Usually, the conference tweets are easy – just use the organizational acronym and that is it.  There are a few issues, but more on that in a bit.  The real problem comes when tweeting about specific sessions.  You don’t want to have to explain in every tweet what session you are at – right?  The solution is usually to start numbering sessions and adding that to the conference tag.

Last year, I worked with the Texas Distance Learning Association on this issue.  We had 150 or sessions, so just add a number to the end of the tag and you are done: #txdla101, #txdla102, etc.  The problem is, we ran into a huge problem with searching for tweets.  If you want to just find #txdla101 – no problem. But then what if you want to see #txdla102? That is a separate search.  Multiply that by 150 sessions and then the conference tag (which won’t show up when you search for #txdla101) and you have a tiresome problem that would hinder the back channel due to search exhaustion.

I tried wild cards, but the results were spotty at best. And I was shocked to see how many random link generators that spammers use ended up containing “txdla” in them.  So we came up with a simple solution.

Just put a dash in the tags (like #txdla-101) and your problems are over.  A search for “txdla” will show every session tag AND the general conferences tags – all in one search.  Easy.  Or, if you do want to see a specific session, then search for it (like “txdla-101″) and your search is easily narrowed.

Once we figured that out, we had to discuss the general conference tag a bit more.

The discussion that we had was whether to use the year in the general conference tag – #txdla vs #txdla2010.  Ultimately you would need the dash in there to help with searches.  But we also ended up with confusion over whether to use #txdla-2010 or just #txdla-10.

Most conference only happen once per year, so I say the year is unnecessary.  Twitter searches in 2011 are not going to find anything from a year ago. They just don’t go that far back.  But, if someone does somehow find an old tweet and wants to know the year, they can just look at the time stamp and quickly find out what year the conference happened.  Overall, I would say that it is unnecessary to identify the current date in any Tweet – they are all time stamped.

Another controversy I have read online is over whether conferences should officially announce Twitter tags or allow them to be used by presenters.  Some say that this would keep some back-channelers from being totally honest if they knew that it would be seen by the person up front.

To this, I say “hogwash.” (guess my Southern roots are coming out).

Look, Twitter is a public forum.  If you have a problem with what you are about to say being read by the person up front, then maybe you should consider whether it should be Tweeted at all.  But even if that is not enough, then I still have to come back to Twitter being public. If you don’t want everyone to read it, then make your feed private, or go to a different method of back-channeling.  But don’t claim that a public forum is going to shut down honesty and openness because it is being, well – public.

Now, if your conference or event has less sessions or happens more than once a year, you might have to come with a different set of guidelines. But these are the ones I found work best with year conferences with large numbers of sessions.

(side-note: I am always thankful and surprised to find some readers of this blog out there. Any time you ever see me out there at a conference, feel free to grab a chair at the table I am eating at and let’s swap ideas.)

I guess we just have to be ready for hecklers and critics everywhere we go. In many ways, I like to embrace the comments of those that get visibly upset and red-faced when we question their sacred cows. Their questions and concerns help us to sharpen our argument significantly.  So this blog post is really a tribute to those critics and hecklers.

But first, a quick look at a good piece of constructive criticism:

For an improvement, I would have liked to see more examples of what people are doing. I like concrete items, I know the topic was theoretical which limited what could be presented; however I think I would have liked to see the presenters present more examples or talk rather than fielding as many questions as they did.

This comment actually came from someone that really liked the session, but left this as a suggestion for improvement.  We intentionally made our presentation more discussion oriented… more open-ended. We think that people actually need to start demanding that conference presenters stop giving so many concrete ideas and examples. They need to stop thinking for us. They need to give us the concepts and let us come up with the concrete ideas.

An interesting question arose from the discussion that I think applies here.  The question was basically that students don’t usually like to think for themselves – they want to be spoon fed – so if we go open and active with learning, won’t they just complain? The answer to that is a bit complex, but the short answer is yes, they will complain that content is not being spoon fed to them in a passive format.  Then the attendees started laughing about how that is also how we want stuff as educators – we go to conferences to be spoon-fed and not think ourselves.  The comment above is an example of that – we left it open ended and let people interact more, and even among the people that loved what we said their were still people that still wanted us to be more passive. I still want at times myself, so I am not criticizing this person’s comments as much as pointing out how much we need to change as educators.  Bur from here on out, the comments I want to feature get pretty bad :)

They were just presenting a conceptual piece, seemingly hoping for someone to fund them. It seems as though they assume ALL students have youtube, blogs, twitter, etc accounts.

Fund us? Do they know anything about these conferences? Going to TxDLA or Educause hoping to get funding is like Barry Manilow going to Metallica hoping they will buy some songs for their next album.  That is just crazy talk.  The second sentence shows how little people pay attention when they have written you off.  Our point was that students can used whatever tools they already are using online, no matter what it is, in their learning – rather than learn new tools just to do “assignments”.

Be prepared to provide strong evidence you are correct. If you can’t do that, you should keep your opinions to yourself.

Really? This last one is just sad, because it really defeats the whole purpose of education.  We can’t share new ideas? We can’t dream and think outside of the box and get other people to dream along with us?  You know, someone has to actually try this stuff before there is any evidence. That is kind of how you get evidence. Ideas only get better once you share them and collaborate around them.  But, once again, we want to be spoon fed.  Don’t give me concepts – give me ideas for me to mindlessly clone!

Despite the last two sad comments, the majority were good constructive ideas like the first one I quoted above or just down right awesome encouragement.  I will conclude with one of the better ones that was left for us:

What Matt and Harriet are proposing is exciting, innovative, and Bb, D2L, Google, Microsoft should all stop and listen.

This year, Harriet created a Prezi presentation.  Prezi is pretty cool in that it can be very non-linear.  You can click and scroll around on the presentation as you like. This gives me hope for a future of conference presentations that are free of PowerPoint overkill.  Here is what I am thinking:

Someday, someone will come up with an iPad competitor that doesn’t have all of Steve Job’s weird hang-ups about Flash.  Prezi is built in Flash, so this is key. Oh, and it will run a real operating system instead of iPhoneOS.  Then they will create a cheap adapter that hooks this superior iPad product to projectors. Then the fun will begin.

Image if you could just create a map of all the concepts you want to discuss in a presentations in Prezi.  Then use this better iPad model to run the presentation.  Using the touch screen, you can scroll around and zoom in on concepts as they come up in the discussion. Non-linear, interactive presentations, controlled by a light, portable touchscreen pad.  That would make any session much more active and connected.

Also consider how this could change your classes. Or maybe this already exists and I am just not buying the right products?

Anyways, here is the Prezi from our TxDLA session (which is still linear – we didn’t want to blow too many gaskets in one session):

Next time I hope to go in to some thoughts about some of the discussions and feedback we had at the conference – it was some great stuff.

Rapid changes in online learning concepts such as learning communities, personal learning environments, and complexity are driving a need to dismantle the learning management system as we know it. LMS systems and instructional design are in need of major overhauls and are in danger of becoming obsolete if they don”t evolve. Students need a place to connect and collaborate at complex levels rather than hide behind a “walled garden.” Two colleagues at UT Arlington will present a new paradigm as an innovative alternative to the existing LMS concept as we know it.

As we were getting ready to present another round of conferences in 2010, we realized that the term “Web 3.0″ is soooo 2009. So we updated the presentation:

TITLE: The Web is Changing. Time to Dethrone the LMS!

ABSTRACT: Rapid changes in online learning concepts – such as learning communities, personal learning environments and complexity – are driving a need to dismantle the Learning Management System as we know it. LMS software programs and instructional design theories are in danger of becoming obsolete if they don’t evolve. Students need a place to connect and collaborate at complex levels rather than hide inside a “walled garden.” Two colleagues at UT Arlington will present a new paradigm that is intended as an innovative alternative to the existing LMS concept as we know it.

We really just noticed that the typical “Web 3.0 concepts” weren’t driving the need for change as much as some of the concepts mentioned above are. The main gist of the presentation will still stay the same, of course – we would like to see LMS/CMS/VLE concept go away, to be replaced by a Social Learning Environment or a Personal Learning Network Aggregator of some kind. And there will be even more play dough!

We also plan to have a few new things, like an interesting viral video that will mock the LMS mercilessly and even a working model of New Vision to also show everyone.

First up on our conference schedule will be the EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference in February.  Stop by and say “Hi” to us if you are there!

• a menu of tools
• adaptability / accessibility
• interactive virtual agents
• ease of collaboration
• seamless integration
• tactile activities for any sense (smell, touch, taste, etc)
• modular learning (customizable)
• holodeck
• capture, evaluate, and weigh user created content
• useful
• game based interaction with in game assessment
• simulation
• translate into different languages, including American Sign Language

As you can see, quite a diverse list… even some crazy ideas.  I like crazy ideas.  This was at our presentation on New Vision for Learning Management Systems.  Interesting how people that had come from all over the country came up with many of the concepts we are trying to capture with New Vision.  Coincidence?

• One general session had a panel with an author and representatives from Google and Microsoft.  While the Microsoft and Google people were speaking, I couldn’t quit thinking “Hello, I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC.”  I’m beginning to think that certain companies really do attract and hire certain personality types….
• During one session, the presenter asked what people do to increase student engagement.  One gentleman raised his hand and declared “animated gifs!  Kids love them, and you can finds thousands of little ‘banging hammers’ and ‘flying birds’ out there for free!”  I had to strain to resist the temptation to smack my forehead so hard that they wouldn’t have heard it in the next session over.  Other people in the room actually began nodding and agreeing – “oh, yeah – students love media that moves!”.  A colleague even told me that the same man shared the same idea in another session. (We’ve had to ban animated gifs where I work for the most part, because students complain that they are distracting, boring, and make us look really, really ancient.)
• I sat in a session about creating realistic avatars of instructors that speak to students.  Basically, you spend hours (or days) creating a realistic virtual image of a teacher, then have the teacher record some speech, and then spend some more hours or days syncing the words to the avatar, adding blinks and stuff like that.  Or, you can just spend an hour or two actually filming the teacher and be done with it.  Seriously – it seems like no matter how far technology advances, some people just can’t get away from the talking head we’ve had in education for millenia now.  Do we really need high tech cutting edge talking heads now?
• Augmented reality made an appearance in a session (even though the session was about something else).  You don’t hear many people talking about educational uses for that, but they need to.  More on this on later.
• Adobe always has impressive products, but they always seem to be off people’s radar for some reason.  But they really do some interesting stuff.  They are trying hard to get Flash working on all media devices from smart phones to HD television.  That could prove interesting.
• One presetner asked “why should we pay so much for sales and marketing of textbooks, when we already need them in the first place?”  Or something to that effect.  70% of the costs of some textbooks goes in to those two categories.  But there are solutions for that – and many of the other problems that textbooks have – I’ll be blogging more about that later.
• Bing was brought up a few times.  It was actually spoken very highly of.  “It has a gorgeous interface” someone said.  Actually, it just has a gorgeous picture prominently in the middle, surrounded by a hideous interface that hides in the glow of the cool picture in the middle.  Ed-Techers get criticized that we are so distracted by coolness and flashiness that we tend to forget functionality.  And here we go proving that criticism to be true….

• TxDLA 2009 – April 6th – 9th in Corpus Christi, TX
• The Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning (try saying that one 10 times fast) / Moodle Moot 2009 (two conferences for the price of one) – June 17-19th in San Francisco
• NUTN 2009 – June 21-23 in Saratoga Springs, New York.

I will be presenting at all three, the first two with Harriet.  Some of the other EduGeeks will be at TxDLA – other than Katrina, not sure who all yet or what they are doing there (such as presentations), but will keep you post.

Harriet and I will be presenting “Will Web 3.0 Make Us Change the Way We Educate? A Call for a New Learning Management Program” at TxDLA and Sloan-C.  I will be presenting with Tim Gottleber of DCCCD at NUTN. The session will be called “Get Those EduPunks Off of My Lawn!”  :)

First of all, if you go through all of the trouble to pick an interesting city to host a conference in, then also be like NUTN and plan to integrate some of the cities attractions in to the conference (not just as after hours activities). Like a trip to downtown Park City for networking dinners or the gondola ride up the mountain for an awards dinner – great ideas.

My presentation on the future of the Internet was fun. I was a little surprised at the resistance to meta tagging that was voiced (“that will take too much time with no return benefit”). Of course, these people were in the minority I found out, as other people came up afterwards and told me they loved tagging and found it very useful.

I was also in a session that looked at the future of pedagogy and instructional design. Basically, three presenters each defended their position: tried and true (aka “the talking head”), expansion of current policies, and cutting edge. After they talked, we discussed. I was surprised at the support for tried and true lecture-based instructional delivery (both in face-to-face and distance learning). Passive learning has long proven to be ineffective at delivering instruction (no matter how interesting the presenter is), but I guess some still feel they are doing something while up there yapping. A great discussion nonetheless.

The keynotes were excellent. The opening keynote was Kurt Bedell, who had been with Apple for 10 years. He showed us some back-door stuff for iTunes University and even a little bit about the new iPhone :) I am always a little suspicious of podcasts because people tend to promote passive learning when using podcasts, but done correctly they do have their place.

We also had Mary Cullinane, who basically was the School of the Future Technology Architect for Microsoft. They seem to be doing great things for the future of education. That is, if you want to go to a four year college. She seemed to indicate that she believes that the only way to successfully complete your education is to finish a four year college degree. I didn’t get to ask her if she meant to imply that, but we do tend to think that way in suburbia America. The problem with this is that many people just are not interested in four year colleges. Technical schools, community colleges, and on-the-job training are all very acceptable alternatives to job development after high school.

Then there was the closing key note – Chris Melissinos, the Chief Gaming Officer of Sun Microsystems Inc. Yes – Chief Gaming Officer. He was incredibly funny, and not to mention really smart. He gets to play and develop games for a living – and go around presenting about them. Think video games are too violent? According to Chris, less than 20% of all video games sales are rated Mature (can’t remember the exact number). He spent a good chunk of time debunking myths about video games in education.

Also had a blast doing a geo-chaching activity. Did I mention there was also good food? I did manage to take some pics and a few short videos – mainly of the scenery:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mcrosslin/NUTN2008
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2717213734838364471&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=459153142681737867&hl=en

So, plan on attending next year in Saratoga Springs, New York. You won’t be disappointed.

EduGeekJournal Podcast ep002