nnoakes's blog

Created by Nicholas S. Noakes (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) on March 10, 2005

I'm in Hong Kong. I couldn't make it to Houston :-( but thanks to Sarah, Kyle, Brendan and Apple (thanks Peter), I have been able to experiencce the focus session vicariously via podcasts which are automatically downloaded onto my iPod (or is that myPod following on from GCSU's initiative). I've been listening to these on my way to and from work ... and don't worry folks I don't drive to work ! ... and in my lunch break. The podcasting team have done a brilliant job and are to be congratulated, but .... isn't there always a but ? ... I am left with a lot of Y's

Y wasn't the Ann case and the groups wiki's linked to the podcast post?
Y weren't ppt's to presentations put in the posts raw .. they can still go into the educause library later (a great resource by the way)
Y weren't people who couldn't come invited to be involved in the pre-meeting homework, the case (which is here but I still have no idea where the wiki is)?

These resources would make listening to the podcasts a lot more meaningful. And finally, the most important point perhaps ...

Y weren't these outside participants involved much more during the 2-day focus session?

Just before the Educause main conference in Denver last year, I was involved in a joint face-to-face and online conference on Appreciative Inquiry (which higher ed institutions really need to look at if they are serious about transformative change ... and they need to be serious about it when you see brilliant learning environments such as Croquet coming to fruition). OK, enough of a sidetrack ... the AI conference had some 500 plus people in Miami and over 200 people online. I was one of 22 voluntary online facilitators worlwide helping to provide 24/7 online presence and facilitation. On the ground, were expert online facilitators (who also blogged live the sessions - check out Nancy White's blog at ) .. the sessions were videotaped and streamed online within a few hours, along with any ppts or papers. The presenters then came in to an online chat with people from around the world who had already watched their presentation and thus what happened was a very extended and worthwhile Q&A for an hour. The online facilitators in Miami (like Nancy) basically were in the chat room as the presenter, read out the questions from the online audience to the presenter and typed in the presenter's responses. There was also asynchronous conversations with participants and presenters after that for the duration of the conference (and a couple of months beyond as people were still dialoguing and reviewing the videos, etc). At the beginning of each day in Miami, key posts and comments from the online group were read out to the onground group and then some of the onground group would come online and post (including some starting blogs within the online conference space). It became very cyclical and reciprocal.

I'm telling this story coz there was a syncronicity and level of engagement between onground and online participants as I have never seen before. The reach was so much greater, the value added so much higher and if you think about all the people involved around the world taking this back to their worklives ... the georgraphical and temporal reach to other people I would argue is also so much greater.

So great work NLII staff and podcasters but we could be interactively reaching out and engaging so many more and so much deeper! :-) I'm writing this in a very positive frame of mind (as I'm buzzing after listenting to the podcasts) as a spur to keep us moving forward. So how about it NLII folks? How about starting to plan and organize this sort of engagement now for the summer focus session?

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A wish for future NLII Focus Sessions

Some things I need to blog more about

		nnoakes's blog A wish for future NLII Focus Sessions Created by Nicholas S. Noakes (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) on March 10, 2005 I'm in Hong Kong. I couldn't make it to Houston :-( but thanks to Sarah, Kyle, Brendan and Apple (thanks Peter), I have been able to experiencce the focus session vicariously via podcasts which are automatically downloaded onto my iPod (or is that myPod following on from GCSU's initiative). I've been listening to these on my way to and from work ... and don't worry folks I don't drive to work ! ... and in my lunch break. The podcasting team have done a brilliant job and are to be congratulated, but .... isn't there always a but ? ... I am left with a lot of Y's Y wasn't the Ann case and the groups wiki's linked to the podcast post? Y weren't ppt's to presentations put in the posts raw .. they can still go into the educause library later (a great resource by the way) Y weren't people who couldn't come invited to be involved in the pre-meeting homework, the case (which is here but I still have no idea where the wiki is)? These resources would make listening to the podcasts a lot more meaningful. And finally, the most important point perhaps ... Y weren't these outside participants involved much more during the 2-day focus session? Just before the Educause main conference in Denver last year, I was involved in a joint face-to-face and online conference on Appreciative Inquiry (which higher ed institutions really need to look at if they are serious about transformative change ... and they need to be serious about it when you see brilliant learning environments such as Croquet coming to fruition). OK, enough of a sidetrack ... the AI conference had some 500 plus people in Miami and over 200 people online. I was one of 22 voluntary online facilitators worlwide helping to provide 24/7 online presence and facilitation. On the ground, were expert online facilitators (who also blogged live the sessions - check out Nancy White's blog at ) .. the sessions were videotaped and streamed online within a few hours, along with any ppts or papers. The presenters then came in to an online chat with people from around the world who had already watched their presentation and thus what happened was a very extended and worthwhile Q&A for an hour. The online facilitators in Miami (like Nancy) basically were in the chat room as the presenter, read out the questions from the online audience to the presenter and typed in the presenter's responses. There was also asynchronous conversations with participants and presenters after that for the duration of the conference (and a couple of months beyond as people were still dialoguing and reviewing the videos, etc). At the beginning of each day in Miami, key posts and comments from the online group were read out to the onground group and then some of the onground group would come online and post (including some starting blogs within the online conference space). It became very cyclical and reciprocal. I'm telling this story coz there was a syncronicity and level of engagement between onground and online participants as I have never seen before. The reach was so much greater, the value added so much higher and if you think about all the people involved around the world taking this back to their worklives ... the georgraphical and temporal reach to other people I would argue is also so much greater. So great work NLII staff and podcasters but we could be interactively reaching out and engaging so many more and so much deeper! :-) I'm writing this in a very positive frame of mind (as I'm buzzing after listenting to the podcasts) as a spur to keep us moving forward. So how about it NLII folks? How about starting to plan and organize this sort of engagement now for the summer focus session? Blog (WebLog) \| Events \| Teaching and Learning 1 comment Read more 3470 reads Some things I need to blog more about Created by Nicholas S. Noakes (Hong Kong University of Science & Technology) on February 23, 2005 This is my first 'post' to my Educause blog and this one is going to be a bit of a mind dump right now! Things I need to blog about: Distributed learning (publishing) in the raw (blogs, audioblogs/podcasts, vblogs, online social networks, learning tribes, smartmobs) Emergent ontologies: the freedom - structure cline (aka Mike Pedler's "the tension of liberating structure") Collaborative vizualisation (CMAP, VUE, freemind) Beyond eportfolios: digital storytelling - how could we do collaborative digital storytelling? Beyond the LMS: Croquet - when will Sony or Disney wake up and see the education market and leave us all in their dust ... if they got to see the potential of Croquet, it could happen very quickly Student Authorable Learning Objects (SALOs) Faculty evaluation gets out of the traditional publish or perish rut! Informal leaning spaces If you are interested in these topics and/or have others to add, I'd really love to read your comments! :-) Blog (WebLog) \| Learning Objects \| Learning Space Design \| Teaching and Learning 2 comments Read more 4455 reads
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