Saint Lawrence UniversityTechFest

January 2008

NITLE workshop

Introduction to Teaching with Technology in Liberal Education

Agenda for the day

0. Introductions and overview

1. Resource aggregation2. Publishing to the web3. Discussion areas4. Multimedia pedagogy5. Next steps

Agenda for the day

(and also:*6. Mobile and wireless*7. Technology and

pedagogy*8. Utopia and dystopia)

First, liberal education

Inherited models

Artes liberales – Skills– Practice, yet

theory– Multiplicity

Literacies– Multiple– Productive– Media vs

information

Different weavings from the cloth

• Pure learning for learning’s sake• Student-centered pedagogy• Preparation for democratic

citizenship• Institutional typology and heritage

-Jo Ellen Parker, “What’s So “Liberal” About Higher Ed?” (Academic Commons, 2006)

Digital, not analog?

Differences, enhancements• Repeatability, scrubbing,

segmentation, transferability• Iteration• User’s schedule• Spatial (Murray)• Procedural (“)

(Desire path, Vermont, 2006)

Further affordances

Social software– Triangulation– Presence– Performance– History

Temporal developments– Synch versus

asynch

(Second Life presentation audience,social and synchronous in 2007,

http://flickr.com/photos/bryanalexander/2088829657/)

Practical tendencies

• Timeshifts within the classroom

• Classroom vs. the rest of spacetime

• LazyWeb meets DIY

• Archival teaching for the professor

(Middlebury College,January 2006)

Challenges

What are the challenges you see or anticipate to using technology for teaching and learning?

The relief of history

Early modern information overload, 1685:

“We have reason to fear that the multitude of books which grows every day in a prodigious fashion will make the following centuries fall into a state as barbarous as that of the centuries that followed the fall of the Roman Empire…”

-Adrien Baillet, Jugemens des sçavans sur les principaux ouvrages des auteurs (Paris, 1685)

Antecedents

One response to too much information: the humble marginal annotation

• Glossators (Franciscus Accursius, Denis Godefroi)

• Then the Geneva Bible

(Early English Books Online)

Another response to overload

• Cyclopedia (Ephraim Chambers, 1728)

• Encyclopedie (1751-1772)

Another response to overload

• Cyclopedia (Ephraim Chambers, 1728)

• Encyclopedie (1751-1772)

(Another precursor, lacking the technology: Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, 636)

I. Resource aggregation

• Eroding, but semiarchived (http://archive.org)

• Vast• Growing• Personal• And

public

(Bookstore in Fes,Morocco, 2007)

Requirements• Search (classic, Web 2.0, media,

social)• Aggregation (bookmarks,

del.icio.us, Scholar.com, H2O)• Information literacy• Social aggregation, or digital

citizenship

Away from the wild Web

• e-reserves • Databases

(ARTSTOR, JSTOR)

• The oldest information profession

• Zotero

(Denison Library,Claremont Colleges)

Using the Web to tame the Web

• Social bookmarking (del.icio.us)– Demonstration– Hands-on

• Aggregating Media– Podcasts– YouTube

• Searching the live Web– Technorati

• RSS– Good, free feed

readers: Bloglines, Google Reader, NetNewsWire, Gator

– Increasing number of feeds

II. Publishing to the web

“Web 1.0”• Vast, semiarchived

(archive.org)• Hypertext and

multimedia• Enormous

publication scope• Needed: editor and

host(Sir Tim Berners-Lee)

Many pedagogical examples

• Euclid’s Elements, Interactive Presentation. http://math.furman.edu/~jpoole/euclidselements/euclid.htm

• Salem Witch Trials Documentary Archive. http://etext.virginia.edu/salem/witchcraft/home.html

• Virtual Seminars for Teaching Literature. (WWI archive) http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/

• Visual Elements Periodic Table. http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/pages/pertable_fla.htm

“Web 2.0”• Social

software• Microconte

nt• Open • Platforms

Web 2.0: blogs• Public intellectual• Research record• Personal expression

• Collaborative blogs• Scholarly discussion

– Formal and in-

• Emergent interest

(Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Pomona CollegeLMS conference, Reed College, 2005)

Web courseware (Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai)

• Class (not course) only

• Copyright shield (TEACH Act)

• Integration with e-reserves

(Moodle on a Nokia 770, via Leonard Low; Martin Dougiemas, via PeskyLibrary on Flickr)

III. Online Discussion

• History of online discussion– Discussion boards, newsgroups, etc.– Listservs (SF-LOVERS, 1979ff)

• Asynchronous vs. Synchronous– IM– Chat rooms– Skype chat– Virtual world, gaming chat

• Question: what are your best practices for online discussion?

Web 2.0 discussion areas

• Blogs– Posts– Comments– On-campus and off-

(“Blog-based communities,”James Farmer, from

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elifishtacos/90944651/)

Wikis• History• That encyclopedia• Two challenges• Wikis not called

wikis

Modes of use• Discussion• Annotation• Collaborative

writing

IV. Multimedia pedagogy

Why would you do such a thing?– Learning styles– Active engagement– Changing population– New literacies– Long, long tradition

Images• Visualizatio

n• Compositio

ns• Presentatio

n (ppt)• Social

(Flickr)

(Storms on Jupiter, NASA New Horizons mission)

Audio• Sound objects• Social sound:

podcasting• Embedded sound

(Web, video)• Synchronous:

VOIP

(Aaron Prevots, French,Southwestern University)

“Podcasting”?Pedagogies• Profcasting• Studentcasting• Public intellectual• Field work

Video • Video objects• Social video (Web)• Synchronous (Video

conference)

Digital cartography

• Google Maps• GIS • Web mapping,

a/k/a virtual globes

• Synchronous? Watch Google

• Platforms? Cf Twittervision

(Google Maps/Flickr mashup;NASA WorldWind)

Multimedia Syntheses• Presentation tools (PowerPoint, Keynote, Web)• Media: text, images, sound, video

– Demonstration and Hands-On

• Ease of use• Danger: death by PowerPoint

(cf Ed Tufte)• .pdf, too

(from “The PowerPoint Anthology of Literature”, Daniel Radosh

http://home.nyc.rr.com/dradosh/ppaol1.html)

Multimedia Syntheses• Web 2.0:

VoiceThread– Image– Voice– Social– Demonstrati

on– Hands-On

http://voicethread.com/

Multimedia syntheses• Virtual worlds

– Virtual reality– Social-emotional

bandwidth-A metaverse future

Multimedia syntheses

• Gaming– Pedagogies

(Gee, 2003ff)– Learning objects– Literacy– Compositions

(http://swi.indiana.edu/arden/index.shtml; Scott Osterwall, MIT, from NERCOMP presentation

http://www.nercomp.org/events/event_single.aspx?id=1227)

And text!

And text!Technologies

everywhere:• Web 2.0• .pdf• Synchronous: chat,

IM• Within Second

Life, gaming

• Nearly every digital affordance

• Utter comfort for most of us

• Third-oldest educational technology

(previous slide: Ken Wark, GAM3R 7H30RY (2007)CommentPress implementation

http://www.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory/)

V. Wrap-Up

1. Small Groups– Plan for how you can use one thing

you’ve learned today

2. Final Group Discussion

NITLEhttp://nitle.org

Liberal Education Todayhttp://b2e.nitle.org