A Day at the Circus
I am like a kid at the circus. I am in Day 2 of my Emerging Instructional Technologies class at the University of Northern Iowa. Trying to summarize a day in class is like trying to summarize a whirlwind tour of Chicago or New York City. Where does one begin?
To start, this is not your grandmother's classroom. The instructor, Dr. Zeitz, doesn't stand in front of the class and lecture. There is no text book, because many of the technologies we are studying are too new. The resources for this class are on the web and directly from the people making it all happen.
We started the day with an interview with Steve Hargadon, creator of Classroom 2.0. Steve was skyped into our class from his hotel in Texas. My first reaction was how clear the audio and video of the session was. I couldn't help but remember many of the meetings we held in the late 1980s and early 1990s during the planning phase for the Iowa Communications Network. There was a lot of discussion regarding one-way video with two-way audio, ITFS vs. fiber optics, full-motion video vs. compressed video. In the end, the broadcast quality, fiber optics network won the argument. Here we were today, however, watching and listening to an interview with an expert in the field using a free service (Skype) connecting two laptops. Pretty amazing stuff. Obviously, Skype can't replace a tool like the ICN for broad classroom instruction, but for specific uses like today, it worked like a charm.
Ning and The Power of Social Networking
Hargadon introduced the class to Classroom 2.0 and to Ning, the social networking tool behind it. Hargadon sees much more potential in the development of social networking sites over the ubiquitous blogging tools. Blogging, according to Hargadon, has its limits. For one, it places the owner of the blog in the "expert" seat while commenters are in a secondary position. Second, blogging takes months to develop a readership. It takes a committed person to invest the time necessary to create valuable content and wait for the readers to discover you.
Social networking, on the other hand, levels the playing field. A person can join an existing network like Classroom 2.0 and immediately start receiving feedback. It also turns users from readers to participants. Very quickly, a conversation can develop within a social network that can take months to develop on a blog.
Hargadon is a true believer in the significance of social networking as an educational tool. "I think social networking holds the most dramatic potential for personal influence and development of anything we have seen in years."
Tools like Ning allow individuals to develop expertise in narrow subject fields, develop an audience, and make a valuable contribution to the world's knowledge base. It does not matter how narrow the topic may be, social networking allows communities to form around topics of interest.
It didn't take long and I could begin to see the value of a tool like Ning. My personal mission is to help the church and Christian educators begin utilizing the power of technology within a Christian educational setting. While listening to Hargadon speak, I jumped over to GoDaddy to reserve a domain name (www.ChristianEdTech.com), logged into blogger and reserved a blog place (ChristianEdTech.blogspot.com) and reserved the same name on Ning (ChristianEdTech.ning.com).
As a successful developer of a social network, Hargadon concluded with some valuable tips for the would-be creators in our cohort: help develop the culture of your network; help users become contributors; help the community to begin connect with one another.
Adventures in Second Life
The second half of our day was spent with Dan Powers, Professor of Information Systems and Management at the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa. Dr. Powers is the creator IowaMetaVerse, a nonprofit organization developing Virtual Iowa within SecondLife [http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iowa/129/122/26]. Within a few minutes, our class was logged into SL and touring the developing virtual community. We received a behind-the-scenes look at building and managing an enterprise within SL.
The key to SL, Dr. Powers observed, is the creation and utilization of valuable content, not just the construction of virtual worlds. He cited a couple of examples of large organizations (for those interested they are linked here and here) that have developed a presence on SL, but they are all but deserted. SecondLife is not a "build it and they will come" environment. To illustrate, he provided several examples from around Virtual Iowa that add value to the experience, not just nice buildings and empty spaces. Moreover, a community of builders is taking interest in and helping develop Virtual Iowa. As Dr. Powers listed some names, it was clear that Virtual Iowa is the result of an international community of citizens.
From a user perspective, SecondLife is the most challenging technology to get my arms around. Do a google on SL and you will find that educators either love it or have no use for it. Clearly, to become expert in SL takes a lot of time (not to mention a lot computing resources, money, and a fast broadband connection). Moreover, the greatest barrier for educators is the mature nature of the SL population. In this respect, SL mirrors real life: it's filled with a lot of great people as well as a lot of warped people. It's the last place you would want to encourage kids to hang out.