e-learning,community and practice

I’m off, in about 20 minutes, to do an exciting presentation on broadband and it’s benefits for a group of county clerks. I’ve produced the shortest powerpoint in my life, yet, coming in at 12 pages…9 if you discount the title, links and contact pages. When I started thinking about this presentation I started nodding off…..not another 32 page powerpoint about minicipal wi-fi, mesh networks, et al. I’m bored giving boring presentations so I began to wonder about better ways to do things and remember the planning games over at usefulgames, so we’re doing a short powerpoint, some questions and then into a planning game.

I’m looking forward to this, to see how the process works with the hope of being able to make this another tool I have available. For now, here’s the powerpoint. Later my reflections on the presentation.

I’m working on a presentation on the value of broadband internet access and was trying to delineate the elements that make up successful broadband community. I’ve attached an image of the powerpoint slide:

Any input, thoughts, etc….would be welcome.

Last night we were in Chenango, NY conducting a seminar on Gas Leasing. I was the technologist - primary responsibilities for organizing, moderating and generally making the event happen belong to Rod Howe, of the Community and Rural Development Institute, here at Cornell  University.  We webcast the event, using Adobe Connect and so our combined audience was between 180 - 200 people. This is the second time we’ve combined Connect with face to face meetings and it really does seem to present a reasonable, fairly stable way to extend outreach, in cases like this.

I’ll add another post later which gets into the technical setup but for now I’ve posted a few images from the face to face seminar here, and you can learn more about the actual topic at our Gas Leasing blog.

[Show as slideshow]

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement rising out of a democracy of opportunity. Thomas Jefferson

This is a quote of some beauty  which I want to perserve so I’m blogging it. I had a short conversation today with someone about Justin Smith Morrill, author of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts , and the seeming prescience or forethought these men had and of the somewhat depressing fact that statements like the one above are still dreams as yet fufilled.

Morrill, Jonathan Baldwin Turner, Liberty Hyde Bailey, Jane Addams, Eduard Lindeman, Mary Parker Follett - and the list goes on. So many who have thought seriously, spoken eloquently, about educating adults and yet here we are in 2008….

Things have wrapped up, kids are getting ready to travel home to the 4 corners of New York state and I’m a bit exhausted. Unlike previous years I flew solo and there were moments when another brain and set of hands would have been welcome, but we survived. 4 videos produced, some new skills learned and a long weekend coming up. My immediate, after event, thoughts/questions are:

What happened to iMovie? - It’s been a while since I used iMovie. As a matter of fact last years CE may have been the last time. In the interim it went and changed on me and all I can ask is - What was Apple thinking? The interface is gnarlier, much more confusing to work with and some effects …basic effects like slow motion …have been stripped away. I used to love iMovie for work with teens who have never done video before but now I may have to take a look again at MovieMaker, as painful as that is to contemplate.

Did we accomlish our goals? - A qualified yes, I believe. Given the groups size (20 participants), the time frame and my lonely self we covered some contextual material before unleashing the technology but I just didn’t have enough time to work with each of the three teams they divided into to reinforce some of the fundamentals about structuring stories and so on. Next year I may limit the size down even further and have been wondering whether some sort of pre-screening is possible or desireable.

Given a few days more willl filter in but for now….it’s over, we did some things, no one got hurt and I’m thinking about next years programs, so it must have been good.

Off to the races, so to speak. Today began at 8:30 - an ungodly hour to have to be functionally interacting with others, in my opinion, but the schedule abides. After a brisk discussion, everyone was anxious to get out there, start doing things and so out into the world they headed. It always amazes me - the energy, the creativity that can happen - and I really shouldn’t be suprised. I am hopeful that this experince provides a space to encourage some exploration that is otherwise unavailable on a day to day basis. After 7 years of doing this event I like to think I’ve found a balance between providing the right amount of structure and support without narrowing the field of potential action.

Things move in parallel, that goes without saying, and so perhaps some of the increase in flow and succesful completion of projects during these sessions is the inevitable result of pre-existing exposure to technology but I would like to think that some small spark happnes here. Yes, I still want to be the cool instructor guy that kids want to hang out with and learn from - ego, as well as schedules, abides - but I hope some of it is the program, the space and freedom to express.

This year I have 5 or 6 returning participants who were in last years session and at least one who is marking the third year of participation in my/our session - something must be clicking.

Pictures from yesterday afternoon and earlier this morning are up at the digital storytelling blog.

Startling realizations thus far:

• I wildly overestimated any interest in things political ( ie Lincoln, Obama, narrative and counter narritve as illustrated in current political events).
• Popular music can be quite depressing….and also quite meta/self referential in it’s thematic content
• The more things change the more they stay the same

more to come….

This year’s Career Explorations program begins in a few short hours and I am quite hopeful that I’ll drop in at least 2 or 3 blog posts during our session, but I had the same hope last year and never quite made it, so we’ll see. We have about 12 hours total during the next 3 days to explore some existing, and create some new, digital stories. And, new this year, I’ve set out some goals and done some focused pre-planning - we’ll see how that goes, too.

Once we begin to produce new content it will be posted to the our Youtube channel and linked from the Digital Storytelling blog. By tonight I should have some images to post, but for now here is our sechedule. More to come, I hope.

Of late I’ve been reading some historical materials about the origins of Cooperative Extension and during this exploration I came upon “The Meaning of Adult Education” by Eduard Lindeman.  As I began reading I was struck by counterpoised feelings - I am always comforted in finding that others, long ago, entertained a progressive, enlivening vision of what education can be and at the same time I am saddened that so much of what was said can still be said today with equal validity - we seem to have not progressed.

So when Lindeman says “The fact that over half the children in our public schools stop at eight grade and that only ten to twelve percent of those who enter high school complete the course may constitue an indictment, not against intelligence, but against the formalism of our educational system”  we can, and should of course, alter the statistics to our current state - 71% graduation and so on, but the salient point still holds. The formalism is deadening, even for those who survive the public schooling process. This struck me because I’m preparing for one of my sons high school graduation this friday and another son moving from 6th grade elementary school up to the high school.

I’ve railed before against all the standardized testing, worksheets and inanity that occurs in our schools- it’s little wonder that our kids run off to myspace and video games and places where they can have some control and expression.

Lindeman was writing 82 years ago, by the way………

One of my co-workers has a current significant other who is a pirate reenactor - which I have to admit was a new one to me. And we have spoken here, on occasion,  of the SCA in tones ranging from admirable to puzzled but one thing I will say unequivocally, without any puzzlement,  is that at least all the reenactors and anachronists are running about in the real world.

I mention this because I am continually reminded of the vast stores of enthusiasm some people have for Second Life, which puzzles me to no end. People who’s opinion I otherwise respect, seem to get swept away in the irrational fervor and illusory promise of an online world that is sure to be the “next big thing”. I’m puzzled even more deeply when I see educational institutions jumping on the pixelated bandwagon.

So what’s my beef with 3d virtual worlds? I really have no problem if someone wants to while away their life glued to a monitor, clicking, swooping and zooming in some make believe world. But what I’m hearing, from some sectors, is how wonderful and educative it is - which in select cases it may well be, but it’s very select and it’s very exclusionary and passive. Changing the clothes on your avatar don’t change nothing in real life, cleaning a pixelated toxic river doesn’t save one real fish, and in my humble opinion, what we need now is people who can effect real (positive) change in the real world.

So my beef includes:

• Privileged assumptions about univeral access to high speed internet connections and current computing technologies
• Assumptions that we live in a digitally literate world
• Creation of an illusory sense of impact ( we can’t change the world but I can change my avatar, so that’s something)
• Disengagement with the real world

That’s a partial list. There are so many factors at play, so many risks unaccounted form, in our naively enthusiastic adoption of and egagement with technology. I’m not the first, by a long shot, to mention this but I think it bears frequent repeating.

More to come, without a doubt……..