I have been writing at TypePad for several months now and have decided to point this DNS entry to it … that means I will be taking this site down in the next couple of weeks. Find my new space at http://colecamplese.typepad.com … at the end of the week colecamplese.com will point to the new TP space.
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Depression Sets In
The forcast for the next two weeks is nothing short of depressing. I’m taking bets on if we can make it through to Spring.
Getting Disruptive
My colleague Scott McDonald and I are getting set to embark on the second running of our Disruptive Technologies for Teaching and Learning course this Spring. We attack this thing as a grand experiment, not really knowing what to expect fully but with hopes of high level activity. We know some things will work and some things will not, but at the core of our design philosophy we feel OK with that. We spent a couple of hours yesterday putting some more touches on what we hope will be an open and engaging learning opportunity. What is emerging is what we hope to be a very powerful mix of academic rigor and applied technology investigations.
So far we have solid numbers in this graduate only course and know we’ll find ways to push our students into unfamiliar and uncomfortable waters. Scott and I have big questions heading into this new semester — primarily what technologies will move the students into the same kind of round the clock learning community we saw emerge last time? We feel like we are better prepared to collect data from the get go and see how we can be more systematic about sharing the things we learn. The course is timely as Scott and I recently completed an article that focuses on the key trends and drivers we see as disrupting current classroom practice. The article should be available in the next month or so, but we will be using it as a kicking off point for the course this Spring.
For those of you who are interested I will be posting thoughts about the course here during the semester and you can also watch as the course will evolve in the open at the course site. We are taking a cue from another one of our PSU colleagues (and TLT Faculty Fellow) ,Dr. Christopher Long, who has been talking about the course site not as a blog per se, but as an ongoing text that is contributed to by all the members of the course. Our goal is to keep our course site going semester over semester so that current students can build on the work of the past. Another grand experiment I suppose!
Featured Session: 01/21/2010: Educause Learning Initiative
Earlier this year I received an invitation from colleagues at EDUCAUSE to do featured session on "Doing More with Much Less: Pursuing an Innovative Teaching and Learning Agenda in a Time of Fiscal Austerity" at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2010 Annual Meeting. I am honored to be part of a panel that will take time to talk to the audience about the things we are each doing at our institutions to help continue to push forward even in times of economic turmoil. I plan to spend my time discussing how we've re-evaluated our strategic planning, how we've turned to the community to produce local (and high value) professional development, and how we have leveraged existing IT infrastructure to innovate. I would be lying if I didn't mention that I am a bit intimidated to be a part of a panel like this and hope I can hold my own with my fellow panelists. From the program:
Supporting an innovative program for teaching and learning is challenging even in the best of times. But when institutions face severe fiscal austerity, such support becomes a difficult task. We all face tough choices about what to emphasize and what to stop supporting. We find we must tax our creativity to the utmost to find new support strategies and resources. We are all asking ourselves similar questions: Is the cloud our salvation? Should we focus on support services and scale back on providing learning infrastructure? Can institutions collaborate on resource development? What are the core priorities that need to be retained? At this discussion, leaders in the field will discuss their ideas, programs, and the decisions they have made and are facing, and they will facilitate a brainstorming session with audience participants.
Presentation: 01/20/2010: Educause Learning Initiative
For the third year in a row I will be on the program with an accepted presentation at the Educause Learning Initiative annual meeting. This year I am doing a session with friend and colleague, Allan Gyorke, titled Incidental Openness, Exploring Stories of Education in the Open. As always I am really looking forward to sharing stories from PSU and having a the chance to expose some of the work our faculty are doing is really a treat! Below is the description of the session:
Incidental openness can happen. Institutional mandates typically create initiatives that are weighed down by policy and inefficiencies. At Penn State we have seen an explosion of openness due to the implementation of new platforms for use in teaching and learning. With these platforms in place, we have worked to rethink concepts such as e-portfolios, faculty development, collaboration, OER, and course management systems. During this session, we will describe what Penn State has done, show examples of the impact on teaching and learning, and provide an open forum to discuss our approach and practice to generating open teaching, design, and learning.
Keynote: 01/14/2010: Stevenson University
I have been invited to do a keynote presentation at Stevenson University focusing on harnessing the power of disruptive technologies in teaching and learning. I'll be speaking primarily to faculty from Stevenson, but I am told staff from across various offices will also be present. My talk will be titled, "Enabling the New Campus Conversation" and will cover some of the points I have been working to extend in the last year or so. I plan to integrate some new data from our freshly released 2009 FACAC student survey to help highlight how our students are adopting the services we are implementing on our campus. It should be a fun and engaging event that I have been looking forward to for quite some time.
Invited Speaker: 01/09/2010: Penn State Abington
I've been invited to speak to a group of faculty and staff at Penn State Abington to kick off the new spring semester. The talk will focus on how social computing can impact teaching and learning. The idea is to help faculty rethink the role of the open social web as to begin to see value in the approaches emerging across the Internet. I'll be sharing some thoughts that I hope will resonate with the group and perhaps push some of them to take advantage of many of the technologies we have available here at Penn State.
The Tablet?
Here’s the thimbleful of information I have heard regarding The Tablet (none of which has changed in six months): The Tablet project is real, it has you-know-who’s considerable undivided attention, and everyone working on it has dropped off the map. I don’t know anyone who works at Apple who doubts these things; nor do I know anyone at Apple who knows a whit more. I don’t know anyone who’s seen the hardware or the software, nor even anyone who knows someone else who has seen the hardware or software.
As always, Gruber's thoughts are excellent and level headed. I have a feeling he is on the mark with this new device — why think small when Apple has been working to think so big for so long (at least under Jobs). The Apple I and II, the original Mac, the PowerBook, the iPod, and the iPhone all were ideas that changed how we took advantage of technology … there is no reason to believe that Apple would do it any differently this time. When it shows up, I can't see it simply being a big iPod Touch or a crappy tablet MacBook … it'll change things.