Thumann Resources

21st Century ideas to help facilitate good teaching and learning.

Backchannel Backlash

Posted by lthumann on July 22, 2008

For the life of me I can’t remember who I overheard say it or where. It was sometime before NECC. But the statement was, “at this point presentations are for the presenter and the backchannel is for the attendees”. THIS WAS SO NOT THE CASE AT BLC08.

//pairadimes.davidtruss.com

image from http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com

Most of us came prepared for the backchannel. I know when I arrived at Liz Davis’s house Sunday evening, the first thing I did was make sure I could connect to her wireless network. Her husband just laughed. He knew Liz and I would be lost in the technology for the rest of the evening. Come on - admit it. The desk in your hotel room looked similar Dave Truss’s. There’s no shame in admitting that you came to BLC08 prepared to document, record and participate in as much as possible to build your learning community.

The caliber of sessions I attended was outstanding. I missed two because Liz and I presented twice. (You can view our session wiki at http://bolc08.wikispaces.com/)

So back to the backchannel. Most of the sessions that I attended were UStreamed. Bob Sprankle even recorded podcasts of several for his subscribers. There were dozens of sessions that I wasn’t able to get to since they have not yet been able to perfect the science of cloning. So, UStream and podcasting extended my conference experience by allowing me to attend additional sessions.

One of the sessions that I set up the Stream for had 30 people in the chat room. Now I have no way of knowing if all 30 were from outside of the Newton Marriott, but when I asked the facilitator, Darren Kuropatwa, if I could relay some questions from the chat, we were able to include BLC08 virtual attendees Lisa Durff, CathyJo Nelson and Bud Hunt in the conversation. Had I not been following the backchannel, Darren would not have known until much later that some of his viewers had questions.

Speaking of just-in-time teaching and learning…

Where’s the learning with the backchannel?

Is it a distraction? Maybe sometimes.

It is what you make of it. I feel it’s part of our collective intelligence. It allows for the opportunity to offer a different point of view than what you might be thinking of had you been viewing the presentation in silence or isolation.

The backchannel affords us the chance to discuss, in real time, the topic at hand, rather than going back later when the speaker is unavailable.

Karen Janowski set up a Ning for BLC08. They have a group that is getting together the links to the UStreams from the conference.

Listed below are the resources that I have put together so far. Some of them I have on my iTouch, some in my Diigo, some in my head.

BTW - If you can remember who made that comment about the backchannel - let me know, would ya - I’d like to talk to them about it.

Pre-Conference: Alan November Published Google Doc with links to everything thanks to Dave Truss

Keynote: Ewan McIntosh http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/562434
Keynote: John Davitt http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=440

Everything Old is New Again with Darren Kuropatwa and Clarence Fischer
http://dkuropatwablc08.pbwiki.com/Everything+New+is+Old+Again

A Day in the Life of a Technology Teacher Presentation by Darren Kuropatwa
http://dkuropatwablc08.pbwiki.com/A+Day+in+the+Life

Joyce Valenza’s “Web 2.0 Meets Information Fluency: Designing Projects for 21st Century Learners”
http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=445
Resource: http://newtoolsworkshop.wikispaces.com/

Dave Truss
This, My Blog Has Taught Me
http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/this-my-blog/
This is just one of three presentations that Dave did while at BLC08

Clarence Fischer at BLC http://ping.fm/NhJb4

Reflection from the end of the conference:
http://dkuropatwablc08.pbwiki.com/Ustream+reflection+from+end+of+conference


Posted in 21st_Century_Learning, PLN, web2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments »

The One Thing I forgot To Talk About At EduBloggerCon East

Posted by lthumann on July 15, 2008

EdubloggerCon East blew me away yesterday.
I was so impressed by the educators that dedicated their day to joining our gathering at the Newton Marriott. Alan November graciously arranged for a room for us for the day and the accommodations were fantastic (including the wireless access).

I know many of the EBC attendees will be blogging about the day and you can view our notes on our Google Doc. Also, in the next few days, we’ll post a link on the wiki to the archived UStream and I’ve posted the Wordle that we tried to make yesterday here as well as in our Group on the BLC Ning. (I had fun Joyce!) But most importantly, I’d like to take some time to post my thoughts on the one idea I neglected to mention.

Over really yummy Mexican food, I looked at Liz Davis and said, “I just remembered what I wanted to ask everyone!” I wanted to have a conversation about what makes a blog worthy of being listed on your blogroll. I’ve noticed that some edublogger’s blogrolls have gotten quite lengthy. Some are even categorized. Mine on the other hand is quite short and is missing many blogs that I read on a regular basis. So I’ve gone in before posting this to fix that. I’ve also eliminated some of the blogs that I really haven’t been dedicated to reading.

Now that I’ve updated mine, I thought I’d share with you why I listed the blogs I chose. These are the blogs I have subscribed to in my Google Reader. They should give someone reading ThumannResources an idea of who I interact with and what topics I’m interested in reading. For the most part these bloggers are part of my PLN.

Questions for you:

Why do you share your blogroll?

Who’s blog is listed in your blogrroll that your actually read on a regular basis?

Who’s blog is listed in your blogroll that you really don’t read?

What other reasons are there that would cause you to list someone’s blog in your blog roll?

Posted in 21st_Century_Learning, PLN, web2.0 | Tagged: , , , , , , | 6 Comments »