Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Cole had a Flickr slideshow running with photos from today's event. He wanted to start by thanking everyone for coming out.

We tried some really interesting things today, and some words have emerged in Cole's mind to describe what's going on out there:

• Create
• Teach (We heard lots about tech, but not as much about teach)
• Learn
• Community (Creating this can be hard, but that's one of the goals of an event like the symposium.)
• Collaboration
• Bold (Take some risks, check out the "cluetrain manifesto")

This is our community. He would love to see everybody back here next here with some great examples of applications of these new technologies for teaching and learning.If you (faculty, staff, etc.) want to collaborate, come find us (Teaching and Learning with Technology)

Everyone is invited! http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu

Over 90 posts created by all of us -- the community.

Thanks for spending a Saturday here, doing great things, and sharing them with us. Here is a link to Cole's slides from the wrap-up session.

A recent study in Nature magazine involved pulling several random scientific entries from wikipedia and checking their accuracy. The study showed that there were more scientific, factual inaccuracies in Encylopedia Britannica than there were in the corresponding wikipedia entries. (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html)

However, Encylopedia Britannica disputed the results, charging bias on the part of Nature's staff. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/britannica_wikipedia_nature_study/)

What are your opinions or experiences with the accuracy of wikipedia articles?

Passmore started with a background on wikis (e.g. what they are, how they work, wikipedia example, etc.) and then moved into why they can fit well in education:
Why use wikis in education?

• Open editing
• Simple formatting, publishing
• Easy to create new pages
• Collaborative writing

He then provided some ideas about potential educational uses:

• Post reports from group work, lab work
• Class notes
• "Outward bound" collaboration (Since a lot of educational technology tools are set up to keep students inside Penn State (e.g. Angel), wikis open the discussion up to the outside world)
• Brainstorming
• Collaborative alternative to PowerPoint
• Knowledge base
• Peer assessment/grading

...and some discussion of the environment for wikis at PSU:

• "Penn State Decides Against Supporting Wiki Project" (http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2006/02/02-10-06tdc/02-10-06dnews-12.asp)
• If you google wiki in the psu.edu domain, you get about 69,000 hits
• PSU's ITS is working on an internal wiki project (https://wiki.et-test.psu.edu/)
• Plenty of faculty/staff are serving their own wikis (e.g. Zope and Plone) (http://emerge.ed.psu.edu:8080/testPlone/index_html/wiki)

There was also a discussion of examples of wikis in use and some conventions for writing wikis:

• WF ED 543 students are using publicly available wiki service (http://infomarkets.pbwiki.com) to develop a book collaborative.
• Wikis can push out RSS feeds to help users monitor updates.
• Passmore set up a sandbox at http://tlt2006.pbwiki.com (Passmore can provide Password).
• Users can create an "orphan page" by marking up a link with [square brackets]

In closing, he covered some of the key benefits that wikis offer:

• Authentication
• Version history
• RSS feeds
• Comments and discussion about page

An enhanced podcast (i.e. slides with audio) of the presentation is up already at http://tinyurl.com/jqfgx

Today's keynoter, Henry Jenkins of MIT is a self described, "humanist from MIT." Among other things, he offered up a look at classic and new competencies that youth will need to be successful in the increasingly participatory and complex media environment:
Classic Competencies Needed:

• Traditional Print Literacy
• Research Skills
• Technical Skills
• Media Literacy

New Competencies Needed:

• Play - Experiment as surroundings as a form of problem solving
• Simulation - Interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes
• Performance - Ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
• Appropriation - The ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Multitasking - The ability to scan one's environment and shift focus onto salient details on an ad hoc basis
• Distributed Cognition - The ability to interact meaningfully with tools which expand our mental capacities
• Collective Intelligence - The ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal
• Judgement - The ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of difference information sources.
• Transmedia Navigation - The ability to deal with the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
• Networking - The ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
• Negotiation - The ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms