This week I attended an online conference, Clouds on the Horizon, devoted to the subject of cloud computing for online teaching and learning. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of cloud computing, Common Craft has recently produced a new video on the topic for their Plain English series.

Thanks to cloud computing, online learners have a wide variety of web 2.0 tools they can use to learn, create, collaborate, and share their work with others. This often goes beyond the limitations of learning management systems, because learning is extended beyond the traditional scope of the classroom: they can use media not supported by the learning management system, work faster or slower than the average course schedule, and interact with an audience much larger than any course could support.

This raises a question about the way we are thinking education: are universities still serving students in this era to take advantage of changes to the educational matrix? Alan Collins and Richard Halverson, in a lecture last month at the University of Illinois, argued that schools are fighting a losing battle because of incompatibilities between the educational system as it was designed in the 1800s and today’s technology:  people are taking education out of schools and using online resources and forums to advance their passions and career goals (Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology). In other words, students can often learn more, and faster, from participating in web forums with an international community of career professionals than they have been learning from one instructor at their school.

We are currently living in an age when our sociocultural network is changing and adapting, not just because people are using the internet but because of the way they are using the internet. Anyone and everyone is potentially an audience and a collaborator. Knowledge is being shared faster with the entire world as its audience. Traditional online courses, however, are restricted to a small number of people who are paying to learn from one instructor behind a password-protected wall. Open-source education, on the other hand, advocates sharing information with all the world. One of the concepts Curtis Bonk hammers out in The World is Open is that when education is made available to everyone, “WE-ALL-LEARN” (Bonk).

This can sound terrifically inspiring (and as I write about it for a publicly viewable blog in “the cloud”). Coming down from the cloud, however, one might wonder how so much free knowledge can maintain its educational integrity and, simultaneously, financial sustainability. What about the instructors who have been sharing their knowledge for a living, or anyone else employed by a university, for that matter?

Richard Katz, VP of Educause, argued in his keynote presentation for Clouds on the Horizon that universities can’t completely advocate learning entirely from the cloud because there is too much “truthiness” masquerading as factual information; the wider audience of web 2.0, in other words, makes it harder for students to separate sources with academic integrity from just anyone who feels like writing whatever and posting it online.

How, then, can instructors best make use of cloud computing? By all means, it can’t be a bad idea for instructors to make use of web 2.0 resources when they can help students learn the course topic and prepare for their lives beyond the classroom. And, as most of them are already using many of these technologies, their use in online teaching can help increase communication and participation among those students. One of the other points Katz stressed in his keynote, however, is that instructors should not “confuse a tool with a goal”: i.e., getting students to use technology is not the same as getting them to learn with technology; exercises still need to be structured around solid pedagogical concepts and learning objectives.

The relationship between cloud computing and education remains an issue that may need to be considered over time as technology continues to grow and evolve. As online instructors, are we making the best use of the technology at our disposal, and is it helping our students prepare for their futures as well as we could hope? How does it compare with any learning (or erroneous learning) they may be picking up outside of class from other web 2.0 sources? Will universities need to change the way we present and teach information, and if so, how?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianbyday/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Beginning Monday, online programs and schools across the United States will celebrate National Distance Learning Week. The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA), which is sponsoring this celebration, will host several free webinars on e-learning topics throughout the week.

Some of the topics will include:

• Blended Learning
• Military/Government
• Public Policy
• Mobile Learning
• Global Education
• Game-based Learning

To sign up for a webinar, or for more information, go to http://www.ndlw.org/.

The WISE (Web-Based Information Science Education) Consortium will offer its sixth annual pre-conference workshop addressing best practices in distance education at the January 2010 conference for the Association for Library & Information Science Education (ALISE) in Boston.

This workshop will be open to all interested conference attendees, especially doctoral students and new online instructors. All attendees will have an opportunity to learn more about the pedagogy of online collaboration in the context of library and information science education.

Keys to Successful Online Collaboration will be highly participatory and feature rotating stations of presentations and breakout discussion groups. Workshop topics will address pedagogical issues in the use of collaborative learning activities in online courses:

1. Demonstration of specific collaborative technological tools (i.e., wikis, blogs, social media networks, synchronous communication software, file sharing tools, etc.)
2. Presentation of effective pedagogical practices for facilitating online collaborative activities
3. Breakout discussion on implementation of collaborative learning goals

Workshop attendees will be able to select the topics of particular interest and move from one station to the next at regular intervals. The workshop will conclude with a full-group discussion of the topics presented, and also the future of collaboration in online library and information science education.

Call for Presenters (it’s not too late to submit a proposal!)

"Death by PowerPoint": image from Pundit Kitchen

The invention of PowerPoint software made it possible for great strides in the way people present information to others. Unfortunately, it’s also borne the reputation for great snores when lecturers are allowed to blather on from slide to slide ad infinitum.

A technique that is being practiced to prevent “Death by PowerPoint” is the pecha kucha method of presentation delivery. Named after the Japanese word for “chit-chat”, pecha kucha (pronounced “peh-CHA-k-cha”) sets specific perimeters for slides and presentation: 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide.

To give a pecha kucha presentation, you will need to set your slides to self-advance every 20 seconds. This frees you from the need to click to advance each slide so you won’t have to pay attention to the clock — but you will need to keep up with the slides. The result is a paced presentation style that leads the presenter to get to the point expeditiously and think critically about selecting the best slides to carry that point. Not all presentation topics can or should be delivered in this method, but for speakers who are concerned about audience engagement or staying within a limited time allotment, it might be worth practicing.

This lecture method would be especially useful for online learning, both for synchronous and asynchronous lectures. In addition to aiding bandwidth issues, the frequently changing slides would ensure closer attention from students who are at greater risk of distraction online.

The following video is an example of a lecture presented using the pecha kucha method by Daniel Pink. He begins the presentation with a brief explanation of pecha-kucha before launching into his intended topic, Emotionally Intelligent Signage. The topic itself is interesting enough to merit viewing, but if you only have time to investigate the lecture technique you can turn it off after the first minute or so:

(Thanks to ProfHacker for introducing me to both pecha kucha and Daniel Pink’s presentation!)

The PechaKucha website provides more information as well as several uploaded presentations following this method.

Have you ever taught a lecture using this method? Share your experiences in our comment thread!