Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

As our 2008 Keynote Speaker Lawerence Lessig pointed out, students are communicating differently these days. Dr. Kathleen Brown, Justin Miller, and Chris Millet give us some insight on the current generation of "storytellers". Click on through to the session notes and download this Symposium 2008 podcast for more.

One suggestion I have for improving this site in the future is making the session podcasts more findable. For instance, in the agenda table, there is a link to the session notes for each session. How about a link also to the corresponding podcast? Perhaps also renaming the link "Agenda" to "Sessions" - it's a more intuitive place to look when you're going back to reflect after the conference, when you're no longer concerned about when things are taking place during the day.

Amanda Klunk, an undergraduate student studying English talks about her interest in new media as literature. She also talks about the parallels between teaching a course online and tutoring online.

I've looked forward to Kathleen Brown's Next Generation Storytellers presentation. With Dr. Brown are Chris Millet and Justin Miller.

Chris offered a general background of digital storytelling. Simply, it's storytelling using a variety of the available multimedia tools. The Stories revolve around a theme- not the technology. It could be a photo montage, a podcast, or a collaborative voice thread. Remixing- using existing media- to tell a new story, is currently a popular method. There are a number of pedagogical benefits: engagement, motivation, dual-coding, authentic learning. And, it can serve as a "hook", as in a great Astro001 video example on the Composition of a Comet. Poor Steven.

The 2008 Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology is just around the corner. It will take place on Saturday, March 29 from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. Here are a few notices and recommendations that may help you to get ready for the day. All of the recommendations are optional. We are making them to give people the opportunity to try out some of the technologies that our presenters are discussing and to allow people to take a more active role in the Symposium if they choose to do so.

1. Registration is Full
2. Schedule for the Day
3. Read Faculty Stories
4. Bring a Laptop
5. Share your Photos
6. Blog the Symposium
7. Tweet your Activity
8. Get Help with the Above Activities

Here are some guidelines you can use when blogging about the symposium.

• If you get the chance, read the session abstract before the session to familiarize yourself with the material.

• Capture what jumps out at you as the key issue or theme that arises during the session. Don’t worry about capturing the minutia instead focus on what strikes you about the presentation.
• Use links in your post to point the readers to key information referenced during the session.
• Don’t worry about perfection. You are doing this live and on the fly. Mistakes and typos will occur and that is okay. You can always go back and fix the typos later.

During the Symposium, attendees can tag themselves with some stickers that we have on hand. I hope this will help to strike up conversations between people who share a common interest, but who don't know each other yet.

Christopher Long in the College of the Liberal Arts teaches “Tragedy, Comedy, Politics” and “20th Century Philosophy” courses. To help students develop their critical thinking and writing skills, he asks each student to create a blog on which they post assignments. The blogs allow students to write for a broader audience than their instructor alone and encourage them to develop a unique voice. Long’s ability to provide regular, dynamic feedback helps students grow as writers and thinkers.