Innovations in E-Learning Symposium 2007

So, have you heard of BaseCamp? Well, I hadn't until Kathleen Gilory, a keynoter at the Innovations in ELearning Symposium brought it up as an example of a Web 2.0 tool that facilitates project management. What about EdTags? That's a new social bookmarking or social tagging tool for educators, designed and developed by Adam Seldow, a doctoral student at Harvard University who was a presenter at the symposium. Adam also explained what sociosemantic networking is and showed an example of smoodle (second life + moodle). This is just a sampling of what speakers had to share at this symposium which was truly innovative.

Also, check out the social software history wiki that Nada Dabbagh and Rick Reo put together for their presentation. Nada (wearing the theory hat as she always does) argued that social software and social constructivism are a perfect fit and also that social software and the mind as a rhizome metaphor (of the mind) are a perfect fit.

Going back to Kathleen Gilroy's keynote, I really liked how she pointed to the difference between WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers) which is the core of the desktop metaphor and SLATES (search, links, authoring, tagging, extensions, signals) which is the core of the web as a platform. I need to look up who actually came up with these constructs. Kathleen also emphasized her belief that the individual is at the core of the social network making "everyne an expert" and Gordon Freedman from Blackboard had a similar perception when he emphasized the need to bring down enterprise technologies from institutionalization to individualization. Gordon also emphasized the need for learning institutions to harness young people's technosavvyness with social software rather than forcing them to become part of the mainstream.

More later! All in all, it was a great conference!