As far as institutes go, I think it was a transformative week.

At the same time, I’m well aware of the criticism that has been leveled at these kinds professional development opportunities…that they are hit and run, don’t provide long term support, and can’t often get at the kind of sustained change we hope for in teaching practice. However, we had an amazing week with this group of faculty members, and I just want to share a few thoughts here as I continue to digest and reflect on the experience.

Emphasis on Personal Use of Technology
One of the things we emphasized and modeled throughout the week was the importance of using technology in ways that supported personal learning. We introduced folks to the social side of the web as a way to help them begin to get at how they could use social software and practices to support their own learning.

To my delight, many of them embraced the notion of social bookmarking by establishing and using del.icio.us accounts throughout the week, and really seemed to get the concept of tagging. They created customized feeds through Google Reader, and began to realize the power of RSS and how it has transformed our experience of the web. The creation and use of podcasts and screencasts also seemed to resonate on the personal learning level.

The thinking here is that we wanted faculty to have multiple experiences of using technology – first and foremost - in personally meaningful ways. The hypothesis is that if faculty members viewed tools and practices as supporting their own learning these things would more naturally spill over into the ways they use technology to support teaching and learning. Discussions of classroom application were woven throughout the sessions, but we rarely led with, “this is how these technologies can be used in the classroom.” I think that anchoring this stuff in ways that support personal learning really impacted the uptake and valuing of these technologies and practices among our faculty participants.

Shifting Notions of Collaboration
We attempted to engage folks in the exploration of web-based collaborative tools. We pulled off at the obvious stops…Google Docs and Wikis…and a more exotic rest area - Gliffy. Prior to that however, we brainstormed about our ideas related to collaboration. We discovered that our idealized image of collaboration was layered, complex and nuanced; involving relationships, multiple perspectives and social interaction. The tools we were exploring, with their focus on shared document and resource development, seemed to fall short of our shared view of collaborative process.

We also recognized the challenges of introducing the collaborative value of tools like Google Docs and wikis in a context where sustained collaboration lasts all of a few hours, or at best a few days. I’m not sure it is possible to create a strong experience of web-based collaboration using these tools in a brief workshop-like context. We were however able to gain some experience of what it was like for 20 people to simultaneously edit a wiki or Google Doc (limited to 10 users / time). The context of the Institute – with its time constraints – seemed to force contrived collaboration that in retrospect seemed artificial to me.

One of the things I realized from this experience is that these kinds of tools seem to ask us to rethink our notions of collaboration. What we outlined in our brainstorm map did not readily translate into the use of these web-based apps. In fact, I’m not sure they would even given the extended time of several weeks or months. I have come to see web-based collaboration as something quite different from my traditional notion of collaboration. This might seem like a big “DUH” to some of my more learned colleagues, but it was a breakthrough for me. Norms, values and expectations for web-based collaboration are not transparent; they emerge and are established over time as people work together in a mix of web and F2F environments. It seems that most of us are still figuring out how to do this.

Sustaining Community
One of the exciting things that can happen when people have shared experiences – like participation in an Institute – is the creation of a sense of community. To be honest, I can think of little else that is more powerful in supporting learning than participation in a community. The Institute this past week was a reaffirmation of that belief for me. I again witnessed the contagious energy that comes from learning that is cooperative, challenging and in good measure self-directed.

Despite dominant views, learning to teach with technology is not best mediated by a one-on-one experience with a computer and software; it is a social act where interdisciplinary dialogue, critique and practice are necessary…if not absolutely essential.

The dilemma arises when the Institute or event comes to a close. How can the community be sustained? How can these collegial relationships – so important yet so elusive in higher education contexts – continue to be supported? How can the shared experience and the dialogue continue? How can we continue to ride the wave of enthusiasm and interest?

These are questions we have wrestled with – as I’m sure others have - at the end of every single Institute we conduct. We’ve set up discussion boards to continue the conversation, sent the occasional email follow-up, set up collaborative grant opportunities and even threatened to set up a post-institute wiki. Rarely have I witnessed anything gain traction to sustain the energy of the community. Perhaps that is as it should be, an intense moment in time valued for its temporary excitement and energy.

I’m a holdout though…as a teacher, I have to be. The community formed is unlikely to be sustained in its original form – and I’m cool with that - but it can grow from smaller nodes and spread creating new communities where none previously existed…at least that is what I hope for. Watching these folks interact during the past week I got the sense that something had changed for them. They gained insight to the social web and explored some tools and practices to begin the journey to build their own connections and learning communities both locally and virtually. Suddenly, the world is a very different place…I’m looking forward to hearing their stories.

The Institute was filled with the ebb and flow of interesting conversation, challenging questions, healthy skepticism and an awesome potluck lunch on the closing day. It is not always easy to predict what generates the spark, but as always, the Institute week contained moments of intensity and passion where discussion about teaching and learning got “hot.” One of these moments came on the morning of the final day when my colleague Britt Watwood was facilitating a session on NetGen learners. Let me begin by saying that Britt did an excellent job with the session, and my comments here are not a critique of his presentation, but rather an examination of the context and what unfolded. The intended purpose of the session was to address some characteristics of NetGen students, explore factors shaping their learning and to consider some implications for teaching and course design…arguably an important conversation to have with faculty members. Britt kicked off the session with Michael Wesch’s A Vision of Students Today as a conversation starter. We’ve used this video in a number of contexts – as many folks have - to generate conversation and highlight some key points about how we see the web impacting teaching and learning. When the clip ended there was a brief moment of silence punctuated by “Wow!” and “That was amazing” and “Interesting.” And then the comments shifted a bit…

One faculty member said something to the effect: “This is an example of why I don’t want to use technology in the classroom. I don’t allow students to use laptops in class while I’m teaching…they are simply a distraction.” This generated some head nodding, and another comment, “And the same with Wikipedia too.” This was the first time I had encountered faculty members responding to Wesch’s video in this way. Instead of examining questions about context, opportunities and challenges, the conversation turned toward a bit of technology bashing. I was baffled. Why were these faculty members seeing the video as a confirmation of why to NOT use technology in the classroom? Were they threatened? Was the message in the video an affront?

With the images of Wesch’s video still dancing in their heads, Britt shifted gears and asked folks to transition from the video to some discussion about the NetGen. This also brought immediate replies and questions: “You mean Millenials, right?” “What about the Gen X students?” It was at this point that something came into clearer focus to me…

Introducing labels like “NetGen” and “digital natives” in discussion establish “us / them” boundaries that divide. They offer very little in the way of understanding diverse sets of students or in guiding our teaching practice.

With all due respect to people who have written eloquently on this topic, I have come to the personal realization that terms like NetGen, digital natives, Gen X…and others that are sure to follow…offer me very little in the way of predictive power about how students will learn in my classroom, and how I might better support their learning. The terms are often used too generally and broadly for my liking, and they also have the undesired effect of masking diverse experiences. In some ways they are examples of grand narratives that attempt to simultaneously be descriptive and prescriptive.

We tend to use terms like “NetGen” and “digital native” to raise awareness and focus discussion about how the Internet and digital technology have impacted students. My recent experience with faculty members in our Institute suggests that the terms confound the discussion, or frame it in such way that detracts from attention to important questions. While many of today’s students have certainly been steeped in digital technology from their earliest days, I don’t think that makes them “digital natives” anymore than “non-native” tech-savvy educators who also use digital media in very meaningful ways…and who also happen to know how to put a stamp on a hand-written letter. Perhaps we are unnecessarily focusing our attention on sorting out artificial distinctions.

Digital technologies and web-based media are impacting all of us in ways that require us to rethink some fundamental assumptions we hold about teaching and learning. So instead of attempting to illustrate how one generation is digitally different than another, perhaps we should shift the conversation to address key issues and questions that impact all of the generations in the digital melting pot.

The next time I have the opportunity to talk with faculty members about how the web is impacting students, I’m thinking I’ll forgo the NetGen rap and see if we can come to any agreement on some of these questions:

1) What does critical thinking - on and about the web - look like?

2) How is the unprecedented access to information on the web [re]shaping our notions of teaching and learning?

3) What is the read / write web anyway? How is it changing our perspectives of publishing, scholarship, authority and authenticity?

4) How is hyper-connectivity (always on) changing our expectations and thoughts about communication?

5) How are web-based social networks redefining the exchange of ideas, collaboration, and community building?

For me, seeking answers to these and similar questions – across generations – is where we are going come to some better understanding of how to build connections among varied expectations and experiences.

One of the things that struck me about this experience however was the amount of time it took me to actually stop thinking about reading blogs, reading / answering email, what was happening on Twitter…what cool ideas was I missing on the Network?! It was a little unsettling at first, and I was almost embarrassed that I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about all this stuff. It took me the better part of three days to really disconnect. As my digital life blurred, I became consumed by hiking mountain trails, scouting the creeks, being quiet streamside and watching bugs hatch off the water…observing feeding trout, gathering firewood and staying warm and dry. In these moments I really appreciated the simple slowness of a day of hiking, fishing and camping out under the stars.

All of this helped me realize how much time is actually required to manage a modern life along with the desire to be a live node on the network. The latter is in itself a full-time job! I remain a little unsettled with the realization.

In any event, I have since been thinking about a concept I heard a few years back – Continuous Partial Attention. To the best of my knowledge this was initially coined by Linda Stone, a social computing researcher at Microsoft. She writes:

“To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter. We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention.”

Whoa! That set me back a bit. Forgive the rhetorical question, but…what are the implications of maintaining a sense of high alert and constant crisis for extended periods of time?

I began to think about these ideas in the context of some of the work I am engaged in at the Center for Teaching Excellence at VCU. Over the past year, my colleagues Britt Watwood, Bud Deihl and I have been engaged in a collective journey to explore social networking and the development of our own web-based personal learning networks (PLNs). For each of us this journey has involved significant amounts of time and energy to connect and stay connected; to really be part of the networked conversation about teaching, learning and technology…writing blog posts, reading countless blog postings in our RSS readers, tagging resources in del.icio.us, making / listening to podcasts and Twittering. Along with engagement in this conversation there seems to be the added expectation for even more engagement. Based on observations of colleagues and friends, and what I imagine about my network “heroes,” I think it seems safe to say that continuous partial attention, as described by Stone, is a necessary precondition for reaping the benefits of developing and maintaining a PLN. If we accept that, I think a whole host of questions arise…Who can really afford to develop and maintain a PLN? Who can afford not to develop a PLN? How does the maintenance of a vibrant PLN impact the attention we have to devote to other aspects of life and work? Are PLNs primarily for the early adopter set?

To me a PLN seems to be a bit of luxury, and at times an extravagant one.

That said, I turn to considering the faculty members with whom I work at VCU, and teachers in general, and wonder how many of them would even remotely consider taking the time required to overcome learning curves, fear, doubting, and network building to begin reaping benefits of a robust PLN. I suspect very few.

Perhaps it is simply my emerging notion of a PLN, ill-formed as it is and full of my own personal trappings, that makes it difficult for me to see how many teachers could really devote the amount of time and energy that appears to be required here. I’m not discounting the possibility, but I do however think we need to be realistic in terms of our expectations about how many teachers (K-12 & higher education) can devote the time required to engage and participate in the development of a robust PLN.

If we value the role PLNs can play in education, we need to find ways of introducing them that don’t confuse or overwhelm by being fully formed, offer meaningful starting point experiences that can lead to further development, and at the same time be part of a balanced practice and life. That is a tall order…and I’m not sure how to do that just yet, but I’m inspired by another comment from Linda Stone:

“We have focused on managing our time. Our opportunity is to focus on how we manage our attention. We are evolving beyond an always-on lifestyle. As we make choices to turn the technology OFF, to give full attention to others in interactions, to block out interruption-free time, and to use the full range of communication tools more appropriately, we will re-orient our trek toward a path of more engaged attention, more fulfulling relationships, and opportunities for the type of reflection that fuels innovation.”

Right on! I’m going fishing…

What is Twitter? Do you get it? Why would anyone want to use it? How do you use it? What are the applications in the classroom? These questions ran through my head for nearly a full year, until recently, I – like many others have recounted - took the Twitterplunge. I’ll try to provide a little insight into what finally kicked to put me over the edge.

The first time I encountered Twitter was nearly a year ago at the University of Mary Washington’s 2007 Faculty Academy – a wonderful event put on by the UMW folks at DoIT. At this conference I had the pleasure of seeing Alan Levine talk about Twitter and share some uses as well as his own head scratching journey to take the Twitterplunge…it seems everyone has that story. There was also a TwitterCamp set up for folks attending the UMW event where participants could tweet at each other and engage in some exchange…I watched in confusion. I continued to lurk – inconsistently – at the fringe of Twitter for several months…uncertain and already overwhelmed with more information streams than I could manage. Why did I need this…? I couldn’t answer the question…it continued to stew on the wayback burner.

The second significant encounter I had with Twitter was at the recent 2008 ELI Annual Conference, where Twitter was again featured prominently. The ELI folk had set up a TwitterCamp that could be “followed” by any participants, as well as others not attending the conference. Twitter became a medium of exchange – in the moment – that allowed people to comment and share thoughts on what they were experiencing and thinking about in sessions during the conference. This got my attention. There was an entire stream of ideas flowing among participants that was visible, informative and most importantly…generative. It was a valuable back channel of information and it was here I think I turned the corner on Twitter. I began to “follow” people on Twitter who I saw at the conference, and slowly over time began and continue to build a network.

So what makes it worthwhile for me? Right now there are a few things:

1) I have come to see Twitter as a piece of a much larger conversation. Blogs, YouTube, podcasts…these are all part of a conversation I am attempting to participate in, and Twitter is an interesting complement.

2) Twitter somehow seems to let me learn and get to know a little bit more about the folks I follow. It builds a sense of connection, and for me represents a bit of community building.

3) The network you build on Twitter becomes a resource to support learning and exchange.

4) It allows me to stay loosely connected to folks that I have a relationship with that I might not get to talk or communicate with as much as I’d like.

Yet Twitter still represents a very real challenge for me.

I am valuing the participation as a learning support and a process for connection. However, I’m still thinking that the adoption curve on this one is pretty wacky. Every faculty member I have introduced to Twitter, albeit casually and with hesitation, has rolled their eyes. “Twitter, cute! What do I need that time sucker for?” Perhaps they sense my own uncertainty. No matter how you slice it though, arrival at valuing participation in a networked community is something that takes time and belief that it will be a resource that can pay learning dividends in the future. Part of the challenge – seems to me - lies in creating a context or need where participation in the network becomes a necessity. Are we there yet?

I really love what David and Jeff are doing with their podcast, which is to ask the big questions that drive the conversation about what it means to shift our schools. I enjoyed the conversation which unfolded around the episode’s essential question of, how do adults learn? I don’t know that we answered the question very well, but I do think we were able to push it in a direction to consider some important possibilities as it relates to teaching and learning with technology. For me, there were three themes that emerged, and I’ll try to summarize them here.

Supporting the self-directed nature of adult learners has become more complex in the wired world
It is important for adult learners in educational settings to be self-directed in their efforts to use technology to support teaching and learning. This is crucial for obvious reasons, but I think it is also made more challenging by the context in which we find ourselves today. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but we live in a time that has witnessed unprecedented growth in access to information, web-based tools, and opportunities for exchange and collaboration. The pace is blistering, and while the “new tool everyday” is exciting, it contributes to a bit of option paralysis in my opinion. This can be overwhelming even for those who are steeped in it and live it everyday. Self-direction in a sea of opportunity can add a layer of challenge that prevents some adult learners from ever moving forward with an exploratory learning project. To say that we should be sensitive to this is an understatement. And while I think it is important to always ask the question about pedagogy – what do you want to achieve instructionally with the technology? – I’m not entirely convinced anymore that this should always be the first question. George Siemens, over at the Connectivism Blog, has a very interesting post addressing this idea.

Risk taking is paid for by overcoming fear
When we ask teachers to use technology in meaningful ways to support teaching and learning, we are asking them to take a risk. We are asking them to step outside their comfort zones, to experience some uncertainty, to be vulnerable, to wrestle with the idea that maybe the students do know more (or maybe not) about the technology, to question notions of expertise and to come to terms with fundamental shifts about power relations in the classroom. How can this kind of risk taking – the kind that results in transformative learning - be supported? How can we help teachers navigate the bumpy terrain bought about by the exploration of instructional technology? Perhaps one thing to do is simply start by acknowledging the fear. To admit that all of us – even the uber geeks – and I mean that as a term of endearment, experience fear when it comes to teaching and learning with technology. There was a presentation at the recent EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative conference that did a wonderful job of starting this conversation.

Risk taking can be supported through connecting and community building
When you feel a part of a supportive and engaged community, you begin to share experiences, build relationships, and discuss the success and failures. There is support. You are not playing without a net…and so maybe…you can ride a little closer to the edge than you might otherwise have done. In the podcast, Jeff Utecht talked about learning events at his school where he regularly brings teachers together to explore technology, and build connections. He also mentioned the role professional conferences (at least those that are edtech related) seem to be playing, in that they are more like kick-off events for the creation of community that can be sustained after the conference. In the work we do with faculty at VCU the theme that permeates nearly everything we do is to create community and connections among the faculty. We have found that cohort-based programs related to IT, and specific faculty learning communities where we bring people together an entire academic year can go a long way towards building those connections. It is a slow process, but one we think is worth investing in. The glue among these examples, I think, is the idea of an environmental event in the lives of people that can bring them together and serve as place holder… an organizing circumstance…for subsequent community building and perhaps some strengthened self-directed learning. I think there is something to be gained by paying more attention to the environmental contexts in which we engage with adult learners - teachers – and reflect on how, as a result, some meaningful self-directed learning can be supported and sustained. That is a challenge worth spending some time on.

Bottom line…building connections and community are central to supporting adult learners in taking risks to use technology to support teaching and learning…and I want to again extend thanks to folks like David and Jeff for advancing the conversation about this.

The presentation was also an opportunity for me to formulate and pitch some ideas that have been cooking for a while. I really appreciate and admire the School of Social Work students for the interest and willingness to engage with the ideas of how web 2.0 practices are reshaping some long held views about scholarship.

[slideshare id=290850&doc=scholarship-technology-where-do-we-go-from-here-1204581709634095-4&w=425]

There are some tough questions and issues out there for new – as well as established - scholars to consider about how and where to “publish” their ideas given the range of emerging web-based possibilities. I tried to hit the obvious features on the landscape, and pose some questions for discussion.

Are published articles in open access peer reviewed journals as valuable as those in print-based journals? Is the quality of the peer review process all that different in between these distribution mechanisms? Can blogs written for academic purposes be a form of scholarly publication? Is web-based peer review in blogs and wikis a legitimate means of vetting scholarly work? Do podcasts represent a new form of academic publishing? Can web-based videos be considered scholarship?

These are thorny questions. Some answers reside in the willingness of various disciplines to wrestle with emerging notions of collaboration, expertise and participation.

When I encountered del.icio.us about two years ago, it was the first taste of web 2.0 I experienced, and it opened a whole new world. I not only thought it was an amazing way to store my own web links, but to also connect with others that had similar interests who were also saving bookmarks on the web. The idea if social bookmarking was very appealing to me then, and it remains so now. This web-based practice is generally useful and convenient, but it is also a powerful way to discover new resources, build connections among people with similar interests, promote collaboration, and tap into a new way of organizing the web. In many ways, I see it as a bit of a gateway experience to exploring new instructional possibilities and practices…if you get this one, the doors to the participatory web begin to open up.

Clearly everyone doesn’t see it the same way.

In the work I do with faculty to explore meaningful uses of technology to support teaching and learning, social bookmarking - and the concept of tagging in general - is something I try to promote. Some faculty members immediately see the value and become tagging junkies (and encourage their students to do it as well), some have a passing interest and tolerate it for a while and still others see it as bizarre. “Why would I want to share MY bookmarks with people I don’t know?” or “This is a great tool, but I really don’t want to share with anyone…can I keep it private?” or “What do I need a network for?” Comments like these always give me pause for reflection. I try to understand the resistance.

One thing I have been giving more thought to recently is the language and meaning surrounding the ideas of “social” and “bookmarking.” Social brings thoughts of conversation, interaction and public exchange. Bookmarking brings images of one-on-one with a browser, individually saving sites, a private act, and sharing –when it happens - is with an emailed link.

Social = open + public
Bookmarking = personal + private

Like oil and water…these are at odds. Some folks see social bookmarking and say…you must be kidding…mix private and public? The initial contact with the idea seems so foreign that many can’t get past the semantics. They won’t even come to the table. The ideas – appealing to early adopters – are in need of some translation, reconceptualization or repackaging to be more broadly appealing. The practice of social bookmarking needs an emulsifier to mix together seemingly disparate ideas and make a tasty dressing.

I suspect that the language surrounding many of the web 2.0 practices and tools that instructional technologists readily use to communicate with each other, may well leave others scratching their heads, unable to share in the excitement and possibility. I’m feeling a strong need to use different language to talk with faculty members about something like social bookmarking. Sometimes I think that a simple [re]packaging can get the job done. But I’m wondering how social bookmarking can be [re]labeled so that more educators can engage with the notion of building connections through resource sharing? Is this really even necessary? Am I totally missing the boat here? Should I even be concerned?

In a recent post, Will Richardson commented:

We’re in the “Networking as a Second Language” point in teaching, this messy transition phase that is slowly gaining traction where we are beginning to understand what this means but not quite sure yet what to do about it.

I think this notion of “second language learning” gets at a little bit of what I’m struggling with. I think I’m looking for a way to translate, to use concepts in the first language to assist folks in understanding concepts in a new language. I’m feeling a little bit at a loss about how to proceed…

The notion of a Google University is not a new one, but recent interest among some universities to embrace the use of YouTube for hosting instructional content has brought things into a slightly different focus for me.

UC Berkeley was the first to jump in and set up a YouTube channel for distributing content, and they have recently been joined by MIT, USC, Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, Texas Tech and Auburn. More are sure to follow. On the surface this seems like a great way of sharing learning resources as well as a marketing tool for colleges and universities to show a different web presence…participating in some of that YouTube love.

Another interesting wrinkle here is that it has not been made transparent by YouTube just how other interested universities might become involved in offering their own YouTube channels. The Chronicle recently reported that calls to the YouTube brass about gaining additional information about how to get involved in YouTubeU have gone unanswered. Club membership seems to be a bit restricted at this point, but why all the interest? Perhaps exclusivity is fueling the the desire to join…

Google, with its vast resources, really seems on the verge here of being able to open up Google University. And if McDonald’s can grant GEDs, it seems quite conceivable that a GU could offer some pretty compelling degree programs. It could provide its students with unlimited web-based access to some of the most amazing library collections in the world (Stanford, University of Michigan, Princeton, Oxford, Harvard, Cornell….etc.), a suite of web-based productivity and learning tools (Gmail, Calendar, Pages, Docs, blogs, Maps, Reader…and not to mention Search) and now an emerging collection of full video recordings of courses and lectures from some prestigious universities. Wow!

It is not difficult to imagine or envision a scenario where you could enroll for a Google Course. Courses could draw upon the vast collection of resources, pulling and re-assembling the best learning content to suit the needs of individual learners. The idea of having an intelligent tutor embedded in the web browser that is evaluating decisions, links, and responses to learning content…in real-time…and serving up a multimedia buffet of resources that seemed to be just in time to support that next cognitive step. In such an environment the learner could always remain in that zone of proximal development. Hmmm…a long shot? Maybe.

What might such an arrangement mean for traditional notions of courses? Degree programs? Institutions of higher education? For learning?

Would such an environment be desirable?

The questions about relevance and “does what I do really matter?” are perennial and shifting, especially when it comes to the notion of the role of the instructional technology[ist]. To be honest, I’m not even sure I can say what an instructional technologist is anymore, short of being a container that means lots of different things to lots of different people. But I don’t think that is the point of the conversation that is unfolding here…at least not for me.

I have been fascinated, as many folks have, over the last few years with the seemingly endless emergence of new web-based tools that permit new forms of social exchange, knowledge creation and sharing. It has been easy to share our excitement for the tools.

But, as others have echoed, its not the tools that really matter.

Over the past two years I have had the amazing good fortune to collaborate with a group of five colleagues in a faculty learning community (FLC) at the university where I work. The focus of the FLC has been to explore the ways technology might enhance teaching and learning. The early days of our work found us exploring several web 2.0 technologies - blogs, wikis, podcasting, screen recording, social bookmarking tools…you know the drill. Some of the faculty members attempted to integrate these into their courses and teaching practice. Interest would run high on the new tools from the popular buzz surrounding them, and I certainly felt excited because I had a group of faculty who seemed very interested in what I had to share. Excitement can be hard to sustain, and the glamour of shiny new tools wears off when you are not sure about learning impact, and if you are “doing the right thing.” As our first year wore on, I started to have doubts about the value of what we were all getting out of the FLC endeavor. They had learned about some new tools and experimented teaching with them. Perhaps there was greater support for risk taking through group membership, but I found myself asking questions about what had really changed?

Change is not always obvious, and it often happens in places we didn’t previously consider.

As facilitator of the group, I had hoped that the change would be in the committed adoption of these technologies, and that teaching and learning would begin to be transformed in the classrooms these faculty members taught in. I was wrong. I’m happy that I was.

I think what changed was that we began to respect each other more, to grow in a trusting collegial way that allowed us to feel a little less vulnerable about the uncertainty surrounding what we were trying to do - to be a little less isolated and a little more connected…and perhaps to be a little less fearful about not really knowing. This is the kind of dynamic that the environment of the academy might well benefit from having more of.

We are well into our second year of this FLC, and we haven’t spent any time learning about new tools. I think we have realized that it is not ultimately the focus. We have instead begun to tell our story about our learning and the change that is often slow and circling as we attempt to make sense of technology and practice.

The members of the FLC worked collaboratively to draft a paper describing the work of the FLC and our learning, and have submitted it for publication. In the Fall of 2007, we designed and conducted a survey study exploring student / faculty expectations for using technology, the first study of its kind ever conducted on our campus. Most recently, several members of the FLC attended and presented the early findings of our study at the 2008 ELI conference. Like many who attend this conference, we came away full of new ideas, and energized by the people who make ELI what it is. These activities have confirmed a sense of value for continuing our work in the FLC.

In a recent meeting of our group - post ELI - we excitedly discussed several opportunities for next steps. As a group, we are beginning to ask hard questions about the real impact of technology on learning. Individual FLC members want to examine their own practice as they attempt to use technology in their teaching. They are beginning to critique how technology is shaping their work in the academy. Arriving at the point where this line of inquiry becomes valued and important in the lives of faculty members takes time, patience, the development of trust, and endurance to get through the wondering if it is even worth it.

Engaging in collaborative and interdisciplinary scholarship about the impact of technology on teaching and learning has served as an impetus for our group to start a larger conversation – one that has been missing on our own campus – about learning and the role technology should play in it.

So does the technology really matter? I’m not convinced yet, but what we do together in search of an answer certainly does…

During a session presented by George Siemens and Cyprien Lomas, they offered some interesting perspectives on using web-based tools to assist with data visualization. One of the tools was, Many Eyes, which provides the opportunity for unique visualization of data. One of the options in ManyEyes is the generation of a tag cloud from large amounts of text. I had come across ManyEyes some time ago and thought it was pretty interesting, but at the time I just didn’t have a strong sense of what I might use it for. As happens all too frequently, I let it get buried under a host of other tasks and other ideas demanding my attention.

During the session George Siemens commented that he will occasionally – when he is bored – take the last several months of posts from his blog and dump them into ManyEyes to create a tag cloud. Someone in the audience immediately picked up on this and suggested that we take the last several years of the Horizon Report and generate tag clouds for the sake of comparison. This idea really seemed to resonate with people in the session, and the back channel communication being conducted on Twitter immediately began to light up with this idea.

Picking up on this idea after the conference, Chris Lott generated tag clouds of the most recent Horizon Report, as well as for past reports from 2004 – 2007, and posted them to his blog. Interesting stuff…

This practice of generating tag clouds for knowledge representation also appeared last week following President Bush’s most recent state of the Union address, one version of which can be found here. Both of these examples suggest an interest in using tag clouds as a form of sense making that is gaining in popularity.

This recent activity and buzz surrounding tag clouds has increased my interest in their use as a form of knowledge representation. Sometimes I find that when I look at tag clouds of data sets I get a flash of insight that leads to some realization, something that helps me analyze underlying meaning and sub-text. And sometimes I look at tag clouds and see…well….just clouds. Data haze. However, I am thinking increasingly that there is something a tag cloud reveals in a way not otherwise possible. In this way I think that the creation of tag clouds represent a replicable method for directing inquiry and attention when we are engaged in learning or problem solving…in other words a heuristic.

I am a huge of using technology tools in ways that help us to do things that would otherwise not be possible…or otherwise so time consuming and tedious as to discourage a particular practice. Many Eyes, for its ease of use in generating tag clouds from large amounts of text, permits a level of analysis that would otherwise not be possible. Taking hundreds of pages of text and representing the frequency of key words can be accomplished in mere seconds. There is also another web-based tool, a bit less sophisticated than Many Eyes, called TagCrowd that permits similar tag cloud generation using text, as well as just entering a URL for a website…so perhaps some interesting potential here as well. Ultimately, I think this kind of practice opens the door for us to ask some interesting questions and perhaps lead to inquiry that might otherwise remain unexamined.

So, I am continuing to think about practical ways this might be employed in educational contexts to support learning and inquiry. Building on the basic blog / report idea from George Siemens, I think the following practices would also be of interest:

• Tag clouds for individual and class sets of student papers / essays.
• Tag clouds for speeches and lectures.
• Tag clouds for analyzing the content of websites.
• Tag clouds of classic pieces of literature.
• Tag clouds generated from set of stories covering the same news event.

Just to name a few…

The other thing I wonder is, if we engage in these kinds of practices in the classroom, what are the kinds of questions we should be asking students to wrestle with? how do they interpret tag clouds? Are they of value in supporting learning? Inquiry?

In any event, I’m sure I’ll be doing my fair share of dumping data into Many Eyes and seeing what kinds of patterns and questions emerge. I remain excited to learn about other creative uses for the tag cloud that are bound to emerge, but one I’m thinking about is a web-based application that would create a tag cloud from selected podcasts (transcribed text content) where the tags are also links to the list of podcasts addressing that concept. Anybody know of something like that?