New Rules, One Post a Day

I’ve decided to try and write a meaningful post every week day during the month of August. From the comments on my post yesterday it sounds like it would be an interesting test. As people mentioned to me, the only way for it to work is to write things that go beyond the “mailing it in” posts … instead focusing on a particular theme and trying hard to make each post have some depth.

So, to get this kicked off the right way, I’ll add a few rules that I will attempt to stick to during the One Post a Day effort for the month of August … I am writing this mostly so I have some parameters to follow, but I am also interested in seeing if anyone else feels like trying to create with me for a month. It could be interesting to see what would happen if a bunch of us tried to follow some basic rules and publish meaningful content for a month. I would think if we could grab a few other people in this, the aggregated content could be really interesting. At any rate, here are my “new rules” for the One Post a Day project:

• I’ll post every week day during the month of August. I am giving myself the weekends to think about other things.
• Posts have to be meaningful to count. I’m not going to simply point at an external site and say “this is cool.” I’ll try to find things that could be of value to the community.
• Sticking to a theme seems like a good idea. From a few the comments it seems important to have a focus and I think I know what I want to focus on … I’ll work to expose interesting results from both our and national statistics that have emerged in the last year. I’ll draw upon data we’ve been collecting and attempt to add a layer of context to it that explains where we are going and why.
• Trying to create conversation will be a big part of the effort. I’d like to share stuff that gets people anxious, angry, excited, and interested in talking back.
• Having fun and writing are really what it is all about. If I’m not having fun, I’m done. That doesn’t mean I am dropping out if it gets hard, but it means that if I am having a good time exploring ideas then it is a waste of time.
• There are no invitations required to join in. If you want to write along with me, let’s come with a shared tag and I’ll aggregate stuff together on a public page shared via Google Reader. I you want to come along, establish your own theme, and torment yourself with me then leave a comment and share an idea for a shared tag.

That’s it. I hope I can follow my own guidelines and make this go.

A Thought? One Post a Day.

I am considering trying to write a post a day for the entire month of August. I would limit the rules to only having to post during week days, so weekends would be free time. I wonder if I can pull that off and if it would be meaningful? Given the lackluster posting schedule around here, I’m not sure I could make it happen. But, I may try. Here is what I have in mind … I’d take results from our own surveys related to the things we’ve been looking at with our faculty, staff, and students and share the discovery and try and add some thoughts to each post to clarify how it is effecting my/our thinking. What do you think? Worth it?

Finally, Arriving at the Blog is Not Just a Blog

I can’t believe it has been two years since we made the claim that the Blogs at Penn State could be so much more than a blog and should be viewed as a personal content management system. In that time, we’ve made huge progress related to the notion that our blogging environment can and should be used for all sorts of things — most recently we’ve been doing some important work as it relates to blogs as portfolios. Our Faculty Fellow, Carla Zembal-Saul, has been working with Brad Kozlek and others here in ETS to rethink how we frame the portfolio opportunity … what we are coming to is that the win in the portfolio space is associated with the social opportunities the blog platform affords. We’ve been doing our thinking in the open over at the ETS Wiki, so please take a look. We have several pilots taking advantage of this approach this fall, the coolest one being with the Schreyer Honors College … check out Dean Chris Brady’s post seeking volunteers. Some of the scholars’ comments are very encouraging.

At any rate, that is not what I am focusing on here … with the latest release candidate of Moveable Type 4.2, we’ve started testing out the new template set concept they’ve introduced. When we pitched the Blogs at Penn State project I made sweeping promises that we could use this one platform to easily support blogs, portfolios, note taking spaces, personal websites, course pages, and more. Well, with template sets that is coming true. I did a little screencast showing how easy it will be to create personal websites using the MT environment. This has far reaching potential. Take a look at the screencast below and let us know what kinds of templates would be compelling (or watch the QT version). BTW, sorry about the watermark on the screencast … I tried ScreenFlow and have yet to purchase it. A little tough to see, but you can get the idea. Another BTW, the wonderful music in the background was written, composed, and performed by Penn State’s Stephen Hopkins. The track is Ian Grove Blues and is available from Stephen’s Penn State Blog. Steve was an early guest on ETS Talk as well.

Some Interesting Stuff

Recently I was asked to share some “interesting statistics” about what is going on here at PSU and on a national level with the use of technology by young people. Here are some points I thought could resonate. I didn’t editorialize too much, but my basic thoughts are below. What strikes me is how this leads us to such obvious conclusions about where time, energy, and dollars should be applied within our environments.

I don’t cite all this stuff, but nearly all of it is from various PSU reports or the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Please fell free to comment on these.

• 40% of online teens watch TV on devices other than a TV. This is a real trend hitting our campus. I gave two guests lectures in freshman classes last week and all but a handful of them said that is what they do. This has big implications for the kinds of networks we provide and the amount of bandwidth we allocate.
• Nearly a third of all PSU students created a rich media piece last year. Half of them did it for a class which means faculty are beginning to accept digital media as evidence of learning. That means the other half did it just for fun. Looks like the move towards rethinking our lab spaces is a good move. The idea that we should put a Digital Commons at every campus may help grow and support this trend.
• Nationally approximately 80% of college students are in Facebook. This is growing as Facebook continues to open to younger and more diverse audiences. At PSU, last November, the number was at 83%.
• The most interesting statistics related to FB are that 60% log in daily, 80% update their profiles several times a month, and that 23% of our students spend more than 5 hours a week in social environments (FB and MySpace). This proves to me that they’ll spend lots of time online if given the right kids of spaces to participate in.
• According to Pew Internet and American Life Project nearly 50% of online teens are sharing content online. This isn’t file sharing, it is sharing pictures, text, and other forms of their media. 64% engage in at least one form of content creation. Girls dominate most elements of online content creation and sharing with 35% of teen girls blogging, and 54% sharing photos. Compared with 20% of boys blog and 40% share pictures. Boys are nearly twice as likely to share their videos online.
• Why is this the case? 89% of them report that people comment on them some of the time. Most of them use their social networks to control access — Facebook is the number one photo sharing site on the Internet.
• We know they use all sorts of modes to communicate, but they use modes differently with different groups of people. Text messages are used to connect with peers, while email is “for old people.”
• Digital video is explosive at the moment. It is empowering new types of conversations across the web. Visit youtube and notice not only the number of views on videos, but the number of comments and video responses. It is stunning.
• Internet users watched 10 billion videos online in December 2007.
• 73% of adults own cell phones, 63% of teens own them, and at PSU 93% of students own a cell phone.
• Nearly 90% of PSU students own MP3 players. iPod is the majority.

Presentation: 07/24/2008: TLT Talk

Yesterday I spent an hour sharing stories of how ETS is using social tools to create and engage our communities.  The talk was titled, "Engaging Communities" was relatively well attended and seemed to capture the attention of the audience.  The best stuff happened during the question and answer period at the end when we got into a real conversation about how we could be thinking more broadly about engaging our audiences.  People really seemed to want to discuss Twitter in particular — the initial reaction is always centered around, "this is the dumbest thing I have heard of."  We talked through how Twitter is connected to our primary website and how it has become our number one source of traffic at the ETS site.  I think that kind of stunned people.  The other thing that stood out was when I showed the ETS is ranked number 2 in search results for "education technology services" … right behind our friends at Berkeley … and in front of about 64 million other results.  All in all it was an enjoyable hour and am more than happy to share more thoughts from it.

Open Event Planning

I’ve noted the Learning Design Summer Camp that is happening on our campus August 12 and 13 a number of times before, but I wanted to share a few additional details that have been making me very proud of the work going on around PSU. You see this event is different than anything else we’ve planned before — different because we really aren’t so much planning it as we are guiding it. I pitched the LDSC idea as a way to replace our more traditional all campus instructional design meeting that has historically happened on an annual basis. My challenges were to expand the reach to a more inclusive community of learning designers, raise the level of the conversations we could have, create a fun and robust program, and let the community shape the event. It was that last challenge that excited and scared the hell out of us.

We’ve watched others do the unconference thing and have loved the results. None of had done it so we were reluctant to try until I got back from the Berkman at 10 event and felt new energy about how communities can rise up and participate. We had been getting good participation in the ETS Wiki and felt like we could count on at least a handful of people to help out. What has happened has surprised us all. My colleague, Allan Gyorke, added a page to the wiki on May 28th with a very light skeleton structure … a few Tweets later and the pages came to life. Within days a volunteer committee had formed and met. Within a few weeks enough ideas for sessions had been proposed and discussed that we didn’t need to be concerned. A couple week later, someone from the University Libraries offered their gorgeous space for us to hold the event. Within two months an amazingly robust event had been planned. All of it without having an assigned committee or agenda. All we had was a vision, an outline, and a wiki.

Learning Design Summer Camp Wiki

If you have the time, or the interest, jump over to the LDSC wiki page and see for yourself. This event is shaping up to be outstanding. The stories and conversations that can potentially go on are both exciting and encouraging on all sorts of levels. Explore how the community has created a series of stickers that represent areas of interests or icons of themselves, take a look at how the logo for the event evolved, check out the sessions proposed by the community, and look at how many people from all over PSU decided to spend two days with us. So maybe the community can be the committee!

Blogging from my iPhone

When the iPhone 2 software was revealed during one of Steve’s keynote addresses the thing I wanted the most was SixApart’s mobile blogging tool, but for WordPress. Well today I got it! The iPhone WordPress app is now available … this post is being banged out on my iphone and I have to say it works very well. Lots of potential here. I was able to easily set up the connection to my personal blog, create a new post with the picture to the left, and then edit that (or any other) post. Very cool.

Perhaps next up is a client to publish to the blogs at Penn State environment?

My Simple iPhone App Wish

I’ve been very happy with my iPhone since I got it last year … I like it so much I haven’t yet felt compelled to pony up for the new one. With the 2.0 software update I am thrilled with how easily I can extend the functionality of the device — and the “fake” GPS works fine for me at the moment. I am betting there will be a killer app for the real GPS integration that will get me thinking, but for now the location based hooks in software are good enough for me.

There is one thing I want though … I would really like an app that made it easy to acquire content from the iTunes Store that is in the iTunes U area. I know how it all works behind the scenes (for the most part) so I know it isn’t a simple task, but having the ability to integrate SMS notifications to students that new content is available in their iTunes U course spaces would really kick ass. I fully get the challenges with authentication, storing credentials, and the like but having an app that would at least let me point students directly to (even a public) course in iTunes U would be outstanding. I could easily write a half dozen case studies where this could be put to amazing use — and I am betting it would drive adoption of both the new 3G powered network device and the wifi enabled iPod Touch on campuses.

Real content on the go would be great. Total integration across the iTunes/iPod/iPhone eco-system would be an ideal situation for us all. Thoughts?