Snurblog - ICE3 2007

Slidecasting

Snurb — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:52:17 +1000

Finally getting around to processing some of the recordings of the papers that I've given at conferences this year has coincided for me with exploring in a little more detail the Slideshare service for sharing Powerpoint presentations, and so predictably I've fallen in love with the audio synchronisation tool they're calling "Slidecasting". Very nice interface to a handy little tool, and I've now uploaded Slidecasts from the ICE3 conference at Loch Lomond in March, from the Creativity & Cognition conference in Washington, D.C., in June, and from PerthDAC just the other week. It's interesting - for me, anyway - to listen back over these recordings to see how much my conceptual models for analysing produsage have developed over the past few months, as I've researched and written the produsage book. Unfortunately I seem to have missed out on recording my presentation at the MiT5 conference in Boston this April - this has probably been my favourite paper of the year so far, perhaps because it's also been the most speculative one. Ah well.

Each of the conferences also enabled me to present my work on produsage to a very different group of scholars from those that I tend to see at my usual conferences, and I had some very positive feedback after each of the presentations (some of which made it onto the recordings as well). Unexpectedly, posting these presentations to Slideshare has also had an interesting side-effect: my presentation from PerthDAC was featured as "Slidecast of the Day" on the site, and had over 1000 views in less than a week as a result. Nice little bonus - the other two Slidecasts didn't fare quite as well, so I'm embedding the ICE3 here as I'm also quite fond of it. Full details on another page...

Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age - ICE3 conference, Loch Lomond, Scotland

Snurb — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:39:53 +1000

ICE3 conference

Beyond Difference: Reconfiguring Education for the User-Led Age

23 March 2007 - ICE3 conference, Loch Lomond, Scotland

If produsage is an increasingly significant element of intellectual, economic, legal and political processes within society, then educational institutions must pay more attention to developing produser capabilities in their graduates - focussing on learners' collaborative, creative, critical, and communicative capabilities (or C4C, for short). Indeed, they must lead by example and base more of their teaching and learning frameworks on produsage models. Social constructivist approaches to education already call for a greater role for learners in the educational process, but even pedagogies based on this framework often still retain a strong role for the teacher, and standard tertiary education practices continue to allow for innovation only within the confines of otherwise persistent and immutable institutional structures.

ICE on the Road

Snurb — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:24:07 +1000

Leeds.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called Scotland 2007. Make your own badge here.

I've safely returned to Leeds from my trip to the ICE 3 conference on the shores of Loch Lomond, Scotland. Given the cost of flying to Glasgow, and the unreliability (and sadly, occasional catastrophic failure) of the British rail network, I ended up driving myself to Scotland and back in a rental car, and this worked out pretty well overall. As I crossed the North Pennines into Cumbria, the snow-streaked landscape did look as bleak as the frozen steppes of Siberia, but happily things improved again as I approached Glasgow. I stopped for lunch and a spot of sightseeing in Glasgow itself, and promptly lost my way trying to re-enter the motorway towards Loch Lomond, but this minor diversion was nothing against my confusion on the way back - I guess it would have helped had I known that on Scottish roadsigns, "Carlisle" is the codename for the south (providing overt directions to England is considered to be in bad taste, perhaps?). Although this cost me an hour, there were no major other problems on the way (except for the occasional Fiat driver appearing to suffer from the delusion of being at the wheel of a Ferrari) - and kudos also to the good folks at Google Maps, whose directions served me well in getting to Scotland and back.

Where to for Scholarly Discourse?

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 23:18:55 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The last presentation here at ICE 3 is a group act by Bruce Ingraham, Gráinne Conole, Chris Jones, and George Roberts, who have also set up a group blog in preparation for this talk, which some of us have already contributed to. Their focus is especially on scholarly communication through new media environments - and they begin by noting that unfortunately few ICErs did respond to their original blog-based challenge, which in itself provides some insight on the extent to which scholarly discourses have changed so far. Why is this so - are the topics available too dull; is there too little time available to participate in such environments; or are emerging new media not suited to scholarly discourse (which could also mean that scholarly discourse is unsuited to the modern world, however). If we are not professing our disciplines to one another using such new media environments, however, how can we enocurage our students to do so? If we do not do so, then who will - the people formerly known as students?

Teaching Global Citizenship

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:31:01 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The next speakers here at ICE 3 are Leah Macfadyen and Anne Hewling, presenting on their experiences with a University of British Columbia online course in global citizenship, which they developed from scratch. Aims of the course were for students to develop an understanding of the concept of global citizenship, as well as ultimately to consider the impact they might have as global citizens within local, national, and international communities. Students within this (elective) course come from a very brad range of disciplinary backgrounds (and in fact also from the universities of Hong Kong and Melbourne, who were remote partners in the project).

Produsage and Education

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:51:27 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
It's a clear but frosty morning here in Scotland - for the first time in some 14 years, I've had to scrape ice off the windshield of my car today... We've reached the last day of ICE 3, and I'll be the first speaker, presenting on the implications, for the field of education, of the move from production to produsage (full paper here). I'll try to record the talk as well, and ~~if all works out I'll post it up here some time soon~~ the recording is below as well as here. For now, here is my Powerpoint... I must also apologise to Debra Ferreday and Vivien Hodgson for not blogging their talk - my laptop was in use to run the presentation.

Games and Learning

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 04:06:39 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
Maggi Savin-Baden and Christine Sinclair (as well as their Second Life avatars Christine Sanders and Second Wind) are the last presenters at ICE 3 for today (full paper here). Both are students in the MSc in e-learning at the University of Edinburgh, which in part focusses on the use of digital game-based learning environments. They begin by describing their journeys into this degree, which were motivated for them as academic professionals in part by an interest in learning about what it means to be a student in the present university environment, and an interest in exploring possibilities for e-learning which were not covered by WebCT and other standard solutions.

Pedagogies of Productivity in the Modern Workplace

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:26:29 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
As we approach the end of the second day at ICE 3, Karim Remtulla is the next speaker (full paper here). He is particularly interested in how e-learning connects with the realities of the workplace (both in terms of the experiences of recent graduates in transitioning to the workplace, and those of employees coming back to university for further education). Karim notes that the projections for e-learning are promising - it is now a US$300 billion market globally, while the World Bank's education portfolio stands at US$8.5 billion, and covers 86 countries. The dominant point of view on e-learning is that it is simply a process of learning from information which is delivered electronically, leaving us as learners to identify relevant information and convert it into meaningful and applicable knowledge - but this may be a highly questionable definition.

Evaluating Uses of Learning Technologies?

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:14:48 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
The next presenters at ICE 3 are Michael Begg, Rachel Ellaway, David Dewhurst, and Hamish MacLeod. They describe themselves as educational informaticians, and note that the idea of learning design has been somewhat diluted by the ubiquity of online teaching spaces. Instead, this group focus on proximal development - experimentation with spaces which are in a constant state of development and often sit at something of a distance from the institutions around them.

The problem here is Web2.0: the variety of definitions which exist; and the lack of clarity about its standards. Why do institutions say they like it, yet do so little about it? Who is implementing it in an educational context, and who owns it? What is the origin of the claims that it is going to make things better? What makes us "us" and the institution "them" - and is Web2.0 for us or for them (or for the students)?

Digital Divide Narratives

Snurb — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:20:37 +1100

Ross Priory, Scotland.
Up next here at ICE 3 are Debbie Holley and Martin Oliver. They begin by highlighting the notion of the digital divide, which appears to be based on a notion that media access is inherently a good thing: if the digital divide problem is solved by providing access for all, then society will be better off. This question of access is positioned as the basic issue, but is ultimately only a superficial one - behond this, there are also divides in relation to people's skills and literacies, to their levels of motivation to exercise their skills (they may have skills, but choose not to use tem), and further, there is a divide between what are seen as 'normal' high technology uses on the one hand, and disruptive effects of complex technologies on the other.