Presentations

We tried something new (for us) this year, and had an Ignite session during the Taylor Institute's annual conference. It was a risk, as we had never hosted that format before, and none of the 6 presenters (for 5 presentations) had ever done an Ignite. Nevertheless, we persisted. I got talked into being the (humble) host for the event, introducing the format and acting as emcee between presenters. Each presenter provided their slides earlier in the week, so I had time to smush them all into one master presentation file and apply the automatic slide progression for their decks....

I was asked to give a presentation for the From Courses to Dis/Course online conference last week, and chose the topic of identity as it relates to openness. My session, Identity in the Open Classroom, was a fun (for me, anyway) exploration of the issues, and I think served the purpose of framing discussion. Here's the video of the recording from the session: the full chat transcript for the session is available, as well as the full Elluminate session recording....

I was involved with two sessions at this year's Faculty Technology Days conference on campus. The first one was a keynote panel on "Social Networking in the Academy" and the second was "Weblogs as Personal Repositories." Social Networking in the Academy When we were planning the Social Networking panel, we realized that some of the faculty members might not be familiar with social networking, or with some of the aspects or implications of it, so we thought it would be a good idea to start the 2-hour panel session with a brief introduction to the topic so we were all on similar pages....

Michael Geist gave a talk at The University of Calgary on April 2, 2008, on the subject of copyright. He talked about the need for Fair Dealings, the dangers of the Canadian DMCA, and even touched on the benefits of open access and even open education. Dr. Geist's presentation was very compelling, interesting, and engaging. I believe he was able to communicate the benefits of less-restrictive copyright, and am hoping he helped plant some seeds to get an open content movement going here at The University of Calgary....

I had the pleasure of co-presenting a session with Brian, Alan and Jim for the MacLearningEnvironments.org group. We wound up breathing some new life into Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and building some demo sites and background wiki pages. Here's the video for the session: The video is available in iPod format, and original lossless QuickTime format. Brian is also offering up an audio-only MP3 version of the jam session.

I had the pleasure of attending a presentation/workshop by Craig E. Nelson this morning. The Teaching & Learning Centre hosted the event, which brought faculty members from the various sides of campus together to discuss critical thinking and implications on pedagogy. It was a really interesting session, with Craig telling stories and modelling effective use of the strategies and activities he was talking about (and getting us to talk about). My takeaway points from the session:...

I've been following the TED Talks videos as they're published - recordings of the various presentations at the 2006 TED Conference/Symposium. There are some absolutely amazing presentations, ranging from Al Gore, to Nicholas Negroponte, to Mena Trott (and many others). TED Talks in iTunes The video production and publication is sponsored by BMW, who are hoping to be associated with the innovation and Deep Thinking presented at TED, and I think it's a great example of how online advertising can work....

Our session this morning went really well. I think we were able to walk the line between force-feeding the participants with the relentless firehose of super-cool social software stuff, and having a fun interactive session that served as a solid starting point for people wanting to play with Web 2.0™ toys. The session was completely full, with Harry quietly jamming to the groovy vibes of Sesame Street. It was pretty cool having Harry in the session, and he was good enough to let Keira participate....

Brian managed to swing me an invite to co-host his Social Software session at the BCCampus Spring Workshop on Educational Technologies 2006, which will be held at North Island College in beautiful downtown Courtenay BC. (actually, I've never been to Courtenay/Comox, so am looking forward to seeing the area - I'm flying in on a Beech 1900D, so that leg of the trip should be interesting). The session should be fun....

I'll be giving an "Intro to Podcasting" workshop/presentation/session on Wednesday April 19th here at the Learning Commons Teaching & Learning Centre. I've only got an hour, and it will be an "intro" session, so I'll follow Levine's Law and start with the demo. Then, I'll stick with the demo, showing different tools used to create, publish, subscribe, and listen to podcasts. I'm hoping to keep the session rather informal, with some audience participation....