Research for undergraduates?  Or for faculty/graduates?  Distinctions not clear.

Paul

Much more good info, but more crap, more amusing themselves, realize the need to discern the valuable stuff from the crap.

Caches of stuff not on line will gain in value/importance.

Heather

Onus on us to help students understand the wealth of information.

Value of accessing hard copy/originals/experiencing the “real.”

Literacy instruction will/needs to be shifted “down” into pre-college, primary education.

“We” are left with being specialized resources and offering remedial resources.

College/University academic support shift into higher levels of discernment and support.

Linda

More opportunity for people to share and manipulate their own information.

While the computer distinguishes differences the user is left to make meaning of this.

Need for people who understand data, metadata,  the structure of information, and the tools that allow analysis.

Open access and creative commons copyright…publishing happens locally through repositories, refereeing moved to post-publication, there might be multiple refereeing groups representing different wings within the discipline.  Possible to also have broader commentary.  This may open spaces for greater inter-disciplinary collaboration.

Indexing allow greater integration with less human input.

Standards will be more important to better permit cross-searching.  (Tension between associations and others who define these standards.)

Heather

How do we balance willingness to take risks (depending on new publishing spaces for instance) with leading such changes.

Paul

Tiers of approval…Kuhn’s normal/revolutionary science.  How do we create spaces where both can happen?

How does this impact “our” work?

Heather

Develop ability to analyze non-textual sources critically.

Linda

Will the Instructional Technologists’ job still here?  Or is it sped up commoditized/moved off site?

Paul

How do we support open source?  We will still need to mediate between the users and the hosts of the open source tools off site.

In case you’d rather flip through the presentation at your own pace without Elluminate, here are the slides (.pdf) and the chat (.pdf).

Comments are welcome.

Facebook ‘enhances intelligence’ but twitter ‘diminishes it’, claims psychologist – telegraph.Internet on-line. Available from <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/6147668/Facebook-enhances-intelligence-but-Twitter-diminishes-it-claims-psychologist.html>. [11/20/2009, 2009].

How video games are good for the brain – the boston globe.Internet on-line. Available from <http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/10/12/how_video_games_are_good_for_the_brain/>. [11/20/2009, 2009].

Survey : The MISO survey.Internet on-line. Available from <http://www.misosurvey.org/category/survey/>. [11/20/2009, 2009].

YouTube – the twitter experiment – UT dallas.Internet on-line. Available from <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8>. [11/20/2009, 2009].

Collins, Allan, and Richard Halverson. 2009. Rethinking education in the age of technology : The digital revolution and schooling in america. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gorlick, Adam. Stanford study: Media multitaskers pay mental price. Stanford Report (Stanford, California) . 2009. August 24, 2009. Database on-line. Available from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html, .

Shirky, Clay. 2008. Here comes everybody : The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Siemens, George, and Peter Tittenberger. 2009. Handbook of emerging technologies for learning. University of Manitoba. Database on-line. Available from http://techcommittee.wikis.msad52.org/file/view/HETL.pdf, .

Tapscott, Don. 2009. Grown up digital : How the net generation is changing your world. New York: McGraw-Hill.

http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/rli/archive/rli265.shtml

• The Dumbest Generation
• 

  Wordle of Tapscott’s Net Gen Brain

Michael Wesch Video

• A Vision of Students Today

Optional Reading

Chapter 5: “Rethinking Education: The Net Generation as Learners”

Tapscott, Don.  Grown up Digital : How the Net Generation is Changing your World.  New York : McGraw-Hill; 2009.

Overview

This is a big topic, both timely and timeless, that tries to get at the heart of how we engage and enrich our minds.  The seminar started with an overview of efforts to combine education and entertainment, from Sesame St to The Wire, interactive science museums to The Physics of Superheroes, from Homer’s Odessey to Joyce’s Ulysses to Fox’s 24.  Arguments for blending education and entertainment were culled from Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You and from Douglas Rushkoff’s notion of the “renaissance prospects” introduced by the internet.

New Tools

Marshal McLuhan writes in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, that “We shape our tools, thereafter, our tools shape us” (Mike Roy notes that McLuhan likely based this on a statement Winston Churchill made in speech to the House of Commons, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us”).  The new tools of particular interest here are the internet and applications that are designed for user contributions such as iTunes and YouTube.  These tools have shaped us, encouraging us to be more collaborative, expressive, creative and connected.  By making is easy to participate, tools like iTunes, YouTube, Wikipedia, Flickr and so on have begun to blend entertainment and education.  As academic information professionals, we can help, particularly in the area of metadata, ensuring academic content is as discoverable as the machinima videos.

Why Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a great example of how new tools shape us, both as “content” consumers and producers.  Digital writing need not only include text, but can integrate images, audio and video.  New media literacies are needed to understand how to use images and video not only to entertain and also educate.  Examples include mash-up videos of social rituals with theoretical explanations, data-driven simulations to describe economic indicators, video essays and immersive environments.  New pedagogical theories such as constructivism emphasize learning as an active social process and teaching as facilitating this process.  Digital storytelling requires new ways to composing and evaluating stories (see: The 7 Elements of Storytelling).  Instructional practices need to include training in tools and software applications, production equipment and file management and move beyond checklists of accuracy, currency and authority to teaching new rhetorical conventions such as sound tracks and camera angles.

As librarians and technologists, how can we/should we/do we want to participate in the education/entertainment trend?

“Technology is anything that was invented after you were born,” notes Alan Kay, a computer scientist (see: Kevin Kelly’s blog post, “Everything That Doesn’t Work Yet“).  As adult librarians and technologists, many of the technologies that have shaped students have altered us much less (see: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants), so that we are less fluent with the technology, while at the same time more objective, or at least able to bring a different perspective, a perspective informed by older technologies.  This generationally-induced digital divide has opportunites and dangers.  There is the opportunity to meet students where they are by using the same platforms they use for entertainment to educate them including Facebook, YouTube and blogs.  The danger is that of the “creepy treehouse” effect on students who see these attempts by adults to join in on the fun as weird and perverse.  There are ways to avoid these dangers. Set up online presences for institutions (instead of for older people with funny accents).  Make participation in these “educational” virtual places optional.  Educate students and faculty on how to create separate personal and professional profiles on social networking sites and how to use advanced settings to control who sees what.

Evaluating New Media

How do we evaluate these new tools and media, particularly as media such as gaming shift from being purely entertainment to offering real educational value.  Unlike books, which traditionally have been reviewed by faculty, many new forms of media are evaluated by students themselves or by observing how students use a new tool or media.  Evaluation of content is still very important of course, but so is determining how engaging a tool/media is, how easy it is to use, its design and aesthetics, how much it encourages creativity and critical thinking.  Unfortunately, games and new media products too often use popularity as a primary means of evaluation and borrow from the movies rating systems that focus on content suitable to different age groups (AO for adult only, M for mature, T for teen and so on).  The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has 32 difference descriptors for games that help consumers understand what distinguishes one game from another.  However much less work has been done on game rating systems that focus on learning outomes.

Random thoughts:

• do have a moderator
• whiteboard drawing — distraction or helpful conduit for release of nervous energy?
• ask presenting group to summarize post presentation conversation
• have speaker transmit video of themselves?
• share online media via links in IM feed
• use headphones if you’ll be talking
• use the author’s name in your IM if you’re responding to another IM
• use the 6-speakers setting