Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Cole Camplese and Jim Leous interview Bryan Alexander after his presentation at the 2007 TLT Symposium. They discuss the attendee's reactions, mobile devices, privacy, participatory culture, and many other topics related to the social web. [There are some problems with Bryan's audio, but you can catch most of what he's saying.] You can view the streaming version of this interview by clicking on the preview image or get the feed through iTunesU.

https://streaming.psu.edu/media/?movieId=1135

Dr. Smith's "Student Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with Technology" panel discussion is available as a streamed video. You will need the QuickTime plugin to view this video.

Time moves so quickly that if you're a slow adopter you run the risk of missing out. For those who prefer not to be on the cutting edge the trick becomes getting in when the moment is right. -Table 13

What are some of the ways we foster on-line learning environments?

Issues faculty at this table are facing: How de we get into the heads of our students? Struggle trying to understand why students act the way they do, e.g. in learning communities. Do learning communities foster shortcuts? Plagarism? Is it any different than how they operated in the "paper" age? Do technologies provide more affordances for discretions to occur? Or do we need to change our paradigm? (Refer back to the keynote speaker's ideas). Is the learning process now the thing as opposed to a final product?
Faculty at table 13 would like to assess the process, the contribution and the individual and group results.
Feel the need for students to somehow show the work.

Instructor involvement in the dialogue, creation, spurred student buy-in and contribution in learning communities such as team projects.
Impromptu Social Networks
Impromptu social networks, e.g. the gaming community comes together to "solve" a new game.How do we tap into this method of creating a "Collective intelligence" like this into the learning environment.
This led to a discussion on what constitues human interaction now? Walking down the street talking on your phone ignoring everyone else around you... what community are you a part of? Which one are you engaged in?

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?

One of the challenges Kelly mentioned was building a rapport with students through an entirely on-line environment. What are some of the afordances we can ake advantage of to remedy this?

Kelly used:

-instant messenger for office hours (Is it possible to transition to a video communication tool such as iSight in the future?, How much of an audience can we reach with it?)
-a profile on Facebook

-timely reminders, emails, and announcements via ANGEL

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

Wiki's facilitate collaborative page creation. Wikipedia demonstrates the power of "collective media."

Why would you want to use a wiki in instruction?

-any activity that requires accountable, collaborative writing.

-Open-editing, lower security, easy to use, democratic: everyone has equal access/auhority

-Class notes as a group

-Outward bound collaboration--bring in a greater network to the classroom
How can they be used?

No official Penn State policies on Wiki's.
Its is developing a Penn State Wiki (It's is not available yet. Check back periodically)

Dr. Passmore has a wiki you can check out.

pb wiki is a place to go for free wiki space

Use {bracket} to create orphan pages where you want students to create something new.

Sandbox is a place to go and play with a wiki The password is tlt2006. Set up by Dr. Passmore

Dr. Passmore has made a Podcast of this session available.

Security:

-authentication. can require a password to edit some, or all, pages
version history. can keep track of all versions
rss feeds

We have decided to create a common tag for use with Flickr so we can create an online archive of digital images from this year's event. Flickr is a free photo storage and sharing tool that enables users to post their pictures and tag them with key words (categories). By tagging photos with an identical tag, we can create a "living photo album" made up of any Flickr photos that share our tag.

We've decided on the tag tltsymposium2006 for use with Symposium related photos. You can visit Flickr to see photos currently tagged with our shared tag. Also, if you are interested, you can subscribe to the RSS feed to receive automatic updates to the Flickr photos.