Contemplations on Savannah, GA

On top of meeting all the people and the wonderful welcome extended by the DLA2011 I felt a sense of belonging I was not expecting. OK, I'm corny, but think about the movie "Muppets from Space." There's a scene near the end when one of the characters experiences a reunion with "his people", people he didn't know before, and didn't know existed. I was reminded of that scene today at the closing luncheon of the Distance Learning Administrator's Annual conference in beautiful Savannah, Georgia.

Of course it was terrifically affirming to learn that the keynote speaker is an ION fan and included ION materials in his DLA toolbox handout. It was also great fun to run across friends of ION now serving Colorado Technical University and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Then there are all the people from around the south and around the world I met and had a chance to share ION with.

To top it all off, I treated myself to a Segway tour of historic Savannah and thoroughly enjoyed that. I'm hooked! Met a couple who Segway tour everywhere they go if it's available. Talk about a memorable trip....oh, I guess I am. ...till the next time.

Scott

Almost Summer updates

There have been updates to the pricing for Founding members and program additions to the MVCR program. We've survived the 2011 Faculty Summer Institute and I am working on the program for the Fall IAECT conference.

Open Educational Resources continues to be a hot topic, along with mobile technologies, and online learning in general.

The COLA program has been warmly received and has several people pursuing it as a loosely formed first cohort.

We've granted more than 530 MOTs and there have been more than 6500 successful MVCR participants.

Sloan C Blended Learning Conference

Presented on ION/MVCR Blended Learning course at the conference. Ran into friends, some a bit more unexpected than the others.

COLA program progress

The COLA program is moving forward with QA running and AS, the 4-week threshold course opening just yesterday. The first COLA recipients will be awarded by the end of the year.

Mobile Technology Course

Today, the Mobile Technology course opened. There's a small group but it should be a good one. Between Moodle, Twitter, Tweetdeck, this blog, my phones and pda, and additional techologies, great opportunities for interaction and exploration present themselves. I didn't do a good job of staying with the PLENK2010 class (#PLENK2010) but is certainly has opened my eyes to PLEs.

Open educational resources are going to be big in weeks and months to come.

Half an Hour: Collaboration and Cooperation

Half an Hour: Collaboration and Cooperation working on a presentation exploring collaboration and cooperation, came up with this handy examination of the topic. I'm running into your work frequently these days, Steven Downes.

More on PLEs and PLNs

The challenges I'm having in this PLENK2010 course remind me of the feelings I had taking graduate classes that I just didn't get at first. Some of them I subsequently "got." There are issues of scale and responsibility that I find curious.

Just what is the fuss over LMS? There are purposes for things. Arguing against the application of course/learning management systems in favor of PLNs or PLEs seems like preferring ice tea over sand bags. They are different things, they apply differently to people and at different levels.

I'm struggling, too, with the value of trying to learn anything with >1000 people in the room...just too much stuff happening. That some of it is happening in other languages is intriguing in part, but brings so much extra work that there is marginal value at this point in time for THIS learning path traveler.