Month: January 2009

On Being an Uncle

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Early this morning, after nearly 20 hours of labor, my little sister had her first child. They named her Mia and she is absolutely beautiful. I am already an uncle many times over to children from my wife’s side of the family and I love them all with all of my heart — each of them are so different but are so similar. They are children and they carry with them a wonderful perspective and view on life … I am blessed.

For some reason it has been a little different with my own little sister. Seeing her last night working to get Mia into the world safely made me so proud of her. Then today seeing Mia and Kitt together was a wonderful sight. Amazing how perfect she seems when holding her … I remember when we were kids how she would take such good care of all her dolls and act like a little Mommy. Now here she is all these years later a real Mother, but still my same little sister yet transformed in an amazing way. Like I said, I am blessed.

Welcome to the World little Mia!

25 Years of the Mac

/ Cole Camplese / 9 Comments

happymaciconIt is hard to believe for me, but I’ve been a Mac user since 1984. Yesterday the Mac turned 25 … that means I’ve been a Mac user for the same amount of time. I was lucky enough to get a Mac 128K for my birthday back in March of 1984. I recall that earlier that year I had gone to the local Apple dealer, like I was prone to do, and saw the Mac for the first time. I was simply amazed by the graphics, WYSIWYG capabilities, the finder, desktop, trash, and especially the mouse. I recall on that particular day I had talked my Dad into letting me run in for a few minutes while he waited in the car. I came out so excited by what I had seen … I made him take me back over and over after that. Of course I wanted one, but never thought my parents would actually purchase one. Even though they were both University professors, they didn’t seem to get the whole thing.

I remember that they were going to take me out to dinner for my Birthday and before we went out they called me downstairs to open gifts. There were two big boxes and I honestly had no idea what could be inside them. When I ripped them open I found the original Mac and an Imagewriter I. I was stunned … from that day forward I have been hooked. In the early days I was always wanting to do things with my Mac and I struggled a bit with the seemingly closed architecture. While me friends all had Apple II machines and could write basic and logo I remember having to get a copy of MacBasic to write simple apps. I did all sorts of stuff with MacPaint and MacWrite — and I remember playing Millionaire in my room for hours with my Dad.

My love of technology comes from that moment in March of 1984 and that one gift opened me up to opportunities to work to change things through the application of technology and innovative thought. I think the people who envisioned and built the Mac back in the day hoped that would happen to people. Sort of amazing for me to even think about how one gift could change and chart a course for someone. So I want to thank my parents for finding a way to give me such and amazing gift and to Apple for having the vision to create something that spoke right to me.

Stylin' with the 128K Back in the Day

Stylin' with the 128K Back in the Day

I wonder if other people remember their first Macs and if it was as significant to them?

My Macs through the years … Mac 128K, Mac SE, Performa 600 (for about a week), LC III, Mac Portable, PowerMac 7200, PowerCenter 180, G3 All in One, Blue and White G3, PowerBook G3, Dual G4 PowerMac, PowerBook G4, 12″ PowerBook, G3 iMac, PowerMac G5, MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Intel iMac, and MacBook Air — somewhere in the middle I’ve lost track as work and personal life overlap, but suffice to say I’m hooked.

Home from ELI 2009

/ Cole Camplese / 3 Comments

This past week I was in Orlando, FL enjoying the warmth that was the ELI Annual Meeting for 2009. I did my overall recap over in my PSU blog as a travel report … I also did that to provide some much needed reflection on the whole event and to be included in the PSU travel aggregation. If I had to sum up the event in a few words it would be really easy — the whole thing left me feeling really energized about the state of educational technology. It seems to me that ELI continues to push the edge of the conference on many fronts. They try new things every single year and work very hard to make the event both comforting and challenging. The level of participation is always high and this year was no different.

One thing that was different about this trip were the number of colleagues that I traveled with from PSU. I was lucky to be joined by Allan, Brad, Chris, John, Carla, and Hannah — all of us spent time in multiple sessions and lots of time thinking and reflecting together. I think having so many PSU folks travel together worked out very well. We actually took time to talk about what we were seeing, hearing, and feeling around the event. Having that opportunity was a real difference maker. The other thing I am noticing about these events is how many people I am beginning to really know from other Institutions and organizations — I got to see Bryan Alexander, Alan Levine, Jim Groom, Carl Berger, and so many others. The whole community is coming together in a way for me personally that is hard to explain. All in all it was a blast.

I loved the challenge and opportunity to present with Alan and Jim … figuring our how to structure a session when all three of us are in very different places wasn’t easy. Going in it felt like we hadn’t prepared, but in hindsight, the things we discussed have been part of our collective focus for so many years now the prep time wouldn’t have mattered.

Planning the Session

Planning the Session

I got to work with both Brad and Carla on an ePortfolio presentation that generated lots of discussion and some follow-up emails from people. I love to find time to present and share the work of our organization at events like this, so getting the chance to do two was great.

If you are looking for details read my reflections on the event, listen to ETS Talk 52, visit the website or the listen the audio from the Not Your Grandpa’s Blog session. For now I think I’ve said enough about the ELI 2009 event.

Community Question: Lifestreaming

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With the closing of several Google services I’ve been thinking about some of the content I (and a bunch of other people) publish across the social web. So much that I want to get some ideas about what many of you think about it all. If you step back and think about how many new people are joining and actively participating in social networks, one has to consider where we go from here. What do we do to protect the emergence of our meta identities — each crafted in small pieces across many networks. As a simple example, take a look at the emergence of Facebook with adults … according to a new report issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s December 2008 tracking survey:

The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% now.

That is a whole lot of people creating lots of real data about themselves and their relationships. Even if you don’t worry about closures or server meltdowns, consider the following from a post on Read Write Web:

The most obvious example of this loss of access to lifestream data? The inability to access anything beyond beyond page 162 on Twitter. No matter how many times you’ve posted, you cannot go back any further than 3240 tweets. So, every new public message you send removes one from your history. (To see this in action, simply add “?page=162” to the end of any Twitter user’s default URL.) Those who had seen Twitter as a journal of sorts for recording fleeting moments for posterity, suddenly found those moments just as fleeting online.

I’ve talked to lots of people who think that their Twitter streams belong to them. The reality is that we are trapping our thoughts, relationships, and content in someone else’s microblog. It has bothered me since we used Twitter in my CI 597C course — much of the course dialogue happened in the backchannel there and much of it is lost. Clearly this only one small example, but I am guessing you get the idea.

So I am curious about what kinds of strategies we should be considering as we continue down this path? I doubt the answer is to stop participating — the ship has left the port and it isn’t coming back in. What do we think?

The Plunge

/ Cole Camplese / 9 Comments

Last night I attended my doctoral course in assessment here at Penn State. I was surprised that I was a bit anxious as I walked into the room. I guess it comes back to the fact that I was a student and not the teacher for the first time in quite some time. I’ve been teaching courses at Penn State off and on for the last eight years, so the notion of sitting on the other side of the equation left me feeling a bit vulnerable (I think that is what I was feeling). I’ve been quietly working on my doctorate for the last couple years — slowly plodding along, but exclusively by doing independent studies, taking courses online, or by getting credit for teaching. This is the first time I have been a student in a real classroom in quite some time, so being a bit nervous was a natural feeling. I am lucky enough to be taking the course from my advisor and friend, Dr. Kyle Peck and his wife, Dr. Catherine Augustine. Both of them are easy going and very smart. They put us at ease — all nine of us.

After I got into the flow I found class to be rather relaxing — I was able to leave email and daily demands alone for a good three hours as we talked through some very basic concepts related to assessment. I think my positions at the Institution have afforded me unique views into the issues we’ll explore so I felt as though I was at a bit of an advantage. I have either been a practicing instructional designer or leading instructional design teams for the last 12 years so that has also given me experience in the things we were talking about — made me immediately ready to dive in. I think I will be able to add value to the class on a few levels and am looking forward to exploring it all as it progresses.

With that in mind, I am going to try something a little different as I move through this experience … I am going to use this space and my PSU blog to attempt to open the course up to those not in the room through my thoughts. I am begining to wonder how I can use an open set of tools to invite others into my learning and see how it impacts my own thoughts and outcomes. I’ll be writing weekly reflections, tagging content in delicious with insys522, making new YouTube videos asking questions from the course, creating podcasts, and more. These aren’t assignments … no one is directing me to do this.

My own personal reflection from the experience last night has pushed me to ask some new questions about teaching, learning, and community engagement. I am curious about what more I can learn by almost redesigning things as they happen to me … sort of looking at design as a mind tool. Will I create deeper meaning for myself through this practice and will it have any sort of impact on people in and out of the course are two issues I am eager to explore? Those are just two of the questions I am considering as I walk into a fresh field of snow — no footsteps to follow on this one for me. I’ll do my best to be as transparent through the process and I welcome any and all comments, feedback, encouragement, or whatever else gets thrown my way. So, in a sense I am inviting you to engage in a semester long experiment with me to see what learning and sharing in the open can mean. I hate to say it, but even if you don’t show up I will — but I certainly hope you do! Anyone up to take the plunge with me?

Freebies

/ Cole Camplese / 9 Comments

For most of what I do I rely on a bunch of free online applications — I’ve written about it before, so there’s no real need to rehash the story. But today as I was scanning feeds I came across a post at Read Write Web, Google Giveth, and Taketh Away that has me thinking about it all a little bit. The post tells of Google either closing or stopping work on several free web-based services … clearly they aren’t their most popular ones, but with Google Video, Notebook, Jaiku, Catalog Search, and Dodgeball all going away it makes you pause and think about how much a bunch of us are relying on open and free services to do all sorts of things.

I wonder what would happen, if economic times continue to worsen, to other services that more people use? I know I would have a really hard time going back to paying for simple things like word processing and note taking applications — especially ones without the advanced syncing I’ve come to expect. I would also hate to see the innovation going on in the web-based application universe start to die. I am guessing YouTube killed Google Video, but Notebook was loved by many and existed as a powerful add on for FireFox — in other words, it was an app without real competition. My current favorites include Evernote, Google Docs, and LaLa … all free, but with some sort of revenue model sitting there for advanced features. I just wonder how much energy to dedicate to them given they could go poof in the middle of a massive economic downturn. What happens if Yahoo jumps out of the delicious or Flickr business? I (and a boat load of others) would be SOL.

I know it isn’t restricted to free online apps … many of us used HyperCard for years and Apple killed it. Remember Claris Works? Gone as well. I shouldn’t worry too much, but watching the mighty Google just decide to stop offering tools gave me a little pause. What should we be doing?

Presentation: 01/21/2009: Educause Learning Initiative

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Also while in Orlando for ELI, I have the additional privilege of sharing work being done here at Penn State as it relates to blogging and ePortfolios.  I get to share the stage with Dr. Carla Zembal-Saul and Brad Kozlek.  Both of these individuals have had a huge impact on the success of both our blogging and portfolio advancement in the last year.  Carla was a faculty fellow within ETS last summer and her work pushed us in new directions and have helped us rethink the blog platform as a social portfolio space.  Brad has been the project manager for our blogging initiative and has some serious insight into this space.  It will be a real blast to share these experiences!  Session description below:

The focus of this session is to discuss the blogging platform at Penn State as a vehicle for student e-portfolios. We will share the ways we have begun to take full advantage of the fundamental aspects of blogging and the richness of the blogging culture to engage Penn State students in professional discourse communities around frameworks and problems of practice associated with their chosen professions. In cases where this information might be used by programs for accreditation, reporting, and/or self-assessment purposes, we will share our vision for capturing student evidence at specified points across their programs.

See details at the Educuase site. You can grab our slides as a PDF.

Presentation: 01/20/2009: Educause Learning Initiative

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In two weeks I'll head to Orlando to ELI … while there I will be part of two presentations.  The first will be with colleagues from across North America.  I am lucky enough to be playing with Jim Groom, Alan Levine, (and remotely) D'Arcy Norman and Brian Lamb.  This is a real thrill as I make sure I know what this crew is up to at all times.  Each are pioneers in our community and I honored to get to work with them!
We have a blog setup that will hold all our materials.
Session description below:

The presenters have evangelized open personalized publishing platforms and have struggled with establish closed environments as the basis for teaching and learning with technology. Their overall quest has led them to find powerful and flexible online publishing platforms. In a series of lightning talks, the presenters will share work at their respective organizations that they believe to be useful to others in the teaching and learning community. Each will select a project or problem that poses a significant challenge, which will then be discussed by all attendees.

Find the description online at the Educause site.