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By Erica, September 13, 2008 11:07 am

Yesterday I attended the ECVA conference, “New Times, New Pedagogies”. It was held in Blacksburg so I left immediately following Thursday’s class. My husband is a graduate of Virginia Tech so he went with me–to Blacksburg, not the conference. On Thursday night as we were pulling the suitcase out of the trunk of the car in the dark of the hotel parking lot, we were greeted with a lowing from an unseen cow. My husband remarked that if I wasn’t sure Tech was a cow college, there was the proof.

Friday morning proved that Tech is more than a cow college (naturally) as I slid into my seat and connected to the wireless system. There are benefits to holding a conference in a university setting and there are even more advantages to holding a conference in an electronic village. Wireless is everywhere. What a refreshing idea.

The conference started with one of the hosts reading a poem by Billy Collins. For those of you who don’t know, I was an English major in undergraduate. Starting a conference about technology by reading a poem instantly connected with me. It was the perfect blending of things I love most–the written word (read beautifully) and technology. It made me want to figure out a way to stay in the university setting…these are my people!

Michael Wesch began his portion of the presentation by telling us some statistics about the room if we pretended the 100 of us represented the Earth. Many of us were in poverty, some were dying, some were pregnant and overwhelmingly we weren’t Americans. You may know Dr. Wesch from his work at Kansas State University. He’s a cultural anthropologist who has done some amazing things by embracing technologies and letting his students collaborate and create their own learning (seriously go back and check out those links–powerful stuff).

Some key points that I gleaned from his presentation:

• we need to acknowledge that sometimes learning is created by losing control of the classroom
• the way communication changes so rapidly we need a new literacy (how to read and write online)
• soul murder is what happens when we regiment how students are to behave (sit in lecture halls with 200 other people, face forward, listen to the professor as the sage on the stage, and figure out how to skate through the assignments and still obtain a good grade)
• is content king or is the ability to gather and make meaning what’s important
• learning is an ongoing process–there is no end to it
• what are the best ways to create significant and meaningful connections
• embrace the new digital media, there are no natives in this environment at the college level–all of these technologies have been created in the last ten years
• let students control the wiki: his students created very detailed lecture notes and study guides on their own
• manage relationships and cultivate participation; enable but not control students
• think of the use of technology as a way to facilitate conversation–no one wants to be distracted from an engaging conversation but who hasn’t been distracted during a lecture

We broke for a short lunch and then Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins spoke. She started off by throwing the goat. Mmmn, the whole conference started with poetry and then she threw the goat. I may have actually been experiencing a dream come true yesterday.

In addition to her other fabulous roles at Ball State University, Intellagirl teaches freshman composition. The class everyone has to take and the one no one wants to take. I bet that has changed as Intellagirl uses Second Life to teach. She wanted a way to really connect with her students and build a sense of community. Second Life allows her students to do that. Her students use Second Life to complete ethnographic research and to hang out and collaborate. She asked us how many of our students go to Blackboard to chat on Friday nights. The group laughed. Yeah, who would want to do that? Go into a virtual environment and chat? Oh yeah, that sounds like fun.

Fun is a part of learning and Intellagirl said she doesn’t understand why learning isn’t thought of as fun.  I don’t think her students mistake the virtual world as a place to goof off. They are there to complete research but they are also there for a connection they may not get by sitting in rows in a classroom. Community bonding is facilitated by technology. As we know from our readings and discussions, learning is embedded in a social context.

Intellagirl’s talk centered around the use of technology and the bargain we should make with our learners when we decide to incorporate it with our teachings. One of her main points was that using technology for technology sake isn’t the right idea. It’s important to find the tool that helps you solve a problem. Tied to that idea is the idea of if we’re going to use the tool we need to know the tool. We don’t have to be experts but we have to know the basics. We have to make students feel safe so they’ll commit to the tool/environment/learning and an easy way to do that is to have a level of competence that shows students this new thing they have to learn how to use is worthwhile.

Since this post is getting long enough to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, I’ll wrap up with a bulleted list of what I found to be most fascinating:

• her slides were awesome and I need to figure out how to use that technique–simple pictures, some text, organic feel
• don’t let the tool overcome the content and context
• students have to let go of self-limitations (give up notes, books, student thinking–how can I skate and still get an A)
• instructors need to let go of control and change their role in the classroom
• there are two ways to think about the online community: escapist vs. extender (escapists create new identities/personas and extenders are those that just extend their authenticity to the web)
• reflection is a tremendous portion of learning
• using a virtual space equalizes the playing field-the instructor is a faciliatator and a learner
• we’re not covering up the past, we’re moving forward and bringing some of the past with us–the world is changing and we’re helping to move it forward