Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences and Communications Software

Personal authoring technologies have made it easier than ever for instructors and students to contribute their thoughts, experiences, and opinions to a global discourse. In addition, these technologies provide a rich opportunity for instructors to focus their students' attention on discipline-specific questions related to a single course or topic.

This seminar will give attendees valuable "face time" with blogs, wikis, and podcasts in order to critically assess their instructional value and creative potential, as well as the IT infrastructure required to support them. We will demonstrate the numerous technologies UW-Madison is using, discuss the pedagogical application and assessment of these technologies, present an overview of IT support challenges, and provide hands-on experiences with the production of blogs, wikis, and podcasts. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of other personal authoring technologies emerging on the educational horizon.

A challenge arises in making digital information and communication technologies accessible to indigenous communities. From digital preservation of cultural and historic artifacts to embedding culturally sensitive materials in academic courses, technology can become a double-edged sword: it can be deployed to obfuscate a critical analysis of how "communication" is understood as meaningful by First Nations themselves.