I just finished reading Curtis J. Bonk’s new book, The World is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you that Wiley, the publisher, emailed me after I reviewed Dan Willingham’s book in a previous post and asked if they could send me Bonk’s book for possible review (with no strings attached).

I said yes and the next week received a copy of this book at no charge.

With that said, this book has resonated with me and I found Bonk’s approach interesting.

In many ways, Bonk is as much a fan boy of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat as I am.  Just as Friedman had ten flatterners, Bonk has ten openers:

Ten Openers: (WE-ALL-LEARN)

1. Web Searching in the World of e-Books
2. E-Learning and Blended Learning
3. Availability of Open Source and Free Software
4. Leveraged Resources and OpenCourseWare
5. Learning Object Repositories and Portals
6. Learner Participation in Open Information Communities
7. Electronic Collaboration
8. Alternate Reality Learning
9. Real-Time Mobility and Portability
10. Networks of Personalized Learning

WE-ALL-LEARN provides a framework for his book and the premise that anyone can now learn anything from anyone at anytime.  Bonk  spun out chapters on each opener, illustrating each concept with stories, a bit of research and statistics, and implications for education in the future.  Working in the field, I recognized some of the people he named, but I also learned new pioneers.  Bonk continually reinforces that these openers ought to be changing education as we know it, as our world is quite different from our parent’s world.

In Bonk’s view, these openers need to viewed through three overarching trends.  First, the pipes are getting bigger allowing access to tools and infrastructure.  Second, more and more pages of content is becoming available as free and open content. Third, a participatory learning culture is evolving around social media.

One of the things I found fascinating was my own reaction to the book.  I buy the basic theme that openness ultimately improves education, and I consider myself someone who is part of a participatory learning culture.  I was pleased that Bonk provided a companion website with hyperlinked references and other resources.  But my first inclination was to begin following Curt Bonk’s Twitter account…and I could not find one for him!  Other than his blog, I did not see Bonk participating to the same degree that he discusses in his book.  I have never met him and may be way off target, but I was somewhat surprised that I could not immediately connect with him the way I did with some of the people he mentioned in his book like Stephen Downes, Vicki Davis, Clay Shirky or Dave Weinberger.

So I was thrilled with the content and miffed a bit by the author!  Weird reaction!

I also found that increasingly with books like this one, I read it with a laptop nearby, so that I can quickly go look at something new and immediately start the learning process for myself.  I had never seen Dancing Matt before, so really enjoyed viewing his Youtube video while reading that section of the book.  This bouncing between the web and the written word is a new but interesting process…and it suggests that in many ways, this should have been an e-book as opposed to a print book.

His final opener has to do with personalized learning…something we reflect on often in faculty development.  Bonk stated that we should be striving to move from where we see personalized learning as the ideal to a culture where personalized learning is the accepted norm.  With the pipes, pages, and participatory culture, anyone can establish their own learning path on any topic, whether it be improved teaching, learning a new language, or finally programming the VCR (…just kidding).  The implications for faculty development are huge!

Bonk has fifteen predictions at the end.  I will leave it to you to check them out, but I liked that he is questioning the status quo.  With the availability of all the world’s knowledge in our pockets/cellphones, the typical four-year college process no longer makes sense to Bonk.  He suggests that formalized education will expand rather than contract.  But informal learning with global partners will play an equal role to the formalized higher education model.  Learning will be authentic from passionate teachers…but those “teachers” may no longer be credentialed.  Bonk also served up a dozen issues that will have to be solved for openness to succeed.

I work with faculty daily on best ways to incorporate the internet into their teaching practices.  In the past three years since I came to VCU, the access to learning on the web has exploded.  Bonk’s book is pushing me to reconceptualize how I should facilitate faculty development in an open world.  I recommend the book to you and would be interesting in your thoughts on the evolution/revolution of faculty development in these exciting times!

Yesterday was the final day of Blackboard World 2009.  It was an enjoyable conference.  I met some interesting colleagues who are all grappling with best ways to teach online.  It was great seeing old friends from Georgia Virtual Technical College.  Twitter as a backchannel was going strong, and I added quite a few new contacts in Twitter.  The hashtag #bbworld09 allowed us to attend a session but keep up with several other sessions simultaneously.  Yet, as compelling as the digital links were, I think I enjoyed most the quiet retrospective back in the hotel room with my colleague Bud Deihl about what the two of us were experiencing.

Thursday was only a half day.  I started the day the way I start every day – up before the sun, coffee, and a review of emails, tweets, Google Reader, and Facebook.

Before the closing keynote, I attended two sessions.  Kathy Keairns of University of Denver discussed leveraging Web 2.0 tools for teaching, research, and fun.  I liked that she provide her wiki handout link.  She focused on four tools:

• Jing

- A great screencast tool that I frequently use
- Free but limited to 5 minute videos

• Picnik

- Free online image editing tool
- Works in the cloud, no downloads
- Good for quick resizing, cropping, and neat effects like Polaroid view

• dVolver

- Cute and quick animated video program’
- Text based cartoon – no audio (other than canned music)

• Gabbly

- Chat Box on the fly
- Just add ‘gabbly.com/‘ in front of any URL

After her session, I attended an interesting session by two gentlemen from England.  Mark Kerrigan and Mark Clements discussed using Web 2.0 as an assessment process to improve institution retention and learning.  They noted that students come to college to get a degree, but the reality they find is that they are enrolled in 24 siloed courses.  At University of Westminster, they have integrated a process where by every student is assigned a “tutor” – what we would call an academic advisor.  After every major learning event in each course, the students are automatically sent a questionnaire/ survey, with the results forwarded to their advisor.  The students are also encouraged to blog about their learning journey after each learning event.  The advisors use the survey results and the blog reflections to help the students see the relevance of their course work and the interconnections with their chosen degree.

U of Westminster is much smaller than VCU, yet I could see parallels between their effort and our Focused Inquiry program for first year students.  Their use of social media could enhance our process in which our students are together with each other and the same faculty member for both FI One and Two.  Food for thought!

The closing keynote was Lester Holt of NBC News.  He gave a very engaging presentation on the parallels between how journalism has been evolving and how education has been evolving. One comment I liked is that both good journalists and good teachers are in the business of informing and provoking deeper understanding.  He said that Brian Williams reminded them all the time that they were writing the first draft of history.

He focused on the timeshift that was occurring, where the new generation of students expect and demand both their news and their learning on demand 24/7.  NBC is partnering with Blackboard to provide its archived news material for online learning (details and costs about NBC Learn to be provided later).  Lester noted that he was not a super student, preferring hands-on to book learning.  He suggested that he might have had better grades if he had had the online opportunities today’s students have!

His keynote was upbeat and a nice way to end three days of learning at Blackboard World 2009.

{Photo Credits: Sheila Chandler, Glenn Harris}

Forty years ago when I was a plebe at the U. S. Naval Academy, I learned quickly that naval officers never said “I don’t know.”  The correct response if you did not know the answer was “I’ll Find Out, Sir!”  And then you had better find out!  It is a little thing, and yet, from an attitude perspective, huge.  “I don’t know” is a passive response requiring no action.  “I’ll find out” is a proactive response requiring action.

As I said goodnight to Michele, I was reflecting on her comment about my not saying “I don’t know.”  That is a personal attitude, but could it not also be transferred to our students? After all, it is simply an expectation that students will take responsibility for their own learning.

We have been debating the efficacy of allowing laptops in classrooms here on campus.  At the risk of calling them old-schoolers, there is a segment here that flatly bans the use of laptops or mobile devices in their classes.  To me, that is inviting a passive student to your class.  Luckily there are faculty here who feel the opposite.

The alternative as these other faculty have found is to tap in to the natural curiosity of students and set the expectation of “I’ll Find Out!”  At a brown bag lunch last week, one faculty talked about the excitement of having students in his History class fact-check him during lectures and pull their impromptu research into the class discussion.  I totally agree, and I think the attitude applies whether you are talking face-to-face or online classes.

In my online classes at both the undergraduate and graduate level, I have tried to set the expectation of student-generated content to add to the learning process.  My current class is a good example.  I have enjoyed co-teaching Educational Technology and School Leadership this semester with Jon Becker.  Over the past twelve weeks, we and our students have collaboratively explored the integration of Web 2.0 in K-12 programs.  At the start of class, we had a group of self-described technophobes who were very worried about taking an online class.  Through the use of active learning and collaboration in a wiki, they have grown comfortable working and sharing online.  Now, they wonder why their colleagues are not doing the same.  During the past week, the online discussion was rich with commentary about the professional development of K-12 teachers.  It was interesting to see my students moving from a former expectation that it was the administrator’s job to provide professional development to one that espoused personal learning in a networked world as the key to professional development.

“I’ll Find Out!” may be the heart and soul of learning-centered teaching, but I am coming to the realization that it also is the heart and soul of faculty development as well.  Of course, it requires action on the part of each individual.  A personal learning environment or network does not materialize overnight.  It requires time and conscious thought to develop a learning network that works for you.

Trying to figure out how to facilitate that process will tug at me for the next few weeks.  In June, Jeff Nugent, Bud Deihl and I will be guiding our annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Institute.  Our theme this year is Teaching and Learning in a Networked World.  Our challenge will be to introduce faculty to the power of networked learning and to assist them in developing their own networks.  I have had the luxury of a full semester with my class, so this is a tall task to attempt in one week.  It will be interesting to see how we do.  Will we succeed?

I’ll find out.

{Photo Credit: Ezalis, Chrisfreeland2002}

I probably read too much into this, but it suggests that people are not interested in the conversation about “why” one should or should not blog, they just want to know “how” to do it. And one reason I read too much in to it is that whether we are talking 4 or 12, few faculty in general even consider blogging as part of their professional life.

The issue may not even be blogging per se, but rather “workshops” as a verb.  Few faculty in general see a need to change how they do what they do.  While workshops remain a necessity to efficiently provide training, those who read this probably have shifted much of their professional development to the social media landscape (as I have).  But the majority of faculty do not use social media for their PLE, and if they see no need to change, they probably view workshops as something they do not need.

This was on my mind when I opened the April edition of Tom Peters Times newsletter, which arrived today in my email and contained several interesting articles on customer experience.  It linked to the following video of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant rapping his mandatory pre-flight  safety announcement.

You have to admit that this person delivered his message in a new and compelling way!

I am not suggesting that I begin singing my workshops…that would definitely drive down participation.  But I do think we in faculty development need to [re]examine our approaches in light of social media.   Taking a cue from the marketing types, networks like Twitter, Yammer, and Facebook could all be used to announce and draw in participants.  But more importantly, I need to look at the total delivery.  Would a “conversation” about blogging with faculty here be enhanced if bloggers from around the world joined the conversation by live streaming?  Why do I look at workshop format as locked in stone?  As the flight attendant noted, maybe I need to shake things up a bit!

And if the “customer experience” was enhanced, would word of mouth spread that news around campus, growing demand?

Be interested in your thoughts.

{Stone Carving from Flaming Text}

Had a great first day at the League for Innovation’s 2009 conference.  While I work at a wonderful four-year research university, my doctoral dissertation and first ten years in higher education revolved around two-year colleges.  So it was refreshing to once again rub elbows with the dedicated faculty and administrators who handle a significant segment of higher education.

Sixteen faculty attended my morning workshop on engaging students through free web tools, which I blogged about yesterday.  It was a fast three hours that I thoroughly enjoyed.  This group was simultaneously blown away and energized by both the opportunities for learning afforded by these tools, and by the enthusiasm evident as they brainstormed uses for these tools.  In a short three hours, I touched on:

• Pandora
• Delicious
• Wayfarer
• Wordle
• Google Reader
• Netvibes
• Blogs
• Slideshare
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Yammer
• Facebook
• Google Docs
• WetPaint
• Wikispaces
• Garage Band
• Audacity
• Jing
• Jott
• Zoho Polls
• PollDaddy

Whew!  Seems like a lot of tools, but what we focused on was the practices these tools offered.  What was gratifying was the comments by several at the end of the day on how helpful this session was to them personally.  Making a difference one faculty at a time!

After a breather, I attended two forums in the afternoon as well as the opening keynote.

Thelma Bushong and Elaine Karls of Delta College (home of my old mentor Jim Steele) did a presentation called “Everyone Grows: Organizational and Professional Development for All Employees.”  There premise (and one I agree with) is that it takes engaged faculty and an engaged support staff to develop engaged students.  A key question that they asked is how does a college invest in significant learning experiences that result in engagement, empowerment, and leadership development for faculty?  Part of their answer is to open leadership and learning opportunities to staff as well as faculty.  They have taken the concept of faculty learning communities and expanded it outside faculty to a holistic approach to college leadership and empowerment.

The second session I attended was by Michael Coste, Angelica McMillan and Brandon Berman from Front Range Community College entitled “Personalize Your Class with YouTube.”  This was an engaging and exciting session focused on, as they stated, getting the human that is in each of us into classes.  They demonstrated how, with the use of inexpensive Flip cameras and free software, they developed some rather sophisticated YouTube videos for:

• Introductions to Classes (Get to know the professor)
• Checking in (quick updates on general status of how class is going)
• Lesson Reviews
• Mini-lessons
• Group critiques (students commenting on each others YouTube presentations)
• Speeches ( faculty commenting on public speaking by students via YouTube)

A good example of one of their videos is here.

The keynote speaker to open Innovations 2009 was Gail Mellow, President of LaGuardia Community College in NYC.  She is co-author of the 2008 book Minding the Dream: The Process and Practice of the American Community College. She gave a dynamite speech to the 1500 attendees at this conference.  She detailed the different standards American higher education places on two year colleges, noting that there were real differences between institutions that screen out and select their students versus institutions that welcome in students.  While noting that community colleges enroll roughly half of the higher ed population, they only receive about twenty percent of the funding.   The students are typically much further behind four-year students in terms of entering SAT scores.  Two-year and four-year institutions are typically assessed based on IPEDS data, yet that data is only collected for first-year full time students, which make up only 14% of community college students.  Yet, given the inequities in funding and assessment, community colleges are surprisingly successful at impacting the percentage of higher education students who complete a four-year degree.  She illustrated that if four-year institutions factored out their feeder institutions and reverse-transfer students, many four-year institions would be in trouble.  She saw community colleges as integral partners in President Obama’s call that all Americans complete some course work above high school as a means of rebuilding our economy.  It was an empassioned keynote that seemed to energize the crowd.

Looking forward to Day Two tomorrow!

After two 3+ hour flights and one flight delay, I have crossed the country to attend Innovations 2009 in Reno NV.  Innovations is an annual conference of the League for Innovation in Community Colleges, and this is my fifth or sixth.  While I am no longer associated with two-year colleges, I still stay in touch through both the League and the Chair Academy.

About two months ago, Barry Dahl asked if I could step in and take over a pre-conference workshop called “Engaging Students with Free Web Tools” that he had originally submitted.  It seemed the missus had obtained some surprise cruise ship tickets without checking dates with her husband.  I was only too glad to do so, and have enjoyed putting together the workshop with my own spin on it.

Barry had previously done a similar workshop and used his blog to post his resources.  I liked the idea, but I wanted to model the practice of open collaboration.  So I went with a Wet Paint wiki for my resources.  I am opening it up to anyone to join and improve.

I will be spending three hours with this group…and on the off-chance that the hotel internet is snarky, I created a lot of powerpoint slides to back up my presentation.  I am posting parts one and two below.  I am trying to be true to Presentation Zen…but I have a long way to go!

Looking forward to tomorrow and the conference!  If the wiki is useful to you and your personal learning network, feel free to use it or share it.  It is under Creative Commons Sharealike licensing.

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Research one of the Top 100 Tools from Jane Hart’s list and present your findings in a short multimedia tutorial presentation to the rest of your classmates.

26 students – 26 tools

In two weeks.

With no further guidance.

Two weeks ago, you might as well said:  Take this goat and cross this rickety bridge.  (Love this image!)

As one might imagine, during the past two weeks, these students stressed out over just how to do their projects.  One noted that she was ready to toss her computer through her window!  I suspect that several of them would have preferred carrying a goat over doing a web presentation!  At the start of the journey, very few of these students had any experience in web applications.

This weekend, 26 presentations had been uploaded into our class wiki.

Our students reviewed each others presentations and commented in our class discussion forums about what they learned themselves and what they learned from each other.  Many of the comments discussed their stresses in trying to figure out how to present online and how amazed they were that they overcame them and completed their projects on time.

My team mate Jeff Nugent passed me a relevant article this past weekend from Barbara McCombs and Donna Vakili, entitled “A Learning-Centered Framework for E-Learning.”  It noted that content has become so abundant as to make it a poor foundation on which to base an education system.  Rather, context and meaning are the important commodities today.  My students may have started their journey assuming that the tool they were studying was the critical element, but they ended realizing that it was the journey that was important.  One student noted:

“After reading these posts, it seems that we all agreed that using our tool was not the hard part of this assignment.  Perhaps Britt and John knew that when making this assignment…”

I collected their reflections and dumped them into Wordle to see what emerged:

A few things jumped out at me.

USE – Most felt that they would use these tools (and several presented by their classmates) in their teaching.

JING – Jing became the default method for presenting their respective tools to each other.  It was not the only method, however.  We also had some Camtasia screencasts, some YouTube videos, an iMovie clip, and one engaging seaturtle with Blabberize.

STUDENTS and LEARNING – while each of these graduate students approached their specific tool in unique ways, they all focused in on the educational implications of web applications.  Many stated this was eye-opening for them.

And finally, TIME – they recognized the time investments one must make to gain proficiency with these tools.

I found one student’s comment particularly revealing:

“I had been dreading the actual tutorial because the technology scared me to death!  Once I played around with Jing, and saw how easy it was, it wasn’t so bad after all.  I learned that I definitely have some fears when it comes to technology!  It made me wonder why I have them.  My students definitely don’t.  My 11 year old doesn’t.  They just dive in and play with it until they know it.  I wondered when I lost that in myself…”

Another lesson that several reflected on was how this project reflected the social nature of web learning. In keeping with the theme from this year’s EduCon, Jon and I had reinforced  the notion that all learning can and should be networked learning, and that they should therefore support one another as they developed their presentations.  They found this support one of the most valuable aspects of the project.

The McCombs/Vakili article noted that research “underlying the learner-centered principles confirms that learning is nonlinear, recursive, continuous, complex, relational, and natural in humans” (p. 1586).  The lessons learned by these students backs this up – messy at the time but rewarding when accomplished.

Four weeks ago, I told these students that they would freak out doing their projects, but that they would persevere and all complete their projects…and be amazed and proud of themselves.  This weekend, they saw that I was right.

26 different destinations, but one journey – and it was fun to go along for the ride!

{Photo Credit: Jungle Boy}

I had the good fortune last Tuesday to participate in a podcast with Kathyrn Murphy-Judy, professor of French in the School of World Studies here at VCU.  Facilitated by Jeff Nugent and joined by Bud Deihl, we spent nearly an hour discussing the uses of social media in our classes.  As Jeff set the stage, he noted that as faculty continue to explore ways to take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by the participatory web, they face new challenges about how to assess student learning in a context that values collaboration and shared knowledge building.  After all, we want students to collaborate and build knowledge together, but at the end of the day or course, each student must be assigned a grade.

As always, I learned a lot listening to Kathyrn and bouncing ideas off my two colleagues here in the Center for Teaching Excellence.  Have a listen – I would be interested in your thoughts and feedback!

{Photo Credit: JustABigGeek}

I used these slides to guide the conversation:

My framing questions revolved around (1) “What is a community?”, (2) “Does building community enhance student learning?’, and (3) “What web tools can now be used to build connections and community?”.  I used three vignettes to illustrate my thoughts on social media and connections.  First, my many connections with Gabriela Grosseck through College 2.0, delicious, Google Reader, our blogs, Slideshare, and Facebook, all of which have informed my own teaching and learning.  Second, the viral reach of Slideshare for one of my presentations from last year.  And finally, a Twitter shoutout by Will Richardson earlier this week and the resultant comments tweeted by others.  These all illustrated connections, but I asked the participants to reflect on how one gets from connections to community (and the image below evolved out of a sketch Jeff made on the back of a notepad):

One participant said that social media to her was like visiting the SPCA.  She could not go in and choose one dog.  All dogs were lovable, all dogs needed to be adopted, and she would leave crying and unfulfilled.  When I suggested that maybe she needed to just rent a dog this week and a different dog next week, she said, that would be like timesharing dogs – an unworkable solution!

The conversation that resulted was rich and nuanced.  It flowed from professional versus personal digital identities, issues of privacy, student misunderstandings on their own digital identity, and time management regarding the tools.  Jeff made an excellent point of differentiating users of social media between broadcasters and instructional.  Broadcasters have to be present in multiple applications and visibly engaged in multiple applications.  Instructional uses suggest more nuanced approaches with clear boundaries.  Bud Deihl illustrated how “conversations” could start in one application and spill over into other applications, such as his networking with his fellow graduate students through LinkedIn.

There was some concern about how we as educators advise our younger students when we are just trying to figure out the – as Michael Wesch calls it – mediascape ourselves.  Conversations like we had today are one way – and commenting via blogs is another.  I would be interested in the thoughts of my readers on how you visualize using the Read/Write web to build connections and community, both professionally for yourself and instructionally for your students.

Of course, one benefit from today’s session was that I did pick up several new “friends” in Facebook! 

ps – One unrelated and yet relevant event today.  I posted the above powerpoint in Slideshare last night so that I could embed it in our wiki and here in this blog.  Overnight, I got an email from Slideshare noting that the editorial team had selected it to be showcased on their Education page.  I also got tweeted by Gabriela saying that she had seen it there,  Another example of connections and community.

When I first arrived from Mexico to teach here, it was very noticeable for me to see that students here are more used to that kind of fast, graphic and entertaining way of displaying information or teaching and it took me some time to adapt to those “new students’ needs”. Here I have been in the process of becoming a digital resident.

I think that in developing countries, this change is happening but at a much slower pace because of the differences in access to the internet, just by looking at your ‘ClustrMap’ (in your Blog) and the red dots representing the access numbers from different countries, I could realize the way many countries are so far behind in terms of Web 2.0 tools usage.

I have been looking at the ClustrMap and seeing the connections spanning the continents.  He looked at the same map and saw the missing opportunities being illustrated by the sparseness of some of the dots.

This is one of the reasons I enjoy working with international faculty.  They help ground me in some fundamental truths.  Friedman, Shirky, and Weinberger have all pointed to the democratization afforded by the web.  All true, but evolving slowly and not there yet.