Author Archive for Kenneth

Woo hoo! First page done, can I finally defend now?

Published
by
Kenneth
on November 14, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 1 Comment

So as many of you know, I’ve totally switched gears on my dissertation due to the subconscious saturation of my attention deficit disorder and, quite possibly, the stale data that I let sit for 2 years as I lolligagged throughout my late 20’s and started paying mortgages.  Fortunately for me, Tommy J’s University let me pick a new topic and now that I have that, a new advisor, and a masculinized Labelle’ian attitude, I should be A-otay!

This go round, instead of researching the affordances and limitations of using threaded discussions when having discourses on sensitive and emotionally-charged subjects (ie. providing a pedagogical rationale for using discussion boards in a course on Race and Politics), I’ve decided to study the experience of inexperienced, newly-minted science teachers who facilitate AP-level environmental science courses online!  (Much more fascinating, isn’t it! [/sarcasm]).  This topic definitely correlates to my interest in the field - remember I’m all about the integration of technology in education (cut me a check Blackboard!) - but I will admit, I really enjoyed my previous, longitudinal, ethnographic, qualitative, full-of-thick-description-and-umpteen case-studies, 10-years-to-complete-at-the-pace-I-was-going, study. :)  Dr. C and my committee members have promised to put the fire to my feet, encouraging me to write smarter, not harder and emphasizing that the best dissertation is a completed one! :)

But now back to the AP online science stuff, there’s really some interesting data to analyze and interpret.  The grant project I’ve been affiliated with, for the past 5 years, had one single mission: provide underserved gifted students access to quality online science curricula! If there’s anything thats poppin’ for the underserved folk - you know I’m down!  We used my favorite open-source tool Moodle as our technology platform… and those of you who dont know about it by now betta ax sumbody!

I’ll be reporting back as I try to find more motivation to write page 2 of this diss.  Yay for new attitudes! :)

Latent beastiality, domestic outsourcing and chicks w/ pink bangs

Published
by
Kenneth
on October 31, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 1 Comment

That pretty sums up EDUCAUSE ‘08.  And I must say it was off the chizzle! (ie. excellent, well-organized, profoundly stellar, etc.). V.S. Ramachandran kicked it off with a great keynote on how the mind functions and the complexities of mapping the human brain.  As intriguing as it was, my feebled self had significant troubles tying neuro-psychiatric syndromes and the loss of ones limbs to the future and sustainability of educational technology.  I’m sure one of the uber-deep and intensely metaphoric attendees was able to draw parallels… but not me, I just giggled my self to pieces when V.S. told the 9,000+ crowd that humans engaged in “latent bestiality and incest”.  Once I heard that, V.S. instantly won my vote for best keynote ever.

Thursday mornings session was also intriguing.  Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), you know, the cool Second Life chick with the pink bangs, threw down during her presentation on Social Media and Education: The conflict between technology, institutions and the future. If colleges and universities don’t “man up” and start embracing the power of social media, they will find themselves irrelevant to students expectations.  Harvard’s competition will no longer Yale, but its bastardized child, Facebook.

Let’s see, what else happened… I made it to most of the sessions in my schedule except for the one on Google Apps @ USC.  OMG, it was packed! Like, I mean little-grey-haired-women-were-climbing-on-trash-cans-just-to-catch-a-glimpse-of-the-PowerPoint packed.  Like seriously, they wouldn’t even let the apunctual physically-challenged folks on scooters get a sneak peek!  From what I could hear, USC was just talking about the importance of cloud computing and how they didn’t force their students to adopt Google Apps (Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, etc.), but yet and still its heavily adopted and everyone loves Google cause USC is saving money, yadda, yadda.  But on the real, cloud computing is where it’s at.  As is Google.

Speaking of Google, when I saw their booth in the exhibition hall… my heart started to flutter and my countenance became giddy.  I wanted so badly to take the young Google girls by their hands and skip with them exclaiming “I love your compannnyyyy, your company is big brotherrr, but I luvvvsss ittt sooo muchhh. Yayyy!”  Wish I was joking. :) A few other booths I thoroughly checked out were:

Blackboard - Oh man, version 9/NG, its about to make me a believer - very very promising!  And with its newly announced Moodle integration, Sakai integration and RSS feed aggregation… I’ll clearly be copping some of that good BBBB stock at $26/share (52-week low, w00t!)

Microsoft - The new tablet PC table that looks like a classic Pac-Man tabletop is off the chizzle, too! They demo’d it with your typical political map (Blue VS Red) and was zooming into different states, similarly to what they do on CNN.  Still, I was thoroughly impressed.  It’d be nice if my institution could cop one (nudge, nudge) and integrate it with our Voting America/Digital Scholarship Lab app for students who will be camping out in the library on election day.

Turning Point - They were trying to hock some cheap looking clicker remotes, that honestly, were pretty slick.  Real time polling w/ powerpoint.  The applicability in class on politics could be very high, especially when trying to elicit authentic responses from emotionally-charged questions.

Smartboard - Another “off the chizzle” tech company.  These folks are just make huge moves.  Digital whiteboards are where its at - especially when Google Earth is on them.  Who wants to spin the globe now? :)

Apple - Iphone, one day, will own me - again.  I kind of wish I never sold my old one.  One of the most fascinating ed apps, in my opinion, was the mobile portal that MIT created for mobile devices (cough, iphone, cough).  Students can go to m.mit.edu and track, in real time, the location of campus buses, see geo-maps of buildings and classrooms… all kindsa good stuff!  I’ve seen the GPS bus thingamajig at NC State on a few flat panels in their library - but having this capability on your mobile phone?  Wow and wee!

Here a few videos I took walking around, I’ll post more soon

VENDOR NO SPM PLZ from Kenneth Warren on Vimeo.

Assess deez.

Published
by
Kenneth
on October 29, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 1 Comment

Now everyone knows I ‘luvs me some skool’.  And, even though I haven’t attended a classroom lecture in over 3 years, today’s session on “Evaluating Online and Blended Learning in Higher Education” had me reminiscing to my days of post-graduate glory!  Four fulfilling hours of narrated PowerPoint’s sprinkled with quasi-relevant anecdotes, off-topic tangents, randomly requests for learner participation and frequent interruptions for potty-breaks.  Professor Thomas Reeves (from UGA) put together a rather rich and exhaustive presentation on a myriad of evaluation methodologies, philosophical research paradigms and current models used to understand and “make-sense-of” online learning initiatives and/or blended teaching strategies.   I personally think it was a tad  too peppered with scholarly jargon that *may* have gone over folks’ heads, but it was nonetheless a great (albeit expansive) introduction for conducting successful evals.  My highlight of the session was the simple explanation of differentiating between “assessment” and “evaluation”, I realize they are different and hold different weights depending on the context of their use - however I am ALWAYS hearing them used interchangeably - oft times incorrectly.  I commonly associate assessment with the pre- of the test (before treatment) and evaluation with the post- (after the treatment). As in conducting a needs assessment THEN a program evaluation.

Reeves simply stated:

Use the term assessment when referring to what you are doing to people and/or their learning experiences and engagement.  Use the term evaluation when referring educational projects, programs and initiatives.

Now I hope I interpreted that correctly cuz I cain’t have Reeves reading this post and calling me out.  Lol, that would be an epic fail on my part.  Nonetheless, this was a good way to start EDUCAUSE 2008 and I can officially say I am in conference mode (meaning that my feet hurt, I’m miss my bed and I have a nifty tote bag full of technology literature, mouse pads and advertisements that I’m sure I’ll read and recycle).   Here’s my schedule for the next two days:

Wednesday

The Unique Human Brain: Clues from Neurology
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
8:15 a.m. - 9:45 a.m.
West Hall WE2

Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
10:30 a.m. - 11:20 a.m.
West Hall WF5

Don’t Call It a Blog, Call It an Educational Publishing Platform
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
11:40 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Room W330D

Mashups, Remixes, and Video Culture: Engaging the YouTube Generation in the Classroom
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
11:40 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Room W230CD

Breaking Out: Learning Spaces to Inspire Faculty and Engage Learners
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
11:40 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
West E/F Foyer

Learning Space Design
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
12:40 p.m. - 2:10 p.m.
Room W340A

Library Lightning Round
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
2:15 p.m. - 3:05 p.m.
Room W230AB

NITLE Reception (by invitation only)
Session Details
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Room W307CD

Thursday

Social Media and Education: The Conflict Between Technology and Institutional Education, and the Future
Session Details
Thursday, October 30, 2008
8:10 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.
West Hall WF5

Faculty: Scholars or Software Developers?
Session Details
Thursday, October 30, 2008
11:45 a.m. - 12:35 p.m.
Room W209C

ELI Member and Newcomers’ Meeting
Session Details
Thursday, October 30, 2008
12:50 p.m. - 2:15 p.m.
Room W307CD

The Launch of Google Apps for Education at USC: Determinants, Decisions, and Deterrents
Session Details
Thursday, October 30, 2008
2:20 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.
Room W330D

Holla at me if you see me!

8 hour countdown.

Published
by
Kenneth
on October 28, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 1 Comment

I’m finally settled in the hotel, watching political commentary and surfing somoenes free Wi-fi!  I picked up a November 2008 edition of Wired at the airport and read a pretty profound article about the dilution of friendship and control in social networking. Its something I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially as it relates to virtual identities, the authenticity of connection and the transparent addiction of sites like Facebook and Myspace. I’d highly recommend that all teechrs and professrs somehow integrate the importance of understanding social technologies in their introductory technology courses.  Facebook and Myspace are not a game (I know, a-whole-nother post), but the concept of losing the ability to “lose friends” is nothing to be played with either.  I wonder if Obama would de-friend all his “unknown” friends on Facebook if he didn’t win the election.  I mean, sometimes you just wanna brush the folks, who you really dont know, off ya shoulders! :)

Time for sleep! I’ve got a workshop on blended learning in the morning.

Time to journalize these experiences…

Published
by
Kenneth
on October 8, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 3 Comments

As a bonafide advocate of media production and user-generated content creation, I think I’ve had an epiphanal moment: I exist in elements of hypocrisy.  I’m always telling folk how great Web 2.0 is and how powerful the internet has become as an enabler and social connector.  I’m always trying to encourage folk to tell their own stories, craft their narratives and publish them to the world…  But you know what, I dont think I’ve ever taken my own advice!  At least I havent in the past 7 years.

I probably search for, and consume more, content than I would ever consider producing.  I don’t know whether to attribute this inconsistency to apathy, laziness, irrelevancy, or paranoia, but, whatever the case, I’m going to at least try to get back to blogging - and this time with Wordpress!

The Director for The Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, here at the University of Richmond, has been quite adamant that I get back in the game (ie. get my blog on)… and today, October 8th, 2008, the moons, stars and gaseous nebulas have come into alignment.  The psuedo-teechr is back to bloggin’.

For starters, let me tell you what’s on the horizon…  I’m hitting up the EDUCAUSE 2008 conference in Orlando at the end of the month and although I haven’t done anything “EDUCAUSE” since their 2006 Learning Technology Management program, I’ve been told from folks that you need to go to this 9,000+ ed-tech megaconference at least once in your career.  I’ll probably be blogging back and forth about my daily experiences, (and even posting a few pics of the behemoth Adobe , Blackboard and Google booths)…  Check back on 10/27, I’m sure you’ll find something new!

Oh the indicative…

Published
by
Kenneth
on February 12, 2008
in the goody good-good
. 2 Comments

As you have probably guessed, the title of this site is a tad cliche, especially with all these pre-school-enabled web 2.0 naming conventions. At least you can’t say I was never sheepish, Baaa baaa! Anyways, as I embark upon my journey of exploring and reframing the concept of teaching, learning, technology, culture, linguistics, philosophy, historicity, design, architecture, art, media, race, politics, inequity, activism, classism, multiculturalism, polyculturalism, post-modernism, generationalism, and hegemony, I invite you to cease whatever more important duties you need to perform in order to consume my 2.0 streams of consciousness. ;)