EduGlu Sandbox

http://solr.bccampus.ca/wiki/index.php/SREB_Web2.0

Next week I am back in Atlanta to give a talk on “Web 2.0″ to the educational technology working group of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB).

At this point in the game, giving a talk on “Web 2.0″ is pretty daunting, not because the topic is that difficult but because it’s been done so well so many times before that the challenge is how to keep it fresh and interesting.

I thought about this for a while and came up with the above approach. First off, rather than try to speak of “Web 2.0″ in the abstract, I decided (inspired by Cogdog’s recent examples) to tell a story, in this case my own story of the various points where I came to accept that something new IS going on with Web 2.0. Like many, my tendency was to try and understand the present and the future in terms of the past. While at times this can serve you well, it also results in a tendency to underestimate the magnitude of true discontinuities. And it seems to me that anyone still needing a “what is Web 2.0″ talk is likely suffering from this phenomenon, underestimating the disruption these innovations are already affecting.

The other approach I thought I’d try is to do the presentation as a page in mediawiki and then use the mediawiki presentation script during the presentation. (As an aside, I modified the script to work a little better, if you care you can install it from this page.) The idea, obviously, being to

1. use Web 2.0 tools to talk about Web 2.0
2. turn the presentation into a demonstration of some Web 2.0 phenomenom (write once/read anywhere; participatory web, etc)

That’s where you come in. I am about to send this page off to the organizers so that they can circulate it to the attendees with the request that they add to it, but I’m also looking for feedback and additions for you.

Each section has two links to areas I’m hoping people will add to. Each section heading has a link where I have added some additional notes, links and an invitation to steer the talk on that particular topic. And at the bottom of each section, there is a link for people to add their own stories of how they came to stop doubting and embrace the change being heralded in by Web 2.0. It’s there that I especially hope you will consider adding links back to your own blogs, your own personal stories of how you came to understand these various aspects of Web 2.0

If you decide to, you can edit the wiki using a generic account I’ve set up (username:wiki, password:wikiwiki). I’m hoping for at least a couple of outside contributions in an effort to demonstrate to decision makers from 16 southern states the power of the network. So please, consider adding a link or note on one of the sub-pages, and I will try to then work it into the larger presentation. - SWL

Tags: mediawiki, particpatory culture, presentation web 2.0

Last year was a banner year for my conference attendance; on top of the always fun Northern Voice, I was able to attend the (not so fun, for me) IMS Alt-i-lab sessions in Vancouver, the mind opening Open Education convergence in Logan, Utah, the WCET conference in Atlanta, SREB’s Online Learning Task Group Meetings (again, back to Atlanta), and closer to home, the BC Ed Tech User’s Group session in Kamloops and Camosun College’s Distributed Education days.

As enjoyable as many of the programs were, the highlight is always the people, the hallway and barroom conversations where new ideas are spawned, plots hatched and connections made. Indeed, this year’s crop was spectacular in this regard; as much as I am in almost daily contact with my online network, the opportunity to see Chris Lott and Jim Groom twice in one year, and Brian and D’Arcy more times than was seemly was a great boon to my thinking, growth and personal well being.

I typically canvas my network of close friends and edublogger buddies about what events they are thinking about attending, as I know this will factor into my own planning. But this got me wondering (which I did aloud on Twitter) if there wasn’t a better “web 2.0″ way to find out this information, especially a way that would allow me connect with people who I read and am interested in but don’t already have strong ties with.

As usual, Twitter yielded at least one good suggestion, upcoming.org, a site purpose-built for this. So I dutifully reactivated my account there, but I have some concerns. Not uncommon with any social software, the big one is “who else is there.” As much as I want to connect with new folks, the whole exercise began in an effort to more easily (less intrusively) find out where people I already know and like to talk to are going. The second issue is the lack of uptake of upcoming.org, epsecially amongst the educational technology conferences. A number of biggies weren’t in there (before I added them, a feature I quite like) which makes me suspicious of how useful it will be.

So, my question for you to start off 2008: where are you telling people (and how can I best find out) what physical meetings you are planning on attending in 2008? upcoming.org? Your blog? Facebook?

For myself, I will endeavor to use upcoming.org for now (cf. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/syndicate/v2/my_events/201841), but I am absolutely willing to be convinced of the merits of some other method. - SWL

Tags: conferences, events f2f