Australia in July: This was my third trip to Australia and each time it has been July or "winter" there. Fortuantely, it was pretty warm the whole time. Wow, it has been 3 weeks since I got back from Australia and I am still having difficulties adjusting to North American time zones. Had a wonderful time in Oz, not just at the Moodlemoot conference in Melbourne and the DET conference in Sydney (i.e., "The Office of Schools conference Engaging learners through innovative practice"), but every stop along the way.
Melbourne: Saw many wonderful people during my 6 days in Melbourne. Saw around 9-10 old friends in Melbourne and another 9-10 in Sydney (see prior blog post for names and links to some of them). For instance, my old friend Clint Smith took me for a ride down part of the Great Ocean Road about an hour out of Melbourne. Got to see a humpback whale at the beginning of the journey and got nearly face-to-face with a wild wallaby in the bush near the end of it. Clint took a turn up through some rugged terrain on the way back. Pretty amazing. My old friend, Dr. SuJin Son (now back in Korea) and one of Clint's friends, Jacqueline Bates from Wagga Wagga, New South Wales joined us in the trip. I always wanted to say Wagga Wagga in one of my blog posts and here is my chance. Jacque is manager of New Learning Technologies for TAFE (Technical and Further Education) there in Wagga Wagga. I better Wagga Wagga on now.
Among the key people I had a chance to tour around with in Mebourne were Siew-Mee and Greg Barton. Siew-Mee got me off the plane and nearly immediately had me speaking on her campus at Deakin University. A couple of days later, her husband Greg took me around in his Mazda Miata sports car. Lovely. He and I saw the Tim Burton exhibit at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square. This too was exciting and highly recommended (the historical timeline of his work pretty much matched many of my own life stories). The Tim Burton exhibit will be there until October 10th, 2010.
Suffice to say that Siew-mee and Greg are great hosts. They are also going to helping with the newly announced Global Learn 2011 conference which will be in Melbourne March 28-April 1, 2011. More on that in another blog post in a few days perhaps.
Some of the other Melbourne memorable moments included seeing Geelong defeat Hawthorn (Hawks) in an Australian Rules Football game (footie) 85-82. Additional highlights included receiving a caricature of myself after my keynote at the Moodemoot. A few hours after that was a scheduled "Great Debate" with Martin Dougiamas, the original developer of Moodle. Of course, since we hold much in common, it was more of a conversation and perhaps a bit of a history lesson for some of the audience. His advisor influenced my early work on a social constructivism scale over 20 years ago and my 1998 book chapter with Don Cunningham on social constructivism in my Electronic Collaborators book apparently inflluenced aspects of his design of Moodle. (Side note: That chapter, by the way, is one of my most cited articles ever due, primarily I think, to the fact that it is open access. I had to convince my editor at Lawrence Erlbaum to make 1 chapter of the book open access at the time. I am glad that we selected that one. Back in 1998, that was not so commmon, of course. Today it is.)
Both sessions were packed which made the long flight over to the land down under much more enjoyable. Moodlemoot was fabulous. The day before the conference start, I got to do an all-day "Masterclass" session with Julian Ridden, who apparently has become the "Moodleman" in Australia (in addition to Martin, of course). This too was oversubscribed. Color PDF copies of my slides from that 4 part session and all my sessions in Australia can be found in my archived talks page.
Sydney: Of course, the Sydney Harbor area was fabulous as well. My hotel overlooked Botany Bay where James Cook first landed his HMS Endeavour in Australia (after New Zealand) centuries long ago (April 29, 1770 to be exact). Of course, that also meant that I had a view of the airport. Great running through along the beaches there. Friends like Christine Dennis, recently retired from Australian Catholic University, Gary David of artography fame now (Gary David Images), Michelle Selinger of Cisco (who at the time was about to return home to the UK after 3 years in Oz), John Hedberg of Macquarie University, Rick Bennett from the University of New South Wales and founder of the Omnium project, and others, all made sure I had a great time. Hearing about Rick's work in the Philippines and Africa and other outreach projects was eye opening to say the least. (Note: John Hedberg just agreed to be co-program chair at Global Learn 2011 in Melbourne next March. More on this later in the week.)
I miss Australia already. But now I guess I have to focus on teaching at IU in the fall. Darn. Oh well, at least my syllabi are done or nearly so.
R685 40 Page Syllabus (all hot links): The details on my fall syllabus for my R685 seminar on emerging learning technologies (The title is “R685: The World is Open with Web Technology.” It sorta follows the chapter sequence of my recent World is Open book. It is a Web 2.0 technology and e-learning type of class. It is taught on Monday nights from 7:00-9:45 pm in Bloomington and Indianapolis (via videoconferencing…I will be in Bloomington).
R685 Online Syllabus: http://php.indiana.edu/~cjbonk/Syllabus_R685_Fall_of_2010.htm
While it the first 40 page syllabus anyone has likely ever seen, every article is a free hot link and there is much choice is what students read and do. The weekly topics are listed below.
Projected R685 Seminar Weekly Topics
Week 1. (August 30) Intro to Open World and Neo Millennial/Web 2.0 Learners
Week 2. (September 6) Digital Literacy Skills
Week 3. (September 13) The Sudden Explosion of E-Books and E-Book Readers
Week 4. (September 20) The Continued Expansion of Blended and Fully Online Learning
Week 5. (September 27) The Movement toward Free and Open Source Software
Week 6. (October 4) Open Educational Resources (OER) and OpenCourseWare (OCW)
Week 7. (October 11) Connectivism, Social Knowledge, and Participatory Learning
Week 8. (October 18) Wikis, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Collaborative Writing
Week 9. (October 25) YouTube, TeacherTube, and the Future of Shared Online Video
Week 10. (November 1) Interactive and Collaborative Learning
Week 11. (November 8) Alternate Reality Learning: Massive Gaming, Virtual Reality, and Simulations
Week 12. (November 15) Mobile, Wireless, and Ubiquitous Learning
Week 13. (November 22) Educational Blogging
Week 14. (November 29) Podcasting, Webcasting, and Coursecasting
Week 15. (December 6) Networks of Personalized Learning (including online language learning)
==========================================================================
Guest speakers will include the following:
1. e-book and mobile learning researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and Getya Learn On (Week 3--September 13--both Dr. Michael Mayrath and Priya Nihalani will join us);
2. Kevin Modany, the president of ITT Technical Institute (Week 4--September 20);
3. Paul Kim, Assistant Dean and Chief Technology Officer from Stanford University School of Education and mobile learning guru (Week 12--November 15);
4. Thanomporn Laohajaratsang, Department of Educational Technology in the Faculty of Education at Chiang Mai University (Toh is a visiting scholar at IU this fall and sharing my office).
There will be a few others I think visiting the class. But the R685 syllabus is the main thing. At 40 pages and growing, it is meant as a free resource for the world to share, use, or perhaps modify for their own courses and programs (with appropriate referencing). It was a lot of work, but there is a hec of lot happening to make the world more open for learning (I hope you agree).
The key thing is that students do not have to buy anything since every article or chapter is freely available online. My World is Open book can supplement it if they want but that is totally optional and I am still working on a free version of that book. I hope to get back to it soon and finish it this fall. Anyone with a book called the World is Open needs a free version. Speaking of free, later in the week (or next week), I will have an announcement about a huge set of short, snappy, and free videos for teaching online that I have been working on since last September. Till then.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Saturday, 26 June 2010
TravelinEdMan tours upstate New York...Next up Ohio and Oz
Speaking Updates (the past 2 weeks and the next few weeks):
My time at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York (Albany area) was great (June 16-17). Apparently, President Obama spoke there in September 2009. Susan Gallagher, the Director of Distance & Online Learning took really good care of me during their disance learning day. She got me a lovely suite at a nearby hotel. After my keynote, I got to hear from some of their faculty members. There were many impressive presentations related to the use of wikis, open educational resources, free software, shared online video, online discussion, etc. It was fun to kick back and listen after I was done, rather than present another talk.
That afternoon I drove to Syracuse, NY and stayed with my brother Tom and his family for a couple of nights. On Friday, he and I drove over to Syracuse University where Dr. Jing Lei, Associate Professor of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation organized for me to do a symposium on my World is Open book. It was my first time on that campus and so after the talk, Jing took us for a tour of the campus and to a local pub for a beer or 2 or ??? Always good to finally meet someone for whom you wrote a letter of recommendation/review for tenure as I had done for Jing the previous year.
This coming week (Tuesday afternoon), I will present 2 talks at the newly remodeled library at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. These talks at OSU are free and open to the public. The last time I spoke on the OSU campus it was 1998 and it was for a job interview to direct the student success center that they were building at the time. Needless to say, I did not move to OSU and it was likely a good decision to stay in Bloomington.
The day after the OSU talks (Wednesday June 30th), I will present 4 times at Franklin University which is also in Columbus. These talks are open for any of my friends so let me know if you want to attend. Color PDFs for all six of the talks are already posted to my archived talks at TrainingShare as are the talks from Hudson Valley CC and Syracuse U. I will see a few old friends and new friends when in Columbus. Should be fun.
It is always great to travel somewhere for two (or more) events rather than just one. Speaking of which, I will travel to Melbourne on July 6th (arrive the 8th). I immediately will get picked up for a visit to the Melbourne Concention Center as people there want to host the Global Learn conference sometime (not sure when) so I am having a look. That day I will also present on blended and mobile learning at Deakin University in the Melbourne area. That night I will also attend the conference dinner of the HERDSA 2010 higher education conference. This will be held at Etihad Stadium. What a first day in Melbourne! Greg Barton (from Monash U) and Siew-Mee Barton (from Deakin U) will take good care of me during my week in Melbourne. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan U will also be in town the first day.
The next day I will present at the EINet Informal E-Learning Congress. The program is posted as well. My old friend Clint Smith, formerly of TAFE Frontiers (Technical and Further Education), found out I am coming and is bringing me in. He will also take me to a footie game the next day and coastal trip the following Tuesday.
I am mainly going for the MoodleMoot conference in July. I will be helping with a huge Masterclass workshop on July 11th and my keynote is July 12th. I will also debate Martin Dougiamas who developed Moodle later that day (Monday the 12th). And on the night of the 13th, they want me to give a funny dinner talk on 100 ways to identify someone teaching ineffectively online. Suggestions welcome. I told them that many Australians think I am funny since when I was there last time (8 years ago), I perhaps was. Lately, I have been trying to give more serious talks...but it will be a good challenge to throw in some good old fashion humor again. (A smile and a wink to those who know me.)
After than it is on to Melbourne where I am speaking at a K-12 event held at the Novotel at Brighton Beach. It looks very nice! The conference is the 2010 NSW Department of Education and Training Office of the Schools Conference--Engaging learners through innovative practice. I arrive on Wednesday July 14th and my keynote and workshop are on Thursday the 15th. I might present at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) on the 16th. Old friends like Dr. Christine Dennis from Australian Catholic University and her husband might take me to dinner. Ditto friends like Rick Bennett from the College of Fine Arts at UNSW. Rick is the brains behind the very cool Omnium project for online photomedia and design.
I will also see my photomedia friend Gary David (a former ed tech guru turned "artographer") on Saturday who now runs Gary David Images. I hope to spend Saturday catching up with him. And then I will see Max Gallo from Navitas on Sunday morning before I come back. Navitas provides English training to young people seeking to attend universities in the USA, UK, Canada, etc. I gave a couple of talks for them a few months ago from the USA that were taped talks. Max had recommended me since he saw me speak in Dubai 6-7 years ago back when I used to be funny. True story...Max said he would cancel the invitation to speak if I was not funny (I think he was joking)...so I came up with something new for them that I am still using.
As you can see, the Australia trip is jam packed from departure on July 6th to return on the 18th. Should make for interesting times or so I hope. When I return, however, I need to work on other things like my free e-book extension of my World is Open book.
I think that is enough for now...whatcha all think? Hope to see some of you at my OSU talks in Columbus! Perhaps I will update my blog when in Oz. Not sure.
My time at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York (Albany area) was great (June 16-17). Apparently, President Obama spoke there in September 2009. Susan Gallagher, the Director of Distance & Online Learning took really good care of me during their disance learning day. She got me a lovely suite at a nearby hotel. After my keynote, I got to hear from some of their faculty members. There were many impressive presentations related to the use of wikis, open educational resources, free software, shared online video, online discussion, etc. It was fun to kick back and listen after I was done, rather than present another talk.
That afternoon I drove to Syracuse, NY and stayed with my brother Tom and his family for a couple of nights. On Friday, he and I drove over to Syracuse University where Dr. Jing Lei, Associate Professor of Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation organized for me to do a symposium on my World is Open book. It was my first time on that campus and so after the talk, Jing took us for a tour of the campus and to a local pub for a beer or 2 or ??? Always good to finally meet someone for whom you wrote a letter of recommendation/review for tenure as I had done for Jing the previous year.
This coming week (Tuesday afternoon), I will present 2 talks at the newly remodeled library at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. These talks at OSU are free and open to the public. The last time I spoke on the OSU campus it was 1998 and it was for a job interview to direct the student success center that they were building at the time. Needless to say, I did not move to OSU and it was likely a good decision to stay in Bloomington.
The day after the OSU talks (Wednesday June 30th), I will present 4 times at Franklin University which is also in Columbus. These talks are open for any of my friends so let me know if you want to attend. Color PDFs for all six of the talks are already posted to my archived talks at TrainingShare as are the talks from Hudson Valley CC and Syracuse U. I will see a few old friends and new friends when in Columbus. Should be fun.
It is always great to travel somewhere for two (or more) events rather than just one. Speaking of which, I will travel to Melbourne on July 6th (arrive the 8th). I immediately will get picked up for a visit to the Melbourne Concention Center as people there want to host the Global Learn conference sometime (not sure when) so I am having a look. That day I will also present on blended and mobile learning at Deakin University in the Melbourne area. That night I will also attend the conference dinner of the HERDSA 2010 higher education conference. This will be held at Etihad Stadium. What a first day in Melbourne! Greg Barton (from Monash U) and Siew-Mee Barton (from Deakin U) will take good care of me during my week in Melbourne. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan U will also be in town the first day.
The next day I will present at the EINet Informal E-Learning Congress. The program is posted as well. My old friend Clint Smith, formerly of TAFE Frontiers (Technical and Further Education), found out I am coming and is bringing me in. He will also take me to a footie game the next day and coastal trip the following Tuesday.
I am mainly going for the MoodleMoot conference in July. I will be helping with a huge Masterclass workshop on July 11th and my keynote is July 12th. I will also debate Martin Dougiamas who developed Moodle later that day (Monday the 12th). And on the night of the 13th, they want me to give a funny dinner talk on 100 ways to identify someone teaching ineffectively online. Suggestions welcome. I told them that many Australians think I am funny since when I was there last time (8 years ago), I perhaps was. Lately, I have been trying to give more serious talks...but it will be a good challenge to throw in some good old fashion humor again. (A smile and a wink to those who know me.)
After than it is on to Melbourne where I am speaking at a K-12 event held at the Novotel at Brighton Beach. It looks very nice! The conference is the 2010 NSW Department of Education and Training Office of the Schools Conference--Engaging learners through innovative practice. I arrive on Wednesday July 14th and my keynote and workshop are on Thursday the 15th. I might present at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) on the 16th. Old friends like Dr. Christine Dennis from Australian Catholic University and her husband might take me to dinner. Ditto friends like Rick Bennett from the College of Fine Arts at UNSW. Rick is the brains behind the very cool Omnium project for online photomedia and design.
I will also see my photomedia friend Gary David (a former ed tech guru turned "artographer") on Saturday who now runs Gary David Images. I hope to spend Saturday catching up with him. And then I will see Max Gallo from Navitas on Sunday morning before I come back. Navitas provides English training to young people seeking to attend universities in the USA, UK, Canada, etc. I gave a couple of talks for them a few months ago from the USA that were taped talks. Max had recommended me since he saw me speak in Dubai 6-7 years ago back when I used to be funny. True story...Max said he would cancel the invitation to speak if I was not funny (I think he was joking)...so I came up with something new for them that I am still using.
As you can see, the Australia trip is jam packed from departure on July 6th to return on the 18th. Should make for interesting times or so I hope. When I return, however, I need to work on other things like my free e-book extension of my World is Open book.
I think that is enough for now...whatcha all think? Hope to see some of you at my OSU talks in Columbus! Perhaps I will update my blog when in Oz. Not sure.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
On the Road Again...Oh my, TravelinEdMan's been traveling
Ok, no blog posts for nearly 2 months. No, I am not terminally ill or stuck grading papers (though there was some of that). Instead, TravelinEdMan has been traveling. Six trips resulted in nine stops and many talks in five countries. As detailed below, each stop was quite eventful. This included the past couple of days in Lubbock, Texas to present to 220 or so K-12 teachers about online learning. Some might consider West Texas a sixth country to add to the list but I had fun there…it was a wonderful experience for me. True America.
Stop #1. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: This latest string of travel stops started with an event at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for an e-learning conference keynote. I left for that conference on Saturday April 10th and returned on Thursday the 15th. I arrived at the same time as perhaps 400 Filipinos and so the line going through customs was especially long. Patience? What patience after logging all those hours in the air. There was a lot I did not know about the conference before I went…for instance, I did not know my hotel or the time of my talk until I was in route in Paris. But I had fun there with a visit to a Saudi Museum as well as a look at an old city near Riyadh being excavated and rebuilt. An authentic Saudi dinner and much tea were also included.
My keynote at Kind Saud U on my World is Open book was well received. Fortunately, the Indiana Jones costume and jokes went over well. Many great pics were taken with my new Saudi friends. It was my 4th trip in a little over three years to Saudi Arabia but the first time I got an official tour of some kind. What was perhaps most interesting was the fact that the women attending the conference did so from another university some 45 minutes away. This included the female keynotes from the USA and Australia. We could hear their voices and see their slides but not see them; in contrast, they could see us via videoconferencing.
The other keynote presenters came from Australia (Jan Herrington from Murdock University) and the USA (Brent Wilson from the University of Colorado at Denver and Colleen Carmean from Arizona State University). It was great to finally meet Colleen (I cited her articles on course management systems in my R2D2 book) and have long discussions with Brent (I have used his constructivist learning environments book for a long time); Jan I met at the University of Wollongong over a decade ago. Other conference presenters came from places like Syria, Oman, and Egypt, in addition to Saudi Arabia.
My talk was on the first day. There was also a panel that day on the future of e-learning in which I participated. Then I listened to others. Fortunately, I was able to say a few closing remarks at the end of the conference. The day before those remarks I met a young man whose nickname was “Triple S.” It stood for the fact that his name was Saud and he was from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. So in his honor my remarks were about the 5 S’s I observed during the conference. But instead of Triple S, it was a Quintuple S. Here they are:
1. Struggles: Many participants noted their Struggles in establishing or conducting online learning in their organizations or institutions. Getting into e-learning is not as easy of some think.
2. Successes: While many noted their struggles, problems, and challenges, there were an equal number of SUCCESSES noted during the three days of the conference. It seemed that the conference participants were interested in innovative learning applications and success stories with Web technology. Emerging technology covered in the talks included virtual worlds, course management systems (CMSs), collaborative writing tools, language learning, and laptops.
3. Smart: Some people talked about technology becoming SMART enough to interpret different languages and translate online content better as well as to make people using them smarter. Smart was definitely a theme.
4. Studies: It was refreshing that many of the presenters discussed research STUDIES that backed up what they were saying. Or they discussed their own research findings and future directions. In effect, they were not just there to hear from the keynotes. Seems online learning research was accelerating in the Middle East. Consequently, they wanted to know the impact of e-learning or get involved in the assessment of it.
5. Standards: Throughout the 3 days of the conference, I heard words like comparison, accreditation, quality, and benchmarks. All these words were in reference to creating STANDARDS of success. While this is not my main area, I was intrigued by the constant focus on it.
So that was my recap (if there was a 6th S, it was systems). The e-learning systems included Moodle and Blackboard as well as some homegrown ones. The systems in place seemed to be evolving.
I promised them a 2 minute closing but I guess I took a few more. Smile. Other topics and terms mentioned included infrastructure issues, financial or administrative aspects of e-learning, cultural change in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, definitions of e-learning and blended learning, acceptability and approval for e-learning initiatives, government approval as well as colleague views about e-learning, and trends toward the understanding and use of e-learning. Suffice to say, the conference covered the gamut of e-learning. Much has happened in Saudi Arabia related to e-learning since my first visit there in February 2007. Yes, new brick and mortar is going up all around Riyadh and the entire country, but, so too, is much thinking about the role of online learning in education there. It is great to see that opening up of the country to virtual learning possibilities.
Departing from Riyadh is never easy; the airport entrance always reminds me of cattle going through gates at feeding time. I wish I could close my eyes and just walk to the gate but that is not possible. But after 2-3 security clearance checks, I made it through. On the way home from Riyadh, I flew through Paris where I had a 4 hour or so layover. My plane departed Paris and 6-7 or so hours later and had to make an emergency landing in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a lady who was pretty ill on our plane. I think she was ok, but it was interesting to see the snow falling there in mid April. I was never in Newfoundland in my life but will be twice in 2010—I go there again in October to keynote an e-learning conference. Cool.
What the guy next to me found out when we briefly stopped there, however, was that the volcano eruption in Iceland closed down Charles de Gaulle and many other European airports 2 hours after we left. Had we left just a little later, I would likely have been stuck in Paris for more than a week. Wow…that was close! I missed my connecting flight in Minneapolis but it did not matter since I got the next plane and made it home. Thank goodness!
Stop #2. Monterrey, Mexico (San Pedro actually): After the trip to Riyadh, I had 2 nights (1 day) at home before flying to Monterrey, Mexico to speak at the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in San Pedro (an adjacent city). UDEM is one of the top private universities in Mexico. My hotel was stunning with lovely paintings throughout (even in my room). There were also some exquisite statues, wood floors, and so on. The Universidad de Monterrey is a picturesque campus snuggled between two mountain ranges. On Saturday, my host, Arnaud Chevallier, took me to dinner and a brief tour of the city. On Sunday, he took me hiking up a mountain. It was a good 5-6 hour workout and 10-15k of walking. After the hike, I had dinner with UDEM administrators including UDEM's president—Antonio Dieck. Antonio had seen me present at a conference in Beijing 5 years earlier and was the reason I was in Monterrey. He is great! And so is Arnaud.
My invited talk there was in a beautiful room with a balcony where many of the UDEM undergraduate students sat. The administrators sat in the first few rows. It was quite an awesome place to present in. After a short lunch, I was on my way home. I really enjoyed my stay there.
Stop #3-5. San Francisco, San Jose, and Palo Alto, California (ISPI): Two more nights at home (and one day) and I was on my way to San Francisco at like 4 am for the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) conference at the downtown Marriott there. A huge audience for my talk at ISPI included my good friends Thiagi and Chuck Ferguson as well as several former students of mine who are in the Coast Guard. Other former students of mine, Dr. Yun Jeong Park from St. Cloud State University as well as Dr. Brian Beatty from San Francisco State University were there. Before the talk, Subude (now at Cal State Monterrey Bay) and Rodney Tom (from Genetech) (both former students) joined Brian and I for lunch. Dr. Wen Hao Chuang and Dr. Siat Moy Chong came to dinner (they studied with me at IU in the 1990s). So many former students with me each day…it was quite fun.
The following day, I took the train down to San Jose State University (SJSU) for a talk that my long-time friend Mark Adams arranged. Dr. Mei-Yan Lu from SJSU, who I have been giving e-learning advice to, was also there. Mark’s e-learning colleagues are very smart, caring, and committed individuals. They make a great team in these tough budgetary times at SJSU. Keep in mind that SJSU generates 10’s of thousands of credit hours online. This has likely saved the campus. A very nice campus too. Many great pics there.
After the talk, YaTing Teng picked me up and took me to the headquarters of Adobe. YaTing, a newly minted Ph.D. from the U of Illinois showed Mei-Yan and I around. A few years ago, YaTing was part of my blended learning team and I have been giving her advice on your dissertation since then. YaTing then took me to Stanford for a talk on my World is Open book. It was cool to finally present at Stanford (I have done Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard now…all that is left on my personal to-do list is Cambridge and MIT…someday, someday, someday!). Not bad for a dumb kid from Milwaukee who got a 19 on his ACT.
After the talk, my good friend Paul Kim from Stanford took us out to eat on downtown Palo Alto. After that, he had a friend of his pick us up and take me back to the Marriott. The following day I went jogging downtown in San Fran before heading to the airport. Caught some wondrous views of the Bay area when on that run. Oh, there are days that one does not want to depart a city and that was one of them. I love San Francisco. Always have…always will.
Stop #6. Denver, Colorado (AERA Conference): When I got home, I finally had 7 nights in my own bed before heading to Denver for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting in Denver. The Denver trip started with a new talk on shared online video at Jones International University. My former student, Dr. Michael Thomas from the University of Wisconsin joined me and gave a talk on games, mobile learning, and international education. Glenn Jones, the Chancellor of Jones International University, was so appreciative, he brought Michael and I to his personal office for a catered lunch. The following night (Saturday April 30), Glenn took me and 9 of my former students, friends, and spouses (including Michael and his wife) to the Denver Symphony Orchestra rock performance of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. What fun! Glenn also took Michael and I as well as Scott Warren (another former student) to dinner 2 nights later. During the AERA conference, I had a presentation on wikibooks with Nari Kim (yet another former student). On Monday morning, I was co-discussant with Dr. Mimi Lee (yes, a former student) on a symposium on research related to the Web 2.0.
After that, I went jogging down a river walk area in downtown Colorado. I saw Mile High Stadium and many other landmarks. At the beginning of the run, I decide to call my former student, Dr. Frank Sanchez. He returned my call and I got in touch with him at the end of the run. His office was 1-2 minutes from where I ended up. Frank is a high level administrator at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was so great to meet up. Frank has not changed a bit. I miss him. The next morning, I had breakfast with my one of my two advisors at the University of Wisconsin from 20 years prior. His name is Dr. Steven Yussen. He was my human development advisor at the UW. Gary Davis was my human learning advisor….I was a double major. Steve is now at the University of Minnesota. Since leaving Wisconsin, Steve has been dean at the University of Iowa as well as Minnesota. It was so fun to catch up.
Stop #7. Singapore: After flying back to Indiana that day, I had another 7 nights at home before heading to Singapore and Penang, Malaysia for the Global Learn 2010 conference premiere (Global Conference on Learning and Technology). In Singapore, I saw 4 former students of mine at the National Institute of Education-—Timothy Hew, Joyce Koh, Ashley Tan, and Hyo-Jeong So. The only former student I did not see was Judy Lee whom I saw the week before in Denver, Colorado when at AERA. Hyo-Jeong took me around to the new casino (Sentosa Island) as well as the Night Safari and other things. Just 8 hours after getting off the plane in Singapore, I gave a 3 hour workshop on shared online video at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). My friend Dr. Daniel Tan invited me to give that workshop. I also saw my old friend Paul Gagnon before departing for Penang, Malaysia for Global Learn.
Stop #8. Penang, Malaysia (Global Learn): I was picked up at the Penang airport by April Tan and her husband. I had been giving advice to April (as well as her friend Chiew-Lan Teh) on their respective dissertations for a number of years, so it was good to meet. Global Learn, which is the newest conference of the Association for the Advancement for Computing in Education (AACE), was a huge success. I do not have space or time to go through all the details here but there were more than 520 registered participants from at least 48 countries. How cool is that for a premier conference? Having worked to develop this conference for 2 years, it was great to see this happen.
A boat ride around the island made it even more enjoyable as did many late nights at beachside pubs.
Global Learn will take place in Asia or the Pacific Rim each year. Are you interested in hosting the next one? Well, bids for Global Learn 2011 and 2012 are due June 15th (see http://www.aace.org/conf/glearn/). Want to see some of the 2010 events? You can see many pics taken at Global Learn 2010 at the conference Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glearn/
The conference grew so big, we had 2 hotels side-by-side (the Park Royal and the Holiday Inn). In fact, the conference ended 1-2 hours later than originally planned. The Global Learn conference director, Dr. Gary Marks from AACE, had booked his flight out on Thursday evening (just before mine) so I got to say a few words at the closing ceremony since Gary had left. In contrast to my five S’s in Saudi Arabia, I asked the group to toast to 5 P's of the Penang event:
1. Fantastic keynote and invited Presentations--the invited talks were fabulous (Jan Herrington, Paul Kim, Jon Baggeley, Colin Latchem, Merry Merryfield, etc., all were top notch!). It was geat to meet them all. Much global in their message. I hope we can find as good of invited speakers in the future.
2. Thoughtful Papers. I learned a lot both from the brief papers as well as the full papers!
3. Great Place--The Park Royal in Penang. Lots of P's!
4. The Premiere Global Learn conference. Again more than 520 registered people from at least 48 countries. Wow! Keep in mind that AACE is a non-profit organization--it took a huge risk in extending itself to Asia after many requests to go there.
5. The wonderful People. The last toast ended with a thank you to Tom Reynolds from National University (whom I have known since grad school days) and Mimi Lee (from the University of Houston). Tom and Mimi, in addition to Gary Marks and myself, were heavily involved in many teleconferences and Web conferences in Adobe Connect Pro for nearly 2 years planning the GL conference (before it had a name) and putting together the special issue. They helped with Global Learn mission statement, logistics, topics and subtopics, conference venue selection, exec board nominations, and many other things which are too numerous to mention here. The important thing is that Tom recently was promoted to full professor (in addition to being a Fulbright scholar in Columbia this year) and Mimi found out she got tenure and promotion to associate professor just before Global Learn. Congrads to both of them on their wonderful accomplishments. The final GL toast was to celebrate that fantastic news.
This past year, Tom, Mimi, and I edited a special journal issue of the International Journal of E-Learning on E-Learning in Asia which is now a print-on-demand book. The book is called "A Special Path Through Asia E-Learning." This evolved from a special symposium we ran at the E-Learn conference in Las Vegas in November 2008. People from the symposium and then the special issue who were in Penang for the conference included Zoraini Wati Abas (the Open University of Malaysia), Okhwa Lee (Chungbuk National University in Korea), Ke Zhang (Wayne State University), Siew-Mee Barton (Deakin University in Melbourne), Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang (Chiang-Mai University in Thailand), Katsuaki Suzuki (Kumamoto University in Japan), Yayoi Anzai (Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan), Tom Reynolds, Daniel Tan (Nanyang Technological University), and myself. That is 10 of the 15 people from the symposium and special issue on e-learning in Asia. It was so great to see everyone! Perhaps next year a few of the others will come to Global Learn.
I must point out that Zoraini (mentioned above) was the most instrumental person in making this conference happen. She did a ton of work! She got us the venue at the Park Royal and arranged a good price for everything. But there were many others. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Siew-Mee Barton from Deakin University, Insung Jung from International Christian University in Japan, Sanjaya Mishra, Indira Gandhi National Open University in India, and so on.
Here are a few conference highlights involving the people above. First of all, Katsuaki Suzuki was on a special invited panel (Research Trends of Learning and Technology in Japan: A Critical Review of Two Journals by Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education). He also brought a few of his students. There was a huge contingent from Japan. Katsuaki also announced that his organization (Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education …JSiCE) will be giving away monetary awards at Global Learn to best grad student papers in the future. Katsuaki is great!
Second, Yayoi Anzai bravely put together a mobile learning panel that was quite special (Opening Up Learning With Mobile Technologies). This was an extremely engaging panel. After Paul Kim wowed everyone with his projects and Elliot Soloway and his colleague Cathie Norris dazzled people with their ideas and persuasive powers, it was Ke Zhang who highly impressed the entire panel with her data on mobile learning. Ke was, in a word, PHENOMENAL. I do not say that just because we have a book together (Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing). It is true! Fortunately, her son Arthur was in the audience next to me and got to witness his mother in action. She identified all the current trends and gaps mobile learning, thereby giving people a sense of where the research in this field has been and where it is going. Congrads to Ke and Yayoi for this session. I hope others can propose similar sessions next year.
In addition to that, Tom Reynolds had a poster on the open educational resource movement in South America and Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang had a couple of excellent papers. And it seemed each day Siew-Mee and her husband Greg had 1 or 2 wonderful papers and presentations. We also heard proposals from people planning to put in bids for Global Learn for next year but I cannot say from where just yet. Stay tuned.
Finally, it was great to see Elaine Khoo from the University of Waikato in New Zealand win an outstanding paper award. I have been sending Elaine stuff of mine (and others) to read and corresponding about her dissertation research since 2002 when I visited Hamilton, New Zealand and her campus. And now 8 years later, she has passed her dissertation (all 550 pages of it) and is winning awards. She has also become a mommy 2 times in that span. It was great to see Elaine (now Dr. Khoo) and her entire family in Penang. Suffice to say that Global Learn was a blast! I miss everyone already.
Stop #9. Lubbock, Texas: So after all these visits to places in the United States as well as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Singapore, and Malaysia during April and May, I was off to Lubbock, Texas on May 31st. I had to take an early (6:25 am) flight from Indianapolis due to the fact that the Indy 500 race was the day before and all other flights were booked. But I am glad I did. I got to see more of Lubbock and Texas Tech as a result. It was my first appearance in west Texas; a truly unique and enjoyable place. I stayed in a hotel across from Texas Tech University. It was a brand new hotel and convention center called the Overton Hotel. Running on campus late afternoon on Memorial Day was quite a treat.
Fortunately, my talks in Lubbock went well. But I am happy to be home…home at least until June 7-9 when I go to Las Vegas for the EduComm Conference. Then comes Syracuse University and a community college in Troy, New York, followed by Ohio State University and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio…all in June. MoodleMoot in Melbourne awaits in July as does a K-12 conference in Sydney. I can’t wait. TravelinEdMan will be back on the road soon…real soon. Till then.
Stop #1. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: This latest string of travel stops started with an event at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for an e-learning conference keynote. I left for that conference on Saturday April 10th and returned on Thursday the 15th. I arrived at the same time as perhaps 400 Filipinos and so the line going through customs was especially long. Patience? What patience after logging all those hours in the air. There was a lot I did not know about the conference before I went…for instance, I did not know my hotel or the time of my talk until I was in route in Paris. But I had fun there with a visit to a Saudi Museum as well as a look at an old city near Riyadh being excavated and rebuilt. An authentic Saudi dinner and much tea were also included.
My keynote at Kind Saud U on my World is Open book was well received. Fortunately, the Indiana Jones costume and jokes went over well. Many great pics were taken with my new Saudi friends. It was my 4th trip in a little over three years to Saudi Arabia but the first time I got an official tour of some kind. What was perhaps most interesting was the fact that the women attending the conference did so from another university some 45 minutes away. This included the female keynotes from the USA and Australia. We could hear their voices and see their slides but not see them; in contrast, they could see us via videoconferencing.
The other keynote presenters came from Australia (Jan Herrington from Murdock University) and the USA (Brent Wilson from the University of Colorado at Denver and Colleen Carmean from Arizona State University). It was great to finally meet Colleen (I cited her articles on course management systems in my R2D2 book) and have long discussions with Brent (I have used his constructivist learning environments book for a long time); Jan I met at the University of Wollongong over a decade ago. Other conference presenters came from places like Syria, Oman, and Egypt, in addition to Saudi Arabia.
My talk was on the first day. There was also a panel that day on the future of e-learning in which I participated. Then I listened to others. Fortunately, I was able to say a few closing remarks at the end of the conference. The day before those remarks I met a young man whose nickname was “Triple S.” It stood for the fact that his name was Saud and he was from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. So in his honor my remarks were about the 5 S’s I observed during the conference. But instead of Triple S, it was a Quintuple S. Here they are:
1. Struggles: Many participants noted their Struggles in establishing or conducting online learning in their organizations or institutions. Getting into e-learning is not as easy of some think.
2. Successes: While many noted their struggles, problems, and challenges, there were an equal number of SUCCESSES noted during the three days of the conference. It seemed that the conference participants were interested in innovative learning applications and success stories with Web technology. Emerging technology covered in the talks included virtual worlds, course management systems (CMSs), collaborative writing tools, language learning, and laptops.
3. Smart: Some people talked about technology becoming SMART enough to interpret different languages and translate online content better as well as to make people using them smarter. Smart was definitely a theme.
4. Studies: It was refreshing that many of the presenters discussed research STUDIES that backed up what they were saying. Or they discussed their own research findings and future directions. In effect, they were not just there to hear from the keynotes. Seems online learning research was accelerating in the Middle East. Consequently, they wanted to know the impact of e-learning or get involved in the assessment of it.
5. Standards: Throughout the 3 days of the conference, I heard words like comparison, accreditation, quality, and benchmarks. All these words were in reference to creating STANDARDS of success. While this is not my main area, I was intrigued by the constant focus on it.
So that was my recap (if there was a 6th S, it was systems). The e-learning systems included Moodle and Blackboard as well as some homegrown ones. The systems in place seemed to be evolving.
I promised them a 2 minute closing but I guess I took a few more. Smile. Other topics and terms mentioned included infrastructure issues, financial or administrative aspects of e-learning, cultural change in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, definitions of e-learning and blended learning, acceptability and approval for e-learning initiatives, government approval as well as colleague views about e-learning, and trends toward the understanding and use of e-learning. Suffice to say, the conference covered the gamut of e-learning. Much has happened in Saudi Arabia related to e-learning since my first visit there in February 2007. Yes, new brick and mortar is going up all around Riyadh and the entire country, but, so too, is much thinking about the role of online learning in education there. It is great to see that opening up of the country to virtual learning possibilities.
Departing from Riyadh is never easy; the airport entrance always reminds me of cattle going through gates at feeding time. I wish I could close my eyes and just walk to the gate but that is not possible. But after 2-3 security clearance checks, I made it through. On the way home from Riyadh, I flew through Paris where I had a 4 hour or so layover. My plane departed Paris and 6-7 or so hours later and had to make an emergency landing in St. John’s, Newfoundland for a lady who was pretty ill on our plane. I think she was ok, but it was interesting to see the snow falling there in mid April. I was never in Newfoundland in my life but will be twice in 2010—I go there again in October to keynote an e-learning conference. Cool.
What the guy next to me found out when we briefly stopped there, however, was that the volcano eruption in Iceland closed down Charles de Gaulle and many other European airports 2 hours after we left. Had we left just a little later, I would likely have been stuck in Paris for more than a week. Wow…that was close! I missed my connecting flight in Minneapolis but it did not matter since I got the next plane and made it home. Thank goodness!
Stop #2. Monterrey, Mexico (San Pedro actually): After the trip to Riyadh, I had 2 nights (1 day) at home before flying to Monterrey, Mexico to speak at the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in San Pedro (an adjacent city). UDEM is one of the top private universities in Mexico. My hotel was stunning with lovely paintings throughout (even in my room). There were also some exquisite statues, wood floors, and so on. The Universidad de Monterrey is a picturesque campus snuggled between two mountain ranges. On Saturday, my host, Arnaud Chevallier, took me to dinner and a brief tour of the city. On Sunday, he took me hiking up a mountain. It was a good 5-6 hour workout and 10-15k of walking. After the hike, I had dinner with UDEM administrators including UDEM's president—Antonio Dieck. Antonio had seen me present at a conference in Beijing 5 years earlier and was the reason I was in Monterrey. He is great! And so is Arnaud.
My invited talk there was in a beautiful room with a balcony where many of the UDEM undergraduate students sat. The administrators sat in the first few rows. It was quite an awesome place to present in. After a short lunch, I was on my way home. I really enjoyed my stay there.
Stop #3-5. San Francisco, San Jose, and Palo Alto, California (ISPI): Two more nights at home (and one day) and I was on my way to San Francisco at like 4 am for the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) conference at the downtown Marriott there. A huge audience for my talk at ISPI included my good friends Thiagi and Chuck Ferguson as well as several former students of mine who are in the Coast Guard. Other former students of mine, Dr. Yun Jeong Park from St. Cloud State University as well as Dr. Brian Beatty from San Francisco State University were there. Before the talk, Subude (now at Cal State Monterrey Bay) and Rodney Tom (from Genetech) (both former students) joined Brian and I for lunch. Dr. Wen Hao Chuang and Dr. Siat Moy Chong came to dinner (they studied with me at IU in the 1990s). So many former students with me each day…it was quite fun.
The following day, I took the train down to San Jose State University (SJSU) for a talk that my long-time friend Mark Adams arranged. Dr. Mei-Yan Lu from SJSU, who I have been giving e-learning advice to, was also there. Mark’s e-learning colleagues are very smart, caring, and committed individuals. They make a great team in these tough budgetary times at SJSU. Keep in mind that SJSU generates 10’s of thousands of credit hours online. This has likely saved the campus. A very nice campus too. Many great pics there.
After the talk, YaTing Teng picked me up and took me to the headquarters of Adobe. YaTing, a newly minted Ph.D. from the U of Illinois showed Mei-Yan and I around. A few years ago, YaTing was part of my blended learning team and I have been giving her advice on your dissertation since then. YaTing then took me to Stanford for a talk on my World is Open book. It was cool to finally present at Stanford (I have done Stanford, Oxford, and Harvard now…all that is left on my personal to-do list is Cambridge and MIT…someday, someday, someday!). Not bad for a dumb kid from Milwaukee who got a 19 on his ACT.
After the talk, my good friend Paul Kim from Stanford took us out to eat on downtown Palo Alto. After that, he had a friend of his pick us up and take me back to the Marriott. The following day I went jogging downtown in San Fran before heading to the airport. Caught some wondrous views of the Bay area when on that run. Oh, there are days that one does not want to depart a city and that was one of them. I love San Francisco. Always have…always will.
Stop #6. Denver, Colorado (AERA Conference): When I got home, I finally had 7 nights in my own bed before heading to Denver for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) meeting in Denver. The Denver trip started with a new talk on shared online video at Jones International University. My former student, Dr. Michael Thomas from the University of Wisconsin joined me and gave a talk on games, mobile learning, and international education. Glenn Jones, the Chancellor of Jones International University, was so appreciative, he brought Michael and I to his personal office for a catered lunch. The following night (Saturday April 30), Glenn took me and 9 of my former students, friends, and spouses (including Michael and his wife) to the Denver Symphony Orchestra rock performance of the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. What fun! Glenn also took Michael and I as well as Scott Warren (another former student) to dinner 2 nights later. During the AERA conference, I had a presentation on wikibooks with Nari Kim (yet another former student). On Monday morning, I was co-discussant with Dr. Mimi Lee (yes, a former student) on a symposium on research related to the Web 2.0.
After that, I went jogging down a river walk area in downtown Colorado. I saw Mile High Stadium and many other landmarks. At the beginning of the run, I decide to call my former student, Dr. Frank Sanchez. He returned my call and I got in touch with him at the end of the run. His office was 1-2 minutes from where I ended up. Frank is a high level administrator at the University of Colorado at Denver. It was so great to meet up. Frank has not changed a bit. I miss him. The next morning, I had breakfast with my one of my two advisors at the University of Wisconsin from 20 years prior. His name is Dr. Steven Yussen. He was my human development advisor at the UW. Gary Davis was my human learning advisor….I was a double major. Steve is now at the University of Minnesota. Since leaving Wisconsin, Steve has been dean at the University of Iowa as well as Minnesota. It was so fun to catch up.
Stop #7. Singapore: After flying back to Indiana that day, I had another 7 nights at home before heading to Singapore and Penang, Malaysia for the Global Learn 2010 conference premiere (Global Conference on Learning and Technology). In Singapore, I saw 4 former students of mine at the National Institute of Education-—Timothy Hew, Joyce Koh, Ashley Tan, and Hyo-Jeong So. The only former student I did not see was Judy Lee whom I saw the week before in Denver, Colorado when at AERA. Hyo-Jeong took me around to the new casino (Sentosa Island) as well as the Night Safari and other things. Just 8 hours after getting off the plane in Singapore, I gave a 3 hour workshop on shared online video at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). My friend Dr. Daniel Tan invited me to give that workshop. I also saw my old friend Paul Gagnon before departing for Penang, Malaysia for Global Learn.
Stop #8. Penang, Malaysia (Global Learn): I was picked up at the Penang airport by April Tan and her husband. I had been giving advice to April (as well as her friend Chiew-Lan Teh) on their respective dissertations for a number of years, so it was good to meet. Global Learn, which is the newest conference of the Association for the Advancement for Computing in Education (AACE), was a huge success. I do not have space or time to go through all the details here but there were more than 520 registered participants from at least 48 countries. How cool is that for a premier conference? Having worked to develop this conference for 2 years, it was great to see this happen.
A boat ride around the island made it even more enjoyable as did many late nights at beachside pubs.
Global Learn will take place in Asia or the Pacific Rim each year. Are you interested in hosting the next one? Well, bids for Global Learn 2011 and 2012 are due June 15th (see http://www.aace.org/conf/glearn/). Want to see some of the 2010 events? You can see many pics taken at Global Learn 2010 at the conference Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glearn/
The conference grew so big, we had 2 hotels side-by-side (the Park Royal and the Holiday Inn). In fact, the conference ended 1-2 hours later than originally planned. The Global Learn conference director, Dr. Gary Marks from AACE, had booked his flight out on Thursday evening (just before mine) so I got to say a few words at the closing ceremony since Gary had left. In contrast to my five S’s in Saudi Arabia, I asked the group to toast to 5 P's of the Penang event:
1. Fantastic keynote and invited Presentations--the invited talks were fabulous (Jan Herrington, Paul Kim, Jon Baggeley, Colin Latchem, Merry Merryfield, etc., all were top notch!). It was geat to meet them all. Much global in their message. I hope we can find as good of invited speakers in the future.
2. Thoughtful Papers. I learned a lot both from the brief papers as well as the full papers!
3. Great Place--The Park Royal in Penang. Lots of P's!
4. The Premiere Global Learn conference. Again more than 520 registered people from at least 48 countries. Wow! Keep in mind that AACE is a non-profit organization--it took a huge risk in extending itself to Asia after many requests to go there.
5. The wonderful People. The last toast ended with a thank you to Tom Reynolds from National University (whom I have known since grad school days) and Mimi Lee (from the University of Houston). Tom and Mimi, in addition to Gary Marks and myself, were heavily involved in many teleconferences and Web conferences in Adobe Connect Pro for nearly 2 years planning the GL conference (before it had a name) and putting together the special issue. They helped with Global Learn mission statement, logistics, topics and subtopics, conference venue selection, exec board nominations, and many other things which are too numerous to mention here. The important thing is that Tom recently was promoted to full professor (in addition to being a Fulbright scholar in Columbia this year) and Mimi found out she got tenure and promotion to associate professor just before Global Learn. Congrads to both of them on their wonderful accomplishments. The final GL toast was to celebrate that fantastic news.
This past year, Tom, Mimi, and I edited a special journal issue of the International Journal of E-Learning on E-Learning in Asia which is now a print-on-demand book. The book is called "A Special Path Through Asia E-Learning." This evolved from a special symposium we ran at the E-Learn conference in Las Vegas in November 2008. People from the symposium and then the special issue who were in Penang for the conference included Zoraini Wati Abas (the Open University of Malaysia), Okhwa Lee (Chungbuk National University in Korea), Ke Zhang (Wayne State University), Siew-Mee Barton (Deakin University in Melbourne), Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang (Chiang-Mai University in Thailand), Katsuaki Suzuki (Kumamoto University in Japan), Yayoi Anzai (Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan), Tom Reynolds, Daniel Tan (Nanyang Technological University), and myself. That is 10 of the 15 people from the symposium and special issue on e-learning in Asia. It was so great to see everyone! Perhaps next year a few of the others will come to Global Learn.
I must point out that Zoraini (mentioned above) was the most instrumental person in making this conference happen. She did a ton of work! She got us the venue at the Park Royal and arranged a good price for everything. But there were many others. Joe Luca from Edith Cowan University in Perth, Siew-Mee Barton from Deakin University, Insung Jung from International Christian University in Japan, Sanjaya Mishra, Indira Gandhi National Open University in India, and so on.
Here are a few conference highlights involving the people above. First of all, Katsuaki Suzuki was on a special invited panel (Research Trends of Learning and Technology in Japan: A Critical Review of Two Journals by Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education). He also brought a few of his students. There was a huge contingent from Japan. Katsuaki also announced that his organization (Japanese Society for Information and Systems in Education …JSiCE) will be giving away monetary awards at Global Learn to best grad student papers in the future. Katsuaki is great!
Second, Yayoi Anzai bravely put together a mobile learning panel that was quite special (Opening Up Learning With Mobile Technologies). This was an extremely engaging panel. After Paul Kim wowed everyone with his projects and Elliot Soloway and his colleague Cathie Norris dazzled people with their ideas and persuasive powers, it was Ke Zhang who highly impressed the entire panel with her data on mobile learning. Ke was, in a word, PHENOMENAL. I do not say that just because we have a book together (Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing). It is true! Fortunately, her son Arthur was in the audience next to me and got to witness his mother in action. She identified all the current trends and gaps mobile learning, thereby giving people a sense of where the research in this field has been and where it is going. Congrads to Ke and Yayoi for this session. I hope others can propose similar sessions next year.
In addition to that, Tom Reynolds had a poster on the open educational resource movement in South America and Thanomporn (Toh) Laohajaratsang had a couple of excellent papers. And it seemed each day Siew-Mee and her husband Greg had 1 or 2 wonderful papers and presentations. We also heard proposals from people planning to put in bids for Global Learn for next year but I cannot say from where just yet. Stay tuned.
Finally, it was great to see Elaine Khoo from the University of Waikato in New Zealand win an outstanding paper award. I have been sending Elaine stuff of mine (and others) to read and corresponding about her dissertation research since 2002 when I visited Hamilton, New Zealand and her campus. And now 8 years later, she has passed her dissertation (all 550 pages of it) and is winning awards. She has also become a mommy 2 times in that span. It was great to see Elaine (now Dr. Khoo) and her entire family in Penang. Suffice to say that Global Learn was a blast! I miss everyone already.
Stop #9. Lubbock, Texas: So after all these visits to places in the United States as well as Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Singapore, and Malaysia during April and May, I was off to Lubbock, Texas on May 31st. I had to take an early (6:25 am) flight from Indianapolis due to the fact that the Indy 500 race was the day before and all other flights were booked. But I am glad I did. I got to see more of Lubbock and Texas Tech as a result. It was my first appearance in west Texas; a truly unique and enjoyable place. I stayed in a hotel across from Texas Tech University. It was a brand new hotel and convention center called the Overton Hotel. Running on campus late afternoon on Memorial Day was quite a treat.
Fortunately, my talks in Lubbock went well. But I am happy to be home…home at least until June 7-9 when I go to Las Vegas for the EduComm Conference. Then comes Syracuse University and a community college in Troy, New York, followed by Ohio State University and Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio…all in June. MoodleMoot in Melbourne awaits in July as does a K-12 conference in Sydney. I can’t wait. TravelinEdMan will be back on the road soon…real soon. Till then.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
Announcing a Breeze Session with Stephen Downes...Thursday April 8, 2010
Thursday night (tonight) April 8, 2010 at 7 pm EST, the one and only Stephen Downes will speak in my Web 2.0 seminar class which I am teaching online this semester. Stephen was gracious to accept my late request to speak in my class. We decided to make this session open for others to sit in on. The details are below.
Time and Date: Thursday April 8th at 7 pm EST, 6 pm Central
Your Time (per the World Clock):
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=4&day=8&year=2010&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=105
Course: R685 on the Web 2.0 (The World Is Open With Web Technology); see syllabus:
Department and Instructor: Instructional Systems Technology, Curt Bonk, Indiana University
Guest: Stephen Downes, National Research Council. Institute for Information Technology, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. He specializes in online learning, content syndication, and new media.
Location: Adobe/Breeze link (date now passed).
Audience: My Web 2.0 class though anyone is welcome—students, faculty, brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends, etc.
Quote from Stephen's Homepage: “I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle. Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be. This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward.”
Topics to Perhaps be Discussed: Stephen will cover Open Educational Resources (OER), OER models, Edupunks, DIYU (Do It Yourself Universities), and perhaps educational blogging and Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs), among other things.
My Personal Praise for Stephen: I met Stephen nearly 10 years ago on a very bad day (November 8, 2000). That was the day George Bush was elected president over Al Gore (though technically that did not come for another 40-50 days). I was in downtown Toronto and had to absentee ballot. Expensive to do but important. I remember telling some people during break time that the election would all come down to Florida. So when I got home later that evening and found out that Gore had (supposedly) won Florida, I was relieved. I did not anticipate the shenanigans of the next few weeks and of course was unaware of what had already transpired that day.
Anyway, Stephen was on a panel with me that was addressing adoption of Web-based learning (or lack thereof) at the TeleLearning Centres of Excellence conference. It was supposed to be a Everett Rogers link--diffusion of innovation. It was a wonderful group to be on a panel with. I think Ron Owston from York University was also on it as were people from the University of Waterloo. Stephen does not likely remember my talk (nor does anyone else) but I fondly remember his. Stephen has an highly unique persona when presenting and it definitely showed that day. Perhaps he was mindful of the election since he was not in a particularly happy mood if I recall.
Since that time, I have realized that Stephen Downes reads pretty much every article written around the world on educational technology and e-learning and attends nearly every ed tech conference humanly possible. He is a man on a mission. Later tonight you can listen in on his talk find out what that mission actually is.
You can read more about him at his Website.
His Old Daily blog where he summarizes events in the field is read by millions of people each year (if not each month). Hec, that might be per day. Suffice to say, his writings and reflections are highly thought of and sought after. His ability to distill the mammoth amount of daily news related to learning technology is a skill few have and one that is highly prized this century. His consumption capacity is at a ridiculously high level. He should perhaps be studied by Carnegie Mellon memory researchers. The Canadians should be proud to have him. Of course, after the election of 2000, they were not worrried...there was little doubt he was there to stay.
Here is the link for the session on Thursday:
Reminder of Adobe/Breeze link: (anyone is welcome).
Hope to see you online with us. Please share the link with your friends and colleagues.
I head to Saudi Arabia Saturday for a few days followed by 2 day trips to Monterrey. Mexico and San Francisco. I will present at the ISPI (International Society of Performance Improvement conference at the downtown Marriott in San Fran at 4 pm on April 21st followed by a presentation at San Jose State University from 10:30 to 12 noon on Thursday the 22nd and Stanford University from 3:15 to 4:30 (in CERAS 100B, Center for Educational Research at Stanford) that same day. Perhaps I will see some of you there.
Time and Date: Thursday April 8th at 7 pm EST, 6 pm Central
Your Time (per the World Clock):
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=4&day=8&year=2010&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=105
Course: R685 on the Web 2.0 (The World Is Open With Web Technology); see syllabus:
Department and Instructor: Instructional Systems Technology, Curt Bonk, Indiana University
Guest: Stephen Downes, National Research Council. Institute for Information Technology, in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. He specializes in online learning, content syndication, and new media.
Location: Adobe/Breeze link (date now passed).
Audience: My Web 2.0 class though anyone is welcome—students, faculty, brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends, etc.
Quote from Stephen's Homepage: “I want and visualize and aspire toward a system of society and learning where each person is able to rise to his or her fullest potential without social or financial encumberance, where they may express themselves fully and without reservation through art, writing, athletics, invention, or even through their avocations or lifestyle. Where they are able to form networks of meaningful and rewarding relationships with their peers, with people who share the same interests or hobbies, the same political or religious affiliations - or different interests or affiliations, as the case may be. This to me is a society where knowledge and learning are public goods, freely created and shared, not hoarded or withheld in order to extract wealth or influence. This is what I aspire toward, this is what I work toward.”
Topics to Perhaps be Discussed: Stephen will cover Open Educational Resources (OER), OER models, Edupunks, DIYU (Do It Yourself Universities), and perhaps educational blogging and Personalized Learning Environments (PLEs), among other things.
My Personal Praise for Stephen: I met Stephen nearly 10 years ago on a very bad day (November 8, 2000). That was the day George Bush was elected president over Al Gore (though technically that did not come for another 40-50 days). I was in downtown Toronto and had to absentee ballot. Expensive to do but important. I remember telling some people during break time that the election would all come down to Florida. So when I got home later that evening and found out that Gore had (supposedly) won Florida, I was relieved. I did not anticipate the shenanigans of the next few weeks and of course was unaware of what had already transpired that day.
Anyway, Stephen was on a panel with me that was addressing adoption of Web-based learning (or lack thereof) at the TeleLearning Centres of Excellence conference. It was supposed to be a Everett Rogers link--diffusion of innovation. It was a wonderful group to be on a panel with. I think Ron Owston from York University was also on it as were people from the University of Waterloo. Stephen does not likely remember my talk (nor does anyone else) but I fondly remember his. Stephen has an highly unique persona when presenting and it definitely showed that day. Perhaps he was mindful of the election since he was not in a particularly happy mood if I recall.
Since that time, I have realized that Stephen Downes reads pretty much every article written around the world on educational technology and e-learning and attends nearly every ed tech conference humanly possible. He is a man on a mission. Later tonight you can listen in on his talk find out what that mission actually is.
You can read more about him at his Website.
His Old Daily blog where he summarizes events in the field is read by millions of people each year (if not each month). Hec, that might be per day. Suffice to say, his writings and reflections are highly thought of and sought after. His ability to distill the mammoth amount of daily news related to learning technology is a skill few have and one that is highly prized this century. His consumption capacity is at a ridiculously high level. He should perhaps be studied by Carnegie Mellon memory researchers. The Canadians should be proud to have him. Of course, after the election of 2000, they were not worrried...there was little doubt he was there to stay.
Here is the link for the session on Thursday:
Reminder of Adobe/Breeze link: (anyone is welcome).
Hope to see you online with us. Please share the link with your friends and colleagues.
I head to Saudi Arabia Saturday for a few days followed by 2 day trips to Monterrey. Mexico and San Francisco. I will present at the ISPI (International Society of Performance Improvement conference at the downtown Marriott in San Fran at 4 pm on April 21st followed by a presentation at San Jose State University from 10:30 to 12 noon on Thursday the 22nd and Stanford University from 3:15 to 4:30 (in CERAS 100B, Center for Educational Research at Stanford) that same day. Perhaps I will see some of you there.
Friday, 2 April 2010
Verbal-Visual...Take Your Pick: 30 Academic Writing Tips or 40 Shared Online Video Sites
This is a two-part blog post. It was much longer but I am getting an error message from Blogger and lost half of this blog post. I do not have time to repost it. Sorry about that. I am not happy.
The first resource below came out 3 years back and is being republished. It relates to writing and building a successful academic career. The second one on shared online video I just came out with. There are many ideas for teaching and learning from shared online video in it.
1. 30 Writing Tips for Jump-Starting an Academic Career Revisited:Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed wrote me last week asking to republish a blog post of mine from 3 years ago with 30 writing tips for young academics. I reread much of it...there are actually some solid writing tips in there (in retrospect). Perhaps you can use a couple of them or might want to share with one of your students or colleagues. If so, here is the citation and link:
Bonk, C. J. (2010, April 2). 30 Writing Tips. Inside Higher Ed. Available: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/04/02/bonk
Keep in mind that these were written off-the-cuff. The original blog post, A Quick 30 Writing Tips for the Start of an Academic Career, had pictures with it. I wrote it with recently graduates of my program here at IU in mind. Some of the ideas might be a tad controversial. Not sure. Some might sound a bit egotistical...but I was trying to point out that one can go from a state of having trouble publishing to a state of enjoyment with writing and publishing if you live a life rich with writing opportunities. Perhaps you can now too.
2. 40 Shared Online Video Sites: Some Formal, Some Highly Informal, Some Mixed:
Last night and this morning I created a list of 40 shared online video sites. These range from Academic Earth, Big Think, Link TV (one of my favorites), TV Lesson, Fora TV (another Bonk favorite), and YouTube EDU.
You can find these linked from the Resource list I have created at TrainingShare.com
Shared Online Video 6a: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/
Or you can go directly to the list: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/Summary_of_Ways_to_Use_Shared_Online_Video.htm
Below the list of 40 shared online video sites, you will find 2 more lists: one on 10 ways instructors, trainers, or teachers (or even administrators) might use shared online video in their courses or training experiences and 10 more ways you can get learners to use or create them.
These lists did not come from thin air. I started reflecting on the use of shared online video in an article I wrote 2 years ago for the AERA (American Education Research Association) conference in New York City. I have yet to publish it but I have posted this online. See below.
Reference: Bonk, C. J. (2008, March). YouTube anchors and enders: The use of shared online video content as a macrocontext for learning. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
Why create such lists of video resources? Well, there are hundreds of such sites. Many people think most of the video on the Web is junk. Perhaps that was true 5 or 10 years back but not today. Today, as the Gates Foundation has noted, higher education can significantly benefit (financially as well as pedagogically) from thinking creative and imaginative uses of all the shared online videos. We must ask how we plan to use such free online content from the world's foremost experts. Never before was it possible to call up a presentation on nearly any topic conceivable and listen the one of the best known experts on the topic discuss it. Cool! As I mention in my World is Open book, this is a learning revolution in learning. This is the learning century and shared online video is a key reason why that will be the case.
Elliot Masie from the Masie Center has published a number of his Learning Trends reports recently on the use of shared online video (report #608, #601, and #584. In the most recent of these three he argues that:
"The introduction of video into almost every aspect of our learning and work tasks is profound and “disrupting”. As designers, we must experiment with these formats, looking for evidence and appropriate use cases and examples of when not to use video. Rising bandwidth, lowered equipment costs, ease of editing and growing expectations of learners will make video a profound component of our learning efforts going forward."
I would agree with Masie. Video is disrupting the state of things in every educational sector. As he notes, so much is possible with video chatting, Skype, telepresence videoconferencing (from Cisco, HP, etc.), video podcasts, video coaching, and synchronous conferencing like Breeze/Adobe Connect Pro. We can stream 5 hour lectures (no questions asked), bring in guests from around the planet online, assign students to summarize their learning in a YouTube-like video, require students to watch 3-5 short videos each week in addition to reading the book and other materials, etc. Video is transforming education and training. Enjoy it...it is not going away anytime soon.
Recap:
If you are a verbal learner, you will perhaps appreciate list #1 above of writing tips; and if you prefer visuals to text, the second list might be more appealing.
Enjoy this brave, new learning century filled with writing opportunities as well as those related to the visual side of our minds. And enjoy the coming weekend. Go Butler Bulldogs!!! Many great videos to be produced there...
The first resource below came out 3 years back and is being republished. It relates to writing and building a successful academic career. The second one on shared online video I just came out with. There are many ideas for teaching and learning from shared online video in it.
1. 30 Writing Tips for Jump-Starting an Academic Career Revisited:Scott Jaschik from Inside Higher Ed wrote me last week asking to republish a blog post of mine from 3 years ago with 30 writing tips for young academics. I reread much of it...there are actually some solid writing tips in there (in retrospect). Perhaps you can use a couple of them or might want to share with one of your students or colleagues. If so, here is the citation and link:
Bonk, C. J. (2010, April 2). 30 Writing Tips. Inside Higher Ed. Available: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/04/02/bonk
Keep in mind that these were written off-the-cuff. The original blog post, A Quick 30 Writing Tips for the Start of an Academic Career, had pictures with it. I wrote it with recently graduates of my program here at IU in mind. Some of the ideas might be a tad controversial. Not sure. Some might sound a bit egotistical...but I was trying to point out that one can go from a state of having trouble publishing to a state of enjoyment with writing and publishing if you live a life rich with writing opportunities. Perhaps you can now too.
2. 40 Shared Online Video Sites: Some Formal, Some Highly Informal, Some Mixed:
Last night and this morning I created a list of 40 shared online video sites. These range from Academic Earth, Big Think, Link TV (one of my favorites), TV Lesson, Fora TV (another Bonk favorite), and YouTube EDU.
You can find these linked from the Resource list I have created at TrainingShare.com
Shared Online Video 6a: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/
Or you can go directly to the list: http://www.trainingshare.com/resources/Summary_of_Ways_to_Use_Shared_Online_Video.htm
Below the list of 40 shared online video sites, you will find 2 more lists: one on 10 ways instructors, trainers, or teachers (or even administrators) might use shared online video in their courses or training experiences and 10 more ways you can get learners to use or create them.
These lists did not come from thin air. I started reflecting on the use of shared online video in an article I wrote 2 years ago for the AERA (American Education Research Association) conference in New York City. I have yet to publish it but I have posted this online. See below.
Reference: Bonk, C. J. (2008, March). YouTube anchors and enders: The use of shared online video content as a macrocontext for learning. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2008 Annual Meeting, New York, NY.
Why create such lists of video resources? Well, there are hundreds of such sites. Many people think most of the video on the Web is junk. Perhaps that was true 5 or 10 years back but not today. Today, as the Gates Foundation has noted, higher education can significantly benefit (financially as well as pedagogically) from thinking creative and imaginative uses of all the shared online videos. We must ask how we plan to use such free online content from the world's foremost experts. Never before was it possible to call up a presentation on nearly any topic conceivable and listen the one of the best known experts on the topic discuss it. Cool! As I mention in my World is Open book, this is a learning revolution in learning. This is the learning century and shared online video is a key reason why that will be the case.
Elliot Masie from the Masie Center has published a number of his Learning Trends reports recently on the use of shared online video (report #608, #601, and #584. In the most recent of these three he argues that:
"The introduction of video into almost every aspect of our learning and work tasks is profound and “disrupting”. As designers, we must experiment with these formats, looking for evidence and appropriate use cases and examples of when not to use video. Rising bandwidth, lowered equipment costs, ease of editing and growing expectations of learners will make video a profound component of our learning efforts going forward."
I would agree with Masie. Video is disrupting the state of things in every educational sector. As he notes, so much is possible with video chatting, Skype, telepresence videoconferencing (from Cisco, HP, etc.), video podcasts, video coaching, and synchronous conferencing like Breeze/Adobe Connect Pro. We can stream 5 hour lectures (no questions asked), bring in guests from around the planet online, assign students to summarize their learning in a YouTube-like video, require students to watch 3-5 short videos each week in addition to reading the book and other materials, etc. Video is transforming education and training. Enjoy it...it is not going away anytime soon.
Recap:
If you are a verbal learner, you will perhaps appreciate list #1 above of writing tips; and if you prefer visuals to text, the second list might be more appealing.
Enjoy this brave, new learning century filled with writing opportunities as well as those related to the visual side of our minds. And enjoy the coming weekend. Go Butler Bulldogs!!! Many great videos to be produced there...
Friday, 5 March 2010
Want an E-Ph.D. in Ed Tech?: An E-nlightening interview with Punya Mishra from Michigan State University
An E-Ph.D.? Anyone? Anyone?:
Do you offer an online doctorate in educational technology? If not, can you recommend a program? Just who offers online Ed.D.’s and Ph.D.’s? I typically get this question a couple of times on each trip I go on. I get tired answering this question over and over and over. There are several universities that I mention with an online doctorate in the field. However, none of them have the brand name of a Big 10 or Ivy league school.
Move Over Bob Dylan...Punya Mishra is Here:
Good news. As Bob Dylan can testify, “The times they are a-changing.” I recently received an email from my friend (no, not Bob Dylan but someone equally creative). The email was from Punya Mishra over at Michigan State University (MSU) about their newly designed online/hybrid doctoral program (see his note below; see his MSU homepage for more information on Punya Mishra). His fantabulous new program will focus on the evolving role of technology in learning. Sounds intriguing to me...especially with the potential for large enrollments from practitioners.
Here is that note from Punya Mishra:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Michigan State University is now offering its doctoral program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology online with a new hybrid option focused on the evolving role of technology in learning. The blended four- to five-year program, which combines online coursework with summer classes on campus, is designed to meet a growing demand from experienced education professionals who want to earn a Ph.D. while continuing in their current positions. This substantially online program is designed for the bright, established professionals currently serving in K-12 schools, universities, policy centers, and research institutions, who understand how new technologies, including online learning, continue to transform education.
We see this as an exciting initiative by a nationally ranked program (MSU's College of Ed graduate programs are ranked #6 in the nation, by US News and World Report). This program is targeted at talented people in the field who have finished their masters, established themselves as effective educational leaders, and who would like to earn a Ph.D. but cannot consider giving up an influential job for four or five years to go back to school full time. Clearly there is a need for a high quality Ph.D. program designed for education professionals who are seriously interested in research, evaluation, and assessment of effectiveness of technology in school.
Students will have the opportunity to work with world renowned faculty in the College of Education at Michigan State University. These include, Dr. Punya Mishra and Dr. Matthew J. Koehler (developers of the TPACK framework for technology integration; more on Matt); Dr. Yong Zhao (author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization; more on Yong Zhao and even more), and Dr. Rand Spiro (developer of Cognitive Flexibility Theory).
Please feel free to contact Punya Mishra (punya@msu.edu) or Dr. Robin Dickson (rdickson@msu.edu) if you want any more information or visit the following websites:
MSU Hybrid PhD website: http://edtechphd.com/
Postings on Punya Mishra's blog these Exciting New Opportunities:
http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
sincerely
~punya mishra
http://punyamishra.com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I provide details of the program below. But before that Punya and I had a little chat about this new hybrid program. My ten questions and his insightful responses are below.
Interview with Punya Mishra, Michigan State University, New Blended Ph.D. in Educational Technology
Curt Question #1: What has you most excited about this new program and why?
Punya: The most exciting part about this, for me, is the fact that this program will allow us to work with the smartest and most energetic practitioners in the field. This is a chance to break out of the ivory tower. This is also an opportunity for us to think of new paradigms of research—research that is more closely connected to things happening on the ground, research that is informed both by the deeper abstractions of theory and the grounded pragmatics of practice. I have written about this on my blog – check out http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
Curt Question #2: What prior experience does your department have in offering such a program? I know you had mentioned some certificate and master’s programs (similar to what we have here at IU)?
Punya: We have been offering a variety of programs for practicing educators in the area of Educational Technology for years now. These include a nine-credit certificate program, a thirty-credit Master’s degree as well as the regular on-campus Ph.D. What is interesting is that, except for the Ph.D. (at least prior to this new hybrid version) all our programs could be taken in a variety of formats: online, face-to-face (on campus, off campus, and abroad) as well as hybrid combinations thereof. For instance, we have students who have taken some certificate courses over weekends, at sites near their schools, followed by some coursework on campus and online (over summer and regular semester). These students received their master’s by completing their courses with one final summer, abroad.
Another exciting initiative we have started recently (apart from the Ph.D.) is what we are calling an “EduPunk Refresher” course. This can be taken for credit or no-credit and is aimed at people who already have a master’s degree but realize that the rapid pace of technology change means that they have some catching up to do. The emphasis is on what we call DIY Ed Tech, an intense hands-on week long workshop dealing with the latest technologies and how they can be integrated in teaching. We are offering this program this summer in the beautiful Rouen in France. Details of all this can be found http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
Anyway, the overall point I am trying to make is that, here at MSU, we have over 7 years of experience offering courses and programs in online and blended formats and have been quite successful at it. In that sense, developing the new Ph.D. was not that much of a stretch.
Curt Question #3: How does a blended or online educational technology doctoral program change the ballgame for ed tech programs around the country? How prevalent might online and blended educational technology program be in 5 years? How about in 10 or 20 years?
Punya: Well, we think that the trend is moving in that direction. I hate to make predictions but I do think that this is the wave of the future, for a range of reasons (many of which you speak of in your recent “The World is Open” book).
I think this is particularly true of practitioner-oriented fields like education. Think of the model that exists now. We ask people to leave their areas of practice, come to campus for 4-5 years, at which point they have lost that very intimate connection between what they are learning and what they do. This model is highly understandable for some disciplines (say engineering or physics) where doctoral research is about getting into a lab – and a lab can be expensive to maintain—so it makes sense to come to campus.
But in a field like ours, the labs ARE the classrooms. What this new program does, in my opinion, is to allow people to maintain a strong connection to their practice, even while engaging in the deeper engagement with ideas, theory, and research that doctoral programs do so well.
Combine this with how powerful and easy to use collaborative and communication technologies have become, and I think we have a win-win situation here.
Curt Question #4: What types of new students do you expect to attract to your new program? What niche market are you going after? Any enrollment projections, hopes, or dreams?
Punya: We are hoping for a cohort of 20 students – every other year. We came to these projections by extrapolating from number of the core faculty that we have who will teach these courses. One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we did not want to dilute in any shape or form the quality of our doctoral program. So, all our courses will be taught by tenure stream faculty...and as you know we have some really good people here at Michigan State. I feel fortunate to be able to work with all of them.
As for the kinds of students we would like to have, I think I said it best in my blog post (so if you will allow the self-plagiarism):
“This new program explicitly aimed at practitioners hopefully will change that. Moreover it seeks to bring together people who care strongly about education and learning and those who understand that newer technologies are fundamentally changing everything. We are looking for people who see the problems we face today and are interested in finding research driven solutions.
We are looking for the adventurous ones, the risk-takers, the ones who want to make a difference. And we want to bring them together, using the powerful tools we now have, to create, explore and share, to engage in dialogue and dissent, to critique research and to conduct research, to experiment with new technologies, new pedagogies and new content.”
Curt Question #5: What is the most unique element of this program?
Punya: The college of education at Michigan State has a long history of being at the forefront of teacher education and scholarship around teaching and learning. Think back to a few decades ago and the work done by Lee Shulman and others around the idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. More recently, Matt Koehler and I have taken that idea a step further to the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (also known as TPACK). This idea of TPACK structures almost every program we offer in my department (details at http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf). So I think this unique coming together or bridging of educational psychology and educational technology within the TPACK framework really puts our program at a different level than most others. Combine this with the unique structure of our new program--the emphasis on theory AND practice—and I think we have a really good thing going here at MSU.
I think the other strength of this program is the faculty members who are part of the initative. I don’t want to start listing names here (check out the website for that) but, as I stated earlier, we have some really highly accomplished, creative, and connected minds here.
Curt Question #6: Why are your colleagues at MSU excited about it? At the same time, what might they be cautious about or be monitoring carefully?
Punya: I think there is a great deal of excitement around the new kinds of students we will see in this program. Already inquiries from potential students have indicated that we are seeing a very different profile from the ones we typically attract. So I think this means that there is a great potential for us (as faculty) to grow and learn, to develop new areas for research, etc. So that is the cool part.
There are a couple of things we are cautious about. The first area is how we support virtual students. Doctoral programs have typically not done a good job of supporting doctoral students. However in an on-campus program the students have one big advantage, they can come and knock on our doors. That will be harder for these students – who are also busier, because of their jobs. So we are spending a great deal of effort to design and build in institutional mechanisms to offer this support. We are particularly looking at leveraging social media in this, but also trying to employ key people whose sole task will be to support and nurture these students as they move through the program.
The other point of caution is in regards to maintaining the quality of our doctoral program. We are proud of the program as it exists and want to make sure that these changes in delivery of the program do not in any way compromise its quality. We will be monitoring this quite closely as we move forward.
Curt Question #7: What programs will be the top competitors to it?
Punya: The design and need for this program did not emerge from a market analysis as much as it did from what we (as faculty members) were hearing from practitioners. So in that sense it is difficult for me to point to competitors. We do know that there are some EdD programs out there, as well as some Ph.D. programs from for-profit institutions. But we are a Ph.D. (which means a strong emphasis on research) and, of course, we are a land grant university (which means a strong emphasis on outreach and making a positive difference in the state and beyond). That combined with our strong reputation I think puts us ahead of most possible competitors.
Curt Question #8: Do you see any partnerships or joint offerings on the horizon? How about an emphasis or a strand in your program on global education with technology?
Punya: We see great potentials in collaborations and joint offerings. Global education is an important piece for a couple of reasons. One of the strongest advocates of global education, Yong Zhao, is right here in our department (and he has a new book on this out too). Also, a large percentage of our online and hybrid master’s students come from around the world, many who are already working in international schools.
Another series of conversations we have just started has been with people in our Ed Admin department. We are looking at developing emphasis areas that would attract administrators to our program as well.
Hopefully other collaborations will emerge as well. But right now our focus is on getting this program up and running successfully.
Curt Question #9: What was the most difficult thing to put in place to get this program started? Stated another way, what key challenges will others face?
Punya: I think the biggest challenge we faced was the faculty concern with quality. Can we deliver a quality doctoral program in a hybrid format? Most faculty members have “grown up” in the old model and it is often difficult for them to see new ways as being good enough. There will be a lot of convincing to do – and some people you may never convince. In that case, I recommend that people attempting something like this find the right team and just move ahead. One aspect of all this that that has been encouraging though is how supportive administration has been. You know the stereotype that higher education is slow to move and so on – but that has not been our experience. Hooray!
Curt Question #10: Will you be conducting research on it?
Punya: Absolutely. Research is something we do and in fact we are currently engaged in an evaluation of our master’s program – so that is something we would do with the new Ph.D. program as well. Of course this could be a great opportunity for doctoral students to do some really ground-breaking work.
Curt Question #11: Is there anything important I did not ask that you would like to add here?
Punya: No, I think we pretty much covered everything. I would recommend that people visit our websites (and my blog) to learn more about this exciting initiative. Here are some links that people may want to follow: Ph.D. Website: http://edtechphd.com/
A couple of blog posts that speak to my personal take on all this (more informal than official web-site language, and hence more accurate in some ways):
Punya Mishra’s Web: http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
More info from Punya: http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
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Here are some program details:
1. Program Length: Intended as a 4-year cohort-based program.
2. Summer is Blended: Students take 7 week course in summer; 2 weeks of which are FTF and 5 weeks online. The first 2 summers are like this. Year 3 summer residency may be shorter and Year 4 depends on need.
3. Number of Courses in Summer: There are 3 courses in the summer over the 7 weeks. As with their traditional students completing 9 credits during a regular semester while working half-time, students will be fulltime students during the 7 weeks and complete 3 classes. This Punya says will be "intense and invigorating." These courses will not be separate sessions over the summer. Instead, they will be taught in an integrated fashion and students will meet each day in a FTF format from 8:30 am to 4 pm with, of course, a lunch break.
4. Regular/Residential/Tenured Faculty Teaching in Summer: The summer courses will be taught by fulltime tenure stream faculty with graduate assistant support.
5. Pooled/Integrated Summer Course Experience: The design of the summer experiences is critical. In a nutshell, the faculty at MSU are developing a curriculum pools together with content and ideas from these three courses to create a highly powerful integrated summer experience. Apparently, they have been doing something similar for their master's program for over three years (2 weeks face-to-face followed by an online option), so they have a track record that it works really well. By integrating or pooling across these three courses, they can strip out the redundancy among what were more isolated experiences.
6. One Course in Fall and One Course in Spring: In addition to completing 3 classes during the summer, students are expected to take 1 online course per semester--fall and spring 1 each.
7. Additional Residency Requirements: There is a flexible residency requirement in the fall semester of Year 3 – the specific details of which will be negotiated between the student and the adviser.
8. Dissertation Year: The fourth year is pretty open and focused on dissertation research.
9. Program Starts in Summer 2010: This program begins this summer. The final date of application for the first cohort is May 1.
10. Biannual Cohorts: This program will run every other year - so the next enrollment will be in 2012.
11. Entry Requirements: A Master's degree is not required for entrance. What IS required is that you are working full time currently as an educator (in the K12, community college, higher education levels, or in industry) and have extensive experience in your field. Having a master’s degree does not hurt your application, however.
12. GRE: Taking the GRE is required. However, there is no minimum score. Your score is one of many factors that are considered for admission. These include your transcripts, letter of intent, etc.
13. Building a Cohort and a Community: The establishment and support of this cohort of students is something they are paying particular attention to. Social media tools will play an important role in this community building as will a strong commitment to meeting students’ needs and requirements.
14. Some Relevant Links:
1. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education: http://www.educ.msu.edu/cepse/EPET/
2. Overview of New Program:
3. Course Sequence:
4. Program Milestones:
5. MSU Hybrid Ph.D. Website:
If you want more information, you can always write to Punya at punya@msu.edu. Hope you enjoyed this interview. The times are definitely a changing for the field of educational technology. Those who adapt will survive. Those who do not…may not. Which category is your program in? Where are you today? Where will you be tomorrow? Perhaps at Michigan State...or perhaps at Minnesota or Florida State or UT-Austin or Pepperdine or Nova Southeastern or Old Dominion University or Hanyang Cyber University or Jones International University or Walden or the Open University of Malaysia or ??? Time will tell. Right now it seems Michigan State is the one to catch. Or is it dear ol' IU?
Do you offer an online doctorate in educational technology? If not, can you recommend a program? Just who offers online Ed.D.’s and Ph.D.’s? I typically get this question a couple of times on each trip I go on. I get tired answering this question over and over and over. There are several universities that I mention with an online doctorate in the field. However, none of them have the brand name of a Big 10 or Ivy league school.
Move Over Bob Dylan...Punya Mishra is Here:
Good news. As Bob Dylan can testify, “The times they are a-changing.” I recently received an email from my friend (no, not Bob Dylan but someone equally creative). The email was from Punya Mishra over at Michigan State University (MSU) about their newly designed online/hybrid doctoral program (see his note below; see his MSU homepage for more information on Punya Mishra). His fantabulous new program will focus on the evolving role of technology in learning. Sounds intriguing to me...especially with the potential for large enrollments from practitioners.
Here is that note from Punya Mishra:
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Michigan State University is now offering its doctoral program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology online with a new hybrid option focused on the evolving role of technology in learning. The blended four- to five-year program, which combines online coursework with summer classes on campus, is designed to meet a growing demand from experienced education professionals who want to earn a Ph.D. while continuing in their current positions. This substantially online program is designed for the bright, established professionals currently serving in K-12 schools, universities, policy centers, and research institutions, who understand how new technologies, including online learning, continue to transform education.
We see this as an exciting initiative by a nationally ranked program (MSU's College of Ed graduate programs are ranked #6 in the nation, by US News and World Report). This program is targeted at talented people in the field who have finished their masters, established themselves as effective educational leaders, and who would like to earn a Ph.D. but cannot consider giving up an influential job for four or five years to go back to school full time. Clearly there is a need for a high quality Ph.D. program designed for education professionals who are seriously interested in research, evaluation, and assessment of effectiveness of technology in school.
Students will have the opportunity to work with world renowned faculty in the College of Education at Michigan State University. These include, Dr. Punya Mishra and Dr. Matthew J. Koehler (developers of the TPACK framework for technology integration; more on Matt); Dr. Yong Zhao (author of Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization; more on Yong Zhao and even more), and Dr. Rand Spiro (developer of Cognitive Flexibility Theory).
Please feel free to contact Punya Mishra (punya@msu.edu) or Dr. Robin Dickson (rdickson@msu.edu) if you want any more information or visit the following websites:
MSU Hybrid PhD website: http://edtechphd.com/
Postings on Punya Mishra's blog these Exciting New Opportunities:
http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
sincerely
~punya mishra
http://punyamishra.com
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I provide details of the program below. But before that Punya and I had a little chat about this new hybrid program. My ten questions and his insightful responses are below.
Interview with Punya Mishra, Michigan State University, New Blended Ph.D. in Educational Technology
Curt Question #1: What has you most excited about this new program and why?
Punya: The most exciting part about this, for me, is the fact that this program will allow us to work with the smartest and most energetic practitioners in the field. This is a chance to break out of the ivory tower. This is also an opportunity for us to think of new paradigms of research—research that is more closely connected to things happening on the ground, research that is informed both by the deeper abstractions of theory and the grounded pragmatics of practice. I have written about this on my blog – check out http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
Curt Question #2: What prior experience does your department have in offering such a program? I know you had mentioned some certificate and master’s programs (similar to what we have here at IU)?
Punya: We have been offering a variety of programs for practicing educators in the area of Educational Technology for years now. These include a nine-credit certificate program, a thirty-credit Master’s degree as well as the regular on-campus Ph.D. What is interesting is that, except for the Ph.D. (at least prior to this new hybrid version) all our programs could be taken in a variety of formats: online, face-to-face (on campus, off campus, and abroad) as well as hybrid combinations thereof. For instance, we have students who have taken some certificate courses over weekends, at sites near their schools, followed by some coursework on campus and online (over summer and regular semester). These students received their master’s by completing their courses with one final summer, abroad.
Another exciting initiative we have started recently (apart from the Ph.D.) is what we are calling an “EduPunk Refresher” course. This can be taken for credit or no-credit and is aimed at people who already have a master’s degree but realize that the rapid pace of technology change means that they have some catching up to do. The emphasis is on what we call DIY Ed Tech, an intense hands-on week long workshop dealing with the latest technologies and how they can be integrated in teaching. We are offering this program this summer in the beautiful Rouen in France. Details of all this can be found http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
Anyway, the overall point I am trying to make is that, here at MSU, we have over 7 years of experience offering courses and programs in online and blended formats and have been quite successful at it. In that sense, developing the new Ph.D. was not that much of a stretch.
Curt Question #3: How does a blended or online educational technology doctoral program change the ballgame for ed tech programs around the country? How prevalent might online and blended educational technology program be in 5 years? How about in 10 or 20 years?
Punya: Well, we think that the trend is moving in that direction. I hate to make predictions but I do think that this is the wave of the future, for a range of reasons (many of which you speak of in your recent “The World is Open” book).
I think this is particularly true of practitioner-oriented fields like education. Think of the model that exists now. We ask people to leave their areas of practice, come to campus for 4-5 years, at which point they have lost that very intimate connection between what they are learning and what they do. This model is highly understandable for some disciplines (say engineering or physics) where doctoral research is about getting into a lab – and a lab can be expensive to maintain—so it makes sense to come to campus.
But in a field like ours, the labs ARE the classrooms. What this new program does, in my opinion, is to allow people to maintain a strong connection to their practice, even while engaging in the deeper engagement with ideas, theory, and research that doctoral programs do so well.
Combine this with how powerful and easy to use collaborative and communication technologies have become, and I think we have a win-win situation here.
Curt Question #4: What types of new students do you expect to attract to your new program? What niche market are you going after? Any enrollment projections, hopes, or dreams?
Punya: We are hoping for a cohort of 20 students – every other year. We came to these projections by extrapolating from number of the core faculty that we have who will teach these courses. One of the biggest challenges we faced was that we did not want to dilute in any shape or form the quality of our doctoral program. So, all our courses will be taught by tenure stream faculty...and as you know we have some really good people here at Michigan State. I feel fortunate to be able to work with all of them.
As for the kinds of students we would like to have, I think I said it best in my blog post (so if you will allow the self-plagiarism):
“This new program explicitly aimed at practitioners hopefully will change that. Moreover it seeks to bring together people who care strongly about education and learning and those who understand that newer technologies are fundamentally changing everything. We are looking for people who see the problems we face today and are interested in finding research driven solutions.
We are looking for the adventurous ones, the risk-takers, the ones who want to make a difference. And we want to bring them together, using the powerful tools we now have, to create, explore and share, to engage in dialogue and dissent, to critique research and to conduct research, to experiment with new technologies, new pedagogies and new content.”
Curt Question #5: What is the most unique element of this program?
Punya: The college of education at Michigan State has a long history of being at the forefront of teacher education and scholarship around teaching and learning. Think back to a few decades ago and the work done by Lee Shulman and others around the idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge. More recently, Matt Koehler and I have taken that idea a step further to the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (also known as TPACK). This idea of TPACK structures almost every program we offer in my department (details at http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf). So I think this unique coming together or bridging of educational psychology and educational technology within the TPACK framework really puts our program at a different level than most others. Combine this with the unique structure of our new program--the emphasis on theory AND practice—and I think we have a really good thing going here at MSU.
I think the other strength of this program is the faculty members who are part of the initative. I don’t want to start listing names here (check out the website for that) but, as I stated earlier, we have some really highly accomplished, creative, and connected minds here.
Curt Question #6: Why are your colleagues at MSU excited about it? At the same time, what might they be cautious about or be monitoring carefully?
Punya: I think there is a great deal of excitement around the new kinds of students we will see in this program. Already inquiries from potential students have indicated that we are seeing a very different profile from the ones we typically attract. So I think this means that there is a great potential for us (as faculty) to grow and learn, to develop new areas for research, etc. So that is the cool part.
There are a couple of things we are cautious about. The first area is how we support virtual students. Doctoral programs have typically not done a good job of supporting doctoral students. However in an on-campus program the students have one big advantage, they can come and knock on our doors. That will be harder for these students – who are also busier, because of their jobs. So we are spending a great deal of effort to design and build in institutional mechanisms to offer this support. We are particularly looking at leveraging social media in this, but also trying to employ key people whose sole task will be to support and nurture these students as they move through the program.
The other point of caution is in regards to maintaining the quality of our doctoral program. We are proud of the program as it exists and want to make sure that these changes in delivery of the program do not in any way compromise its quality. We will be monitoring this quite closely as we move forward.
Curt Question #7: What programs will be the top competitors to it?
Punya: The design and need for this program did not emerge from a market analysis as much as it did from what we (as faculty members) were hearing from practitioners. So in that sense it is difficult for me to point to competitors. We do know that there are some EdD programs out there, as well as some Ph.D. programs from for-profit institutions. But we are a Ph.D. (which means a strong emphasis on research) and, of course, we are a land grant university (which means a strong emphasis on outreach and making a positive difference in the state and beyond). That combined with our strong reputation I think puts us ahead of most possible competitors.
Curt Question #8: Do you see any partnerships or joint offerings on the horizon? How about an emphasis or a strand in your program on global education with technology?
Punya: We see great potentials in collaborations and joint offerings. Global education is an important piece for a couple of reasons. One of the strongest advocates of global education, Yong Zhao, is right here in our department (and he has a new book on this out too). Also, a large percentage of our online and hybrid master’s students come from around the world, many who are already working in international schools.
Another series of conversations we have just started has been with people in our Ed Admin department. We are looking at developing emphasis areas that would attract administrators to our program as well.
Hopefully other collaborations will emerge as well. But right now our focus is on getting this program up and running successfully.
Curt Question #9: What was the most difficult thing to put in place to get this program started? Stated another way, what key challenges will others face?
Punya: I think the biggest challenge we faced was the faculty concern with quality. Can we deliver a quality doctoral program in a hybrid format? Most faculty members have “grown up” in the old model and it is often difficult for them to see new ways as being good enough. There will be a lot of convincing to do – and some people you may never convince. In that case, I recommend that people attempting something like this find the right team and just move ahead. One aspect of all this that that has been encouraging though is how supportive administration has been. You know the stereotype that higher education is slow to move and so on – but that has not been our experience. Hooray!
Curt Question #10: Will you be conducting research on it?
Punya: Absolutely. Research is something we do and in fact we are currently engaged in an evaluation of our master’s program – so that is something we would do with the new Ph.D. program as well. Of course this could be a great opportunity for doctoral students to do some really ground-breaking work.
Curt Question #11: Is there anything important I did not ask that you would like to add here?
Punya: No, I think we pretty much covered everything. I would recommend that people visit our websites (and my blog) to learn more about this exciting initiative. Here are some links that people may want to follow: Ph.D. Website: http://edtechphd.com/
A couple of blog posts that speak to my personal take on all this (more informal than official web-site language, and hence more accurate in some ways):
Punya Mishra’s Web: http://tinyurl.com/yk467my
More info from Punya: http://tinyurl.com/ydw32rf
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Here are some program details:
1. Program Length: Intended as a 4-year cohort-based program.
2. Summer is Blended: Students take 7 week course in summer; 2 weeks of which are FTF and 5 weeks online. The first 2 summers are like this. Year 3 summer residency may be shorter and Year 4 depends on need.
3. Number of Courses in Summer: There are 3 courses in the summer over the 7 weeks. As with their traditional students completing 9 credits during a regular semester while working half-time, students will be fulltime students during the 7 weeks and complete 3 classes. This Punya says will be "intense and invigorating." These courses will not be separate sessions over the summer. Instead, they will be taught in an integrated fashion and students will meet each day in a FTF format from 8:30 am to 4 pm with, of course, a lunch break.
4. Regular/Residential/Tenured Faculty Teaching in Summer: The summer courses will be taught by fulltime tenure stream faculty with graduate assistant support.
5. Pooled/Integrated Summer Course Experience: The design of the summer experiences is critical. In a nutshell, the faculty at MSU are developing a curriculum pools together with content and ideas from these three courses to create a highly powerful integrated summer experience. Apparently, they have been doing something similar for their master's program for over three years (2 weeks face-to-face followed by an online option), so they have a track record that it works really well. By integrating or pooling across these three courses, they can strip out the redundancy among what were more isolated experiences.
6. One Course in Fall and One Course in Spring: In addition to completing 3 classes during the summer, students are expected to take 1 online course per semester--fall and spring 1 each.
7. Additional Residency Requirements: There is a flexible residency requirement in the fall semester of Year 3 – the specific details of which will be negotiated between the student and the adviser.
8. Dissertation Year: The fourth year is pretty open and focused on dissertation research.
9. Program Starts in Summer 2010: This program begins this summer. The final date of application for the first cohort is May 1.
10. Biannual Cohorts: This program will run every other year - so the next enrollment will be in 2012.
11. Entry Requirements: A Master's degree is not required for entrance. What IS required is that you are working full time currently as an educator (in the K12, community college, higher education levels, or in industry) and have extensive experience in your field. Having a master’s degree does not hurt your application, however.
12. GRE: Taking the GRE is required. However, there is no minimum score. Your score is one of many factors that are considered for admission. These include your transcripts, letter of intent, etc.
13. Building a Cohort and a Community: The establishment and support of this cohort of students is something they are paying particular attention to. Social media tools will play an important role in this community building as will a strong commitment to meeting students’ needs and requirements.
14. Some Relevant Links:
1. Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education: http://www.educ.msu.edu/cepse/EPET/
2. Overview of New Program:
3. Course Sequence:
4. Program Milestones:
5. MSU Hybrid Ph.D. Website:
If you want more information, you can always write to Punya at punya@msu.edu. Hope you enjoyed this interview. The times are definitely a changing for the field of educational technology. Those who adapt will survive. Those who do not…may not. Which category is your program in? Where are you today? Where will you be tomorrow? Perhaps at Michigan State...or perhaps at Minnesota or Florida State or UT-Austin or Pepperdine or Nova Southeastern or Old Dominion University or Hanyang Cyber University or Jones International University or Walden or the Open University of Malaysia or ??? Time will tell. Right now it seems Michigan State is the one to catch. Or is it dear ol' IU?
Announcing the 2010 Virtual Symposium - Education for All: Enabling Access through Technology
Are you bored? Needing something to do? You are in luck. There is a free conference happening this month that is related to virtual learning. Drexel University with help from Wainhouse Research and the World Bank's Global Development Learning Network in Beijing are putting on such a conference for the 2nd straight year. I know a bit about it since I am the conference keynote. The conference organizers send me some updated information on the conference in hopes that I might mention it in my blog and so I am.
My keynote will be March 23rd at 8 pm EST for 30 minutes (originally, it was to be at 7:30 pm but daylight savings time is earlier than they expected and so they are trying to be sure that the partners in China will be awake; hence, the 30 minute delay). The conference is called the 2010 Virtual Symposium - Education for All: Enabling Access through Technology. My talk will be on my recent book, “The World is Open.” It will be followed by a short response and Q&A session. The talk will be streamed live and also available online after the event free to the world. I will be coming in via videoconferencing from our Radio and TV Building.
In addition to the keynote, I will also give an invited talk on March 25th: “Best Practices for Online Learning: R2D2 and TEC-Variety.” This will be a shorter talk of like 23 minutes.
Note that the conference registration is totally FREE. Also note that there are already several on-demand presentations posted for this month long virtual symposium. Check out the conference information online.
There are some great speakers coming throughout the month. Among them are Dr. Rebecca Clothey from Drexel, Dr. Baiyun Chen from the University of Central Florida, and Alan D. Greenberg leads the Wainhouse Research Education and e-Learning Strategic Advisory Service. You will also find Dr. Qin Jiang Higley who is the Asian Projects Manager at WIDE World, a professional development program for educators developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Craig Bach who is Drexel University’s Associate Vice Provost for Curriculum and Assessment, Philip Karp who is Regional Coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank Institute (WBI), the unit of the World Bank, and many others. Sounds interesting? It sure is! More information on the conference speakers and participants can also be found online.
My invited “Best Practices” talk is scheduled for March 25th can already be downloaded in 3 different formats from my videostreamed talks page.
1. Small size screen: 41.3 MB MP4 iPod Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_iPodVideo.mp4
2. Medium size: 70.7 MB Medium MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_practices_QuickTimeMedium.mp4
3. Large size: 153.1 MB Large MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_Drexel_QuickTimeLarge.mp4
I hope you can parttake in the conference and, if you do, that it is enjoyable. Remember, nothing is as enjoyable as "free!"
My keynote will be March 23rd at 8 pm EST for 30 minutes (originally, it was to be at 7:30 pm but daylight savings time is earlier than they expected and so they are trying to be sure that the partners in China will be awake; hence, the 30 minute delay). The conference is called the 2010 Virtual Symposium - Education for All: Enabling Access through Technology. My talk will be on my recent book, “The World is Open.” It will be followed by a short response and Q&A session. The talk will be streamed live and also available online after the event free to the world. I will be coming in via videoconferencing from our Radio and TV Building.
In addition to the keynote, I will also give an invited talk on March 25th: “Best Practices for Online Learning: R2D2 and TEC-Variety.” This will be a shorter talk of like 23 minutes.
Note that the conference registration is totally FREE. Also note that there are already several on-demand presentations posted for this month long virtual symposium. Check out the conference information online.
There are some great speakers coming throughout the month. Among them are Dr. Rebecca Clothey from Drexel, Dr. Baiyun Chen from the University of Central Florida, and Alan D. Greenberg leads the Wainhouse Research Education and e-Learning Strategic Advisory Service. You will also find Dr. Qin Jiang Higley who is the Asian Projects Manager at WIDE World, a professional development program for educators developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Dr. Craig Bach who is Drexel University’s Associate Vice Provost for Curriculum and Assessment, Philip Karp who is Regional Coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank Institute (WBI), the unit of the World Bank, and many others. Sounds interesting? It sure is! More information on the conference speakers and participants can also be found online.
My invited “Best Practices” talk is scheduled for March 25th can already be downloaded in 3 different formats from my videostreamed talks page.
1. Small size screen: 41.3 MB MP4 iPod Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_iPodVideo.mp4
2. Medium size: 70.7 MB Medium MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_practices_QuickTimeMedium.mp4
3. Large size: 153.1 MB Large MP4 QuickTime Video Download Link: http://trainingshare.com/video/Bonk_Best_Practices_Drexel_QuickTimeLarge.mp4
I hope you can parttake in the conference and, if you do, that it is enjoyable. Remember, nothing is as enjoyable as "free!"
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