Presentation: 04/30/2008: Annual One to One Computing Conference

Last year I was a featured keynote at the Annual One to One conference here at Penn State.  This year I've been asked back to lead a conversation about web 2.0 and some of the fears surrounding it in our schools.  I hope I can make the case!  Description they gave me follows:
Critical Conversations: Web 2.0, Hype or Hidden Opportunity? What school leaders should know about social networking, Conversation Thought Leader: Cole Camplese, Information Technology Manager, The Pennsylvania State University, Moderated by Anytime, Anywhere Learning Foundation
In light of the constant stream of media reports around the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of web 2.0, and associated social networking technologies, it is critical that all school leaders fully understand the relevance or otherwise of them. So much is now impacting on the lives of students, and as leaders we must be well informed about their potential to support or intrude on learning. Too much is written by inexperienced or overtly biased journalists, and if we are to ensure relevance, we must keep an open mind to these new ideas until proven otherwise.

04/21/2008: Presentation: Web 2.0 at PSU

On Monday I presented to the members of the Penn State Online committee a short talk focused at Web 2.0 and how we are addressing needs at Penn State.  Slides are attached as a PDF.

PSU Tweet Meet

I didn’t take any pictures, but I am guessing some of the new faces emerging on the campus Twitter scene did to document the first PSU Tweet Meet. Funny, I tried to pull the trigger on something like this last year, but it never happened … no matter. I have to say I am constantly amazed at how my digital connections continue to materialize into real live people — right before my eyes. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Twitter has afforded new opportunities to engage the local community like nothing I have been involved with. My colleague, Stevie Rocco, said it best when she described how Twitter is so much more effective for her in her local space — it has shaped new relationships right here on our campus and for that I am thankful.

So, I want to offer I heart felt thank you to all who attended and want to apologize for being in a sub-colecamplese mood … crazy day and without a doubt the Tweet Meet was a very bright spot! It was a pleasure meeting new people and reconnecting with others.

A Day Lost

Not in any real sense, just reacting to the fact that my host, StartLogic, had me down for a full day. I spent the better part of an hour with them on their support line to find out that there was, “an issue with my server.” Great insight. They assured me that I would be back up very shortly and that my “datas” were safe. Well let’s just say that they were telling half truths. Clearly something big melted down as I was offline for a full day and when I did come back my post from last night was gone. I was able to grab the post from the RSS feed, but the downtime is what bothers me. Even when you think you are working to control your own online identity all sorts of stuff happens. At any rate, it is good to be back.

Community as Committee

In higher education we use the committee model to get most things done. If you are planning a conference the first thing you do is get a committee or two together. If you are creating new policy, strategic direction, or just about anything else that requires a decision we assemble a group of people and ask them to build the recommendations. Committees are typically a good way to come to consensus around very complex issues. With that said, I feel like I have arrived at a new place with my thinking around planning — it may be time to take the next step and ask the community to be the committee.

I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately and I am having trouble figuring out why we wouldn’t want to ask the community to really interact with us as we make plans for new projects, initiatives, or approaches. I’m not coming up with anything that is an insurmountable negative and I am certainly not going to align myself with the attitude that talking openly about some of our direction is a bad thing. I know some people will get nervous about the idea of asking anyone in the PSU community to contribute ideas for what we are working on, but at the end of the day as long as we all recognize we can’t implement all the ideas we’ll be fine. So there in lies my first two questions … what are the real downsides to this approach and can it work to create stronger outcomes?

To this end, the one thing we’ve done recently is to start placing more of our planning documents in a quasi-open wiki. Quasi-open because it is limited to those who are part of the PSU community — both people with full access and to those with the Friends of Penn State account. We’ve started a wiki article on the Blogs at Penn State and will be asking the community to come in and help us think big about what we can and should do with it on our campus. Will people show up? Only time will tell … how will we manage the page editing if they do show up? Only time will tell. But if we are to address the needs of over 100,000 potential users it may be time to ask some of them what they think. So, consider yourself invited to be a part of the committee.

What to Write About? Flickr Video?

It has been a week since I’ve written and I am still struggling with what to share … I find myself in a bit of a post Symposium holding pattern with things. I can’t seem to pull it together. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that here at PSU we are in SRDP time. The SRDP is the staff review and development plan that is done with all staff every year. So I have been spending tons of time reviewing people’s plans and trying to be very thoughtful in sharing feedback and providing organizational direction for my direct reports. Let me just say that while it is a critical task, it is both time consuming and takes most of my mental energy to complete.

I do want to mention how interested I am in the Flickr Video announcement from the other day. I am very interested in it because of its limitations to tell you the truth — I am very curious if the 90 second time limit will push people to be more thoughtful with their video posts … much like Twitter pushes us to express our feelings in 140 characters bursts, will the 90 second limit unlock a whole new way to think about video expression? I did a quick video yesterday and things seemed to work very well — other than me on video. I really want to ask my students about it later today and class and get their sense, but I am thinking there are some really interesting things that we can dream up to get people to think hard about how to share a fully baked concept in 90 seconds or less.

Speaking of class, I am still having a blast with it and have been really happy with how things are progressing. I am going to really miss teaching over the summer and may not have a chance to get back in the classroom for quite some time. This has been a very good experience and I have learned a ton about so many things.

This blog is now running WP 2.5 which is a good thing … took a little time to get everything back up and running after the update, but it has been worth it. That’s it.

TLT Symposium 2008 Recap

OK, so its been nearly a week since our own TLT Symposium took place here at Penn State. It has honestly taken me this long to sort of let the dust settle and for me to put what I took part in into perspective. I could probably write a couple of sentences and be done with my reflection, but I know the feelings I have for the events of last Friday and Saturday are fleeting and not capturing them at length would be a long-term mistake for my own historical reference.

I’ll start by saying the simple first — it was an overwhelming success that only happens when lots of dedicated people come together to show and share their passion. The planning teams thought of nearly everything … as a matter of fact I really can’t point to anything and say, “that could’ve been done this way or that way.” I just can’t. That doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking about how to do just that — you know, make it better. It just means that this year’s event was perfect for this moment in time. I knew it was going to be special when a late night Twitter stream pushed a group of us to create all sorts of stuff built around our people tagging stickers … something strange was happening and it felt really powerful.

What jumped out at me? Let’s see … our keynote speaker, Lawrence Lessig, was amazing. I was one of the lucky ones who got to spend quite a bit of time with him. On Friday alone I had the opportunity to have lunch with him, attended private sessions that we had planned between he and other Colleges here at PSU, and had a wonderful dinner with him that evening. All of it happening on my 36th birthday was an interesting twist — I can only think of one other way to spend a birthday and that is with my family. Friday was an intellectually challenging days on lots of fronts. As an example, working to engage Professor Lessig in authentic dialogue was a complex task — he is a very introspective and quietly intense individual who really takes his time in sharing his thoughts. I don’t want to make too much of it, but he is a model as it relates to really working to understand the dialogue before contributing to it. I guess my point is, if you didn’t challenge him he had little say. When he was asked intelligent questions his answers were of the prose his presentations are made of. It was a pleasure having time with him and as the day wore on he settled into a great rhythm and had plenty to share … one of my favorite quotes of his while speaking to some colleagues from PSU Public Broadcasting was, “Public Broadcasting should pay more attention to the public and less to broadcasting.” That was not an insult, it was a sentiment that everyone in the room wanted to rally behind.

On Saturday Professor Lessig was introduced by our President (who stayed for his entire talk) — BTW, having President Spanier do an introduction would have been unheard of for our modest conference a couple of years ago but there he was sharing insights and generating laughs as he made his remarks. Lessig’s talk was nothing short of breathtaking … all I can say is watch it for yourself and listen to how he crafts a message that tells a story that is so complex but yet shares it in the simplest of terms. It was brilliant and it left all of the 325 or so of us assembled in a state of awe, shock, amazement, and I have to admit, empowered. Where do you go from that? Well, you move into faculty sessions that were fantastic. The thing I noticed about the faculty presentations this year was that they were a heck of a lot more like extended conversations than presentations. No one sent an email to presenters and directed them to think about how to engage the audience — they just all did. Each session I went to is worthy of its own blog post, but that has already happened over at the Symposium site.

The other thing I have to mention here is something that can be observed, but not measured — the emergence of a community. I’ve been saying for quite some time that about a year ago I started to notice that there was a connected learning design community ready to just explode here on our campus … it has been building over Twitter for quite some time, but Saturday it emerged in full force — faculty, staff, and students all engaging in real face to face conversations that were meaningful. Many of these relationships were ones that had started in Twitter, through blogs, or over podcasts. I can’t tell you how many times I heard or said, “it is so nice to finally put a face to your (user)name!” I don’t know how to share how I am feeling about being a part of this community, but it is a great place to be. If you want to see just a little evidence of it all check out the hashtag space, the Flickr photos, or listen to the “man on the street podcasts” … not sure if that even gets at it, but it is a shot.

Sorry for the long post … maybe a couple sentences would have been more appropriate, but this is the best I can do at articulating the feeling I have walking away from the 2008 TLT Symposium. I want to personally thank everyone who contributed to its success and to let everyone know that this year our thinking will be even more wide open with more opportunities available for everyone to contribute. I don’t want to overuse something I just said to the new Symposium project manager, but maybe the “community is the committee” for the next event. Keep watching and keep contributing. Thank you!