There are apparently 270 people at the developer's conference - the largest amount ever.
Michael Wesch was the opening keynote and he didn't disappoint with a great opening. Essentially his work started when he was exploring ways in which people used to communicate, and realized that there were changes happening with the way people were communicating now, so it would be a great thing to explore. When surveyed, half his students didn't like school, but all of them liked learning. So he thought about trying to change the way that they learned.
Basic ideals of HE are not being lived up to, in that we want students to be critical, learn richly, etc. However, often we have them sit in a room and listen to the authority speak, rather than really challenging it. Based on model that the authority has all the information and will impart it to the students, who are receptacles to absorb this information.
Then started looking at technology and the changes. Youtube has created more hours of video in last year than US TV networks in 60 years. 88% of that is new and original content. 9,000 hours uploaded per day.
"Nobody is as smart as everybody" - Kevin Kelly
The way we look at the past to try to explain the present can limit our thinking, and make us rely on outdated methods.
Notes that his students may be considered digital natives, but not using the different new technologies. All had used wikipedia, but few knew what a wiki was or had ever really participated in it. He saw them learning these things as essential for future.
http://netvibes.com/wesch - His course website, can be viewed by anyone who is curious. Using a ton of tools all in one place.
Started with his larger lecture class (200 students) to see what could be done to enhance their learning. Students didn't buy into wiki idea until he posted 40 keywords that were important to know about for the exam. The students responded by creating a massive resource with sample test questions, glossary, links to resources and videos, etc.The success of this wiki led to students setting up wikis for other classes, often without the professors being involved at all.Also, he set up RSS where new images, blog posts, and library resources would show up automatically in the Netvibes page so that the information was current and easy to find.
Next he tried more innovative stuff with his smaller class of 10 students, a class exploring YouTube. Students set the schedule for how the class would run, made a history of YouTube video (can be seen online if you want, call something like History of YouTube)Had the students grade each other for one assignment to teach them about assessment and thinking critically. However, students graded way too high (everyone got the US equivalent of a first, including the person who did almost nothing during the class). So he had to intervene, and is still working on how to get this to work. Thinks one problem was small class size meant everyone friendly.
Next tried to bring it back to the larger class of 200 to get them to work together and decide things. Noted the problem of dealing with so many relationships between students, often leads to either a hierarchical authority model or a lecture mass transmission of information model. Wanted to create a network that would lead to participation.Students put into groups of about 10 based on where they were sitting and had a culture assigned to them based on a world map. Students had to research their culture and come up with a way of representing the history of world cultures through a simulation activity. For the activity, they did it in a large ballroom, and represented 600 years of history in an afternoon. They created an economic system based on cereal, and ways of representing resources. Led to creation of military, political systems.After simulation, there was a discussion of how like world history it actually was.
Get the idea with these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnWmu6xdpc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgbfMY-6giY
Talked about a tool called Jott which turns voice into text automatically. Sounded interesting.
He talked about not accepting "not doing technology" as a valid reason for engaging, because today it is so necessary, and will increasingly be so in the future.Asked about having student data online - wants to push the boundaries. Also saw it as a good lesson for students when something they don't want public becomes so. Said at an institutional level is more difficult than an individual lecturer who does not need to worry about the whole system.
To support the students, did an extra 30 minute technology session after every class - though did note that this was lots of extra time.
All in all it sounded really interesting some of the stuff he was doing, though I wonder if he is right that it is much easier for an individual lecturer to do this, and it's not something everyone is ready for. Can we afford to wait too long before some of this does need to be mainstream?
Makes the developers conference worth it for me.
Michael Wesch was the opening keynote and he didn't disappoint with a great opening. Essentially his work started when he was exploring ways in which people used to communicate, and realized that there were changes happening with the way people were communicating now, so it would be a great thing to explore. When surveyed, half his students didn't like school, but all of them liked learning. So he thought about trying to change the way that they learned.
Basic ideals of HE are not being lived up to, in that we want students to be critical, learn richly, etc. However, often we have them sit in a room and listen to the authority speak, rather than really challenging it. Based on model that the authority has all the information and will impart it to the students, who are receptacles to absorb this information.
Then started looking at technology and the changes. Youtube has created more hours of video in last year than US TV networks in 60 years. 88% of that is new and original content. 9,000 hours uploaded per day.
"Nobody is as smart as everybody" - Kevin Kelly
The way we look at the past to try to explain the present can limit our thinking, and make us rely on outdated methods.
Notes that his students may be considered digital natives, but not using the different new technologies. All had used wikipedia, but few knew what a wiki was or had ever really participated in it. He saw them learning these things as essential for future.
http://netvibes.com/wesch - His course website, can be viewed by anyone who is curious. Using a ton of tools all in one place.
Started with his larger lecture class (200 students) to see what could be done to enhance their learning. Students didn't buy into wiki idea until he posted 40 keywords that were important to know about for the exam. The students responded by creating a massive resource with sample test questions, glossary, links to resources and videos, etc.The success of this wiki led to students setting up wikis for other classes, often without the professors being involved at all.Also, he set up RSS where new images, blog posts, and library resources would show up automatically in the Netvibes page so that the information was current and easy to find.
Next he tried more innovative stuff with his smaller class of 10 students, a class exploring YouTube. Students set the schedule for how the class would run, made a history of YouTube video (can be seen online if you want, call something like History of YouTube)Had the students grade each other for one assignment to teach them about assessment and thinking critically. However, students graded way too high (everyone got the US equivalent of a first, including the person who did almost nothing during the class). So he had to intervene, and is still working on how to get this to work. Thinks one problem was small class size meant everyone friendly.
Next tried to bring it back to the larger class of 200 to get them to work together and decide things. Noted the problem of dealing with so many relationships between students, often leads to either a hierarchical authority model or a lecture mass transmission of information model. Wanted to create a network that would lead to participation.Students put into groups of about 10 based on where they were sitting and had a culture assigned to them based on a world map. Students had to research their culture and come up with a way of representing the history of world cultures through a simulation activity. For the activity, they did it in a large ballroom, and represented 600 years of history in an afternoon. They created an economic system based on cereal, and ways of representing resources. Led to creation of military, political systems.After simulation, there was a discussion of how like world history it actually was.
Get the idea with these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnWmu6xdpc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgbfMY-6giY
Talked about a tool called Jott which turns voice into text automatically. Sounded interesting.
He talked about not accepting "not doing technology" as a valid reason for engaging, because today it is so necessary, and will increasingly be so in the future.Asked about having student data online - wants to push the boundaries. Also saw it as a good lesson for students when something they don't want public becomes so. Said at an institutional level is more difficult than an individual lecturer who does not need to worry about the whole system.
To support the students, did an extra 30 minute technology session after every class - though did note that this was lots of extra time.
All in all it sounded really interesting some of the stuff he was doing, though I wonder if he is right that it is much easier for an individual lecturer to do this, and it's not something everyone is ready for. Can we afford to wait too long before some of this does need to be mainstream?
Makes the developers conference worth it for me.
2 comments:
glad you enjoyed the Wesch keynote - sounds very similar to the one I followed when GBA tweeted it but still good stuff so worth repeating (breaking my general rule of "warmed up" keynotes). I'm really jealous that you've got to hear him speak.
A snippet I got from it from another channel was "Roughly 70 exabytes of data will be produced this year. That is 70 billion gigabytes! .01% will be on paper" - digital fluency anyone? Also wonder how much of the 0.01% even originates on paper??
When a keynote repeats earlier stuff often the Q&A is most interesting - what sort of questions did he get?
I included some of the comments in my general description, but I'll draw them out here:
1) What sort of student support do you provide for the technology? (30 minute sessions, doesn't let students say they won't do it)
2) How ready are university processes for this? What types of comments have you had from other staff members (Malcolm Murray asked this one)? (Answer was that it may not be ready for institutional level, that he was successful precisely because he was able to innovate outside of the structures of the university. For instance, he hosts his stuff on non-university websites, and recognizes the risk that the company could fold and take the work with it).
3) What about privacy issues with student data and assessment? (Said easier to work with at HE level than K-12, he's willing to push the boundaries of what's allowed to test them. Said good learning opportunity for students to learn about what information they share with the world about themselves. Also, information like grades delivered through the VLE.
4) How do you keep on top of all these technologies, choose appropriate ones? (Said he practices what he preaches and uses the tools and things like twitter to hear from other experts on things like that).
5) (same person) Doesn't that mean you are following an authority model then, which goes against what you believe in? (No, it's different as it is a community where you can discuss and debate those tools, not just someone saying that's the way it is).
I think there was one other question but can't remember it right now. Maybe something about how the group project was actually assessed. I think he said group members had a chance to regularly feedback on the participation of other people in their group.
Post a Comment