• As you go up the employment ladder, the further up you go, the more the responsibility of the person to think about the future.
• Larger the issue, the further into the future you have to think
• Empowering global leaders: followers -> global citizens (understanding the past and the present) -> global leaders (ability to project forward)
• Five characteristics of futures-oriented teaching and learning:
1. An inherent focus on change: Instead of just “where have we been” and “where are we now, “but also “how did we get from point A to point B.” Futures oriented questions would ask “how did we get here” and “how might we go forward?”
2. Higher-order thinking: objectives that include “plan.” “design,” “model.” “predict,” and “assess the risk of…”
3. Scholarly behavior: scholars are on the cutting edge of knowledge and figures out what needs to be done next and how to do it.
4. Empowerment of the liberal arts: “the 21st century will challenge us to cope with change at a dizzying pace. A solid liberal arts and sciences foundation is the highest and best preparation for life that Elon College can offer its students.” –Leo Lambert
5. Leadership: students become agents of change by imaging a better future, design plans to make them happen, do it!
• Language impacts how we approach things. Instead of “course” how about “quest?”
• Talked about futurist work at Elon: courses as well as campus groups, emerging futures forum, etc.
• This program is a lot about futurism, but also a lot about creating a quest-like environment where you set a large but reachable goal and guide the students to success. Good planning means students can be active creators rather than passive.
• Discussed a biology class that integrated futurist thinking.
• Students design, implement, analyze, and present their own experiment.
• It’s not as much about content as it is about finding information and creating knowledge.
• With this experience they will be more likely to be discriminating consumers of scientific knowledge.
• Has found that biology futurist students end up with more sophisticated views on civic debates, they are more engaged, have more knowledge gains, have a greater understanding of content, other universities are adopting parts of the curriculum.
This presentation reminded me of the OCLC presentation I attended a few years ago. I really enjoy futurist thinking, and would love to join the association. Too bad they have such strict membership criteria!
I gave a session and co-presented a session at the Innovations in Instruction Conference at Elon University. My first session had probably about 70 people in the room. It was a great crowd: engaged, ready to contribute, asked good questions… I had a really good time. Here is that presentation:
My second presentation was given with Jolie Tingen. We had a smaller group, but they were also engaged. We had some good conversations about ways people are incorporating literacies into their classes and the skills that students have to have to be able to participate. That presentation is here:
It’s a crazy time of year to pull together presentations with course planning and back-to-school events to plan, but I’m really glad to have been able to give sessions at this conference and to give back to an event that I look forward to every year. Good stuff!
I really enjoy the Innovations in Instruction Conference that Elon University hosts-for free-each year. I’ve been to all but one (I’m pretty sure) and each year it gets better than the year before. This year I saw a call for presentations so enthusiastically submitted two proposals. I also saw that they had lined up Michael Wesch as the keynote, which raised the bar even higher. I was nervous about attending his keynote, wishing I could use the time to prepare for the two presentations, but I’m so glad that I did. It was one of the most intellectually interesting ones I’ve heard in a while. He also recapped a lot of the issues brought up in his videos, but gave more context to the information. Fabulous talk, and one that re-energized me, which is just what I needed at this time of the year.
From introduction: This program is planned almost exclusively by faculty in their first year. Helps bring them into campus culture.
Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University
Introduced as “one of the most innovative and provocative thinkers in higher ed today.”
• Started by introducing traditional anthropology.
• Talked about his experiences in New Guinea.
• Gave an example of a situation that taught him that he really had to know the language.
• Talked about building a house. 240 people participated.
• Talked about our commodity environment. Pay people for work and relationship is completed. There, they have a gifts environment. Pay people, and it’s another gift, so if continues the relationship.
• This commodity relationship creates a sense of individualism. In a gift environment, you’re dependent on relationships you have a relational identity.
• Portable identity leads to consumerism. Relational identity leads to minimalism.
• If giving a gift (eg a potato), you tell about all the people who lead to that potato being available to give. You connect the receiver to other people. (I think there are interesting gender studies issues here.)
• New Guinea is sustainable and there is an equality among people.
• Ran through the small village exercise. • I keep coming back to the web (as I’m sure he’s planning), thinking about how the online/media environment is based on a gift relationship. Blogs, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc, wouldn’t exist or have value without people giving the gift of their content.; • “The most significant problem in higher education is the problem of significance itself.”
• Asks his students who doesn’t like school, only half their students raise their hands. Asks his students how many don’t like to learn, no one raises their hand.
• It’s not just a technology gap, there is a cultural gap.
• Talked about some forms of Western influence in New Guinea: written language, law, etc.
• Marshall McLuhan: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
• Media are not just communication but they mediate relationships.
• Talked about hype that surrounds technology in education.
• Teaching hasn’t changed given the tools available, but learning has.
• Learning to read and write online… they do the most of these activities on the computer.
• Traditional classrooms are set up with the idea that the teacher can push information to the students.
• Traditional education is built around the idea that information is scarce and hard to find, that authority is necessary for good information.
• In a front facing room, students are told that authorized information is beyond discussion.
• And we see that students bring these assumptions to small classes.
• Students want to know what they need to know for the grade. Crisis of significance.
• Something in the air: the web.
• Students have access to the body of knowledge that is on the web. If we’re lecturing at them while they browse, something is wrong.
• Information is no longer scarce.
• We’ll need to rethink learning, which means we’ll have to rethink education.
• Computer file storage built around real-life metaphor. Just now learning we can do this differently.
• Blogging taught us that anyone could be a creator of information.
• Pointed out that YouTube has produced more video in the past 6 months that television has in its existence.
• Wikipedia is showing us that by working together we can create information that rivals the content of experts.
• “Nobody is as smart as everybody.” Kevin Kelly
• Education is being challenged on the issue that authorized information is beyond discussion.
• For example: discussion and history tabs in Wikipedia. You can weigh the evidence yourself.
• Challenges the idea that authority comes from the top down. Authority comes from the discussion itself.
• Compared what’s happening on the web (in the creation of various forms of metadata) to the work that librarians used to do. Just happening in a more organic way.
• Not just about teaching students how to find information, but to set up a system where information comes to them.
• A social network of learning can be powerful for them.
• If we live in a world where information is all around us, the issue of acquiring is less important. We need to make meaningful connections. We are aiming to help students make meaningful connections. These connections are significant.
• You need the content to make connections, but you need to enable students to learn in a way in which they’re making these connections.
• Gave an overview of the 200 person global map activity. Give each person an area to learn the most about. Room of experts.
• Recognizes that he can’t know everything, that the students are the ones to save the world, that students need to be able to leverage technology available to them.
• Puts people together in groups based around their assigned area of the world and have to create a really good cultural example of the area of the world prior to 1491.
• Try to create a simulation where their world plays along to where we are today. Then, they extend it into the future to try to “save the world.”
• Use a wiki to discuss. Record rules: economic, military power, diplomacy, etc.
• Here’s a video of how it works, but it also incorporates Twitter and Jott.
• It’s really a systems class. Bring in environment, business, etc.
• It’s the way the simulation fails is where the learning takes place.
• The last few weeks of class are discussion based around where it fails.
• Videoing all of this on a number of cameras, each section of the world has to edit it down to 5 minutes. Then professor synthesizes it to 5 minutes for the world. Blend with real world history to show the connections that are being made.
This was a great talk. His class is as much an information literacy class as an anthropology one.
I’ve taken PTO this week to work on my book. I have a rough draft and it needs polishing, and without seeing that page number grow it was getting hard to get motivated.
And this week has been really productive, just not in the way I had planned:
Had a great talk with a PhD student that got me thinking of going back to school
Reviewed an article for a journal
Finished a presentation due for next week
Compiled notes for the other one (We’re meeting tomorrow to finish the presentation.)
Did a little consulting
Outlined a chapter that I need to finish by the end of the month and will have finished the draft by tomorrow
I got a little bit of the book reworked, too.
I was feeling guilty about not using the week as I had planned, but now I’m feeling pretty good about it. By 5pm tomorrow I should have all my “extracurricular” work finished except the book. That will leave one project alone for me to get done in my non-work-hours.
Okay, so I only made the video because I wanted to test the service. But hey, it’s fun, so let me know if you want an invite!
On another note, I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about literacies, information & media competencies, educational technology, and what we’re doing in higher ed. Hopefully you’ll see some of that reflected in some posts here soon.
Next week I’m going to be giving a few presentations at Elon’s Innovations in Instruction conference. I’m really excited about this. I’ve been going for a few years now, and love the one day workshop. This year was the first year where I saw a call for proposals, so I put in one and a colleague of mine and I put in another. Both were accepted, so now I’m feeling the crunch. Today I made the presentation for my solo presentation: Learning from the Context.
So one down, one to go. I’m meeting with my co-presenter later this week. If I can get the okay, I’ll post that one here, too.
The thing I’m most excited about, though, is the keynote speaker. Michael Wesch will start the day, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what he has to say first-hand. This morning I was reminded of this presentation, one of his talks on YouTube:
Web2.0, the Social Media, and Academia: Using Personal Learning Environments to Expand Teaching and Learning
Joan Vinall-Cox - University of Toronto
Premises:
education exists to share ad extend knowledge
information increasing
we are living in most extensive and rapidly changing communication environment
we are engaged with creating and learning how to ‘be’ within this environment
Web 2.0
Social online-hosted applications, cloud computing
A Discussion on Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation User Values Phil Moss - session chair Robert McDonald - University of California, San Diego/Indiana University Chuck Thomas - Florida Center for Library Automation/IMLS Tyler Walters - Georgia Tech
This is an interactive session, use clickers to see how we are like/unlike typical millennials
Do you have facebook/myspace account? 70% of us,
Do you use IM? 40% every day 40% every week
SMS? 50% every day, 30% never
How do you prefer to communicate with colleagues? email at 89%
Kindly asked if he needed to cover Millennials, then said we could skip that section since we all knew most of that content.
Research indicated they are no more gifted or able to find good information over other generations, even online
Used short video interviews to find out millenial expectations. Tried to find people with their own laptops to ask questions of students with some level of technical expertise.
Showed answers for a few questions: do you have an ___ account, IM, cell phone, sms?
Q: Most did say they used these things, but there were some who didn’t.
As someone who went to college at the height of AOL and ICQ messaging, I was really surprised at how few of the students use online instant messaging compared to cell phone text messaging (which most seemed to do daily)
After reading a lot about this generation, I was surprised that so many said that they liked using email.
Seemed like the second most frequent answer for group work, after email, was telephone. This surprised me because I know from reading Millennial research that I tend to have a lot in common with that demographic, but I really prefer the phone the least.
Speakers said that some online communication waits until the group members know each other better.
Interviews confirmed: heavy users of internet for entertainment (gaming, media, media creation), most have multiple devices, very comfortable with internet for shopping and classwork
Q: Asked if the students felt that they are good at finding information online, and if they thought their classmates were good at finding information. All said they were good, and also thought their classmates were good at finding information online (but less confident)
Q: When asked where to find scholarly or trustworthy sources for classes, Google was the only response that they got. One person said Jstor. No other databases or repositories mentioned.
Q: Asked about Second Life with the expectation the students wouldn’t be using it as much as librarians. Most hadn’t even heard of it.
Q: One thing library has that I can’t get elsewhere is: digital media (make movies/audio), “and I guess library help,” “not really anything I can think of,” “peace and quiet,” typewriter, older printed resources, magazines & resources, online library resources, online chat with librarians, free DVDs, with digital media being the big winner in this group.
Learning spaces: collaboration needs of students (virtually and in-person), simultaneous need for technology and library resources, overlapping campus roles (with IT, advising, tutoring, writing center), “flattening library world” (mixed library / computer user support / student services environment)
Study area, multimedia support, presentation rehearsal studio (campus portal has room reservation for this room)
West was done with less student input than East
Learning spaces are never done: continual feedback and adjustment
Campus partnerships grow: software training, multimedia projects, capture campus events, ed tech program development
Q: The main thing I use in the library is: computers, course reserves, stacks if can’t find online articles, internet, quiet areas, digital videos (computers and internet won)
Asked how wireless paths converge: 802.11x and cell
Some cell phones use 802.11x coverage, which decreases what the network can cover
Talked about iPhone: suggested we might need to have apps to be in the market
eLearning Strategic MERLOT Robbie Melton - Tennesse Board of Regents
She’s very funny!
Framed discussion in terms of rising gas prices leading towards more eLearning
Talked about how learning objects save time and money for the organization
Integrates with Desire2Learn course management system, easy to integrate MERLOT learning objects into the course materials
Strategic planning: faculty training, budget line item, online faculty mentors
She recommended hulu.com. This is the only way John and I are watching TV these days. Well, hulu and netflix streaming.
Made an analogy between hulu and the peer reviewed learning objects in MERLOT.
Gives faculty rewards: full funding to MERLOT conference, acknowledgment to chief academic officers, at distance ed conference, website acknowledgment, tenure and promotions acknowledgment
Student activities: tutorials, wequests, web 2.0 instructional tools, access to experts, personal collections, student awards
The Constructive Alignment of Educational Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience Carnegie Horton - session chair William Kennedy - Michigan Technological University
Learning means acquiring new information
Memory means retaining it so that it can be used
Questions if we are getting the best students in college if they get in based on reading and writing. Some good students don’t necessarily perform to what we measure.
The #1 cause of high school dropout is sheer boredom (Gates HS study)
Digital natives are forced into analog world of digital immigrants
Students immerse themselves in digitally mediated world outside of class
Lectures are “excruciatingly slow, repetitious, irrelevant, and unbelievably one-sided affairs.”
“Why not try a scientific approach to education?” Carl Wieman
Said that we teach undergraduates differently than graduates, if we brought undergrads through the process we put graduate students through, they’d live up to those expectations.
