It has happened before and surely will again, but it always amazes me when a social networking tool finally “takes off” in my little section of the social strata. I set up a personal Twitter account a while back as one of the many means of chatting with friends spread out across the globe, but its use was intermittent at best until the advent of my CrackBerry ™. Suddenly, a combination of Twitter and blogging became a successful professional tool, as well as a professional networking opportunity. Rarely am I in front of the pack in any way, but Twitter is now making the second round of my social circle, and it is fascinating to watch.

Granted, many folks are “trying Twitter out” to see how it fits into how they already communicate, but I have watched a few friends take to Twitter like a Peabody duck to a fountain (yes, Educause ‘08 is still with me…).

I am not a texting sort of person, but I can see the appeal in tossing off a quick note- anything more substantial becomes part of the blog (eventually- I am still desperately behind on finishing partial article I have squirreled away). I am very intrigued by this assimilation- it will be interesting to see how it progresses…

So, I’ve noticed something very interesting. This Educause conference focus is on “Interaction, Ideas, Inspiration”, but while there have been plenty of ideas bandied about and certainly some inspiration has wafted my way, I find the “Interaction” aspect seriously lacking. Now, I understand that the unspoken intent is that we are talking about interaction in our classrooms, but how is a professional conference not a learning event?

Perhaps the fault is my own.

You see, even during the more engaging sessions, I find myself blogging and tweeting, checking email (my phone buzzes every few minutes, it seems), IM-ing with colleagues back on campus, not to mention personal web surfing. Somewhere along the way, my attention span seems to have dwindled to that of my students’- if I’m not multitasking then I’m bored (and sometimes even then).

It’s entirely possible that I am misremembering the past- I’m sure that there were seminar classes in graduate school that seemed to drag on forever. It may also have to do with the changing nature of technology and my role- I spend my time in small portions covering multiple subjects as time allows; I rarely have an entire hour to focus on one project or issue.

Is this an advantage or a disadvantage?

I could argue that it gives me an insight into the student experience that I may be able to convey to their instructors- but I’m not sure that those instructors would acknowledge any advantage. So much of our teaching environment is still centered on students focusing on a single project over long periods of time (for a college freshman, 50 minutes is a long time). More and more subject areas have group work and some interaction, but I know of few truly student-centered learning opportunities (hopefully there are lots out there that I don’t know of).

I know, at least for me, this divided focus *feels* like a disadvantage. Perhaps because I still have previous expectations of “appropriate” student behavior.

So, I’m no newb to blogging. While this blog is still fairly naescent, I have managed a personal blog for about 5 years now. A “professional” blog is somewhat different in content and tone, but the general principles are the same. Last night I live blogged the Educause Second Life Constituent Group meeting for AJ Kelton, whose blog can be found here: http://sorrk-afk.blogspot.com . First off, the medium itself, using Cover It Live (http://coveritlive.com) was something new. The format is straightforward and I think that I can safely recommend it. I may look into setting it up for my blog when recording conference events and such.

I indulged in a little meta-blogging during the meeting, but to sum up if you didn’t read through the notes- my only wishes were for an easier way to go back and edit after posting (stream-of-consciousness typing does not always lead one to be aware of typos and mistypes), and that there had been some visitor input during the process so that I could experience that aspect. That said, it may be just well, since reading over the blog I cringe a bit at the disjointed voice- partly note-taking and partly blogging. I blame the distracting and enganing conversations in the roon and in-world. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. *nods*

Well, at least for a few days, thanks to Educause in my backyard. Rolled in bright and early this morning (gotta love highway traffic) and ran into half-a-dozen UCF folks I probably could have caged a ride from, ah well. Met up with AJ Kelton, colleague from my Montclair days and one of the driving forces in Second Life. I’m sitting in on the first session today on Assessing Student performance in SL, one of my key issues with V-Ed (that’s Virtual Ed for folks who aren’t too lazy to type everything out). There is also an interesting looking session on choosing a new CMS, but really we’re past that point, so unless we decide to migrate elsewhere in the future… That’s one of the challenges of Educause though- three things during one time slot you’re desperate to attend, and then a blank with nothing compelling. I think that’s when I’ll hit the vendor room. I’ll be updating here periodically over the next few days, as well as tweeting for those so inclined.

…for me to fall off the blogging bandwagon, now did it? It is certainly one of those cases where no news is *not* good news, sadly. I have several articles in different stages of completeness that I hope to flesh out and post, but life and work is, well, life and work. I am still looking and reading when I have the opportunity, and updating links and blogs as i find them useful. Don’t give up on me yet!

The prerequisite “blog about the blogging experience”…

First off, no, I do not intend to maintain the rate I had last week- I just had a backlog in my head and it’s taking a while to catch up. That said, how often I post will be directly relational to how much time life allows me to evaluate and introspect. I tentatively plan to post something significant at a minimum every other week (this post doesn’t count, heh). I’m hoping that’s a realistic expectation, but time will tell.

Basically, I think keeping this as an open playground to test things out and decide whether they are useful or not is the way to go. That said, if something goes away that’s useful for YOU, please let me know. Conversely, if something appears to suck massively, please tell why you think so- constructive criticism will be considered. Non-constructive criticism will be dealt with as it should. ;}

Mostly, I think right now that I’m still in the “sponge” stage- poring through data and soaking up info. I’ve fallen out of the loop on some things, and on other things I was never in the loop in the first place. This eclectic sampling is opening up some interesting questions for me though, and I suspect that getting back in the habit of research will come in handy when I go for my next degree- what degree I’m not entirely sure yet, but an MA in Instructional Design currently looks appealing. That may change, however.

I’m also hoping this blog will help fill a personal need for professional development- after 2 years at UCF in EdTech I foolishly thought we would be past various technological challenges so that I could include focus on assessment and development. Ha! After 10 years in this field, I should know better, right? And there’s nothing like managing a service desk (of any size) to keep you running from fire to fire, until the end of day when you end up in bed with a bottle of Maalox and a countdown calendar to your next vacation. Like a few other things in life, I recently realized that the time won’t make itself, and if I wait until a good time it will never happen. So yeah, there it is.

I had one of those training workshops that started out shifty and turned out wonderful.

One work day before each workshop I send out an email reminder. The reminder has effected a marked improvement on attendance, and it gives people who overbooked a chance to back out gracefully and keep me from setting up twice as many laptops as I need (or standing in an empty room wondering where everybody is). In this case, I only had a small group registered for a “Presenting Content in Webcourses@UCF” session and one back-out. Oh well, I’ve only had three in a session before.

It turned out to be perfect.

The attendees were three of our HR staff who are in the process of adapting a face-to-face training system into an online program. They have their brick-and-mortar curriculum and an empty course shell.

This is what I live for.

Since they were the whole workshop, I scrapped the original topic and went over their curriculum. We determined what tools they will need, walked through customizing the interface, and talked about how to streamline their training process. For two hours we picked through the toolbox to find the best choices to meet their needs. We have a follow up scheduled to go over the assessment portion and fine-tune the learning module they learned how to create today.

It’s so rare that I get to do this kind of development, and it was *fun*. Fun to ask and answer and try out possibilities and see their eyes light up as I was able to tell them something that will make their lives easier. It was application instead of training. I need more days like this.

Or, “the dangers of introspection in the workplace”.

At UCF we have a professional development track for faculty members who wish to teach fully online or mixed-mode classes (reduced seat time). These tracks are fairly time-intensive (semester long) and there is a waiting list for the fully-online course training. Those who want an online component but are not giving up seat time, however, have a self-paced online training course that walks them through basic tools and applications in our course management system. A dedicated individual can wrap it up in two hours, or spread it out over a weekend if they choose. Once complete, an empty course shell is created that they can start populating with content.

Separate from but in conjunction with the professional development track we have a series of in-depth, tool-specific workshops lasting between 2 and 2.5 hours long. These workshops, collectively, are called Webcourses@UCF Academy (no, I didn’t name them). Faculty members are not required to attend, but are strongly encouraged to do so. The seven workshops are offered on a rotating basis weekly: one face-to-face workshop on the Orlando campus, and one live online training using Adobe Connect (more on that later). These workshops are open to everyone- faculty members, GTAs, TAs, and staff. Participants can register online and attend as many (or as few) sessions as they like, as many times as they like.

I am the trainer for these workshops. All of them.

Now, in theory, my team members are available to assist me in training workshops. In the case of f2f training, they can assist, or in some cases even take over our introductory workshop. In practice, I have four part-time students on a rotating schedule who are handling all our faculty technical support for our course management systems, as well has a large handful of other applications used on campus.

So, I am the trainer for these workshops.

With the migration deadline slowly approaching, I’ve been trying to make adjustments to allow for (what we hope) will be a rush of interest in training for the new system. Since I need my current employees to do what they’re already doing, i started advertising for a training assistant. Preferably someone with an interest or background in training and/or pedagogy, who could stand up to faculty. Luckily, I found someone. Unluckily, it was just in time for a hiring freeze and budget cut.

Gotta love higher ed.

So, in juggling budgets, writing reports, and trying to create a stable basis with limited means for a projected increase in service needs, I found myself seriously evaluating what my team provides and why. And I made a rather interesting discovery:

We provide technical instruction, not instructional technology.

Splitting hairs? Perhaps. But it’s not what I envision for myself, this group, or instructional technology for the future.

So that’s really how this whole little journey got started- I had more work to do, and less funds to do it with, so I had to find some way to complicate things even further. Go, me!

Damn work ethic. *shakes fist*

I can already see the addictive nature of edublogging. This is going to be a fantastic way of keeping track of webinars and recording my feedback for future ref. Fantastic I tell you!

This particular webinar (http://net.educause.edu/eliweb086) is a subject near and dear to my heart. How DO we determine the impact technology has on learning? There seems to be plenty of agreement that it does have an impact, but how much of an impact? Significant? Minimal? And having an impact doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a *positive* impact. And which technology? Not all technologies are created equal. So often faculty ask me about various apps and I want to encourage their experimentation and curiosity, but we also have to address why to use something, not just the how.

In this webinar Karen Swan is emphasizing the importance of instruction over the technology: you can’t ask generalities because there will always be exceptions. Instead, look at the particular instance: does this podcast improve learning in this course subject? Can’t argue with that at all. Start with desired outcomes and then look at specific inputs. I’m not sure how faculty will respond to this response- the ones who are willing and able to do this are already doing it (theoretically); faculty who want to try out technology usually want a blanket answer, however- they’re already going through a time investment in learning how to use the tool in the first place, and I suspect that they wouldn’t thrilled about having to add additional assessment rubrics on top of that.

I’m amused that the survey data on student learning is pulled from UCF’s recent assessment data on learner characteristics (thanks Chuck!). Professional development equals more than knowing how to use the technology- they need to know how to use it in meaningful ways. This is the key issue I’m concerned with. The workshop training I provide almost exclusively deals with the how- in a group I can give different applications as examples, but it primarily rests on the faculty member to use what they have learned in a meaningful way for student learning.

UCF conducts a dedicated professional development track that addresses online pedagogy, but not all faculty have access to this (strictly limited seating). My department (Course Development & Web Services) and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning are looking for ways to make pedagogy input more accessible to faculty outside the professional development track, especially for adjunct and transient faculty.

Overall, I can’t say that I took much new away from this session- some new assessment ideas and a fresh look at the intersection of teaching and learning, but the presentation was mainly geared toward semester-long events. The session title really only peripherally had to do with the content- the focus was on assessment and less on technology- a valid point in Swan’s approach, but I would have liked to have seen a case study of the system applied to an actual instance of technology use in the classroom to move it out of the theoretical.

I must admit, however, that I was marginally amused by some of the technical issues they had with Connect- it sounded very much as if the presenter was using a stationary mic and occasionally moved closer and farther away while speaking. I’m guilty of this myself, which reminds me to get my mic jack fixed before Friday’s online training workshop. *snerk*