Whew, I am tired now after all that venting and I have books literally strewn all over my desk. And, at this point I am probably getting off onto another post and in fact am re-visiting Bohm’s ideas of ‘collective participation’ (On Dialogue, p. 26) as I join in the NMC New Media Faculty Development Seminar. So…there will probably be another post – sooner this time.  Enough for now.

I am in all facets of my life a maker of lists.  Probably has something to do with my need to visualize things to be able to encode them.   I like using all sorts of writing implements/markers/colors/annotations to make them visual memory-joggers.  My desk is littered with my list-making tools.  It is part of the teacher’s accoutrements I can’t do without.

 I have lists for things I am working on here at work; sorted into various columns of importance (ongoing, urgent, today, long-term, ideas, etc…)
I have lists at home to track my family’s activities. 
I have grocery lists,
lists for the discount food store,
lists for the home-improvement store,
the list goes on.

 I keep a journal on my desk for the sole purpose of taking daily notes about things I learn from Twitter and other web interactions…things that stand out and stimulate my thinking.  (It really is fun to look at this over weeks and months).  

I started a year and a half ago making a sincere attempt to do away with/replace the paper lists with OneNote – to be set a good example for colleagues of using my available technology to be more organized and efficient.  I like OneNote for creating various notes folders for everything from conferences I attend complete with urls to info/resources presented in sessions, to meeting notes of all kinds.  It’s a great tool to prep for meetings, where you can keep continual agendas going anytime.  And it (is supposed to) auto-save(s).  I liked feeling like I was using my technology and cutting down on what I needed to print by saving to the OneNote notebooks.  It really is a great tool since it is integrated with all other MS Office apps I use regularly.  Well, during the process of migrating to a new computer I lost all of my OneNote notes…all year-and-a-half’s-worth.  I’ll spare you the gory details. Just suffice it to say that I did not do a good enough job of following up to make sure I had all of my belongings from the old machine before I gave the green light for its repurpose/reimage.  By the time I realized that the notebooks had not survived, it was too late. 

 So, I start over.  Okay, before you start pointing out that I could have/should have been using some cloud app, consider that I might have lost the e-notes just as easily stored somewhere else.  So, what’s my ‘take home’? 

 I don’t know that I’ll give up my pen and paper any time soon….for something cloud-y or otherwise.  I have though, been exploring uses of digital ink/visual note-taking in teaching and learning and am very intrigued with some of the possibilities.  It might just make me a better note-taker/list maker all around both on paper and otherwise.  A striking thing I have learned already is that to be a good visual note-taker requires that you be a good listener.  Take a look at suggestions from Sunni Brown.  I like this, especially the ‘truisms’ for good listening!  I think it’s a pretty good place to re-start construction of new notebooks.

My work involves trying to find ways to encourage/cajole/persuade/entice/motivate faculty colleagues (and some staff who teach) in the use of technology to enhance/enrich/inform their teaching (and thereby student learning – we hope).  Some things I have tried have met with some success.  Others have fallen flat or have been in fact epic failures.  I can tell you after a year and a half in my position there is no magic bullet/easy answer.  The reasons faculty do or do not embrace and use technology in their teaching are complex/multimodal/not easily dissected.  I have learned a few things as I have listened/read carefully to others in the field and offer up my humble take on the matter.

First, faculty are busy people. They work under the traditional burden of academic role expectations crafting their teaching (with or without technology enhancements), service, and scholarship.  It is hard to keep up with that. For many (especially those in my age-bracket/generation) working with technology does not come easy…is not intuitive, is always an add-on that takes time, energy, and commitment to learn even at a basically proficient level.  Mastering something to the point that you feel comfortable exposing yourself and your ability in the public arena of your class takes even more time.  That time might take away from some other facet of work…like service, or scholarship.  Okay, I know about now you are saying….”Learning to use technology can help you be more proficient, productive, and efficient in your role-enactments.  How can you NOT learn to use it?”  Good point.  The fact remains that the time challenge is there.  Now I also know that even my mother used to say that ‘you make time to do just about anything you really want to do.”  So, do faculty just not want to learn?  I don’t think that’s the problem.  The time issue is very real and difficult to overcome.  I have taken to offering up just brief snippets of introductions to tech tools. For example, we hold an annual Emerging Media and Technology Fair we describe as a ‘microconference of minisessions so people can come and go at their convenience and catch short sessions of interest to them.

That brings me to the ‘middle layer’ theme of this post.  I am caught somewhere here between the desire for living totally in the open (ala Alec Couros, Alan Levine, David Wiley, D’Arcy Norman, Jim Groom to name a few) and entirely behind the protective walls of the LMS.  Don’t get me wrong here…I do understand and value life in the open.  I have been following the conversation about everything from Edupunk & DIY, to last fall’s massive open Connectivism and Connected Knowledge course from George Siemens & Stephen Downes (to be offered again this fall – check the site for details).  Boy do I ever appreciate the collegial spirit that under girds it.  At the same time, I appreciate and understand the reticence of most faculty to embrace it.  You see, there is that nagging time thing.  Time is needed to explore and understand safe (for lack of a better word) ways to be ‘open’.  Time to master a rather disparate (I know some will disagree) set of tools most standing alone and needing to be coalesced in a thoughtful way by the user (ie: the teacher).  Enjoying the kind of insight needed to make that happen takes…time…and exposure…and experimentation…and willingness to fail….all luxuries most faculty can’t afford.  So, you can’t blame folks for resorting to their institutionally provided LMS.  Tools are there…they have been used before (granted they can be snarky and are not perfect)….but they are comfortable…easier…take less time to master. 

So…why write about this now?  Well, in addition to my regular following of the open-promoting practices and writings and sharing of the folks I listed above, a couple of things have me focused on this area anew:

1.  One is a post via George Siemen’s blog elearnspace: Addressing the Problem of Faculty Resistence.  To quote George: 

              “Obviously, you don’t need technology to be a provide a great        learning experience. Creative, engaging, and participatory learning is an educational mindset, not something that requires blogs, wikis, Second Life, and podcasts. What technology does, however, is expand the range of options for interaction. Classroom walls give way to global connections. Single educator models are replaced with distributed networks. A bit utopian? Perhaps. But, once control shifts to a network of learners, the prospect arises for the creativity that exists in open source software and with application developers (i.e. iPhone, Facebook) can be applied to education.”  Amen, so how can we NOT embrace technology? Huh?

George links in that post to James Morrison’s writings via the Innovate-Ideagora: Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies.  As I understand it, James started this topic last year, but recently updated it (see comments section) with a list created in his session at the recent EDMedia2009 conference in Hawaii.  Here is the list composed by participants in his session:

“1. Fear of using technology, which may not work
2. Faculty members are busy as is; they see no need to expend time and energy on learning technology or new pedagogies
3. Perception of a lack of institutional support/rewards (little technological or pedagogical resources; no incentives or recognition for using technology)
4. Perception of lack of cultural support from peers
5. Perception that developing online courses threatens jobs
6. Perception that using technology takes too much time (to learn, to set up, to use)
7. Fear that incorporating technology will detract/ distract from their lecture/teaching (technology will become an end in itself rather than being a means to educational ends)
8, Faculty members don’t think that technology is relevant/helpful to teaching in their particular subject area
9. Faculty members are unaware of the degree to which students might enjoy/gain from technology-enhanced active learning strategies
10. Faculty members view their role as experts/information providers, not teachers designing experiential education
11. Perception that face-to-face classroom instruction is the most instruction”

(I recommend visiting the site and following to the close of the post to the group’s suggestions for how institutions can help/support faculty in their efforts to use technology)

You will note that 2 of the items in the list have to do with time.

2.   Today, there was this post and comments exchange (via tweet by @jclary) from D’Arcy’s blog: on openness, walled gardens, community and ownership.  Interesting exchange and viewpoints.

3.  Yesterday’s piece in the Chronicle’s Wired Campus news letter by David Wiley: Open Teaching Multiplies the Benefit but not the Effort. His narrative of his thoughtful beginnings and evolution to offering an entirely open course is very engaging and persuasive.  Granted, it takes starting with just one tool…then building. I’m with him. 

 But there is still that nagging time thing.  One of the things I think I often forget is that I live my professional life (including framing my life as teacher) completely immersed in technology.  So do all of the folks I refer to here.  This is an immersion most of our faculty colleagues do not experience/relate to/know about.  We have a built-in tendency to experiment with/curiosity about technology.  They do not live in the same world as we.  We would do well to remember that.

4. A number of folks in the ed tech/instructional tech world have been tweeting for a while now about the upcoming OpenEd conference (wish I could go, but alas no travel $$ here and personal travel $$ being channeled into my eldest’s semester of study abroad this fall).  In preparation for that, Alan Levine issued an invitation to submit “amazing stories of openness” via his cogdogblog: I’m Talking to YOU! Where is your Amazing Story?.  Alan shares some very interesting examples (and his process is just plain fun).  I hope he streams his session.

5. I am just generally awed and humbled by the things Alec Couros does/writes/shares on a regular basis. His work always keeps me thinking about was to be open-with-grace. Check out his open work at his blog open thinking.  Alec taught an open grad course last fall and will do so again this fall (I am sure he will be sharing more details with us on the blog as the fall semester approaches.

These are just a few things that have me thinking about the middle layer – in which I live…, along with my faculty colleagues.  While I might tend to agree more than disagree with the ideas of openness, I do empathize with colleagues who fear and don’t have time to learn how to live in the open – who are content to stay in the middle.  There are some very palpable privacy concerns (a whole ‘nother post) some folks are just not comfortable confronting…. (more time needed to learn how to be safe and open).  And I know there are many more complexities at play here – I already said so.  But I pledge to be patient and try to meet folks where they are and to try to help them find some time to overcome their fears and be just a little more open than maybe they have been before.  By feeding them little snippets in small frequent feedings.

Whew, that was a lot more than I probably should have written in one post.  Kudos if you stuck with it to the end!!

1.      Course to Dis/Course – ‘This short online conference – May 14 & 15, 2009 – is being organized by Martin Weller, George Siemens, and Grainne Conole.’  Session recordings can be found here.  ( I knew about this one in advance and had registered to participate.  The conference was free).

2.      On May 18^th, I tuned in to an EDUCAUSE Solutions in Action Webcast – ‘…a lightning round of speakers about the ways that they are introducing new technologies to faculty and celebrating innovative approaches to teaching and learning.’  The session archive is available from here.  The session was free.

3.      On June 5^th, I caught Alec Couros at the University of Delaware’s 2009 Summer Faculty Institute for his keynote, ‘Harnessing the Power of Social Networks in Teaching & Learning’.  A video of the session is available from Alec’s blog, open thinking (along with some other really good stuff from Alec. His blog itself is worth following on a regular basis).  I tuned in to this session because someone there tweeted the url to the live stream. I was amongst the twitter followers Alec mentions in the beginning of his talk.

4.  That same day  someone tweeted a link to a live stream of Jon Mott’s ‘Loosely Coupled Gradebook’ session:  from the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange (TTIX).  Visit Jon’s blog, The End in Mind, for a link to his presentation slides and Ustream capture – or visit the TTIX space (link above) for an archive of Jon’s presentation and more. I didn’t catch all of Jon’s presentation – I had been listening to Alec and there was time overlap. But, not to worry, Jon sent me the url to the saved presentation on his blog so I could access the whole thing at my convenience.  I have colleagues here who are interested on his topic, so now I can share this opportunity with them – even though they didn’t catch the live session.

5.      On June 11^th, I listened to a live stream of Kathy Sierra from the New Media Consortium’s Summer Conference.  (See previous post with notes from this session.)  The video archive from the conference is available here.  Again, I tuned in because someone sent out the call to join in at the live stream url.  I am so glad I did.  I did not know about this in advance. 

6.      On June 12^th, I caught Alec again along with Dean Shareski streaming form a conference in Texas.  See Dean’s Ideas and Thoughts blog for more about their keynote and a link to the conference video archive.  Once again, the contact was a result of a tweet…I did not know about this ahead of time.

7.      Then just yesterday, June 22, once again I caught Alec streaming via a tweet (he is a really busy guy living the ‘open’ life!).

8.      Today, as I mentioned, I listened to David Weinberger streamed from EdAccess (See links above to access more information).  The ‘archive’ for this one includes a conference wiki.  Take a look here.

 Are you catching the pattern??  Hints: “tweets of urls to live streams” and “archives” are available.  I believe this pattern is quickly becoming a standard expectation – especially in times of budget exigencies making travel too costly for many.  Again, listening to a streamed session is not the same as being there, but it is no less powerful if one joins in the backchannel and follows up with the archive. Not to mention the connections that result from meeting new folks online and having the opportunity to add them to your network in a more ‘permanent’ way than the traditional exchange of business cards at the standing-room-only cocktail reception.  By linking up in Twitter, etc…folks can re-join around common interests at any time, not whenever they get around to digging through that conference binder and hoping cards and notes weren’t lost….and then there’s the archive.  The archive might just be THE most important affordance, in fact.  Here is built-in ability to share with others – exactly what was seen/heard complete (often) with slides and/or the presenter’s materials. (And some really cool folks like Alec Couros share their materials and invite you to use them yourself if you so choose!).

 Okay, I know…about now you are thinking that I spend my entire work life trolling for streaming links.  Not quite.  Sometimes I turn on conference streams and run them in the background while I multi-task on other stuff.  I do admit that most days I keep TweetDeck running all the time – in the background.  Some days I hardly look at it. Others, I tune in just in time to catch good stuff like streaming urls.  Then on the most special of days I join the conversation for a while. Those are the best experiences where I can gather AND share – in real time.

Take a look at Jim Vanides’ latest blog post ‘Twitter Experiment-The First 18 Days’ and particpate in his survey about how much time educators should spend on Twitter.  Personally, (and based on my experiences like the ones I have written here) participation in Twitter should be a REQUIREMENT of EVERY educator.  This type of network connectedness is not to be missed.  Put it in there with ‘keeping current in the field’ if you prefer the more traditional terms to describe what academics should do. But there really is no substitute for what happens in twitter if the network  is constructed with even minimal care and only intermittent tending.  A more committed participation yields even higher return. 

I can assure you that my own learning has been expanded far beyond what I might have ever imagined just a couple of years ago.  Often that learning is messy, and unexpected but always exciting and giving me new ideas to try out.  And…I have connected with a MUCH broader professional community as well. (Sometime I’ll get around to a post on my own PLN.  For now the focus is what I have recently learned from Twitter). If you are still not convinced (and I don’t know how anyone is not at least curious about Twitter given its role in the unfolding of events in Iran) I invite you to check it out and see what you might learn.  Find someone you know and see who they are following.  Tune in.  Pay attention. See what happens.  And lest you think that the opportunities I have listed are in some way inferior because I did not witness them in person, I invite you to visit the archives links and see for yourself.

Yesterday I enjoyed another of those amazing serendipitous ‘learning from my Twitter network’ moments when someone (I don’t recall exactly who) posted a link to the live stream of Kathy Sierra’s keynote at the New Media Consortium’s Summer 2009 conference in Monterey.  (MANY thanks to the thoughtful people who make such streams happen). 

 Let me explain this.  I am in South Carolina and place bound at the moment because of deep budget restrictions the result of the current and ongoing economic downturn.  I am NOT able to travel to conferences.  I relish the opportunity to join conferences via live connections whenever possible (I have done so on at least 4 different occasions in the last 10 days alone).  Those who care enough to push out a stream from a conference make participation possible for people like me.  And the added perk of such streams has been that along with the actual keynote presentation there is usually a Twitter backchannel going that includes face-to-face conference participants along with virtual attendees (like me) mixing it up together… about the ideas in the presentations – and (BIG PERK- sharing resources with one another).  Sharing live from literally around the globe (one conference I tuned in to last week included participants from at least 3 different continents).  Yet another benefit is the opportunity to add like-minded folks to my network via the contact in the backchannel.  Do I love my twitter network?  You bet I do.  (See an earlier post).

 But, I digress.  The main point of this post is to share my thinking/notes from Kathy Sierra’s presentation.  I am one of over 13,000 folks following @KathySierra on Twitter.  I know a little about her background.  You can look her up to learn more about her (in fact, I challenge you to do so).  Admittedly her presentation was not specifically tailored for an audience of academics/educators.  However, even though I did not hear the entire presentation (I ran across the streaming link in Twitter after the session started) I found much of what she had to say very meaningful to me and helpful in (re)considering my student/classroom/teaching relations as I approach my fall course planning.

 So here goes (Know that I am paraphrasing here and remixing into how I make meaning of what she said.  I am not claiming to render a verbatim transcription.  If you want to hear her directly, follow links from the NMC Summer 2009 Conference Page to a couple of her past presentations.  Also, I’d suggest you visit @GardnerCampbell’s blog GardnerWrites for his take Kathy Sierra Lives.)

1.  Focus on what users do not what you do.  Okay, so for me in teaching this is the whole idea of focusing on what students are learning more than (or at least as much as) what I am teaching.  And…this moves us on to the corollary that if I don’t do this there is the unavoidable ‘I taught it, why didn’t they learn it’ quandary.
2. Give users superpowers quickly.  Hmmm.  How to give students ‘superpowers’?  What does this mean?  Well, I am still chewing on this one, but I think it can mean that it is important to help students feel successful in their learning as early on as possible.  That could take many forms.  It might be early success with grading.  It might be the simple positive comments in response to effort at learning/engaging.
3. Don’t focus on X, ask what X is a subset of.  Here I am interpreting X to be content.  So, don’t focus on content, but what the course content a part is of.  I teaching nursing courses, so how does nursing fit into the larger healthcare picture?  More specifically, how does the use of technology by nurses fit into the broader arena of health care information technology? Of course that is not all there is to learn about information/technology literacy for nurses, but context-building should certainly be a frame for the details.
4. Always be practicing/create a culture of practice.  It is important to build in opportunity for mastery experiences (I am a Bandura fan, but that’s another post).  This takes thoughtful consideration and won’t happen if the emphasis is on content coverage.  It means that the teacher is also a learner – alongside students – practicing learning in a shared spirit of inquiry. 
5. Remember (and I like this one best) that how you make them feel = how they feel about you.  Sierra talked about ‘militantly enforcing’ niceness.  Are people comfortable asking questions? Oh, how I wish I had thought of that when I was a young teacher in the classroom trying to make my mark/prove how much I knew.  I was not a nice person. I was difficult, hard-nosed, haughty, arrogant.  My students had to endure my classes.  I can’t imagine how miserable I made them feel.  I hope I am all better now.  These days I am working on how to make students in my online classes feel closeness with me in their learning endeavors – without face-to-face interactions. 
6. There are no dumb answers. (We’ve all heard there are no dumb questions).  This shifts the perspective a bit…and points out that it is okay to be wrong sometimes.  That comes along with learning alongside rather than ‘instructing’ from the front of the room.
7. Make the right thing easy the hard thing difficult.  I think that could be making learning/engaging easier and not learning/engaging more difficult.  That is more of a challenge, especially when dealing with students who lack motivation and who might be satisfied with mediocrity.

 There was more, but remember I am not after giving you a transcription…but my thoughts about some of the points presented.  I appreciate the opportunity afforded through my PLN to reflect upon my own teaching practice once again using a bit different frame….and the opportunity that came along with to join in the conversation about same with colleagues from afar. Thanks Twitter!!  So, back to the start of this post.  If you aren’t tuned in to your community of professionals on Twitter you are missing a golden opportunity to connect.  Give it a try.  See what you’ll learn.