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Our Boom De Yada

/ Cole Camplese / 18 Comments

I’m sure many of you have seen Discovery’s advertising campaign, “The World is Just … Awesome,” in which lots of people sing a modified version of I Love the Mountains, called Boom De Yada. Discovery’s version is really inspiring, so much so that if you go to YouTube you’ll find hundreds of versions of it from people all over the world.

I spent a little time over the weekend watching a bunch of them and once you start exploring it is tough to stop. So many of them are really inspiring, but the one that really made me smile is an original version from a fourth grade class.

Now, you can say this is just people imitating other people but if you ask me there is something deeper going on here. I am of the mind that the web is a platform for starting conversations — and I’m not just talking about online conversations. If you follow what probably happened in the example above you can begin to see how powerful this is … perhaps their teacher saw the commercial and got the idea that his class could make their own. This simple thought (enabled by technology) motivated that group of kids to work together to create something original, new, and challenging. They had to work together to make it happen … and then by sharing it with the World gave a whole other set of people the inspiration they need to try something new together.

So that’s exactly what happened after I showed the two videos above to Madeline and all her cousins Saturday night while we were in Bloomsburg … they instantly wanted to make their own. Over the course of an hour or so, they each wrote pieces to the song and decided who was going to do what. It was so cool to see all of them working together to make something. In the middle of it they wanted to find a way to include two of their cousins who live in Florida so they wrote them in as well. It was amazing watching them come up with the words and perform it. I think it made the whole house a really happy place! I know I had a blast getting to spend time with them while they laughed, sang, and edited with me.

The RSS Bus

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

Nothing earth shattering for a Sunday, but this picture says so much. If you’re not paying attention to the power of RSS syndication, its time to get on the bus …

Flickr photo by nessman

Flickr photo by nessman

Twitter Responsiveness

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

On Thursday I asked a really simple question on Twitter on a whim, “Quick Poll: What are the first 3 applications you fire up when you log in?” I got dozens of responses on both Twitter and Facebook … and it stunned me. This reminds me once again about what is right with Twitter for me personally — connectedness. To me the idea that I can shout a question into a 140 character text box and get something back from all sorts of people all over the place is a very interesting thought. There’s no need to take it any further … but I would love for you tell me why Twitter is important to you if care to share.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I took a little time to gather the results of the question (totally unscientific) below … note that I combined similar applications and tried to take into account things like gmail, google calendar, and other web-based productivity tools (that, as my Mother-in-Law reminded me, are applications). I also just lumped a bunch of stuff like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc into “Other” as there were a bunch of one-offs. The other thing to consider is that these are a percentage of the total responses — so while nearly every single person said a browser, they all almost all said email as well. So the chart is a bit misleading … I choose unwisely with that, but my data is at work and that’s life. BTW, my first launches are Mail, Safari, and Evernote (which no one else mentioned).

With about 60 responses accounted for.

With about 60 responses accounted for.

Assessment to a Seven Year Old

/ Cole Camplese / 7 Comments

I thought since it was Friday I’d share something a little lighter than yesterday’s post. Not that the notion of assessment is a topic to be taken lightly … it is critical to everything we do in education — at every phase of the game. One thing I’ve noticed is that people all have notions about assessment that they are usually willing to share. Questions like, do you believe in grades? Mastery learning? Tests? Authentic assessment? Almost always get people talking. Wherever you are you can get a discussion going with people about assessment. I think it is because it is so personal and is tied to our lasting memories of school at various levels. With that in mind I thought I’d talk to someone who is relatively new to the assessment world. My seven year old daughter.

My daughter and I have done several podcasts in the past — we call them MaddieCasts. I guess they aren’t really podcasts as I’ve never posted any, but regardless of semantics we’ve taken the time to sit down and capture some thoughts over the last few years in digital format. I always enjoy what we come up with and the other night was no different. I decided to go ahead and post this episode because it is right in the middle of lots of stuff I am thinking about.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I am taking a course on assessment (INSYS 522) … in this course we are exploring lots of things, but we spent time in the first week focusing on the ideas of grades and testing. We’ve moved beyond these concepts, but I have to say that these first conversations made me wonder what it all means to a first grader. Talking about these things brought back lots of my own memories of early school experiences, so I decided I’d engage my little girl in a discussion about these topics. With that in mind I sat down with my seven year old first grade daughter last night to explore these notions. I was interested to hear from someone who is yet to be totally jaded by the educational environment about her view of tests, grades, and school in general. Hearing it from her mouth is a wonderful way of staying connected to the realities of teaching and learning — and what she had to say was a little surprising.

I have to wonder what are your reactions to concepts like grades, tests, and mastery? What are the two things you like and dislike about school? Funny how much assessment plays into even a seven year old mind.

MaddieCast for February 2009.

Intentionally Closed

/ Cole Camplese / 5 Comments

To follow up on the unintentional progress we are seeing with academic content being published openly on blogs at Institutions across the country I thought I’d share a story that tells a different tale. Last May I was lucky enough to attend the Berkman@10 conference at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law … one of the first general sessions was a conversation lead by John Palfrey related to Politics and the Future of Democracy. This was my first real view into the notion of nations filtering access to content by its citizens and it was a very powerful experience. During his talk he discussed the Farsi (Iranian) blogosphere and how explosive it is in terms of growth and productivity. He spoke of it as the fourth largest blogosphere (measured by language publishing) and the intense censorship that goes on in the country on topics such as politics, love, religion, and art. Those who write do so at great risk — not the kind of risk we worry about, the kind of risk that ends with people disappearing.

It is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of freedom after speech.

What struck me at the time was the passion of the bloggers in Iran to get the word out and share … they want so badly to speak out against the government, to show the world that they love art, that they appreciate culture, and so on. They want real change to come to their lives. Because of the level of Internet filtering that goes on, much of what is written within Iran never gets read within Iran … in other words they are writing things that their neighbors can never read. It was a moving thought about the power of the written word and the lengths people will go to for real change. I was reminded of this experience when I came across an outstanding video from the Vancouver Film School, Iran: A Nation of Bloggers. This is so worth the watch.


IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.

This puts the notion of easy publishing in a perspective many of us do not view all that often. I wonder what your reaction to this is and why we are so tied to a closed architecture when there are people willing to die for the ability to live in the open. Maybe I am comparing things that cannot/should not be compared, but it is sort of ironic is it not? We live in a place where access to knowledge is open, a place where I can publish instantly and (part of) the world can take part in the conversation, and yet we still work to build walls around our knowledge. I’m not too Polly Anna to think there isn’t a reason to protect intellectual property (not agreeing with an approach does not make it go away), but for crying out loud its time to cry out loud!

Accidental Openness

/ Cole Camplese / 7 Comments

I was reading my friend and colleague Jim Groom’s blog and came across another one of his spectacular posts … this one wasn’t long and detailed, just short and to the point. Jim, or the Reverend as he is nicknamed, is the mad genius behind the Blogs at University of Mary Washington, the EduPunk movement, and so much more incredibly cool stuff. I was lucky to get to present and hang out with him at the ELI annual meeting and I can tell you he gets this stuff. He gets it a level that is hard to describe … and he does it with his own style. His post, What I Learned from UMW Blogs Today …” calls out two interesting little facts he learned by reading posts on the Blogs at UMW about Salvador Dali and his work and influence on animation in the 1940s … to be honest I don’t really care at all about the topic, but the fact that he could learn that by browsing the Blogs at UMW is a wonderful little happenstance that needs to be explored further.

The same kind of thing is happening at Institutions all over the place — content that has been locked away in the LMS/CMS of choice is now being freed by the easy publishing enabled by Institutional blogging platforms. I find the notion that there is this vast sea of open content being generated without the official blessing of the Academy a wonderful incidental benefit to it all. Let me put it this way … MIT made a huge splash with a “real” open courseware initiative several years ago that cost millions of dollars. The money went to invest in content management systems, convincing faculty it is good, developing models for openness, to support faculty development, pay for marketing, and all sorts of physical and virtual infrastructure. No doubt MIT’s initiative is amazing and has been successful for lots of reasons, but the fact of the matter is that this information inherently wants to be free … so the bottom up community-driven approach I am seeing is a wonderful thing.

Here at PSU our own Blogs at Penn State environment is working to free content in new and interesting ways. Faculty who until recently would not have bothered writing and engaging students openly are doing so. I wonder if it is the toolset or the times we are living in? There is an unprecedented acceptance of technology in our everyday lives and I can’t help but wonder if we are a part of a larger movement in general … a movement in which citizen journalism is reaching into otherwise fortified verticals. Our own vertical, Higher Education, has been one that has promoted locked content for some time now … but what is happening is the convergence of easy to use platforms, social pressures and acceptance, and an interest in participation. It is amazing to watch it unfold. Can it continue in the absence of administrative blessings? I hope so.

Philosophy 298H Course Site

Philosophy 298H Course Site

I am seeing a day rapidly approaching where many of the major Institutions provide platforms that empower open content and scholarly activity … a place where the next LMS/CMS is simply a browser, a social bookmarking toolset, and perhaps a social recommendation space (like Times People). Imagine how amazing it will be when the best content is published in the open where debate, conversations, and discourse happens at the micro and macro level. Think of how concepts will be brought to life when a single blog post could generate a decades worth of comments from millions of people! Will it be like attending a Symposium on a single post where perspectives are shared from all corners of the globe? I can see how it will allow an individual to see the thinking of the author and react to it and the comments of the community … can that happen? Perhaps.

No matter how one looks at all of this, it is impressive. There will always be the need for closed environments for testing and grades, but why lock away original thoughts? The fact that there are open accidents happening all over the educational blogosphere gives me hope. Anyone care to chime in on any of that insanity?

Easy Capture

/ Cole Camplese / 14 Comments

With the emergence of an environment like YouTube, the ability to create and share rich media has gotten really very simple. I’ve written here and elsewhere about the notion of simple creation and even simpler embedding and I think for the most part people are really starting to get it. The idea that I can sit down, point my iSight at my face, and instantly record and encode video straight to the web is really powerful. But if you want to do that as part of the Academy in an official sense the process is much more complicated because we don’t offer the same level of simplicity as they do. Granted anyone with a browser, a relatively fast Internet connection, and a video camera can get video online quickly, but if I am doing this for class (teaching or taking) it can be more complicated. If I go outside our walls I am relying on a third party platform that does not really provide any sort of institutional identity assurances — in other words, it isn’t tied to my institution’s authentication system. Is that a big deal? That is up to you (and a thousand differing opinions on the matter).

I am of the mind that we can’t be building clones of spaces like YouTube … we just can’t afford it and we certainly can’t keep up. But where does that leave us when it comes to letting faculty and students explore rich media creation and sharing within the campus walls? That is the question that torments me as I promote digital media as artifacts of learning — if we can’t really support it, can we really promote it? I find it amazing that over a third of Penn State students reported creating at least one digital media piece last year and I find it even more amazing that about a third of Penn State faculty report using YouTube as a classroom teaching tool. Why then would we want to reinvent something that is working so well? I don’t have a quick or snarky answer to that one … like I said, I am tormented by what to do. If you have the time or the interest I spent a few minutes exploring these ideas a little deeper by using the Quick Capture feature on YouTube.

It isn’t just digital video that I am talking about. Over the weekend I got an email from a student that is relatively typical …

Hi, I need to make a podcast in my class and my teammates and I have never done it. Can you send us information on where to go to get help and where we can go to get equipment?

That to me is frustrating. Even after the progress of the last several years it is still a real process to record, compress, upload, embed, and share a simple recording of a group of students sitting around and talking. Why can’t we just have something like YouTube (or if you remember back in the day, Odeo) to help us do it? We do … right? But then that old question comes back, why in the world would we build it?

With all that in mind, we are thinking about what infrastructure needs to be in place to make this happen inside the walls of the Academy. Like I mentioned yesterday, we are rethinking the whole podcasting eco-system and are currently investigating Apple’s Podcast Producer. We’ve been testing it and it makes the creation of digital media artifacts (audio, video, screencasts, file sharing) extremely simple. From a single interface a person can authenticate, create, and post a rich media file to a whole host of services — iTunes U, Blogs, YouTube, etc. It enables an Apple user (no idea on the PC side yet) to launch a very simple client application, select from 4 choices, and record. Very basic stuff, but all the heavy lifting — editing, encoding, and posting — is handled behind the scenes on the server. It would be an exceptional tool for so much more than podcasting … things like screencasts, recording presentations, practicing music, and so much more come to mind instantly. Would us having our own environment to do this raise the level of participation?

Apple's Podcast Capture Application

Apple's Podcast Capture Application

But even with the simplicity I am still left wondering if we even need to go down this path … doesn’t YouTube do this already? Damn voices! Thoughts?

Podcasting Revisited

/ Cole Camplese / 9 Comments

I know it is sort of funny that I would be hopped on the notion of podcasting — you’d think I would have already said everything that needs to be said about it over the last several years. But recently I’ve been thinking a lot about our Institutional podcasting efforts and where it should be headed. We’ve been at work trying to revamp and rethink the Podcasts at Penn State site and surrounding services to make them easier and more discoverable. Later this semester we’ll release a new site (built on MT) that will have some new tools to support faculty use of iTunes U. The tools will allow for the auto-creation of iTunes U sections, enable faculty editable access controls, and introduce a new statistics dashboard so they can easily see who is accessing their work. All in all it will make things easier on the setup and management side — it really won’t address the active side of podcasting.

With that said I, what I am most concerned with is related to what we are really seeing with our podcasting efforts. I do know there are lots of audio and video files being pushed around in our podcasting space, but what is really happening? Are faculty recording lectures, doing short things outside of class, or are they letting their students create? I think it is time we find out for sure. I am betting, from what I hear most faculty talk about, is that there is less lecture recording than anyone ever imagined — but I am proposing we find out.

To do that I need a little help … what are the categories of podcasts we should be looking for? If I am making a list, it looks like:

  • Full lecture podcasting: Files that focus on lecture recordings of class sessions.
  • Instructional podcasting: Files that would tend to originiate outside of classroom.
  • Conversation starter podcasting: Files that are designed to stimulate conversations.
  • Feedback podcasting: Files that are delivered after activities that students complete.
  • Student podcasting: Files that are produced and uploaded by student.

What else is there? I think it would be relatively easy to setup a database that we could use to randomly sample the podcasts coming out of Penn State on iTunes U see where they fall. It would be nice to know where we need to add more energy. Any additional thoughts?