Our First Real Podcast

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt CrosslinWe finally got around to recording our first real podcast… on the drive home. What can I say? We were so in to the conference that we forgot to do many recordings :). You can see the most recent podcast in our Gcast widget on the right side of the page [EDIT: embedded below]. You can also see a list of past recordings by clicking on the “Posts” button. Here is the description of the most recent recording:

“Harriet interviews Erika, Scott, and Matt of UT Arlington and asks them what they most enjoyed about the TxDLA conference.”

 

Into The Home Stretch

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt CrosslinAnd the last day is actually here. I’d like to say that the time has flown by… but it hasn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong – I have really enjoyed this conference. Rhonda and her legions of helpers and volunteers did a great job with this conference. It’s just that doing the blog, micro-blog, AND podcast took a lot more time and energy than I thought they would. It’s feels like it has been ages since I stepped out of Scott’s truck and Harriet said “let’s go get the micro-blog screen set-up!” I think the poor podcast bore the brunt of our busyness – well, that and the fact that cellphone reception at the convention center is extremely spotty. I really didn’t feel like dragging anyone in to the parking lot just for a quick interview.

There are many promising things happening at this year’s conferences. Several extremely radical ideas were thrown out at every session I attended (including general sessions). Usually these ideas meet with a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism at every conference I have been at – but not here. The enthusiasm might have been cautious, but the skepticism seems to be blissfully absent (as it usually is at TxDLA).

And the absence of certain buzzwords that I don’t like, well… I need to get off of that one 🙂

I also noticed that I made it all the way until Wednesday night before someone made the claim that they were going to be revolutionizing the field of online education like no one has in ___ years. That’s neither good nor bad – just unusual. I love seeing all of the new products in the vendor hall, as well as reading the hype surrounding them with a smile. I explore emerging technologies on a daily basis, so I tend to be a tad too cynical about hype.

I also find it funny hearing people’s reactions to sessions in the halls, elevators, and lunch lines of the conference. Every day I hear this one comment: “It was a good session. They actually did exactly what the description said – I was thinking it would be something else. I wish that they had covered this or went more in detail on ______.” I think that is an interesting commentary on the American advertising system – people are actually surprised when they get exactly what the description says. (If you are a first time presenter – please realize that statements like that are meant as a compliment – as in, it was so good, they wanted more.)

The Digital Native Myth

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt CrosslinWe’ve been having an interesting side conversation on the Micro-blog. It started off with me saying this:

“Almost made the whole day without hearing my least favorite term “digital immigrant.”

It seems like whenever I bring up the term digital native or digital immigrant, I get at least a few (if not more) stories from teachers that can’t seem to find many of these “digital natives” out there. Those of us that are ready to let the students loose in the digital world that they are supposedly native to are getting blank stares from said students. I polled my wife’s 9th grade class last year and found that most of them had no idea what a blog was. Really – no clue. Do you know why? They don’t own a computer at home. Over 80% of them didn’t. There is this thing called the digital divide that is very real and very ignored.

Chris Duke sent me a link to an excellent blog post he wrote called “Millenials” are NOT different learners!! I think he makes an excellent point:

“Millenials have the opportunity to learn with grander and newer technologies than the those available to their teachers when their teachers were in secondary or undergraduate education.”

So, in other words, learning is the same – it’s just that society has changed and given our natural desire to learn new directions to grow that were not available just a decade ago. We’re tapping in to stuff that we always wanted, but just didn’t have the technology to do.

But I digress… my original point was how I despise the term digital native. Just because someone was born a certain year does not mean they will have access to a computer and therefore become a native. Now, there are those that grow up with a computer at home and they technically are a digital native. But there is also this implication that they are automatically more tech-savy than any given digital immigrant on any given day. This is just not true. Think about all of the people that you know who are true early adopters. I am thinking of some now… and no natives are coming to mind. I am usually the one convincing my 20 year old sister-in-law that she needs to sign up for a new website. Not the other way around.

I’ve been blogging on this subject a while on my main blog (EduGeek Journal). Here are more thoughts of mine on this subject (the first link is where I half-jokingly suggest some new terms to use and get some funny responses):

You Were Born a Digital Native. Now What?
Survey Says… (shattering online myths of digital natives)
The World is Not Flat – It is a Plateau

Now, I do recognize that there are differences with every generation. Always has been, always will be. We need to know what these differences are. But won’t focusing so much unnecessary attention on the differences just serve to drive a larger wedge between “us” and “them”? There are also huge similarities. We should stop acting like younger generations are an entirely different species than us. Recognize the differences, but like our keynote taught us this morning – learn to focus on the positive stuff that is there.

Update: Sorry there were some broken links – got those repaired….

Podcast: Themes at TxDLA 2008

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt CrosslinHad a free moment, so I started yacking in to my phone again. Here is the podcast description:

“Matt takes a minute to contemplate some of the early emerging themes at TxDLA 2008. Other than technical glitches, there seems to be an interest in students socializing and connecting with the world around them.”

Thoughts or comments? Feel free to sign up and post them here.

 

The Wild Ride of Being a Presenter

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt CrosslinWell… I knew that I was taking a chance by doing a hands-on session that totally relied on Internet connection to work. So, when the sites that I needed to do my presentation with weren’t coming up – I had to go to plan B. But plan B relied on a PowerPoint, which we don’t have installed on work laptops. So it was on to Plan C – make it up as I go along. So, yep… I was re-arranging my session as I went along. My train of thought is not always an easy ride to catch, but I think I finally got everyone on the right track. For those that weren’t there, or were there and need this information, there is a session wiki with all of my (original) notes in it:

http://moodledesign.pbwiki.com (The access key is moodle2008)

Tech glitches are the name of the game in online learning – what can I say?  I would have like to have gone in to Sloodle for more than 20 minutes at the end, but it is still an experimental program.  Just not much to see with it yet.

Podcast: TwitterBoard, Micro-Blog, and Late Podcasts

TxDLA 2008 Blog

Matt Crosslin[Note: the rest of the TxDLA 2008 Blog seems to have been lost. Many of the comments were also not archived, unfortunately. There were at least a few more posts: One by Harriet about the first day of TxDLA, one from Matt about his first unofficial podcast, and probably a few welcome posts. The podcast episode is presented below. All of these episodes were recorded through a cellphone dial-in podcast recording service called Gcast, so the quality is kind of low.]

“Listen to a tired Matt recap where you can see the TwitterBoard at TxDLA, how you can be involved with the micro-blog, and why the first podcast was recorded so late.”