Notes from the NWACC instructional technology roundtable Nov. 2010.

Keynote speaker: Gardner Campbell

Looking to the future of edtech tools

What does “as much chaos as we can stand” look like?
It is not…

• the constrained and metered environment of an LMS
• a place where student work is discarded like a used kleenex quarter after quarter

It is…

• on the open web (gasp!)
• educates our students about becoming informed digital citizens
  • encourages students to think about digital profiles
• linked, crossed linked, rss fed, commented upon
• archived and groomed over time

What is the role of the instructional tech in this brave new word?
A consultant…

• scanning the horizon for appropriate technologies
• participation framing
• information architect
• persistent digital identities – a consistent locale from where I publish and is fed to interested/relevent locations
• in classroom…? each student has a blog, and their feeds content feeds the “mother blog” http://courseblogs.atlhub.net/
• by making our content open and commentable we can help each other archive
• Google alerts to monitor and feed phrases/names

What about the librarian? Gardner sited an example of a colleague who sees herself as an embedded librarian. Using twitter she is reading student tweets and responds on the class blog in a form of librarian jazz: interactive and dynamic.

3 possible scenarios (Clay Shirky):

1. as much chaos as we can stand –
2. Traditionalist approval –
   the traditionalist cannot see the value of the new thing i.e. blogging is silly
3. negotiated transition – let the radicals do their thing along side of the LMS “continuum of innovation”
   – this is still not going to get us there

How do we think big? Pay attention the the internet.