PennEduTech

This news just in from the New Media Consortium: a virtual symposia exploring emerging forms of collaboration and tools.  Anyone interested in co-presenting a project at Penn?

Rock the Academy
Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning
The 12th in the Series of NMC Virtual Symposia

November 4-6, 2008, via the Internet

Proposals for presentations for Rock the Academy: Radical Teaching, Unbounded Learning, a special 2-day, live online event to be held November 4-6, 2008, are being solicited through October 17. See http://www.nmc.org/2008-fall-virtual-symposium for full details.

About the Symposium
Rock the Academy, the twelfth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore the kinds of ideas and activities that are changing the shape of education today. Revolutionary practices are breaking apart old models of teaching and learning; students are using new tools to construct meaning and contribute to the design of their own education; teachers are sharing the power that has traditionally been theirs alone.

Examples of unconventional, yet highly effective, methods of teaching and learning may be found in pockets all over the world, at all levels of education. When the multitude of examples are taken together, we begin to sense a profound change in the making that will alter our concept of education itself.

The symposium will take place in both the Adobe Connect 2D web environment and in the 3D virtual world of Second Life.  All events in Second Life will also be streamed into Adobe Connect; participants will also be able to access Adobe Connect from within Second Life.

Proposals are encouraged on any of the following themes, but this list is not exhaustive and selections will not be limited to these categories:

• open education resources and open content
• social networking and global connections
• guerilla learning, games, and activist learning
• the next killer apps for education
• alternatives to course management systems
• real-time data, maps, and mobiles
• backchannels and alternative communication tools
• students who do research in their fields
• any technology or practice that shows promise for engaging students and supporting subversive teaching and learning

Sessions should describe new approaches, illustrate case studies, or address the implications for learning and teaching of themes like those above.

Proposals may be submitted online at http://www.nmc.org/2008-fall-virtual-symposium/proposals

I have begun exploring push technologies recently and wanted to share my experiences. Keeping up with new developments in my areas of interest has often been difficult, especially since instructional technology always seems to have new trends. I began by creating an iGoogle page where I added feeds of interest to me including the Penn Calendar and NMC Campus Observer. I explored Google Gadgets such as “Your Daily Al”. I created my own Google Gadget – surprisingly easy. I added RSS feeds from blogs I read occasionally – now my home page has headlines of new posts.

One aspect I love is the creation of customized alerts. You can make your own at Google Alerts (Beta) and put in phrases – topics, names of people, organizations. You will then receive daily or weekly alerts when web content containing your phrase is posted. You may get too many hits with a common phrase, but I have found this effective with targeted search terms. For example, my Google alert for the phrase “Weigle Information Commons” led me to a new architectural website that I may never have learned about otherwise.