Last night and January 20

Last night was a good time. We had new friends Scott and Shawn, courtesy of April, bring us to the original Salt Lick, which was a great experience. After eating a large amount of beef and pork we decided to go out to 6th Street. Unfortunately, Patti and Glenna did not go out with us; April, Tom, Michelle, Kristi, our new friend Dan, I mean Chad, from Michigan Tech went to an Irish Pub and then saw a band—Erin James and the Bad Habits. Her husband is from Chassell (in the UP). It’s such a small world.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with the keynote speaker this morning, even at 8:30 a.m. He was discussing the concept of digital native versus digital immigrant, which is something I was introduced to during my doctoral program by my mentor Dr. Kristine Blair who required us to read an article by Marc Prensky entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. (If I can attach that article, I will.) I can’t wait to look at the book, http://borndigitalbook.com/, which I find very pertinent to teaching freshmen. I think his presentation may inspire me to reorganize my EN 111: Composition I class for the future. I think that I have already started with this direction based on my beginning the semester with the Technological Literacy Narrative and the Day in the Life Profile Assignment, where they need to use the Flips and record and write about what goes on in their life.

After leaving the 10:00 a.m. session 20 minutes into it (I’ll not waste any additional time speaking of its inadequacies.), I spent time looking over three of the poster sessions. The thought that went through my mind as I went through reading the various presentations was “why weren’t these actual sessions?” What I found was that I continually thought, these are the types of projects that I would like to learn more about, specifically about the logistics of set-up, funding, sustainability, student perceptions etc.

Poster One: Not only did a get a wonderful mini paper origami swan from one of the Japanese faculty members from the cohort of 6 Japanese colleges and universities, but I received a brief look at how these “Learning Communities on a Virtual University Environment” provided, through the use of a Moodle site, were able to encourage workshops, student activities, and COLLABORATION between multiple universities! How awesome is that? I love that these universities embraced, perhaps from necessity, a way of reaching out and creating a way to share knowledge and approaches across universities—isn’t that what we should be doing (not only working with our departments, but among other departments across campus and beyond our physical landscape)? They directed me to http://eli2010.f.lecca.jp/ for more handouts.

Poster Two: The second poster session I “attended” was “Implementing Andragogy in the Online Class” where I talked with Heidi Ashbaugh. We discussed the aspects of modeling in online environments and the difficulties and benefits of these types of models for our students virtually. As we discussed, she suggested I looked into Flips if I haven’t already (which I have), and we jointly chatted about some possibilities like students filming their processes during various projects and models of service learning.

Poster Three: A joint effort between a graduate course in Engineering between Penn State and University of Seoul. While I didn’t get to talk to presenter, I could see how learning the logistical information behind this type of project could be extremely helpful. So much possibility.
Then Who Gives a Flip? (I found out that I do, and it should have lasted longer—even beyond the breakout session!)

Shawn Miller will post his materials on the pathway site, so I guess I’ll need to register soon. J
He guided us to their website www.duke.edu/ddi (This site will be redirected to http://dukedigitalinitiative.duke.edu/)

They found that flips were being used for short documentaries; class assignments; recording lectures; recording interviews; Digital diaries, self reflection of service learning projects (I’m seeing another theme!); Groups assignments; Rec events

Examples: http://thejungleblog-duke.blogspot.com/ and http://metoomonologues.wordspress.com/

Went to lunch at the Moonshine with April, which is kitty corner (I know many have different pronunciations and spellings for this, and I acknowledge these differences), to the hotel. My cobb salad was phenomenal, and having a few bites of April’s catfish was divine. What takes the cake, literally, was the Red Velvet Cake. HEAVEN on a plate! Lovely layers, moist, fluffy-from scratch frosting…ahhhhhhhhh…

On the way back up to the room, my phone notified me that I had a message. I listened to the following: “This is your mother. You said you were going to call us when you got to Austin. That was days ago! Call us when you get this.” I figured that I had waited a couple of days a couple of minutes more wasn’t going to matter because the one session I wanted to see since the beginning of this conference was in progress—eportfolios.

After having enjoyed my decadent experience and being shamed, I got to see some of the eportfolio session. My end thought: people are so limited in various systems. While I can understand to a certain extent why people use form driven programs, why not encourage students to create and develop their own hypertexts? By encouraging students to do this, they increase their technological literacy and their ability to analyze audience, purpose/situation, and usability. This type of creation of interactive documents, I feel and have witnessed, encourages critical thinking toward the internet and the sources/resources available on it.

While waiting for the Sophie session to start, I called my parents. Trying to whisper, I attempted to talk to my dad. He kept yelling, “I can’t hear you. Speak up.” So I quickly walked out and told my dad I was safe and at the conference. He said, "That's no excuse! Love you and call later."

Reimagining the Book: Multimedia Authoring with Sophie—a free/open source software (http://www.sophieproject.org/). (Just note: Some of this information was my random typing directly from their ppt.) The first speaker Susan used the word Prosumers = produces + consumers to discuss students. I liked this. Susan provided an overview of what multimedia and familiar terms, as well as the genesis of Sophie. The second speaker, Holly, discussed more intricacies of Sophie and the potential of multimedia and Sophie.

Genres of multimedia: Documentary, Thesis-driven, Essayistic, Game, Experiential, Digital storytelling

Types of Authoring Tools
Presentation: ppt, prezi
Content Authoring: NMC pachyderm, Sophie
Course Creation: Adobe Authorware, Trivantis Corp, Lectora

Resource: http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryTools

Examples: http://www.yhchang.com/BETTY_NKOMO.html; Kairos 14.2 Kuhn, speaking with students (I love Kairos!!! It’s in direct “competition” with Computers and Composition Online, which is where I am section editor, but I love to see something from my discipline here at the conference!); http://vectorsjournal.org/ Public Secrets by Sharon Daniel issue 4

Authoring Tool Considerations
Linear or branched? Static or interactive? Standalone or web-based? Local or hosted? Basic/simple or sophisticated/complex? Rapid or slow development? Commercial or open source? Free or costly?
Other considerations: standards, compliancy, licensing, platform, budget, development team
expertise

What are we doing? Writing? Composing? Directing? Curating? How do we write with media? (This seems like a question that has come up quite a bit at this conference. I have to say that I enjoy that people in other disciplines are thinking about these things and simply placing the responsibility solely on the rhetoric and composition faculty.)

Holly recommended not going into Sophie and just playing around. Instead, she suggested doing 2.5 hours of an investment to work the tutorials back to back to understand it. Sophie has a reader and an authoring tool. The reader only allows the reader to read and make sticky notes. In the future, the comment feature will be active. She walked us through an example of a book that she put together earlier in the day. Through Sophie, teachers will be able to create a conversation with students by having them read and respond through the sticky notes and then emailing them back to me. Tips: When creating a book, save the text as rtf files in order to transfer the information more easily.

10 people for a hands on experience—willing to come to campus to demo Sophie! I think this would be something to consider.

Tip from the audience: Rename the zip file s2.

I can see a lot of potential for this type of software in all avenues of writing. Exciting!