Collaborative Technologies

Web 2.0 tools have the power to transform education. Such a transformation requires that faculty, students, and institutions take risks. With those risks comes fear, which is often unarticulated. How do you tackle this fear and make real change?

In this 43 minute podcast we feature a conversation from the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting. Our particpants consist of a group of five higher ed professionals who co-presented the session, "Who's Afraid of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and the Big Bad CMS? A Digi-Drama About Fear 2.0."

They include:

In this podcast we feature a conversation between George Siemens, Associate Director of the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba. and Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University It was recorded at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Michael Wesch presented a session entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting. He also produced a video, which is referenced in this conversation, entitled "The Machine is Us/ing Us".

George Siemens presented a session entitled, "Connectivism" at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

The slides and video of this presentation can be found here. The speech is by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, and is entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Digital information technologies have profound implications for education and force us to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and who we think we are teaching. Understanding these implications and rethinking education will help us prepare our students to build a more human future in an increasingly digital environment.

In this hour long podcast we feature a speech by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, entitled, "Human Futures for Technology and Education". It was delivered at the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting.

Digital information technologies have profound implications for education and force us to rethink how we teach, what we teach, and who we think we are teaching. Understanding these implications and rethinking education will help us prepare our students to build a more human future in an increasingly digital environment.

In this 21 minute podcast, we feature an interview with Ulrich Rauch, Director of Arts Instructional Support & Information Technology at The University of British Columbia. He has recently been involved in a project called Ancient Spaces at UBC, which uses gaming and virtual world technology to recreate locations from antiquity. He also participated in a session at the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference entitled, "Indigenous Cultures: From Observing to Experiencing, from Videography to 3D VR Immersion".

Ulrich Rauch organizes the implementation of educational technologies for instructors, students and staff in the Faculty of Arts at the University of British Columbia. As the director of a technical and an instructional support unit, and as trained sociologist, Ulrich combines his experience as an instructor with his perspective on learning technologies to research and apply e-learning strategies in support of collaborative learning.

In this 14 minute podcast, we feature an interview with O'Neal Smitherman, Vice President for Information Technology at Ball State University, from the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing conference. Ball State University has partnered with Microsoft to bring a number of services and upgrades to their computing services. Mr. Smitherman discusses how Ball State approached this succesful partnership, some of the challenges a university faces in partnering with a vendor, and how to assess if a partnership is right for your institution.

O'Neal Smitherman was part of a collaborative session at the 2007 Seminars On Academic Computing entitled, "Outsourcing for Student Collaborative Services".

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on project communication tools!  As
we have been researching tools and recommendations, the institutional needs
for these systems has started growing.  In addition to project management we
are wondering about how collaboration tools can also meet communication
needs within our department:

• as a repository for documentation (how to install...)
• to provide an overview of what is going on in the department (this
• week...this month)
• as a place where all the bits of information can be brought together into
• a big snapshot

I have no expectations that technology will provide us with the sole
solution to improving communication and workflow, but I¹d really like to
hear more ideas and stories about how other institutions are effectively
using collaboration applications.  We narrowed down our list of possible
solutions to four:  mediaWiki, drupal, typepad and Teams.

And since drupal consolidates many kinds of content (wiki, blog, RSS, etc.)
we felt that it was the product most worth looking at.  Yeah...simple,
right? 

Libraries must chart the engineering of new architectures for teaching, learning, and research in order to accommodate making science and artistic expression more readily available, in concert with the increasing sophistication of commercial partners and the development of distributed, interactive forms of publishing. During the January 30 EDUCAUSE Live!, Peter Brantley, Director-Designate of the Digital Library Federation and Director of Strategic Technology, Academic Information Services, at the University of California Office of the President, will discuss how digital libraries must work to forge the new collaborations required to enable and build teaching, learning, and research services. This hour-long, free Web seminar is open to the public. Unable to attend? Visit the archives. Peruse EDUCAUSE resources on digital libraries and digital library services.

Brian L. Hawkins, president of EDUCAUSE, will present a keynote session on why collaboration is no longer an alternative strategy but rather the only means of competitive survival for higher education at the Southwest Regional Conference, "Strategic Collaboration Is the Competitive Advantage: Leading, Understanding, and Building the Collaborative Community," February 21–23 in Austin, Texas. The conference program will also cover leadership and strategic initiatives, partnerships and consortia, and technology tools and infrastructure. Register by January 24 for discounted rates.

This 26 minute recording provides coverage of the 2005 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference Session entitled Electronic Collaboration with Academic Medical Centers in the Post-HIPAA Environment.