I spent a few hundred dollars attending ICLS last week, and it was one of the best investments in my education this year. Several people were surprised that I would spend my own money to attend an academic conference. Don’t get me wrong, I would much rather be reimbursed for this kind of thing; but that is not always possible. To me, spending money on a good academic conference is no different than spending money on tuition. I am earning skills, a credential, and a network, and it will take all three to land a good job at a good university (in a place with lots of sunshine, beaches, and low humidity).

Why did I go to ICLS? I went to meet the right people, now that I know my dissertation topic (using TwHistory in the classroom). I presented a poster on TwHistory, which basically served as bait. But I didn’t wait for the professors to just show up. Instead, I attended their sessions, introduced myself, and invited them to come to my poster. Several professors I met last month at AERA came up to my poster and asked me difficult questions about my methodology. Two of the better known history learning scientists spent the next 20+ minutes, beers in hand, coaching me through a more compelling logic model for my dissertation. For the next 2 hours I was asked a lot of questions and given a lot of great feedback on doing historical reenactments with Twitter. I don’t know how to put a dollar value on all of this, but I can only say that it was extremely useful, and well-worth a few hundred dollars. (Plus I got to attend a Cub’s game. What could be better? Well, I guess they could have won.)

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Our “Tweeting from the Titanic” workshop began with a presentation to familiarize participants with how we use Twitter to share historical reenactments (we call it TwHistory). During the second half of the workshop participants researched several characters from the Titanic crew and quickly created nearly 100 tweets that were scheduled and shared that night at dinner. Due to the lack of time, we allowed participants to take some liberties during the workshop, creating a sort of virtual role play based on first-hand accounts. You can see the Titanic resources we prepared, as well as the Titanic Tweets Google Spreadsheet we used to coordinate it all. While we weren’t able to broadcast the tweets on the exact day of the tragic sinking (April 15), we tried our best to tweet at the appropriate times, adjusted for our timezone (GMT-6). I would love to extend this and prepare a more robust, historically sound version for the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, which will take place on April 15, 2012.

I should also mention that there is another TwHistory workshop coming up in October at the 2010 AECT convention in Anaheim, CA. We are preparing a reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and participants will have the opportunity to create some of the tweets for Black Sunday (October 27th), which happens to be the day of our session. I’m looking forward to that one! Here are the details of our AECT workshop:

11-R6:

TwHistory Workshop: Tweeting the Cuban Missile Crisis

Workshop participants will be introduced to TwHistory, a framework for creating and sharing historical reenactments with Twitter. They will be guided through the process of researching and creating tweets for the historical figures they will represent in an online Cuban Missile Crisis reenactment. The combined tweets will form a reenactment that will be shared via Twitter and TwHistory.org during the 2010 AECT conference and coinciding with the 48th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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May 6 Keynote: Hal Plotkin from OpenCourseWare Consortium on Vimeo.

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Augmented Reality in the Classroom - NML Presentation by Craig Kapp

I go to a lot of conferences. And I have given a number of presentations in the past few years — almost 30 of them (I think that’s a lot for a grad student). Today Craig Kapp’s presentation called “Augmented Reality in Learning” absolutely blew me away. I have never seen (well, virtually seen) a session with so much energy!

This year’s NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning was help entirely in a private instance of Second Life, a virtual world called “Hakone.” It was great to present TwHistory with Marion Jensen, alongside new media greats like Constance Steinkuehler, Brett Bixler, and Craig Kapp. A big thank you to Larry, Alan, and all the organizers! I have posted photos of the conference as well. For me, this experience shattered any notion that a virtual conference is somehow less engaging or interesting. Au contraire!

Back to Craig Kapp. In all his spare time as a full-time doctoral student at NYU (I can relate), Craig is working on ZooBurst, an AR storytelling tool that lets anyone create their own 3D pop-up book. He invited those who are interested to take part in the public beta. (I had signed up before his talk was over.)

Here are some of the video clips Craig shared during his presentation. Highly recommended for those interested in augmented reality (AR):

AR Example http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/ar-examples.mov
AR Book http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/augmented-books.mov
Physics http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/physics.mov
Simsnails http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/sim-snails.mov
Whisperdeck http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/whisperdeck.mov
Zoo Burst http://media.nmc.org/2010/03/zooburst.mov

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2010 Connexions Conference in Houston, Texas

I’ve just attended another interesting Connexions conference, and now it’s time to dump a few ideas out here so I can get to sleep.

Conference summary

After a nice welcome and introduction, the first panel shared major content projects, demonstrating the supreme importance the Connexions team places on the content. Mark Horner shared the four projects he is leading with the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation. Jan-Bart de Vreede presented the Wikiwijs project. Kien Pham (Vietnam Foundation), Gary Martin (National Council of Professors of Educational Administration),
Judy Baker (Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources), and Fred Moody (Rice University Press) all shared very interesting projects.

During the breakout sessions, Connexions Project Manager Kathi Fletcher and Alan Runyan of Enfold Systems shared details about the newly-released Enterprise Rhaptos, an open source, stand-alone version of Connexions’ software. This is big news, and I’ll go into more detail later.

During the afternoon authors’ panel, Chuck Severance shared a great story of reuse, and how he ended up authoring 3 books in one year. Jan Odegard, Ken Busbee, and Andrew Barron also contributed to an interesting panel. I also enjoyed hearing from a long list of for profit partners: enTourage (makers of eDGe), SoftChalk, UniqU (providing services and training around Connexions), inetoo, ereadia, Soomo Publishing & WebAssign. Connexions is clearly living up to their name and gaining momentum.

Technical stuff

I’m pleased to see Enterprise Rhaptos rolling out as an open source project. This could meet the needs of many organizations who want their own Connexions site. It will be interesting to see how Enterprise Rhaptos competes with eduCommons in the institutional OCW space, and I would love to see content flow easily between the two systems so users can experience the “frictionless remix” mentioned during several sessions.

Here are some new features Kathi Fletcher announced for Enterprise Rhaptos and for the main Connexions repository:

1. Quick install instructions (for Enterprise Rhaptos) You can be up and running in 20 min. — I’m intrigued with Amazon EPS virtualization, but I don’t see any docs on setting that up. Anyone have a link?
2. Web-based MathML editor that can be used outside of CNX as well
3. CollXML (CNX aggregation format) will soon support output to IMS CC
4. Support for Google Analytics allowing individual members to track their own stats.
5. Kathi announced several more features that the Shuttleworth foundation agreed to sponsor the day before. Since the slides aren’t up yet, here is a photo of Kathi’s feature slide. A bounty system of community development was also announced at the same time, allowing outside developers to be paid for working on features the community is willing to fund.

Future directions and friendly feedback

The new Connexions features and the introduction of Enterprise Rhaptos brings with it new questions. Here are some things to think about:

1. How will Enterprise Rhaptos instances connect to the Connexions Mother Ship (CMS)? It seems reasonable to expect a search from cnx.org to list results from Enterprise Rhaptos sites. Wouldn’t it also make sense to allow Enterprise Rhaptos to upload content to the main cnx.org site as well? Perhaps via RSync?
2. With multiple Enterprise Rhaptos, how will we standardize UIDs for duplicate copies of content? Could we establish a domain-level ID as well as a UID for content. I am in favor of the LOCKSS model (Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe), but I don’t necessarily want Google to have the last word on which copy I find. It makes sense to decide on a consistent URL structure in place up front so Enterprise Rhaptos instances can play nice with the Connexions Mother Ship.
3. Why not have a basic, through-the-web, WYSIWYG editor option for Connexions? Perhaps this should have been my first question. Let me explain this further in the next paragraph.

As someone who is still relatively new to Connexions, I offer the perspective of a new user. I can see how the strangeness of the Connexions Extensible Markup Language (CNXML) could be intimidating to an instructor with average computer skills who wants to add their content to Connexions. Even the Microsoft Word plugin doesn’t entirely get around this issue, and users still end up staring at XML code. Frankly, no one should be surprise that Computer Science instructors are among the main advocates for Connexions. They are not intimidated by a raw markup language. What about everyone else? Could a “beginner mode” be added as an more simple option for authoring?

What elements would be included in a simplified authoring mode? It would be interesting to analyze all the content on the Connexions site to determine which specific tags are being used most. Could a basic, WYSIWYG web editor be created to satisfy the needs of most content creators? While I understand the wonderful advantages of using XML, it could be made all but invisible in “beginner mode,” and I think this would attract even more content creators than ever before.

To conclude, the Connexions 2010 conference was exciting, encouraging, and though-provoking. I’m thrilled to see such a vibrant community forming to meet the needs of so many different users using Connexions. And, as always, it’s always nice to see old friends and make some new ones.

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IMG_5600, originally uploaded by caswell_tom.

I really enjoyed being part of the UNESCO Chair in E-Learning conference on Open Social Learning last week with my friend and colleague, Marion Jensen. We presented TwHistory, a project that Marion started and I have been involved with during 2009, and it involves reenacting historical events using Twitter. Jeff Young posted a nice summary of the TwHistory project on the Wired Campus Blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education, although he gave me more credit than I deserve. TwHistory was Marion’s idea from the beginning; I was fortunate enough to have gotten involved early on in the development of that idea.

For more about the UNECSO Chair in E-Learning conference I will refer you to José Mota’s excellent conference summary. This was my fourth time visiting Barcelona over the past 18 months, and I feel very lucky to have had all those opportunities. Barcelona has quickly become one of my favorite cities in the world, and the wonderful people at UOC are big part of why I feel that way. Thank you to Emma, Julia, and all the organizers at UOC for an excellent conference. You have given me a lot to think about, and I look forward to future opportunities to share and discuss the future of Open Social Learning.

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For anyone who thinks this is a distraction, I can only offer my own experience with the game. Prior to the last keynote, I actually found myself reading Rich Halverson’s CV and an abstract of his book to prepare my keyword bets. I was more engaged than ever in the sessions, trying to detect trends I could use for future bets in the game. So while this is clearly anecdotal evidence, the game worked for me. LibraryRemix points out that because this activity develops skills in trendwatching, it could be powerful in schools as well:

What if your students were compelled to pre-analyze a discussion, predict trends (places they believe their peers will focus their attention during that discussion) AND perhaps empowered to influence those trends themselves, simply by participating in the conversation?  Heady hands-on experience!

I have hung out in many a Twitter backchannel at plenty of conferences (in case you haven’t heard, I’m the reigning Grand Poobah of Social Media from TTIX 09). BackChatter is the most effective, engaging idea I have seen for encouraging meaningful activity on Twitter. Kudos to all who were involved in this project! I hope you will share your project with other conference organizers.

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Welcome to TTIX!

Earlier today I was crowned “Grand Poobah of Social Media” at this year’s Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange (http://ttix.org). This honor came shortly after Chris Lott’s closing keynote in which I realized that I would probably be better off if I tweeted less and meditated more. But now I carry a new mantle, an unexpected honor I earned by blasting out conference tweets and links like a mad man. I can’t complain. They gave me an iPod Touch.

Beyond the iPod Touch and the whole Grand Poobah experience, some highlights from this conference for me were chatting about Twitter as an engine with Scott Leslie at Sundance, catching up with David Wiley (finally!), and presenting with Marion Jensen on Augmented Field Trips using whereigo. Jon Mott’s Building a loosely coupled gradebook presentation and Chuck Wight’s Engaged or enraged? Courting the online learner with lessons learned from video games were also stand outs for me. And there was also the purchase of a Yamaha LD-10 guitar on the way home. What could be better?

Does this hat make me look like a Grand Poobah?

Every one of the keynotes was first rate. Brian Lamb threw it down with style with his presentation on The Urgency of Open Education. I love Brian’s question, referring to the thousands of cameras taking the same picture during Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin: “Was anyone in the audience really worried that this was going to be aptly documented visually?” I enjoy his perspective as he looks into the participatory culture of social media. Scott Leslie’s The Open Educator As DJ was both interesting and a visual breath of fresh air. Scott used a tool called Prezi — you just have to see it for yourself: http://prezi.com/66159/. Finally, Chris Lott really brought it home with his closing keynote, which takes a fresh, honest, philosophical look at at education. He started out sitting us down in Plato’s dark cave, and took us on a guided tour of the history of ideas. I’m so glad there are still people like Chris out there to remind me to be honest and humble about my learning journey.

This conference was packed with great sessions and (more importantly) with great people. When I tweeted something about TTIX saving the best sessions for last Scott Leslie replied that he disagreed because all the sessions were great. Looking back I have to agree. Kudos to the Marc Hugentobler (diamond_mind on Twitter) and the rest of the UVU TTIX team! I’m already looking forward to next year, and not just because I get to wear the Grand Poobah hat!

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Just for fun, I made a Yahoo! Pipes LDS General Conference Tweetmap to show where the last 100 tweets came from. I wanted to map all 2000+ tweets, but Twitter’s search API only allows 100 at a time. Good enough for now. If you’re curious, all the tweets have been organized by speaker here: http://conference-tweets.appspot.com. Enjoy!

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