Desire2Blog

Even though I'm happy with my decision to not attend the D2L User Conference this year, that doesn't mean that I wasn't interested in the goings on, nor did it mean that I didn't miss the many friends who were in attendance. I followed the Twitter stream from the conference in an effort to stay somewhat in the know. Here's a chronological listing of selected tweets. Desire2Learn_PR : Boat cruises, great food, connecting with colleagues… FUSION 2010 is off to a fabulous start! http://bit.ly/17POaR ( expand ) # D2L10 ajwms : At # d2l10 . Last time to see @140universityElluminate as sponsor, I guess http://twitpic.com/24h5u9 tabrown : Lots of fun catching up with folks at the #unD2L conference this evening # D2L10 ConnectYard : launching our new learning tool today for #d2l that integrates FB, TW & TM into courses. Stop by our booth at # d2l10 for more details! ajwms : Has anybody been able to get their iPad connected to hotel wireless at # D2L10 ...

I've been asked by quite a few people (seriously I have, approaching double digits) why I am NOT attending FUSION, the D2L User Conference that starts in a few days. I will very much miss hanging out with everyone at the Unconference Sunday night - in fact, I almost chose to attend this event without attending the rest of the conference, but decided against it. (CC photo by David Paul Ohmer ) A conference in July is never easy because there's just too much summer stuff, family-time, and all that jazz going on. But that's not the reason. We have severe budget cuts that are restricting our travel to these types of events. But that's not the reason.  Maybe I don't need to say this - but my disdain for Chicago is not carried over to any sort of disdain for the residents of Chicago. Without further ado, here is my Top Five List for reasons why I will not be attending the conference this year: Number 5: Location (actually this is a very distant fifth place) I hate at...

I am the presenter for a Magna Publications webinar scheduled for March 23, 2010. The title is: Free Web 2.0 Tools to Use Inside Your LMS. This seminar costs $249 if you register at least a week in advance. The slides below (embedded from Zoho Show ) indicate the things that I will be demonstrating during the online seminar. Because there are so many of them, I will likely have time to show either one or two examples for each of the eight goals. I've done this workshop many times live and at least once before as a webinar. I'm looking forward to it. We'll see how it goes.

I've been working on developing a Twub (Twitter Hub) for use at EAT-IT 09 on Aug 12-13 at Inver Hills CC. One feature is the ability to embed the Twub info on any webpage, so here is an embed of the Twub. Just experimenting. The best experience will be to go to the actual Twub . <a href="http://twubs.com/eatit09">#eatit09</a>

The ITC Grand Debate is held each year at the organization’s eLearning conference . The 2010 conference will be held from February 20-23 in Fort Worth, Texas at the Omni Hotel. Last year I was a participant in the Grand Debate titled “Virtual Worlds are the Second Life for Online Learning.” That event has been well chronicled and I don’t care to discuss it more at this time. The purpose for this post is to solicit a few topic ideas for the 2010 Grand Debate. The ITC Board of Directors meets later this week in California and we will choose the debate topics (and hopefully the debaters as well) for the next conference. A couple of the previous topics included: “Classroom Observation is an Administrator’s Right” (2008), “Cheating is Rampant in Distance Education Classes” (2007), and Open Source vs. Proprietary Course Management: Is Proprietary Software Dead?” (2006). Through a couple of tweets I received the following suggestions about two weeks ago. Generations: Net Gen Skeptics vs. Net...

The D2L UNconference was a blast last night at the Liffey, an Irish pub in St. Paul. Kyle Mackie ( @kylemackie ) did a great job as emcee or chief organizer. Here's a short video (4.5 mins) containing several snippets from the evening, although not all presenters are shown. This video has absolutely zero value, as you'll soon see. There is a good chance that the full video of some of these segments will see the light of day, but probably not from me. I'm just saying.

50 or so of the early-arrivers for D2L09 FUSION will be gathering at 6:30 today for the UNconference prior to the official start of the conference tomorrow morning. Check out the attendance list to see who is going to be having the most fun in St. Paul tonight. The tag for the conference is D2L09. I expect lots of Twitter activity since many people that are coming are tweet-aholics. Here is a FeedFlash of tweets tagged with D2L09. I expect there will be much more to report about this as it unfolds. Live streaming might occur if we have good connectivity. We'll be at the Liffey in St. Paul starting at 6:30.

EAT-IT 2009 will happen on August 12-13 at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. EAT-IT stands for Emerging Academic Technologies and Instructional Techniques (yes, I spent 30 minutes coming up with a name that would fit the acronym.) More information about the conference at the Innovations in e-Education blog . Here's a little different twist. We're NOT going to ask keynote speakers to come to this conference, they're going to ask us (we hope!). The conference is called EAT-IT! The focus of the conference will be Emerging Academic Technologies and Instructional Techniques. More info here. So here's the deal. Submit the form below ( or here ) and tell us why we should hire you as a keynote speaker. Clearly you want to have a message that is on-topic for the conference. Additionally, consider the following: * We need to know your total required fee. In other words, give us one price that represents the total amount that we will have to pay yo...

It seems obvious that there is a perceived void in the development of future leaders in the field of e-Learning. At least it certainly appears that way. I come to that conclusion based on the fact that there are three different efforts by reputable organizations to develop leadership academies focused on e-Learning. One by ITC (note: I am a board member), one by WCET (note: I am involved in the event planning and execution), and one by SLOAN-C. From the Instructional Technology Council (ITC) : (copied from website) ITC 2009 Leadership Academy July 26-28, 2009, Costa Mesa, California Application Deadline: May 20, 2009 See Academy Web site The ITC Leadership Academy is designed to develop and enrich the leadership skills of distance learning professionals in higher educational settings. Ideal candidates include distance learning administrators or learning technologies administrators with three or more years of managerial experience in a distance learning...

At the eLearning 2009 (ITC09) conference last month there was a fair number of active Twitterers who were keeping up with the various activities by tweeting their experiences for others in attendance as well as many followers who were not at the conference at all. Sharing links, making comments, making plans for dinner and other get-togethers, and several other purposes were enabled by Twitter . Below are some of the almost 400 tweets that included the tag ITC09. There were many others that didn't include the tag. One of the best examples of how Twitter changed the conference for me was when I was sitting in a not-too-special presentation and saw a tweet about how a discussion about accessibility formed in another room after the presenter didn't show up. I was curious about how that was going and two minutes later I was able to join the discussion. I was also able to get almost immediate feedback about sessions where I was presenting to see what worked best and what didn't...