Becoming a New Object

/ Cole Camplese / 2 Comments

Good iPad apps can make the iPad feel not like a device running an app, but like an object that is the app. GarageBand isn’t a musical app running on an iPad. It turns an iPad into a musical instrument.

via daringfireball.net

This is John Gruber talking about GarageBand from the iPad 2 reveal earlier this week. This thought, that the best apps turn the iPad into a whole new device is something we discussed when it first arrived last year. Scott McDonlad and I took our iPads into our Disruptive Technology class a day after it shipped to share with our students … that single point was what many of the students marveled at — that a device like the iPad becomes something new each time you launch a new app, at least when you launch a good app.

I like that notion a lot. It is still what separates the iPad from my laptop — it is the app I am running.

Adoption?

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

The other day I got an email from my my friend and colleague, Brad Kozlek about something that has happened to the usage data in the last month within the Blogs at Penn State platofrm … In the last 4 weeks, there have been 10,000 new entries posted to blogs at PSU, including over 8,000 files uploaded and 2,000 more active users. Here is where is gets weird … during the same time last year there was same increase in users, but only half as many entries and less than half as many files uploaded.

Mind blowing.

Keynote: 5/17/2011: University of Missouri Celebration of Teaching Excellence

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I am looking forward to making a return trip to the University of Missouri to provide the keynote talk for their annual “Celebration of Teaching Excellence” event. I haven’t been to Columbia since I did the closing plenary for the first Apple Digital Campus Faculty Academy in April of 2005. It will be an opportunity to connect with old friends and get a look at how another University celebrates teaching and learning with technology.

Last year’s event looks like it was really great.

Wesch Rethinking Education

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

Michael Wesch was the keynote at our TLT Symposium and he was truly a wonderful participant. Humble and quietly brilliant, his talk resonated with the entire audience in ways I hadn’t seen previously. His new video above doesn’t share the same pace as his previous work, but it demands attention none the less. What is interesting to me is that he didn’t push the video’s message as an agenda item last year, but it was clear it was in him. What I wonder is how long has he been thinking about creating this new narrative?

Bag of Gold

/ Cole Camplese / 1 Comment

I wrote about my experience seeing Gardner Campbell’s talk, “No more digital facelifts” at OpenEd in Vancouver right after the event. It was really a true stand out to me at the time and continues to resonate. Clearly the truly interesting work happening in and around Jim Groom’s ds106 course at Mary Washington reinforces the importance of the talk … especially in light of how the open course and #ds106radio is playing out across the Internet. I tweeted not too long ago that the only disappointing thing about my new job is not having the cycles to participate in what is an amazing demonstration in the notion of the aggregate learning experience of the future — and then I see the video above and a little part of me dies as I am faced with a troubling thought …

Am I now the one not understanding the true value of exploring what the bag of gold has to offer and dismissing the opportunity?

I sure hope that isn’t a sign of my new life and I seriously doubt it is. My life is about exploring and in the last couple of months I have had far less time for that. I am not trying to be overly reactive in this reflection so I will just leave it well enough alone. I do, however, want to find time to continue to explore and learn about how to take advantage of and support the explosive nature that teaching and learning with technology affords. I am in total agreement with Gardner, “it is what makes me do what I do.”

BTW, one of the magical things happening in the ds106 course is the intense amount of talent working in a single direction in a very distributed network of intelligence and creativity. Tom Woodward’s remix of Gardner’s talk is a perfect example of that.