Faculty Academy 2006

I'm struck by how many people are here at the Faculty Academy this year. Several high-level adminstrators, and probably 80-90 people attending. That's great and I hope that it's a sign of a larger, broader committment on the part of the faculty and staff to the ideas (and openness) espoused here.

Blogging and Me

So, I stood up and said in front of many people at Faculty Academy that I'm a reluctant blogger in part because of concern about tenure. It's something I've said to Steve and Gardner a number of times, but never in public (and in front of the Rector of the Board of Visitors, the Dean of Academic Affairs, and the Dean of CGPS, as well as at least one member of the tenure committee).

Faculty Academy 2006 -- Rachel Smith

I'm once again blogging about the Faculty Academy.

Rachel Smith of the NMC is talking about gaming and education.

People actually research MMOs and their impact. [Seems useful for modern anthropologists or sociologists.] See The Daedalus Project

MSU program does research on games and gender -- aliengames.org

Research, books and lectures about games. -- gametheory.net

The Post That Was, Then Wasn't, Then Was Again

This post was originally written in February, posted, and then I removed it, out of concerns about 1) how it would be perceived and 2) how it had been written in a moment (moments?) of frustration. I have been persuaded to repost it now, though my concerns remain.

Having done student web site projects (on the history and impact of a piece of American technology) three times now over the last four years, I suppose I should have realized that the specifics of the technological side of the approach (using Netscape Composer and a limited amount of hard coding to build research-based web projects) was getting long in the tooth. What I get is that HTML coding is no longer a relevant/marketable skill to our students.

I'm not planning on teaching the class in which I've done this assignment again until Spring of 2007--which both gives Jerry Slezak, my building's ITS, and I more time to figure this out, but also more time for things to change--yet I still have a number of concerns about completely ditching the old system that may add something to this conversation on Patrick Gosetti-Murrayjohn's blog (or it may just reveal my own biases).

1) Having to completely ditch something (assignments, guidelines, rubrics) Jerry and I spent an immense amount of time creating does not make me eager to adopt something else brand new (especially from a new company that may not be around the next time I teach the class). The reluctance some faculty have for embracing new technology may partly come from a sense that that technology is constantly something new (and therefore a sense that an instructor will be at square one every time they teach a new class).

[I am aware that I wouldn't be literally at square one, but it feels like it sometimes. That feeling can be paralyzing (or at least discouraging of new attempts).]

2) I'm not convinced a wiki or a content management system (especially not knowing what that CMS would look like) will meet all of my expectations for what I had hoped the web projects were doing before.

Just so we're clear on my (perhaps unreasonable) goals, they were (and are) based in the idea that I want to provide students with a chance:

--To learn a new way to present ideas, while adhering to the idea that all serious historical scholarship must be thoroughly cited with footnotes (or endnotes) and a bibliography.

--To learn the components of reliable online sources

--To produce original, available online works of scholarly research that would be intellectually accessible and interesting to other students and web surfers. Ideally these projects would improve—one web site at a time—the quality of information available on the web. I would emphasize that this focus on a scholarly approach is essential to my understanding of the value of this assignment. (And I would add that I think that wikis/blogs are seen by many members of my discipline as unscholarly, at least for now.)

--To create a process imitatible by other disciplines

--To provide history majors with a new skill set that they were not getting within our current curriculum. Ideally this skill set would make them more marketable when looking for jobs or applying to graduate schools. [Although HTML or Netscape Composer skills are less relevant than they were three years ago, certainly I think the ability to think about and present information in the digital realm remains important.]

--To think about what it would mean to write and create for a larger audience than just their instructor.

Now, obviously, some of these goals could be met through a wiki or a blog or a content management system. But, could I count on that medium to be (relatively) stable?

Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way and I should just be focusing on how to get students to think in new ways. Maybe the problem is with my desire to not have to completely rethink my approach every time I teach a class....

Bryan Alexander's Talk on Wireless

"wireless and mobile computing"

Bryan Alexander
co-director, center for educational technology, middlebury college

The combination of wireless technology and mobile computing is resulting in escalating transformations of the educational world. The question is, how are the wireless, mobile technologies affecting the learning environment, pedagogy, and campus life? To answer this question, we must assess the current state of affairs, surveying cyberculture globally and historically. We must consider the United States only peripherally, since it lags behind other parts of the world in several key trends. And we must carefully examine the wireless, mobile learning experience as it rapidly develops, doing our best to grasp emergent trends.

Bryan's presentation is an interesting and fascinating approach to the wireless world. See his blogged presentation notes at http://infocult.typepad.com/presentations/.

Afternoon Faculty Presentations Session

"iPods and Intercollegiate Debate: Coaching on the Go!"
Tim O'Donnell, Director of Debate, University of mary washington

Tim was

"looking for feedback on preliminary plans to rollout a systematic iPod program for intercollegiate debaters in Fall 2005. This is very much a work-in-progress. This presentation will sketch a preliminary vision for managing and coaching the debate program through the iPod."

Tim is comtemplating using iPods to:
1) organize briefing references in centralized location
2) convey information to the
3) Podcast Tim's coaching advice on particular teams and particular judges
4) Record all debates for the season
5) Students can record their own arguments to share with teammates

Issues
1) Security of podcasts
2) Microphone issues

Brian Lang's Been Digital So Long It Feels Like Print to Me

"Been Digital so long it looks like print to me: text technologies, authorship, and orality"

Brian Lamb
Project Coordinator, Office of Learning Technology, University of British Columbia

Brian will raise questions about particular qualities of digital and paper-based text; redefined notions of authorship and authority online; how the different media direct attention and affect cognition; information overload; and impacts on higher education (teaching, institutional and epistemic authority). He'll then open the floor for plenty of discussion!

Material information at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki/brian/wiki?BeenDigital

Brian's approach endorses the massive movement to blogs and wikis. But he also acknowledges that the approach to personal publishing raises some difficult questions about authorship, ownership, filtering. Yet those difficult questions also represent opportunities for new work.

Brian points to this useful piece: Jill Walker, ["Weblogs: Learning to Write in the Network"] -- an interesting piece on the use of the blogs and teaching students network literacy.

Brian also points to the idea of a "remix" culture that is a major part of the digital world. [Texts, music, images]

He notes that at heart blogging is about the "power of positive narcissism."

Great talk!