Serendipity35

Not enough time - as I would have guessed - to cover even all of the links in my social computing entry - but I expected that and just put plenty of info and links on this site in the hopes that people would visit here and continue the discussion and their exploration. The session was recorded, but I do think you would be better off looking at this site and trying the links instead of watching the video.

I didn't really go into my personal broadcasting entry because the next speaker in my session was doing podcasting, but you should look at our podcast.njit.edu site. We have good general info on how to download/subscribe to podcasts (and you are welcome to use it for your own site) and several model courses that each take a different approach to coursecasting.

Social computing will lead to many changes in our students and eventually (like it or not) in our teaching. This cut and paste generation has different attitudes towards copyright and intellectual property - and this goes beyond issues of piracy. Look at how mashup sites are using content from other sites and how these other sites are gladly giving away content in the name of eventual profit.

There were 2 sessions I attended that had nothing to do with my topic and yet I saw connections through my social lens. Seton Hall University presented on Electronic Portfolios: A Reflection of the First Year Experience (Liz Cappelluti, Heidi Trotta, and Danielle Mirliss) and from Montclair State University, Creating an Electronic Portfolio in Blackboard (Yanling Sun). Both presentations addressed the inadequacies of the Blackboard e-portfolio system and how students were adding links to their MySpace pages. Attendees maintained that their students wouldn't be able to create web pages and upload them and yet these same students are blogging, creating MySpace sites etc. Granted, it's easier to use MySpace than it is to use Dreamweaver or set up a website & use FTP, but the software is here now (online, open source) and will be more readily available to do these things without a product like Blackboard. E-portfolios will be powerful websites with databases, content management, security and all the rest.

And what about my little experiment to open up this blog & accompanying wiki to conference participants early to encourage interaction? The email with the link to this site went out to a few hundred people at colleges 2 weeks ago. Four people posted comments to this blog (and one was my friend Steve who is out in Arizona) and there were 5 comments on the wiki. Disappointing.
Part 2: I asked the students I have in my Facebook list to comment on my Facebook entry and had 7 responses in a day - a few came in within 2 hours. Students are using these tools. Instructors are not. Students will not/should not stop. Instructors need to start.