Synesthesia Start

The following is the text of the narrated animation that begins Synesthesia Quest 2012, a virtual, online session offered through SIDLIT (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology). The text is offered here, in case some participants do not have audio playback. For more information on SIDLIT, a free conference held annually at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, visit www.sidlit.org.

Welcome to Synesthesia Quest 2012 (we’ll shorten the name to simply SQ12). SQ12 is an online, virtual workshop session offered as part of the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (abbreviated to SIDLIT). SQ12 will be accessible during sidelight on Thursday and Friday August second and third, 2012, and will remain open for you after the conference. 

With SQ12 we’re trying to accomplish three goals:

1. First, we want to engage all your learning senses in a SIDLIT session that does not have a set time and meeting place. You can explore between sessions, in the evenings or whenever you have access.
2. Second, we want to help you explore and interact with several desktop and web-based apps that may be useful to you. If you’re involved in education, we think you may discover some new tools to use in your classroom, whether that classroom is online or face-to-face or a hybrid of both. You’ll also have a chance to suggest apps you think other educators will find useful!
3. Finally, we want you to use SQ12 as an online forum to summarize and report key points or important ideas learned from the concurrent sessions at SIDLIT 2012. On behalf of the planning committee, we hope that you’ll learn something new from every session you attend. SQ12 gives you a place to synthesize and report on that key concept, new idea, or nugget of information you obtained…and share it with others at the conference. In fact, the closing session called “Sprint to the Finish” on Friday, August third will feature an opportunity to share your “take-aways” from each session as well as hear from others.

So let’s get started. We’ll be using a free, online app called Mentor mob. to serve as the structure and guide for your participation in SQ12. MentorMob is a tool that enables you to organize content including websites, videos or articles into a learning playlist.  While a playlist can link to websites and video already online, you can also upload several file types including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slideshows, PDF files and images.

The next three steps in this Synesthesia Quest 2012 playlist are tutorials covering “What is Mentor Mob?” a “learning playlist tour” and how to “Interact with Others.” The second tutorial will help you learn to navigate a MentorMob playlist and the third tutorial will help you understand how to comment on steps within a playlist. In case you want to add your comments to any step in the SQ12 playlist.

So now, you're ready to click the Next button at the top of the screen (on the top of the page at http://bit.ly/MwhvTK, that is) and move to step 2 in the SQ12 playlist.

Have You Registered for 2 Days of Free Workshops?

Even while you wind down this semester, plan to start the fall semester by registering for SIDLIT (more information at http://bit.ly/aDCY35). Register today for sessions on “Facing Reality: The Challenges of Using eTexbooks in Online Classes,: “Android Productivity Tips,” “Beyond Ning: Rolling Your Own Social Network,” “Education by MMO: The Evoke Game,” and sessions on Pecha Kucha, hybrid courses, ANGEL, Blackboard, Windows 7, Clickers, Gaming, Social Bookmaking in education and much more. Over 60 sessions scheduled and complimented by door prizes, free food and snacks!

If you are not a current C2C member becoming a member is as easy. Simply go to www.sidlit.org and click the Create New Account link in the bottom left corner. Once you’ve completed the member registration form, locate the SIDLIT SIGNUP link and click it.

Join Colleague to Colleague (C2C) and join us for a cost efficient (free) conference at Johnson County Community College on the first Thursday and Friday (5 & 6) in August 2010. And pass on this message to your colleagues so they can attend and learn at SIDLIT 2010.

Pecha Kucha, Ignite and Flash Sessions

Pecha Kucha, pronounced “pe-chak-cha” (see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/what or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdghID66kLs for help with the pronunciation) “is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.” Pecha Kucha presentations (also called Flash or Sprint sessions) typically use 20 PowerPoint slides each displayed for 20 seconds which limit the presenter to 6 minutes and 40 seconds to convey a concept or idea.

Ignite Law is a weekly Pecha Kucha event held in Chicago for lawyers and is free (with a ticket). It’s just one example of regularly scheduled Pecha Kucha sessions around the country. Many educational conferences are beginning to incorporate this type of event within their conference schedule. An example is the upcoming Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (SIDLIT) sponsored by Colleague to Colleague and JCCC (supported by Staff and Organizational Development and the Ed Tech Center). Check out http://www.c2conline.org/ or http://www.sidlit.org/ for more information.

If you’d like to see video from the Ignite Law sessions, check out http://www.ignitelaw.com/video/. Additionally, you can see a Pecha Kucha training video about Pecha Kucha presentations at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGaCLWaZLI4.

Could this concept be valuable in the classroom? Or maybe there’s an application for PowerPoint Karaoke (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSsj0wmeS00&NR=1).

Share Your Expertise This Summer at SIDLIT

Colleague to Colleague (C2C), the sponsors of the 2010 Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (SIDLIT), has extended the presentation proposal deadline until Friday, April 30, 2010. Proposals are submitted online at http://c2conline.org/node/add/sidlit-session.

SIDLIT is an opportunity for faculty and staff to share and discuss instructional technology ideas and techniques with your colleagues from the Midwest. Examples of 2009 SIDLIT sessions are displayed online at www.sidlit.org. Topics range from copyright issues, to Web 2.0 tools, to student and faculty support issues to best practices for online instruction.

Notification of successful proposals will be communicated by Friday, May 7, 2010.

Registration for SIDLIT is now open and can be completed online at http://c2conline.org/sidlit/sidlit-2010. SIDLIT will be held on Thursday and Friday, August 5 - 6, 2010 in the Regnier Center on the Johnson County Community College campus in Overland Park, KS. This is a free conference supported by numerous sponsors including: Articulate, Blackboard/ANGEL, the Ed Tech Center (Johnson County Community College), Epsilen, Hawkes Learning Systems, KCREACHE, MBS Direct, McGraw-Hill/ALEKS, Pearson/eCollege, Softchalk, Staff & Organizational Development (Johnson County Community College), and Tegrity.

SIDLIT Registration Now Open

Registration for the 11th Annual Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology ( SIDLIT ) is now open , the institute will be held on Thursday and Friday, August 5-6, 2010 at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. The conference is jointly sponsored by JCCC and Colleague to Colleague (C2C). If you are already a member of C2C, register by logging in at www.sidlit.org and then click the SIDLIT SIGNUP link. If you are not a member of C2C, go to http://c2conline.org/user/register and join C2C. If you signed up as a member on last year’s website you are still a member, if you forgot your password click the Request new password link.

The two-day institute includes presentations, topic-oriented special interest discussion groups, hands-on workshops, and demonstrations. There is no charge to attend, but registration is required.

This is also your invitation from C2C to submit a proposal for a 50 minute presentation on issues or topics related to distance learning and instructional technology. Proposals for hands-on training to be offered in a computer lab are also invited. Returning this year, we will be offering an improved Speed Geeking session (a take-off on speed dating) which offers 5 short, concise presentations during a one hour session. New this year we are presenting a Web 2.0 Sprints session where 4 presenters spend 10 minutes demonstrating/discussing their favorite new Web 2.0 tool.

To be a part of this year's SIDLIT 2010 submit a proposal at http://c2conline.org/sidlit/sessions-speakers and click the Submit a session link.
April 15th is the deadline for proposals.

The SIDLIT Planning Committee will review all proposals and presenters will be contacted prior to May 4, 2010.

Web 2.0 Apps such as Twitter, Facebook, ePortfolios and More

This past Wednesday, Tracy Newman and I presented a Technology Brown Bag session on “Twitter, Tumblr, Yammer, Huh? – How to Navigate Massive Information Streams and Have a Life.” A video archive of the session is available from the “Video Archive” link on the Tech Brown Bag schedule page ( http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/brownbag/ ). I was a last minute substitute presenter for Marziah Karch, who presented the same topic at the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology (SIDLIT) in late July. Marziah’s paper and others from the conference are available in the JCCC Library’s ScholarSpace archive (see http://scholarspace.jccc.edu/sidlit/ ).

Future Sessions
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be focusing on a variety of Web 2.0 tools and considering how they can be used for educational purposes. The Twitter session was the first in the series, followed this coming week (Wednesday, September 16) with “Struttin Your Stuff – Exploring ePortfolios for Everyone (Faculty, Staff and Students) presented by Bob Epp and “Going Where They Are–Using Facebook in Class” presented by Keith Krieger and Jonathan Bacon. Details are available on the Tech Brown Bag schedule page ( http://web.jccc.edu/edtech/brownbag/ ).

Defining Web 2.0
If you’re still unsure what Web 2.0 includes, check out a couple of earlier blog posts at http://technotipster.blogspot.com/2008/08/web-20-and-what-it-really-means.html and http://technotipster.blogspot.com/2008/07/your-digital-toolkit-lesser-known-web.html .

Regarding Twitter
Back to Twitter, a July 2009 survey by Faculty Focus (see http://www.facultyfocus.com/ ) found that almost 80% of faculty are familiar with Twitter compared to 30+% who use Twitter. The report discussed reasons why faculty use Twitter as well as the leading reasons they do not. Page 9 of the report (released in September 2009) summarizes the findings. Faculty survey responses fell in three categories. Faculty use twitter primarily to:

• “Stay current on news/trends”
• “Network with colleagues”
• “Participate in conference backchannel”

If you have an opportunity to review the survey findings, spend some time reading the revealing comments of active tweeters and their current plus planned uses of the tool. You’ll find some potentially useful applications of Twitter.

The report is available online at the http://www.facultyfocus.com/ site.

Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology (SIDLIT)

It’s been a while since I posted a tip and my only valid excuse is that the Ed Tech Center (including this writer) have been feverishly preparing for SIDLIT (Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology). The conference ran Thursday and Friday, July 30-31, 2009 and now it is history.

It's always a period of readjustment when SIDLIT is over. We spend so much time planning and building toward the event, followed by a sigh of relief (and an emotional letdown) when it’s over. Can you believe that we’ve been doing this for 10 years and we’ve grown from 50 attendees the first year to around 400 this year?

For those who attended, if you can’t quite let go yet and want to relive some of SIDLIT through a history of tweets, check out http://tinyurl.com/mdtgk9 (visibletweets of SIDLIT postings and those with the #sidlit hash tag).

If interested in a sampling of the sessions, you can visit Rob Gibson’s “Integrating Social Networking & Web 2.0 Applications into eLearning” slideshow at http://www.slideshare.net/rgibson/social-elearning-sidlit or Paul Decelles’ session on “Science Simulations for Students in Second Life” at http://tinyurl.com/lxsdmp or Aaron Sumner’s presentation on “Quick Application Development with Web Frameworks” at http://tinyurl.com/mfrau5. More presentations will be available shortly on JCCC’s ScholarSpace site (I'll alert you when they're ready).

For now, we can start planning for SIDLIT 2010. Thanks to all presenters, committee volunteers and sponsors for supporting year 10 of this endeavor.

Twitter for Education?

Launched in July 2006 (see http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/) as a little communications service (originally called Twttr and created by Odeo), Twitter has become the latest fade and fastest growing Web 2.0 tool on the planet. Twitter (www.twitter.com) was described early in its history as “a social network around text messaging” (see above link). Early subscribers (twitterers) would send messages (“tweets”) on such mundane things as “totally could use a vacation now!!!” to “This girl can play some funky songs on her ukulele.”

While those types of tweets are still very common, the tool is also being used to offer customer support (http://twitter.com/trackthis, UPS), sell products (http://twitter.com/GMblogs), inform about current events (http://twitter.com/iranelection) and more.

Of special interest to educators are the suggestions offered by Jim Vanides in his Digital Learning Environments blog back in early June 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/oh9mgk). He suggests using Twitter:

• To create “a backchannel…for student participation (posting questions/comments) during a large group presentation – sort of like giving the audience permission to pass notes, because you can give the note-passing a metacognitive purpose.” Jim has seen this technique used at education conferences and we’ll give this a try at SIDLIT (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning and Instructional Technology scheduled for July 30-31, 2009; see www.sidlit.org).
• For “real-time collaboration” among students, such as when on a field trips.
• To enhance audience participation at athletic events.
• To communicate with a specific audience such as “students’ parents” or alumni or campus clubs (instead of “always creating lengthy newsletters or wading through lots of email”).
• To handle conference planning or to provide “non-attendees” a sense of “being there”. Check out www.twitter.com/sidlit.
  

If you’re interested in learning more about how twitter works, check out Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milsten’s The Twitter Book, from O’Reilly Press, $19.99. It’s a fast read.

Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology

For the tenth year in a row, Johnson County Community College will co-sponsor a 2-day free conference (the Summer Institute on Distance Learning & Instructional Technology or SIDLIT, pronounced sidelight) to be held in the Regnier Center on campus on July 30-31, 2009. The regional conference draws 250-300 participants primarily from KS and MO, but is open to anyone (in the past we’ve had a smattering of attendees from the coasts and a number of states in-between). The two-day institute includes presentations, topic-oriented special interest discussion groups, hands-on workshops, and demonstrations.

For more detail, check out www.sidlit.org . Registration is now open and available at http://www.sidlit.org/user/register .

A sample of SIDLIT 2009 sessions includes: "Choosing an ePortfolio Tool" by Benito Berardo, "Relax and Enjoy a Taste of MERLOT" (the Learning Object Repository) by Heather Seitz, "Delivering High Stakes Assessments in a Computerized Testing Center" by Philip Wilhauk, "Spanish: Reality Online" by Nellie Modaress, "The Open Education Resource Phenomenon: Free Educational Resources for All" by Gloria Creed-Dikeogu, "Digital Storytelling: How to Bring Your Stories to Life" by Tracy Newman and "Effective Video Storytelling" by Bob Epp.

For a listing of all sessions visit http://sidlit.org/sessions/all or to see a tentative schedule of sessions, visit http://sidlit.org/sessions/matrix .

What is Web 2.0

Nowadays, you’ll frequently hear the term Web 2.0 or Web 2.0 apps (applications). It’s a term that’s several years old and refers to the second generation of the web (some say we’re already into Web 3.0 or Web 3D, but that discussion is for another day). If you’re curious, checkout a slideshow I put together last Summer for the Powerful Professional Conference hosted by Johnson County Community College available at http://www.slideshare.net/jbacon/personal-professional-uses-of-web-20-tools. The second slide says most of what you need to know.

In essence, Web 1.0 was a “one way street” (web publishers sent you information they wanted and publishing was restricted to those who knew the language (HTML) and had the tools (HTML editors, servers, access rights). Web 2.0, on the other hand, is participatory. Anyone with web access (a browser) has the ability to publish, contribute, comment and co-author. Tools such as wikis, blogs, and social networking apps are the epitome of Web 2.0. They provide for the “harnessing of collective intelligence” (e.g., we all contribute and the product is better, more accurate and more accessible because it is democratic, self-checked and above all else participatory.

Another way to summarize the shift from Web 1.0 to 2.0 is covered by slides 4-7 of the slideshow at http://www.slideshare.net/anantshri/web20-an-introduction-396686. By the way, http://www.slideshare.net/ site is another example of a Web 2.0 participatory, web-based application.

In upcoming tips, I’ll discuss Web 2.0 apps in more detail. You also have an opportunity to learn more at the upcoming Summer Institute on Distance Learning and instructional Technology (SIDLIT) hosted by the Colleague to Colleague organization and Johnson County Community College on Thursday, July 31 and Friday, August 1, 2008. For more information, a schedule of sessions and to register for the free conference, check out http://web.jccc.net/c2c/sidlit/.