The good and the not so good at ELI 07

Things I liked about the conference

• It is very well organised, things happen on time, presenters are well prepared, there is always refreshment etc
• You get given loads of materials, and clear directions to web resources. People are really good at sharing
• There aren’t too many Brits
• There are people who genuinely care about students, and a fair sprinkling of practitioners
• There are no forced social events, but given that teams are encouraged to attend, it can make networking a little difficult as teams tend to stick together – but still better than being stuck next to someone you have nothing in common with for the duration of a meal.
• Being able to talk to someone about blue orchids, without being mistaken for a some horticultural weirdo

Things I didnt like about the conference

• Eaters, talkers, and clickers. Whose idea was it to have breakfast sessions, where you are trying to listen to someone talking and some porker is pigging away at a trough of scoff next to you? Why come to the session if you are going to talk to your friend all the way through it? And turn your click off on your PDA! cretin!
• Being confined to the hotel, any city centre with a heavy atmosphere on the streets on a Sunday morning has got problems in my book.
• Following on, muzak. Being confined to a hotel with, horror of horrors, jazz muzak is pretty much my idea of hell.
• Very poor bloody marys in the hotel bar. Less celery, more vodka. Oh, and I like putting my own Tabasco in, ta very much
• Atlanta – what would it take to get me back here? End of.

What does it mean for the LTI

I would really like to keep blogging when I get back. At the moment, we have meetings (which seem to get harder and harder to arrange); I stroll around chatting, but it is scattergun communication – if you are not there, or you don’t hear what is said, you don’t know about it. I wont stop strolling around, but I want to try something different.

We, really really seriously, all have to take more responsibility for our web presence. If this means upsetting a few corporate police so be it.

We need a more prominent role in the new Adsetts extension, it is on our patch and we need to get stuck in

Learning Spaces

I think people are only tinkering, refurbing old spaces with a bit of sexed up furniture and kit, or fitting out new spaces with the latest gadgets. These things date very quickly, and never quite offer the flexibility that you were after in the first place. What was interesting was the student input into these spaces – they want 24 hour opening, good lighting, food and drink, some relationship with the outside world (windows, patios, cafes), they don’t want teachers to be around – OK, not rocket science. Students want these spaces to be the physical embodiment of the stuff described above, and don’t like the assumptions that are sometimes made about their needs. For instance, a lot of these learning spaces have multimedia studios, fine for certain types of students, but a lot of them also want whiteboards and flipcharts. And they might want to loan a bit of kit, like a camcorder, but they are not planning on doing any fancy editing etc There is this idea of the third space – apparently a concept just beginning to appear in library journals and suchlike (can someone go off and tell us all what the first and second spaces are?). What we have in the Adsetts and Blackwells is as good as anything I saw. The huge building programme at SHU worries me now, as we are designing it for the students of 2007, rather than 2010

People and technologies

Just as there is a spectrum of digital natives, young people who got on the bus at different stages, the same it true of digital immigrants. It was really impressive to see folk not just paying lip service to social networking stuff, but using it in a way that has clearly transformed their practice. This isn’t an age thing – some of the older hands are nostalgic for the frontier days of the internet, without realising that it is all (sort of) happening again. It is one thing to know about Facebook, flickr etc, another thing entirely to jump in and swim around in all that stuff. The folk who know the names of the new stuff but don’t use it are just like people from a few years back whose attitude to students was “we have found this wonderful thing called the Internet, let us show you how to use it…” There are still a lot of educational developers, learning technologists, and librarians whose first, often unconscious, reaction to the new stuff is to somehow try to rein it in, or put some controls onto it, or think along the lines of “people think this is fun, but it could be really educational, if only...”

This is going to sound odd, but the people I see at the cutting edge of all this stuff are thinking differently about a lot of things – things like: privacy; currency of knowledge; what constitutes true expertise; what is the best way of communicating with others; what scholarship means; and even, friendships. I was quite sceptical about things like MUVEs etc, but having seen the way folk in this community act, I am softening up. The starting point for everything around all this new stuff, it seems to me, is the truism that the best way to find something out is to ask a friend. This goes right across the whole social networking/ Web 2.0 stuff, whether it a student working on a group project and IM-ing their friends who are in other groups, to having friends who you have never met in the flesh, to willingly sharing stuff with others (all over the world) whether it is expertise or dumb questions you feel uncomfortable asking.

The other truism relevant here is “two heads are better than one”, you don’t have to know all about the collective unconsciousness, or meme theory to realise that all of a sudden connecting with people is getting exciting again. If you still think the web is a bit of a mess, with lots of dodgy information and dodgy people; that email basically is a bit of a pain; that you don’t quite understand your mobile phone; that, sometimes, life was better before all this crap (it’s OK that’s how I feel a fair proportion of the time) – move on, and have a go in this world.

A Wider World: Youth, Privacy, and Social Networking Technologies

Tracy Mitrano, Director of IT Policy and Computer Policy and Law Program, Cornell University
Anita Rho, Student, Cornell University
Cyprien Lomas

Facebook represents a growing number of applications that provide communication, connection, and community building among users, so please bring your laptop to this session for an introduction to this cool new tool! We will learn how to create an account, make "friends" (connections with others you know or would like to know who share common interests), and use various functionalities such as bulletin boards, "poking," or posting content such as text, photos, and video. If the prognostications are true that e-mail is for old people and social networking is the new killer app, then come join the future!
www.facebook.com
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Tracy Mitrano
this has surpassed portals
Should Uni's filter with Fb? U's should make it clear if they do. Disclosure.
Question: No need for References in employment process? (Google, Fb, etc, etc)
Thoughts on Facebook article on Cornell U site: http://www.cit.cornell.edu/policy/memos/facebook.html

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Anita Rho

• Fb is for keeping in touch with your friends.
• Has privacy controls - several levels
  
• 'Poking' - Fb's wy of saying hi
• Fb separate from MySpace, Friendster, etc
• Some people use multiple sites
• Some are avid and some aren't
• Some people just put email address in there and so
• "You give what you want to get" Degrees of exposure
• Honesty rules - how much do you trust the info
• Misrepresentation is not a vilation
• Rules in law apply to cyberspace, eg identity theft
• You can modify the truth
• How do they compare? - they serve similar functions but suit different groups. Fb has a college profile.
• MSN is a messenger and email, this about sharing information about yourself.
• The News Feed allows you to see what your friends are doing
• How much time do you spend on Fb? Very avid user, at least once a day, sometimes five
• It allows you to keep in touch with people who in normal life you may otherwise have dropped
• The Wall is for posting messages to friends in a public way - demonstrating friendship
• Used it to get notes from class mates
• Create study groups in a class
• It's a form of publication. Like local newspaper columns of yore? Does everyone want to
• Notes: 'blogging lite' - She has friends who use it to post their life story.
• Fb casual. Instant gratification, more convenient.
• The photos that will keep me from running for public office
• You can take your account offline but Fb holds onto your details.
• This gen embrace the chance to share info and are not so concerned about violation of privacy.
• "I guess my political career's over!!!" - "No, all the voters are in there too"
• You have to befriend people before you can access people's pages.
• Comment: "It seems like a dating agency" - "Whatever you want to use it for, but if you want a dating service then go to a dating service."
• Find unknown potential friends through social tagging.
• The default is everything's open so
• MySpace is cumbersome and ad dominated. MyS is for younger.
• Bebo is huge in Ireland.
• Hives in Holland.
• Good place for universities to advertise courses. You can really target based on location, email adreses, etc...
• Fb used to feel 'exclusive' but felt cheated when it got opened up.
• As you get older you want to self-censor. Employers are using it to filter applicants.

Cyprien Lomas

• Registration offers to import Gmail address book - beware of unintentional spamming!
• News Feed
• Start with adding basic likes, etc to profie then add detail (over time). "I had never put this much data into an ePortfolio. A good way to keep up with professional friends."
  
• 'Poking' - lets friends know that their name crossed your mind.
• 'Events' - invite people. Informal, social list of who's coming.
• Not many bloggers are in here
• 'Groups': mass comms tool for targetting friendship groups. eg ed tech group...
• Adverstising: most cost effective way of reaching appropriate audience.
• Status updates: sometimes it's far too personal.
• Age: OL Privacy Act. Under 13 need parents permission.
• Question: Elgg: do we need special soc net sites just for ed?

Georgia Tech visit

First of all it involved a bus. Conferences and buses. I have bad feelings about these things. Conferences and buses sometimes mean things like: the only spare seat has dog do on it (Ed Media 2004); the journey involves crossing several counties (HEA 2004), or several countries (Ed Media 2004); or people being very ill on the way back (any conference in Scotland); or carrying ex SHU staff out of Disneyland and putting them in the luggage rack on the bus (Educause 2005, Anaheim). But I digress.

I always like a big night out on my last night at a conference, and this time I decided to visit a library. The Georgia Tech learning space was pretty impressive, and not far off what we have with the Adsetts, it was a bit like the Studio with Herman Miller furniture. In the pursuit of objectivity, I conducted a quick ethnographic investigation outside the library. I joined the smokers, and lured in by the promise of english nicotene, they told me the facility was great but it didnt go far enough. What we had was less than 10% of the space transformed, and the students were a bit baffled as to why the rest hadnt been done. I will put up some links so you can see it later.

Andrew "chickens out of most things, like getting a conference bus" Middleton did ask me later on if these things only worked in new buildings. That is a great question. What isnt funny is that SHU has nearly £70m worth of building going on and we are building buildings for the student of 2007 - we should be thinking about 2012 and beyond. There are only so many things you can do with furniture etc we should be taking more risks along the lines of the immersive learning environment we are thinking of installing. Richard Mather can tell you more about that.

Father Google and Mother IM: Confessions of a Net Gen Learner

The rise of the millenials has spawned new conversations about engagement and learning on today's college campuses. But what do these Net Gen learners really want? From the mouth of a confessed Net junkie, learn what makes these students tick, what ticks them off, and what faculty and administrators need to know to bridge the generational divide.
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You may have read this before in Educause Review: 'Father Google and Mother IM: Confessions of a Net Gen Learner'. Carie Windham's presentation here was very close to the article and both were great. I hadn't realised that she refers to her time as a student in the UK at the U o Ulster in the article. This was stuffed full of insight into the Neomillennial Learner. She had great presence and really carried the audience along. She told me the session was recorded so I hope to link to it rather than capture any notes. She also agreed to let me interview her about audio and how this may or may not fit well with the neomillennial so hopefully this will be coming to a podcast near you if we can find some time to sit down.