Emerging Technology for Emerging Scholars: Ed Media Conference and Beyond...

Please Note: This blog post is not going to be the most thoughtful or illuminating that I have ever come up with. Hence, if you are a leader in the field of educational technology or e-learning or whatever, I would not recommend reading it. Skip it and save some time. There is not much here to really chew on. I just needed to post something since it has been over a month and I had promised that I would post more during my sabbatical. Apparently, I lied.

Now on to the post...On Thursday afternoon, my very delightful friend, Jim Hensman, at the Coventry University wrote me an email. Jim said that he wanted to pick my brain for a session he is doing in a week or so at Ed Media in Victoria, BC which is June 24-27, 2013. In fact, it is the 25th anniversary of Ed Media. I wish I could go; from 1999 to about 2007, I went every year.

Jim then told that his session was one of those "Emerging Scholar" types of events. He has one hour assigned and wants to "create a discussion about the future of learning and how new researchers can orientate towards this." He wanted perhaps four or five examples of key things happening that are indicators of the future. They could be highly specific developments or "something more generic and could be really way out or down-to-earth."

I thought about it very briefly and sent him the info below. Then I expanded in it a tad.

Some Indicators of the future of learning:

   
1. Embedded and ubiquitous computing: Wearable devices like smart watches, bracelets, smartphones, Google Glass, etc., from which to access information as well as to communicate with others. Many articles on Google Glass lately, including general ones from the USA Today in April and those that are specifically related to healthcare in March.

     

2. Massive Open Online Gaming (MOOCs): Hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to K-12 and higher education as a result of MOOCs who have never had access before. And many more will change their jobs or career pursuits as a result. But accreditation, assessment, and attrition remain serious issues.

     

3. Free and Interactive Mobile Books: I think that free books on mobile devices or on the Web or your watches, etc., are a key part of the next century of learning. Cites like BookRix allow anyone to post mobile books. And Subtext allows for comments and communities to form around books.

4. Gamification of Learning: Learners want to achieve goals, overcome challenges, solve problems, interact, and ultimately win at something. More emphasis on this gamification of learning will be placed on all digital contents. I appreciate Jane McGonigal''s October 15, 2012 article in "Big Questions Online" (BQO), "How Might Video Games be Good for Us?" Speaking of which, I also appreciate the BQO website. They ask questions like "Can You Learn to Control Your Mind," and "Do We have Souls" and "Are We Alone in the Universe." Stuff like that.

5. Wall of Video for Apprenticeship: I think that expert apprenticeship is on the rise. We have video walls at IU.  It is called the IQ-Wall. I used it when my emerging learning technologies class ended in April We could bring in people from around the planet and have them appear on that wall. We now have another IQ-Wall in our Herman B. Wells Library. You can also have mini walls on a mobile phone. In each window, you can have a different expert, tutor, mentor, etc., appear. Or a different friend, colleague, family member. Increasingly, instructors will be tapping into experts on the fly in video walls or in Google Hangouts or whatever. (see attached paper #1…just published)

6. Extreme Learning and Life Change: I think that people will seek out life change online. OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources led to MOOCs. But it is more than MOOCs. It is also adventure learning, social change, global ed, online learning, shared online video, online language learning, etc., which all combine to offer new learning paths and experiences. People learn when at sea or on a boat, in a plane, on a train, in the mountains, etc. We are learning all the time. I am working on papers on life change from such informal learning environments. Here is one paper that I wrote on extreme learning for an open university conference in Manila, the Philippines last year.

A few hours later, I added the following items:

7. Virtual reality holodecks. Here, the user(s) can reenact scenes in history. Apparently, we already have the capabilities for audio and video, just not tactile yet. According to a February 2013 report, some company in Canada, in fact, is designing virtual holodecks. Apparently, Microsoft and the University of South California are also working on such technology. The author of the article, Matt Hartley, states,

"While 360-degree video might be the most obvious component in a holodeck-like structure, according to Ms. Su, technologies such as directional audio — think movie theatre surround sound on steroids — help to situate the user within an artificial world." He goes on to say, "Some of the technologies that would enable users to navigate the a potential holodeck — including touch computing, speech recognition, and motion sensing capabilities — are already being used in consumer technologies today, such as smartphones and video game systems." LeVar Burton, who was interviewed for this article, said that transporter rooms would be a "down-river goal."

8. On Demand Mentoring. Have a series of mentors or teachers available on your laptop, mobile device, or other as needed. When you encounter a learning difficulty, a teacher, mentor, tutor, etc., will appear. This already is in place for many years in the corporate world. Companies such as Triple Creek took the early lead in online mentoring, coaching, collaboration, and related social learning services.

9. Interactive Video Displays of Teachers and Peers. In effect, when you enter a school, there will be a video display or kiosk of some type wherein a young person (or adult) will be able to pick her classmates as well as her instructors from around the planet. Such technology will help personalize the learning process.

10. Science on the Sphere. Interactive globes that display planetary data such as climate change, ocean temperatures, hurricane movements, etc., around the world. According to one of my students, Michele Kelmer, "it is a project by NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Assoc). IU has the 97th one in the world." Now what happens when such devices are extended to display anything happening at any place on the planet? Oh, I guess that is what the U.S. government may be already doing. 

11. New forms of CVs and Resumes. This is not necessarily a technology tool. However, it will be vital to have a way to place your informal learning experiences and accomplishments in some format. I imagine resumes and CVs will soon divide up education and training into formal educational experiences and certificates at the top; semi-formal next (with badges and still other types of certificates), and then informal learning explorations of OpenCourseWare (OCW), open educational resources (OER), and MOOCs. My research is now looking at learner motivations and goals as well as obstacles and challenges when using such content.

12. Language translation devices: Already, there are tablets, mobile, and other that will take signage you encounter and translate it. See this video on the World Lens tool for the iPhone and Android devices. Such technology allows people to function more effectively in diverse settings.

 Those were the 12 ideas that I sent to my buddy Jim. Nothing earth-shattering here.

Ok, let's add a 13th--Flexible Display Devices. Imagine reading off of buildings, buses, and bendable screens on your watch or smartphone. Cool. There are many other learning innovations. I was just trying to give Jim a few quick items.

By the way, I do hope to go to Ed Media next year in Tampere, Finland and join up with Jim for one of his sessions. I miss him and the conference. One of the best international conferences in the field that one can attend.

Unabridged Interview: "Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style" in Big Think

Some people are wondering when I will post to TravelinEdMan again. How about tonight? Perhaps.

Why have I not been blogging you ask? Well, after finishing my Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for Blackboard back in May (see blog post with archive), I have been working on a book on online motivation and retention using my TEC-VARIETY model which I hope to give away free as a PDF and sell cheaply in Amazon CreateSpace as well as Kindle. One chapter left to write--on goal setting and yielding products. Each chapter takes about a week to write up. Hope to be done after I get back from the 28th Annual Wisconsin Distance Teaching and Learning Conference next week. Will I take a break from writing and hang out in Madison, Wisconsin next week and jog along Lake Monona and Mendota in early August? Yes! But I will try to finish the book before I leave or right after I get back. Then, it will take a few months of editing (and cutting) and copyediting before it I get the book done. I wrote too much....as per usual.

In the meantime, below is my unabridged interview by David Berning from Big Think which took place a few weeks ago and was posted yesterday. Some of you might want to read the article that appeared in Big Think, Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style. It was, in fact, the lead article in a set titled: "Today's big idea: Disrupting Education" (see list of these article).

First, I think I must explain how this interview came about. My team and I have been tracking Big Think as part of our extreme learning research and contacted them to help us collect survey data on informal and extreme learning (you can take the survey, in fact). A couple of wonderful people at Big Think replied that they wanted to talk to me about the research we were doing. Since only part of my reply is in that article in Big Think, I thought I would post the full response here in my TravelinEdMan blog.

What is Big Think you ask? Some might check out their Wikipedia page or their YouTube Channel. Bascially, Big Think includes short video interviews, multimedia presentations, panel discusions, and blog posts of hundreds of intellectuals around the planet. If you browse through it, you might find information on topics like stem cell research, happiness, global warming, technologies or foods of the future, etc. See the About. I heard that some of the founders have experience with producing the Charlie Rose show on PBS. It shows. Suffice to say, this Website is top notch. I remember some of their early interviews when I first explored it around 2007 were with folks like Richard Branson from Virgin Airlines and Deepak Chopra. People now listed in their expert list include John Seely Brown, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Larry King, Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom (IU Professor, recently deceased), Ken Burns, James Gleick (author of "The Information"), Salman Khan from the Khan Academy, Dana Boyd, Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and many other artists, novelists, neuroscientists, filmmakers, politicians, and economists. Way cool.

This is the age of the open education world. Websites like Big Think are playing a huge role in that openness. It now focuses on topics like the future where my interview appeared as well as history; life and death; love, sex, and happiness; science and technology; the environment; beliefs; media and the internet; identity; politics and policy; etc., among the experts of the world. I definitely plan to use this resource in my emerging learning technologies class as well as my class on learning theories. For those interested in shared online video sites, see my portal listing of nearly 80 such sites.

Ok, now, on to that full interview with David Berning from Big Think (and remember, you too, can take our informal and extreme learning survey).

Unabridged interview of Curt Bonk, Instructional Sytems Technology Department, Indiana University, by David Berning, Big Think.

(Please Note: Resulting article in Big Think can be found here: Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style, Posted August 2, 2012.)

David (Big Think) Q#1. What is, in your opinion, the main purpose of education? Is this purpose being fulfilled today? How can the integration of technology better serve this purpose?

Curt Responds: Among the chief goals of education is to help the human species deal with unique problems, issues, or situations as they arise. Education offers possibilities for reflection on the credibility, appropriateness, relevance, and reliability of information sources. The education person knows when she knows, what she knows, and how to obtain information and new skills and competencies which she presently lacks. And that is where technology often plays a significant role. Learning technology, when thoughtfully integrated, can assist in efforts to seek, find, and filter knowledge that is appropriate and timely. It can share the cognitive load with the learner by offering cognitive maps of key concepts, interactive timelines and notecards, images and graphs, assorted referenceware, and sequenced data upon demand. Technology supplements and augments what the learner already knows.

Today, much of the dialogue about education is about catching up to those deemed ahead on various standardized test scores. Unfortunately, most highly used tests measure the basics and not much beyond. Web-based technologies, however, can give us all the information we need within milliseconds. When we can have the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in our pockets on an inexpensive flash drive, we must begin to question exactly what should be taught and ultimately what knowledge is. As the forms of such knowledge-based technology multiply and reduce in price, a new dialogue needs to open up about the benefits and intensions of education.

The purpose of education has swiftly pivoted from knowing what something is to knowing how to find out about that thing. The basic tools of knowledge discovery are now Wikipedia and other wiki-like tools, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TED talks, online news services, digital books, and a vast array of online learning courses and modules.

David (Big Think) Q#2. Your study focuses on understanding the motivating force technology can have on the learning/teaching process and the capabilities it has on sharing knowledge and information. What exactly do you wish to do with the results of your study?

Curt Responds: We hope to create a space for sharing stories of how technology has impacted one’s life in a significant or life empowering way. Such cases and stories can be used to inspire others. We want people to imagine new careers and discover how learning opportunities on the Web can lead them there. We plan to put these stories, with proper permission, of course, into a book or report that is indexed across ages, cultures, and learning situations. Whether one is a young person or more experienced adult, we hope to build an assembly of stories that anyone can use to find role models, new learning vistas, and innovative ideas about education. We intend to help open up the educational world to people who have had it closed for far too long. Open educational resources, opencourseware, open content, open source software, open access journals, and so on, bring immense possibilities for change. The world is now open for learning as I discuss in my book, “The World is Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education.”

I also want to document aspects of human development during the lifespan that heretofore have been hidden from view. This particular goal will admittedly take much more time. However, we are living longer and there are myriad more ways to learn today than just a few years back. It is likely that there are not only human learning gains from the expansion of learning technology and open content on the Web but also wholly new forms of human development that need to be revealed, mapped, and understand.

David (Big Think) Q#3. You distinguish between two separate types of 'informal teaching/learning methods' in your study: simple self-study and "extreme" learning. Can you briefly elaborate on distinction of these terms?

Curt Responds: We are attempting to distinguish between everyday informal activities such as looking up travel or health information in a Wikipedia page or finding an article in a learning portal on Shakespeare, Hemmingway, or Jane Austin, from something that is much more novel and unique which we are calling extreme learning. An example of extreme learning happened to me this past May when over 4,000 people enrolled in a course I was teaching for Blackboard using their free course management system in CourseSites. The course, “Instructional Ideas and Technology Tools for Online Success,” was focused on how to teach online and people who completed it got a badge (registration remains open; in addition, a recap of the course can be found in my blog).

You might think that 4,000 is a lot of students. So did I. However, there is a course on social networking this summer at Stanford with over 400,000 students. And last fall, a professor at Stanford taught an online course on artificial intelligence to over 160,000 students. Not too surprisingly, the success and potential of such massive open online courses or MOOCs has fostered a number of new ventures including Coursera, Udacity, and Udemy. Those wishing to stick to branded universities are in luck as MIT and Harvard recently formed a new partnership to offer such courses through edX.

Other forms of extreme learning include teenagers navigating the globe as solo sailors and keeping up with their high school studies using Skype, satellite phones, and other technologies. Another example would be when researchers in the Amazon provide educational resources and blog posts for kids in schools to read, analyze, and respond to. Still other forms of extreme learning are evident when a researcher listens to a podcast of a chemistry or physics course while involved in a scientific project on polar ice. Perhaps you have heard about people who bike ride through the Americas and blog about their adventures. Or maybe you have been one of the millions of people around the world signing up to take or teach a language in Livemocha, Babbel, or The Mixxer. These, too, are examples of extreme learning.

David (Big Think) Q#4. Surely, it could be argued, that the internet exposes its users to a more distracting environment than what is experienced in a classroom setting. Is this a problem you have witnessed first-hand with your students? Does this argument at all hinder the appeal of online learning and its overall efficiency?

Curt Responds: Sure. There are times that I have to ask my students to turn off their screen or power down their devices. However, one might also think about how to enlist their services with the technology that they bring into the classroom. For instance, you might assign someone the role of “Google Jockey.” The person in that position might find and display Web resources and tools as you mention them in a lecture or as a small group is presenting their project or ideas. In effect, instead of banning various technology that learners bring with them, you are endorsing it. With such a policy, the learning resources of the course dramatically expand.

Another Internet problem is being distracted by inappropriate content. There are trillions of pages of content on the Web. If just one percent could be used in education, there would be more content than anyone could ever hope to use. What each instructor and every department should be doing is finding and agreeing upon 20 or 30 of the highest quality Web tools and resources (e.g., The Encyclopedia of Life, the Khan Academy, The British Library “Turning the Pages” Website, TED Ed, LinkTV, Big Think, The New York Public Library, Sophia, MIT OpenCourseWare, Open Educational Resources Commons, Impossible2Possible, Polar Husky, Earthducation, iCivics, MedTube, Livemocha, BBC Learning English, etc.). Once selected, they should design innovative and pedagogically engaging curriculum activities around these resources and programs.

My research team and I have been finding and rating hundreds informal and extreme learning Websites during the past couple of years. We are looking at the learning potential, scalability, novelty of the technology used, content richness, functionality of the technology, uniqueness of the learning environment, extent of technology integration, and potential for life changing experiences. If successful, we think we can alter and perhaps elevate the discussion about online learning quality.

David (Big Think) Q#5. What are critics' primary concerns about the integration of technology and education? In your opinion, are these concerns valid?

Curt Responds: There are many issues that have been repeatedly raised for decades. Among them is the cost. Once you purchase laptops, iPhones, or Smartboards for a particular learning purpose or need, at some point, they will need to be upgraded or replaced. This is an expensive undertaking, especially in these tough monetary times. However, if technology can help to blend the learning environment, thereby reducing the time for face-to-face instruction, it can offer significant monetary benefits.

Second, is the concern about technology replacing teachers or the entire school or university. Some charter and innovative school programs, for instance, are experimenting with different types of blended learning. With blended learning, students might learn online as well as in physical buildings wherein lab assistants handle student questions and concerns instead of higher priced teachers. Naturally, there are debates about the quality of such instruction and the role of traditional teachers. Despite the debates and concerns, I expect that this trend will accelerate in the coming years. The role of the teacher will dramatically shift as basic skills are handled with computer technology. Teachers will play a more vital role in higher order tasks. For instance, such instructors will orchestrate online collaboration activities with students and classrooms around the world. I predict that increasingly, teachers will be concierges, tour guides, and expedition leaders who find content and make it available for learners to explore, instead of force feeding them with precanned lectures and prepackaged content.

A third concern related to technology in education is the continued digital divide. Many students lack technology access at home and hence are often behind their peers in both technology-related confidence and skills. As a partial solution, stimulus monies in many communities (including my own) were used to get an iPad or laptop for all children enrolled in lower SES schools. But such initiatives are only going to have a modest impact without proper teacher training.

A fourth concern relates to the types of technology tools that should be integrated. The arguments made between using technology for basic and higher-order thinking skills began decades ago with Skinner machines, were extended in the 1980s with the emergence of hypermedia and multimedia, and persist today with in the world of the Web 2.0 and beyond. Fortunately, the tools for collaboration, interaction, engagement, and authentic learning have proliferated in recent years. Still, many educators and politicians view learning technology strictly from what it can do to help boost standardized test scores.

David (Big Think) Q#6. Where can readers go to learn more about you and your study?

Curt Responds: They can explore our extreme learning research project. Once there, they can read our recent conference papers, explore extreme learning Web resources, tools, and projects, and scan through the interests and biographies of those involved in the project, including my own. They can also read some of the life changing stories that have been shared to date.

(Remember the interview in Big Think is here, Extreme Learning, Matrix-Style. Enjoy. Some of  you might also enjoy my survey on informal and extreme learning)

Pushing Off for the Philippines: Presentations, Papers, and People, and

I am sitting in the Indianapolis Airport. I am on my way to the Philippines for the first time. Tried to get here a couple hours early to catch an earlier flight to Atlanta but they cannot change my flight. Ug. Got economy comfort for most of the floght except from Altanta or Narita, Japan. That will be a long haul cramped up like a sardine.

As per usual on such flights, I will have the fun and lovely experience of grading papers from my R546 class on instructional strategies. This is a Saturday class from 8 am to 1 pm that I teach each spring for 8 weeks. Yesterday, we met twice in order for me to go. Super ug! But we made it through. I had the Indiana Teacher of the Year, Stacy McCormack, present during the 2nd session, She is a real dynamo. And she is a role model for my students as she illustrates how creativity + hard work can land you a trip to the White House and a photo-op with President Obama. Stacy teaches chemistry and physics, both of which are critical areas targeted by the federal governnment. No textbooks or boring lectures for Stacy. Nope, she believes in highly active and interactive lab experiences.


Anyway, as I said, I am heading to a conference in the Philippines. You can always get my current (and previous news and travels off my homepage. I will give a plenary talk on Thursday at 1st International Conference on Open and Distance Learning. The theme is creating spaces and opportunities. They expect about 300 people. Color PDFs of my talks (including a 3-part masterclass on Wednesday) as well as my plenary session are posted to my archived talks in TrainingShare.com. You will also find my new paper on Extreme Learning there. I wrote this in a day...think it came out ok (stole much from a recent NSF grant proposal; actually from sections that we had to delete due to page length limitations). Extreme Learning is my new research focus (see team and mission and such).

Please send me a note if you will be in Manila for the conference this week Wednesday to Friday. It shoud be great.

I will also do talks at 2 universities south of Manila (Feb 21 and Feb 28). I'll be back on the 29th. Color PDFs of my 8 talks can be found at my archived talks in TrainingShare.com as well. I will speak at the University of Batangas . After it, I will get a couple of days at Boracay Beach. Boracay beach is ranked top 10 in the world). My speaking will end at the University of the Philippines Open University on Tuesday February 28th. And then I fly back on the 29th.

My friend Dr. Melinda (Mel) Bandalaria from the UPOU is arranging it all. Sweet. She is so great. Back in 2008, she was among a group of about a dozen people who helped me run a symposium on e-learning in Asia at the E-Learn conference. Those presentations later became articles in a special issue of the International Journal of E-Learning and then a print-on-demand book with AACE. It will be fanstic to catch up with Mel and meet many new friends in the Philippines. I know my friend Dr. Kumiko Aoki from the Open U of Japan will be there as I just got an email from her.

I will update this blog from the Philippines. When I return, I will attend the annual IST conference in my department at IU March 2nd and then the SITE conference in Austin, Texas March 6-8th (see our special back-to-back symposium in Austin on emerging learning technologies that Mimi Lee from the U of Houston and I are arranging there). Finally, I will keynote a conference for Indiana Wesleyan on March 9-10 in Indianapolis. Wow.

Time to board for Atlanta.

Cracking the Whip: FEDx Videos from the NSF Cyberlearning Research Summit at National Geographic in DC

So, is NSF cracking the whip to better understand how to impact learning with technology? I think so...well, actually, what I detail below was a quite friendly, informative, and engaging event. Much life. Much energy. Much passion. And dozens of exciting visions of the future of learning.

What am I talking about? A couple of weeks ago (January 18, 2012), I had the extreme pleasure to present in the Grosvenor Auditorium at National Geographic during the Cyberlearning Research Summit for the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Washington, DC. This event, which was organized by people from Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Lawrence Hall of Science along with NSF, was one of the most unique and engaging events of my life. In additon to NSF, organizations like the Gates Foundation were among the sponsors. Not surprisingly, the audience was packed with interesting people to meet.

People flew, drove, walked, ran, taxied, bused, and subway rode into the event. As a result, I got to see many friends at the event, including Tom Reeves from the University of Georgia, Roy Pea from Stanford, Sarah Haavind from Leslie University, YaTing Teng from Adobe, Michael Wenger formerly of Sun Microsystems, and I finally got to physically meet with Christine Greenhow who is now at Michigan State University (we have met in the cyberworld of conference event planning a couple of years back). Both Tom Reeves and Mike Wenger have chapters in my 2006 Handbook of Blended Learning, so it was great to introduce them to each other. In addition to the folks mentioned above, my fantastic friend, Dr. Sherry Hsi from Lawrence Hall of Science was among the main organizers. Here is a list of the organizers.

Organizers
Summit Chairs
Jeremy Roschelle, SRI International, Menlo Park
Sherry Hsi, Lawrence Hall of Science, UC Berkeley

Advisory Committee, Reviewers, & Editors
Chad Dorsey, Concord Consortium
Daniel Edelson, National Geographic Society/National Geographic Education Foundation
Judi Fusco, SRI International
Chad Lane, University of Southern California
Linda Polin, Pepperdine University
Mimi Recker, Utah State University
Patricia Schank, SRI International

As a TED-like event, we each got a short amount of time to make our points. It was NOT TED, however. Given it was for the federal government, I wanted to call these FED talks. Someone else said that they were TED-ED talks. I countered that is was like one of those special TEDx talks, so about FedEx. Ya, like FEDx, the delivery was very fast with mostly on time deliveries. And no one messed up. In the practice session the day before, there were various technology issues and hang-ups. But these were ALL taken care of (Sherry Hsi made sure of that...she cracked the whip...smile Sherry...just kidding my friend. Sherry was awesome in getting us prepared). Thanks to that practice, only one person had a video that would not play and he had a back-up plan so all was well.

There were around 24 speakers that day who each got about 10 minutes to discuss their research and vision of the future for learning with technology. There were also opening Welcoming Remarks from Danny Edelson from the National Geographic Society Janet Kolodner from the National Science Foundation, and Jeremy Roschelle from SRI International. After that, to "Set the Stage," we heard from my friend, Constance Steinkueler Squire from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (who was interviewed and quoted in the USA Today last week in an article on the benefits of video games and what the White House is currently doing in this area to promote gaming). The day ended with a closing reflection from Karen Cator from the US Department of Education. I enjoyed her quick comments and insights. I should also point out that Jeremy Rochelle acted as the host for the day and introduced each sections of talks. He too did a marvelous job.

The Cyberlearning Summit speakers were all nominated and then they had to put in a proposal. Only a few were selected (I was most lucky). Do check out the amazing speakers and their bios, the program, location, the topics, the graphics and videos of the talks, and more information exists in the About section. The also had a scrolling list of quotes from many researchers, scholars, and educators that played throughout the day.

For those like me who have a preference for visual representations of ideas, they hired a graphic facilitator to draw out our talks (here is a sample...a visual was drawm for each set of 4-5 speakers; mine is not yet posted). How cool is that! I has only happened to me once before (back in February 2011 in Saudi Arabia). The artist was Jim Nuttle. I highly recommend him.

Here is part of the description in the Cyberlearning Summit wiki:

"The Cyberlearning Research Summit was a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who shared visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. In the style of the TED conferences, speakers aimed to:

Discuss big ideas on at the intersection of emerging technology and research on learning;

Articulate the “transformative potential” of a direction or approach;
Communicate a sense of the broad research on this topic;

Engage, inspire, and stimulate thinking in this new program area.

Building on those visions, participants gathered as birds-of-a-feather to crystallize a sense of the unique opportunities that should be the focus of the research community now. We seek a community sense of how to couple the learning sciences with related fields of innovation to leverage new technology affordances for the deepest learning outcomes. Through the contributions of diverse participants, the summit sought to exemplify the “transformative potential” of cutting edge research and development to dramatically advance learning – and is expected to be influential in identifying promising directions for advanced R&D efforts."

There is now a YouTube Channel with these talks. My talk, "Stretching the Edges of Technology-Enhanced Teaching: From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning" was just posted. This talk summarized explained the casual informal learning settings brought about by technologies such as Wikipedia as well as those deemed more extreme. See the new Extreme Learning website that my team is in the midst of designing.

I hate watching myself speak and, so, I have only watched a few seconds of my talk, but others say they like it. You can find it here. As you will see, I eventually found my way into my Indiana Jones (i.e., Indiana Curt) outfit, but did not feel comfortable enough to crack the whip during the 10 minutes (where were my friends, Aaron Doering and Charlie Miller from the University of Minnesota, when I needed them?). I did, however, get the audience to shout "WE-ALL-LEARN" a couple of times (based on my World is Open book) and jump up and down. You will have to watch to see I guess. I cannot watch it.

There are many brilliant talks from that day on mobile learning, robotics, virtual humans, cyber-civics, big data visualization, and complexity models of different kinds. One of my favorites was William (Bill) Swartout's talk, Virtual Humans for Learning. It is a definite must see! See also my old friends Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris discuss mobile, "Yes We Can-Now: All K-12 Teachers Enacting Learn-by-Doing."

How might you use? Here are 10 quick ideas off the top of my head.
1. Create a complete course around these videos on emerging technology for learning. As part of this, you might interview 1-2 of the presenters each week.
2. You might crack the whip and assign your students to watch ALL of the videos for one week of a semester.
3. Require students to read the research of particular presenters and then watch their video or vice versa.
4. Assign your students watch each of the 5 Talk Sets for themes.
5. Have your students select their favorite presenter and write to him or her.
6. Have your students engage in a role play related to different presenters, perhaps in a class symposium session (this is what I like to do).
7. Have your students create a wiki glossary of the key points of each presenter.
8. Organize virtual discussions of 1 or more the various presentations and ask the presenter to come in and lend feedback on the points made.
9. Assign different students to blog on each session.
10. Have students reorganize the session presentations for the day in a way that makes most sense to them.

There is much you might find useful from that day.

What a totally cool day! They need to do this again. Perhaps an annual event.

Of course, when we were done, there was a free reception (and drinks) in a wonderful open rooom at National Geographic. Oh my, what a day. We got on the bus at 7:15 am and got back at 10 pm or so. When I got to my hotel, my dear friend Paul Kim from Stanford University and Seeds for Empowerment arrived for a chat. He just happened to be in town for a meeting intended to change the world (I thought I had just attended one such event but Paul's was equally world changing). As an aside, Paul and my son Alex Bonk (Jabonk Productions) go to Tanzania this week to work with teachers and students there using mobile devices. Alex will do some facilitation of the training but is mainly there for his photography and filming skills. I think if NSF does another one of these events that Paul Kim should be first on their list to present. That guy is phenomenal.

I took 4 or so pages of notes from the NSF Cyberlearning Summit. Perhaps I will blog post all of that. Is anyone interested in reading?

In the meantime, watch some of the videos from January 18th. Or do I have to crack the whip?