Archive for August, 2007

22
Aug

Bryan Alexander on New Scholarship: NMC Conversations #5

By Alan Levine 1 Comment
Categories: Audio and Special Guests

NMC Conversations #5
[download MP3] 21.2 Mb 30:50

Continuing from Conversation #4, we again cover the Horizon Project theme by talking with Bryan Alexander on the 2007 Horizon Report horizon of New Scholarship.

As Director of Research for NITLE (National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education), Bryan researches and develops programs on the advanced uses of information technology in liberal arts contexts. His interests “concern mobile and wireless computing, digital gaming, and social software. Other interests include digital writing, copyright and intellectual property, information literacy, project management, information design, and interdisciplinary collaboration”. In addition to publishing on NITLE blog’s Liberal Education Today, he posts frequently to his own blog, Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education, travels incessantly for workshops and invited presentations, and publishes his work in places such as EDUCAUSE Review.

Based on discussions we have had with Bryan about connecting NMC and NITLE , and his active participation in our Future of Scholarship Track at the NMC 2006 Regional Conference, we were excited to connect with him for a conversation about one of NMC’s focus initiatives- New Scholarship.

While we started with some talk about the relationship of blogging and scholarship, we arched more broadly to areas of academic practices, publishing, innovation theory, and affordances of powerful tools such as visualization. We might have gone for hours if someone was not watching the clock.

For reference, resources mentioned include:

Read on for a full transcript of this conversation…

Continue reading ‘Bryan Alexander on New Scholarship: NMC Conversations #5′

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06
Aug

Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay on International Project Based on Horizon Report: NMC Conversations #4

By Alan Levine 1 Comment
Categories: Audio and Special Guests

NMC Conversations #4
[download MP3] 11.9 Mb 26:00

With the arrival soon of the month of August, we at the NMC start thinking again about the Horizon Project as this is the time of year we assemble an advisory board that will generate the topics that will result in January 2008 as the next Horizon Report.

It was appropriate that we talked this time with two secondary school teachers, who work on two different continents, about the amazing project they ran this year based on the 2007 Horizon Report.

We spoke via Skype with both Vicki Davis, a teacher and technology leader at Westwood School in Camilla Georgia and her colleague Julie Lindsay, who is in transition from her position at the International School Dhaka (Bangladesh) to become an educational technology specialist at Qatar Academy (note, at the time of this call, Julie was on holiday on the Gold Coast of Australia, and our Skype connection was not optimal).

Ironically, I stumbled upon the project via a mention from Vicki via Twitter!

Their Horizon Project, which ran from April through the latter part of May this year, was an international collaboration between their two schools and three others in Austria, China, and Australia. In this project, student teams from across these geographically distant schools worked together to research the six topics of the Horizon Project. Using web 2.0 tools described in the report as well as others, they examines how the six will impact schools, politics, and society in the future.

This was an extension of the first Flat Classroom project, an award wining effort, that Vicki and Julie ran in December 2006.

We talked to Vicki and Julie about how their project came to be, what the students gained from the project, what the teachers gained, and heard fascinating insights into the ideas of the students. And it was exciting to hear that another iteration of their Horizon Project will take place in Spring 2008– plus we are hoping to have participation from these innovative teachers in our Horizon Advisory Board this year.

Some references mentioned in this interview include:

Read on for a full transcript of this conversation…
Continue reading ‘Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay on International Project Based on Horizon Report: NMC Conversations #4′

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