Reflection is vital to learning. I am delighted to report that recordings of the April Learntrends sessions are online. Congratulations to Scott Skibell for creating and uploading both standard-format videos and mp4s that you can download to your iPhone.
Someone whose opinion I respect emailed me that they “think that there is a stronger moderation / content role needed for the sessions to give them a bit more push / direction,” to which I replied..
I don’t know that I agree on being more “pushy” in the sessions. To be sure, I’d firm up some of the individual offerings had I to do it over again. However, in terms of sticking things in people’s heads, the informal combo of free-flowing discussion and audience interaction probably got more across than covering more topics in an efficient manner. This was an experiment in making an event more informal and spontaneous. Consider what participants are likely to remember a month from now.
After all, April Learntrends was an experiment in socially-mediated learning in lieu of traditional presentation. In putting the sessions together, I consciously attempted to shift from presentation to conversation. Consider the origins of these terms from the wonderful Online Etymology Dictionary:
presentation. c.1380, “act of presenting,” from O.Fr. presentation (13c.), from L. præsentationem (nom. præsentatio) “a placing before,” from præsentatus, pp. of præsentare (see present (v.)). Meaning “a theatrical or other representation, thing presented” is recorded from 1600.
conversation. 1340, from O.Fr. conversation, from L. conversationem (nom. conversatio) “act of living with,” prp. of conversari “to live with, keep company with,” lit. “turn about with,” from L. com- intens. prefix + vertare, freq. of vertere (see versus). Originally “having dealings with others,” also “manner of conducting oneself in the world;” specific sense of “talk” is 1580.
Improving the process of learning in organizations was our theme. Conversation struck me as a more appropriate way to foster the engagement that’s part of my vision for the future.
More dialog among the conversants in advance would have improved most of the conversations. I’m not so sure about more moderation.
A few comments that resonated with me:
- ended up being my talk radio
- you’ve got to be in it to ‘get’ it
- experimentation with teaching and learning that challenges assumptions of courses and conferences is intriguing
- Con la llegada de las nuevas tecnologías, las personas, a partir de una cierta edad, han tenido que aprender nuevas habilidades para poder desenvolverse virtualmente de forma satisfactoria. Y todo ello a un ritmo vertigionoso.
- love both the planned and impromptu presentations and discussions, which reflect what we all value in our informal learning. This also reveals that learning is taking place in an emergent social landscape other than the formal education platform and system.
- Night owl session going on now on value of learning
- participants were more active than during normal sessions because we had the back-channel in which questions were posted, answers provided and that already during the presentations. One did not have to wait until the last few minutes to ask questions, but could do that the entire time
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Jay, Did you have any kind of post-session deconstructive evaluation? of either content or tools or both?
For me, we’re still in the dark ages with the technology. We’re like cave men picking up a phone with a puzzled look, getting an “aha!” look and then using the phone to crack open a walnut, finishing with a self-satisfied look of “yes, that’s what this is good for.”
My experience was that the back channels, including twitter, twitter chat and other twitter stuff plus the backup to twitter (what was that called “BACK” something) were the technology components that worked the best during the event.
I consider myself to be an Elluminate expert and I don’t think we used Elluminate as the powerful facilitation tool that it can be to nearly the degree that we could have…mostly because most folks didn’t really know about everything it can do.
If you review the late night (to us in the U.S.) session facilitated by Jo from Australia, you’ll get a sampling of what I experienced as a more powerful facilitation method. Jo’s style was unusual, but very effective.
Perhaps another component of these sessions might be some short but sweet bootcamps for all the moderators, facilitators, and presenters , held at multiple, convenient times and during the run up to the event.
I’d be happy to participate as a coach for folks who want to learn about the power of any webconferencing tool, not just Elluminate.
The idea is to get the technology out of the way so that it is second nature to us and to pass around the tips that aren’t in the documentation. For example, even though Elluminate has the capability of having many microphones open at once, world-wide bandwidth has not yet reached the level that can effectively support that. So its best, ususaly to turn off all the mics and use push to talk. This makes things less rapid fire than a telephone, but unfortunately, on Elluminate, you can’t hear what anybody is saying if more than one person speaks at a time. And just have a half dozen mikes standing open, even when not being spoken into, robs the session of bandwidth creating a choppy, unpleasant experience for many, especially those on DSL or slower connections.
I think our peak was 100 + a few and I wonder what it would be like to use teleconferencing + sliderocket (etc.) + shared google docs + a chat stream and a bakup chat stream. The teleconferencing would eliminate the audio issues and given how few web conferencing features were actually used, most of what people did technological could be handled by an online slide presenter, google to share spreadsheets or documentts, the chat streams and maybe a stand alone white board, if that is really necessary.
So those are two ways I can see going:
1) simplify to the least number of features and use all the free versions of those available online.
2) learn more and use more of the features of powerhouse web conferencing systems like Elluminate or Wimba.
Ok, I’ll stop now. Just a few thoughts.
claude