Socratic Monologue
I’ve been reading some of the great reflections on TLt from others (Rick, D’Arcy, Jen, Alec, Dean and Dean again – gosh he’s prolific). After a couple of days for my brain to gear down from the conference buzz, a few presentations and themes stand out:
The power of social networks, especially personal learning networks, arose over and over starting in George Siemens’ opening keynote. Twitter was mentioned a lot. Jen appropriately renamed the conference to “Teaching and Learning with Twitter”. That was a powerful theme for me. I spent most of my time with people in my Twitter online social network, including friends that I had met face to face before and a few that I hadn’t. I was greeted as warmly by people I was meeting face to face for the first time as by people I had known face to face for years.
Dean Shareski’s presentation “Share Everything“. Dean is a gifted presenter and he has a gift for making complex ideas simple and finding the importance in simple ideas. Sharing is a value we learn as children and it is an important value for educational technologists. Along with the power of the social network, sharing was a noticeable theme during the conference. Our ideas become more powerful when we share them. We need to share what we think, share what we read, share what we see and share what we create. I don’t think I’ve been sharing nearly enough, maybe because I have felt that my ideas weren’t worth sharing. Maybe they’re not, but I’m hoping to share more thoughts via this blog in the future.
Brian Lamb is a rawk star! His presentation “Media is Melting, man and I don’t want to swim” started with a brilliant live mashup performance of music and spoken word. I was up at the front so I didn’t see but apparently a number of people walked out during the introduction. I’m not sure if they left because of the less than optimal sound quality, or if they weren’t getting in to the mashup. The traditional part of the presentation highlighted that the current transition between dominant media is precedented by other changes in communication technology. The shift to open resources and licensing, and the ease with which one can remix and create content will disrupt current information oligarchies.
It is now about 1:30 in the morning and my need for sleep is overwhelming my need to share my impressions of the conference. I will need to write more about Rick’s keynote and my presentations another time.
The power of social networks, especially personal learning networks, arose over and over starting in George Siemens’ opening keynote. Twitter was mentioned a lot. Jen appropriately renamed the conference to “Teaching and Learning with Twitter”. That was a powerful theme for me. I spent most of my time with people in my Twitter online social network, including friends that I had met face to face before and a few that I hadn’t. I was greeted as warmly by people I was meeting face to face for the first time as by people I had known face to face for years.
Dean Shareski’s presentation “Share Everything“. Dean is a gifted presenter and he has a gift for making complex ideas simple and finding the importance in simple ideas. Sharing is a value we learn as children and it is an important value for educational technologists. Along with the power of the social network, sharing was a noticeable theme during the conference. Our ideas become more powerful when we share them. We need to share what we think, share what we read, share what we see and share what we create. I don’t think I’ve been sharing nearly enough, maybe because I have felt that my ideas weren’t worth sharing. Maybe they’re not, but I’m hoping to share more thoughts via this blog in the future.
Brian Lamb is a rawk star! His presentation “Media is Melting, man and I don’t want to swim” started with a brilliant live mashup performance of music and spoken word. I was up at the front so I didn’t see but apparently a number of people walked out during the introduction. I’m not sure if they left because of the less than optimal sound quality, or if they weren’t getting in to the mashup. The traditional part of the presentation highlighted that the current transition between dominant media is precedented by other changes in communication technology. The shift to open resources and licensing, and the ease with which one can remix and create content will disrupt current information oligarchies.
It is now about 1:30 in the morning and my need for sleep is overwhelming my need to share my impressions of the conference. I will need to write more about Rick’s keynote and my presentations another time.
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[...] at TLT Summit 2008, and it immediately captured my attention. I even mentioned that I wanted to write some more about that keynote. I guess the idea of eudaimonia has been bouncing around in my head ever since and now I’ve [...]