Tag Archives: presentations

Student Work – Fall 2010

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Exactly one year ago, I shared some of the great work my students created in the Fall 2009 semester. This past year was another amazing year in that I was fortunate to have had some incredibly creative and hard-working students in my classes. So, with the possibility of creating a New Year’s Eve tradition, here again are two very short lists of notable work from my graduate and undergraduate students from the previous (Fall 2010) semester.

Projects & Portfolios
There was a wide-range of possibilities for portfolios and projects in these classes. In some cases, you will only be seeing a small portion of what was actually assessed. However, these pieces may be valuable to others.

Final Reflections
Both undergrad and graduate students were asked to produce or perform short final reflections of what they learned in their class. It should also be mentioned that a few of the best examples aren’t shown here, as they were done in ways that were difficult to record digitally.

So, that’s a bit of what my students did this past semester. Many of these students had very limited technical ability coming into the class, and I feel very happy to know how much many of them learned through the process.

Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!

Crowdsourcing Alternatives To Delicious

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Twitter was abuzz with the news that Yahoo! will be shutting down Delicious, the popular social bookmarking site. Delicious has been a very valuable tool to me for several years now, and I, like others, will be sad to see it go.

However, rather than dwell on the news, it’s better to move on, and find a viable alternative, especially one that will allow the migration of data from a Delicious account to a new host. Rather than trying to find a solution on my own, I thought I would crowdsource an alternative through the sharing of a collaborative Google Document. This crowdsourced approach was very successful back in April when Ning announced their service would no longer be free, so I thought it would be worthwhile to try it again.

I set up the shared Google Doc, shared it, sent out a tweet, and the magic began!

Tweet for Collaboration

In literally seconds, the document began to fill out as people arrived to collaborate or observe. On many occasions, people were booted out as the maximum number of editors had been reached (a number that seems to be around 50 simultaneous users). It was interesting to watch the information emerge. As well, I was fascinated to see others who focused on the formatting and readability of the document. Individuals decided what they could contribute, and worked together for a common goal.

Below is a screencast recorded by Sean Nash of the document as it was being edited minutes after it was tweeted out.

Six hours later, we have hundreds of edits, at least 40 authors (evidenced by the authors that wrote their names on the bottom of the document), and at least sixteen viable alternatives to Delicious with pros/cons listed.

This is a wonderful way to get things done. To me, it’s truly breathtaking to watch and think about what is going on here, and really to consider the geographic distribution of this effort.

However, amazed as I am by what I saw here, this and the Ning example are relatively easy-to-solve problems. I wonder – how well does this kind of crowdsourcing work with deeper, more difficult, or perhaps, more meaningful questions? Thoughts?

You can find the Delicious Alternatives document here.

Teaching & Learning in a Networked World (Keynote)

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I am on my way home from the Quest Conference held at Richmond Hill, Ontario where I was fortunate to have given a preconference keynote presentation. The conference was really great, and this trip gave me a chance to enjoy time with old and new friends, many who I’ve met online via Twitter. There are really some great things happening in Ontario schools, and I’m very proud to know some of the wonderful people creating positive change.

I wanted to take this opportunity to share the recording and the slides of my keynote in case this is useful to anyone. Thanks to the organizers of Quest for inviting me to your excellent conference.

Recording:

Slides:

View more presentations from Alec Couros.

Need Your Help – unKeynote/Keynode

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Graham Attwell and I have been paired together as co-keynotes at the PLE Conference in Barcelona, Spain, July 8-9. The organizers have asked us to do something different than a typical keynote, so we previously asked for feedback on the format. Here are some of the ideas that emerged from that process.

Today, Graham and I met, went through all of the responses, and decided to go with format outlined below. However, to make this work, we would really love your responses. Please help!

How (We Think) the Session is Going to Work:

We have put together a a list of questions (see below) and are inviting your responses. We will put together a joint presentation based on your slides.

We will present the ‘keynote’ together but will be encouraging participants – both face to face and remotely – to contribute to the keynote as it develops.

Where We Need Help:

  1. We’d like you to respond to one or more of these ‘key questions’ found below. We suggest responding through the creation of a (PowerPoint) slide, or creating a very short video (less than 1 minute?). Or, if you can think of another way of representing your ideas, please be creative.
  2. We’d like you to provide questions for us. What did we miss? What are some of the important questions for consideration when exploring PLEs/PLNs in teaching & learning.
  3. Please send your responses to graham10@mac.com (and cc: couros@gmail.com) by July 6/10.]

Key Questions:

  1. With all of the available Web 2.0 tools, is there a need for “educational technology”?
  2. What are the implications of PLEs/PLNs on traditional modes/structures of education?
  3. What are the key attributes of a healthy PLE/PLN?
  4. What pedagogies are inspired by PLEs (e.g., networked learning, connected learning)? Give examples of where PLEs/PLNs have transformed practice.
  5. What are the implications of PLEs/PLNs beyond bringing educational technology into the classroom, and specifically toward workplace/professional learning?
  6. If PLEs/PLNs are becoming the norm, what does it mean for teachers/trainers (or the extension: what does it mean for training teachers & trainers)?
  7. As our networks continue to grow, what strategies should we have in managing our contacts, our connections, and our attention? Or, extension, how scalable are PLEs/PLNs?
  8. Can we start thinking beyond PLEs/PLNs as models? Are we simply at a transitional stage? What will be the next, new model for learning in society? (e.g., where are we headed?)

We’d love to get as many responses as possible to make this work well. It doesn’t have to be much, or anything comprehensive. Just pick up on one of the pieces and let us know what you think on the matter. Again, we need these by July 6/10.

Thanks!!!

Universal Design & Technology with Ira Socol

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I am pleased to announce the Ira Socol will be giving a publicly available presentation on Universal Design on Monday March 8/10, at 6:30 p.m. CST. This session is directed at our preservice teachers who are taking Disability Studies, but the presentation will be available to all interested attendees via this Elluminate link.

Ira is a fantastic presenter and a guru in the field. I am really looking forward to this presentation, and I hope that many of you reading this can make it. Please pass on this information to others that may be interested.

Update: The Elluminate recording of Ira’s presentation is now available here.

Session with Jon Mott & David Wiley

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The Faculty of Education’s new open access journal, in education, is sponsoring a free webinar with two of our authors, Jon Mott & David Wiley. The webinar is scheduled for March 3rd, 2010 at 11 a.m. (CST). The event will be facilitated using Elluminate, a web conferencing tool. You can listen and/or participate using the following link: http://moourl.com/openteaching . It is advisable to join 10-15 minutes early in the case that your computer needs to install software (which, if necessary, is usually an easy process).

Mott & Wiley will be discussing their recent paper, “Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network” found at http://ineducation.ca/article/open-learning-cms-and-open-learning-network . The conversation will likely take us to greater issues of openness and innovation in teaching & learning (especially in higher education).

About the Presenters

Dr. Jon Mott serves as the Assistant to the Academic Vice President – Academic Technology at Brigham Young University where he provides strategic guidance on academic technology issues. He is an Adjunct Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology and also teaches in the Masters in Public Policy Program. He is the former Managing Director of the Center for Instructional Design (now the Center for Teaching and Learning) at BYU. He earned a B.A. in political science from BYU in 1992 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oklahoma in 1998.

Dr. David Wiley is Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also the Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge and Founder and board member of the Open High School of Utah. He was formerly Associate Professor of Instructional Technology and Director of the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning at Utah State University. David has been a Nonresident Fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Scholar at the Open University of the Netherlands, and a recipient of the US National Science Foundation’s CAREER grant. David is also the Founder of OpenContent.org and was recently named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. His career is dedicated to increasing access to educational opportunity for everyone around the world. David lives in Utah with his wife, Elaine, and their five children.

More information can be found at our journal site – http://ineducation.ca/participate

A Conversation With Severn Cullis-Suzuki

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Severn Cullis-Suzuki will be our guest at the Faculty of Education, University of Regina this March 4th, from 7:00-8:30 p.m. CST. The title of the talk is “Education for Sustainability: Touching All Of Our Lives”. I will be live streaming the event at my Open Thinking Ustream Channel. We invite you to attend face-to-face or virtually.

Some of you may know Cullis-Suzuki from this viral video titled “The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes”, filmed in 1992 when she was 12 years old.

More information about the event can be found here.

No Child Left Thinking – Dr. Joel Westheimer

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Dr. Joel Westheimer is presenting a public lecture at the University of Regina on Monday, January 25th, 3:30-4:45 (CST). I will doing my best to stream the event live via this Ustream channel.

Details of the session are found below.

“No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools”
Dr. Joel Westheimer from the University of Ottawa will be delivering a free public lecture to the university and broader community on Monday, January 25th, 2010 3:30pm-4:45pm Education Auditorium (U of R) on the topic of social justice, citizenship, and democracy. His talk is provocatively entitled: “No Child Left Thinking: Democracy at Risk in Canadian Schools” .

Dr. Westheimer’s bio:
Dr. Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in the Sociology of Education and Professor of Education at the University of Ottawa. He is co-founder and executive director of Democratic Dialogue. Westheimer teaches, researches, and writes on democratic engagement, social justice, activism, service learning, and community in education. He has published books such as Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (2007) which Teacher Magazine called “this year’s most important education book,” What Kind of Citizen? Schools, Civic Education, and the Promise of Democracy (forthcoming, 2009), and Among Schoolteachers (1998). He also publishes widely in newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals and addresses radio and television audiences on shows such as Good Morning America, More to Life, The Agenda, NBC TV News, C-Span, NPR, and CBC radio. Westheimer has received numerous awards including:the 2009 Canadian Education Association’s Whitworth Award; an award for Education Research that honours an individual or research collaboration (research team or organization) who has made a noteworthy contribution to educational research in Canada, the Daniel E. Griffiths Award for Excellence in Education Research, the Jason Millman Award, and Outstanding Research of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association’s Division on Teaching and Learning. In 2005, he was named John Glenn Service Learning Scholar for Social Justice by theJohn Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy.

Update: The recorded session is available below.

Role of Teacher Education – We Need Your Help

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Dean Shareski and I are presenting at Educon 2.2 in Philadelphia, and our topic is “(Re)Imagining Social Media & Technology in Teacher Education”. We are hoping to find individuals that will help us introduce the topic. More specifically, we are looking for insight in answering the following questions regarding the role of teacher education in developing new teachers. Roughly, these questions are:

  1. What are your general views on the status of teacher education in preparing teachers, especially in regards to innovative teaching? What positives, negatives, or general views can you share? Please do pull in your own experiences if applicable.
  2. What is the ideal role of teacher education in developing teachers who are media literate and technologically savvy?

Using the Alan Levine Approachâ„¢, we are looking for short videos or audio bites (1-2 minutes each) that we hope to remix into our introduction to the topic. We realize that this does not give much time to answer, so feel free to focus on one or two important points.

If you are a teacher, a teacher educator, an administrator, or work with new teachers, you will likely have important ideas to share. If you are interested, please submit your video via Youtube, or through a file drop service like drop.io. You can add the link to the video in the comments here, or feel free to email me at couros@gmail.com.

The presentation is on January 31/10, but we hope to have submissions by January 22/10 at the latest.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Student Work – Fall 2009

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I truly enjoyed teaching both my graduate and undergraduate courses this past semester. There were a number of really hard-working students who produced some very meaningful work, and overall, I can say that I am increasingly excited by the quality of students I am encountering both in schools (my graduate students) and soon to be teachers (my preservice groups).

I thought I would quickly share a few of my favorite student reflections and projects over the past semester. These represent various forms of digital expression, and will help provide inspiration to my students in future semesters.

I hope these are useful and/or entertaining to you.

Oh, and seeing that it is New Year’s Eve, Happy New Year to all of you, and all the best in 2010! Thank you so much for taking the time to visit this space, and for connecting with me in other meaningful ways. I am truly a lucky person to be tied to such a caring and passionate network of individuals.

Roots of Connectivism – Siemens

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George Siemens presented “Roots of Connectivism” to our EC&I 831 group on September 29, 2009. George provided a basic understanding of various theories of knowledge & learning (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism, social constructivism, constructionism, neuroscience) as he led us toward a theory of connectivism. I warned my students beforehand that the presentation would be theoretically heavy, and our presenter (no surprise) provided us with the challenge of (re)thinking of our assumptions on learning.

As an aside, a tweet from one of the participants summed up what I have noticed about George’s presentation style. Great session by @gsiemens underway at http://moourl.com/eci831live . GS is attentive and handles an online audience with unusual dexterity.

Greater detail of the presentation within the context of the course can be found at the EC&I 831 wiki. The presentation was facilitated via Elluminate and the recording of that session, including the chat, can be found at this location. Slidedeck and audio-only version (MP3) are available below. Enjoy!

Roots of Connectivism

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EC&I 831 - Roots of Connectivism - Siemens Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Pursuing the Elusive Metaphor of Community – Schwier

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Dr. Richard Schwier was our guest in my open course, EC&I 831, on September 22, 2009. Rick’s presentation, similar to the talk that he gave at Ed-Media in Honolulu this past June, raised some incredibly important questions regarding the role of informal learning as it pertains to those teaching (and learning) in K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. And if you’ve never seen Rick present, you certainly owe it to yourself to do so. He has been a great teacher, mentor, and friend to me, and I learn something new with him every time we connect.

Greater detail of the presentation within the context of the course can be found at the EC&I 831 wiki. The presentation was facilitated via Elluminate and the recording of that session, including the chat, can be found at this location. Slidedeck, video, and MP3 versions are also available below. Enjoy!

Pursuing the elusive metaphor of community in e-learning environments

EC&I 831 - Pursuing the Elusive Metaphor of Community - Schwier Play Now | Play in Popup | Download