Desire2Blog

While "attending" the D2L Users Conference, FUSION, in Denver this month, there was no other topic mentioned as much as the Action Analytics project that is currently under development. During the Product Launch presentation, John Baker and Jeremy Auger brought Brian C up on the stage to run through a little demo. I was expecting to see the continued build out of a project that was started at MnSCU a couple of years ago, and that's exactly what I saw. I had the pleasure of working on this project with Al Essa and a few other folks while both Al and I were employed within MnSCU. Several things have changed since then: Al now works for D2L, I now work for nobody, and MnSCU killed the development project of what was easily the most innovative thing that has been done there in many years. What we called Action Analytics at MnSCU, is called the Student Success System at D2L. However, before I go on, let me make it clear that although there are many similarities between the two...

Last week I sort of attended the D2L Users Conference (D2L11), also called FUSION, in Denver, Colorado. I love Denver and the surrounding area, but since I grew up in Cheyenne I've never been too impressed by the whole "Mile High City" stuff. Cheyenne is over 6000 feet in elevation, which I believe is higher than one measly mile. I was a presenter at the Unconference (emceed by Kyle Mackie) that preceded the main conference, and I closed the evening with a little ditty titled "If I had a Beer..." This unconventional presentation was half-serious and half not-so-much. The basic premise was that a nickle is not really worth very much, so the whole "If I had a nickle for every time I've heard that" thing just doesn't seem to add up for me. However, if I had a beer for each of those times - then I'd really have something of value. For example - the bit started with the following. If I had a beer... for every stinking time I've clicked a li...

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...

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.

I am normally the interviewer for the Desire2Pod series, but this time Valerie Beyer of Desire2Learn interviews me about the Online Student Mentor program at Lake Superior College. The Online Student Mentor program ( PDF description ) was selected to receive one of the three Desire2Excel awards at FUSION 2008 held last July in Memphis. We are now in our sixth year of this program. Some of the best outcomes have been related to the number of students who decided to choose a career in education after their involvement in the student mentor program. The slides below are about three years old now, but can give you a good idea about some of the features of the program. LSC Online Student Mentors from Barry Dahl >

D2L Users Conference at St. Paul RiverCentre in July 2009 This from MnSCU CIO Ken Niemi: "St. Paul’s RiverCentre will be the site of the 2009 D2L Users Conference. MnSCU will co-host the event with Desire2Learn. The event kicks off on Sunday evening, July 12. The main conference will be July 13-15, with post-conference sessions July 16-17. This is a great opportunity for MnSCU faculty, administrators and technical staff to attend an international conference within driving distance. The 2008 conference was held in Memphis, Tennessee, where an all-day Executive Session was offered for the first time. Given the success of that session, it will be offered again at the 2009 conference in St. Paul. The session will be geared toward an audience of high level planners and administrators, including CAOs, CIOs, presidents, and other executives involved in planning and administering enterprise system technology and learning management systems. We look forward to c...

I threw together the following video rather quickly, so it doesn't have the highest production value. Photos from FUSION08D2L as well as some video clips of speakers and musical groups from Beale Street and Graceland. No sound except during the videos. Still rather bummed that I decided to leave my camera in the hotel room (I had thrice walked away from it during this trip) rather than tote it along for the final night on Beale Street with John Baker, Shonagh, McLeod, Matt, and lots of other D2Lers; plus Terri, Dany, Dawn, and several others including Stephen Downes. Suffice it to say that I really wish I could have included shots of most of this crew singing karaoke and dancing (and yes, that includes Stephen who the karaoke jockey introduced as David Crosby). It was over the top.

The annual Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 08 , starts Sunday night, July 20 with a reception at the Pink Palace in Memphis . The photo at right is John Baker addressing the crowd in 2007 at the opening reception at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, Minnesota. Sessions get started Monday morning with an opening keynote address by George Siemens . For those who might like a preview of the keynotes, I posted podcasts last month with conference lead-off Siemens and closing keynote Jason Ohler . For bloggers, photographers, or anyone else using any sort of social software tools, please use the following tag: FUSION08D2L (no difference between upper and lowercase). By tagging your content from the conference it makes it so much easier for all of us to find it. For example, if you Google for the tag for last year ( FUSION07D2L ), you find the following artifacts: A Flickr photo group with 238 photos from 5 people About a dozen blog posts from several different people A couple of ...

I returned Saturday night from the Tennessee Board of Regents e-Learning Summer Institute on Web 2.0 and now I'll be heading back to Memphis in 3 weeks for the Desire2Learn User Conference - FUSION 2008. I had a great time in Memphis and met some really great people, many of whom will also be at the D2L conference. On my last night I went to Corky's BBQ and definitely Put Some South in My Mouth. After returning home I was catching up on some email and RSS feeds when a couple of things caught my eye about the D2L conference: According to the D2L Patent Info Blog , the judge will be hearing Blackboard's Motion for Contempt against D2L's proposed workaround (version 8.3) on Monday July 21 and Tuesday July 22 which are the first two days of the conference. This is pretty amazing timing. I'm sure that it's pure coincidence, but some of those Blackbeard conspiracy theorists out there (you know who you are) are probably thinking that Bb somehow influenced the judge t...

The deadline for presentation proposals is quickly approaching for the 2008 DesireLearn Users Conference . The conference will be held in Memphis and is being hosted by the Tennessee Board of Regents. TBR is one of the most recent large systems to have adopted D2L. Download the Presentation Proposal Form . This is a PDF with interactive form fields. Instructions regarding the completion and submission of the proposal are detailed in the form. Friday, January 18th, 2008 is the proposal deadline. The conference planning committee (that includes me) is working hard to score the submissions very quickly so that presenters will be notified by email of selection results by Monday, January 28th, 2008. The proposals will indicate whether the session is targeted at novice, intermediate, or advanced users of D2L. Furthermore, there are four different tracks : Teaching and Learning Support and Training Program Management Technical System Administration There are rumors of a keynote address by E...

The D2L User Conference is over so it's time to start concentrating on the next big conference event. As a newly-elected board member, I will be promoting the ITC's e-Learning 2008 conference far and wide to any and all who will listen. ITC ( Instructional Technology Council ) is a great organization of leaders in e-learning and other uses of educational technology. There is a great mix of single stand-alone institutions as well as multi-campus districts; community colleges and technical colleges; four-year institutions and graduate schools; non-profit organizations along with a few for-profit organizations. The common thread that runs throughout is that they are all interested or involved in instructional technology. There are two reasons why I know that this is going to be a fabulous conference. First is that it is being hosted by St. Petersburg College . At the last e-Learning conference in Albuquerque I had the privilege of getting to know some great people from the Web an...

Elvis has left the building (and gone to Memphis for the 2008 D2L conference). The last post-conference workshops have just finished and everything is packed up and moved out. The verbal feedback on the concentrated training sessions was very good. I attended a session on Rubrics and Competencies and learned a great deal. I have several ideas floating around in my head about how we can use that tool to capture data about college-wide outcomes as well as program outcomes. Now the hard part will be in making a good plan and executing it. Of course we also have to convince MnSCU to actually flip the switch and let us use the tool. Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

In my post a few days ago , I mentioned that I would be posting a link to the resources used in Podcasting without Fruit workshop delivered at the D2L User Conference on Tuesday, July 10, 2007. "Podcasting without Fruit" resources . (Sorry, link fixed 7/13) Technorati Tags: FUSION07D2L , Desire2Learn , D2L

I thought all three keynote speakers were fabulous. Each very different from the others and with different messages to convey in different ways. Nancy White just finished about 45 minutes ago. Nancy is very engaging, very animated on stage, and you get a sense that she clearly has the personality to develop a sense of community among distributed learners, which was a central part of her presentation and about her daily work in the field. She was a great contrast to the other speakers and has been an important contributor to the conference with her attendance throughout the three days. ( Her presentation wik i.) Will Richardson on Tuesday has a powerful message that is not always well received by educators. Will's appearance was my special request as conference planning committee co-chair, and I think he delivers every time at the plate. There are plenty of educators who don't like to be told that they are going 10 miles per hour in a 100 mph world .... but those people tend to ...