This site is rarely updated. benbrophy.com is more up-to-date. - Ben
Sakai Austin Highlights
In addition to the vigorous UI discussions I mentioned in my previous post, there were several other highlights to the conference
Social Computing BOF
I presented at this session, and here's the proof.
Hot topics
- Back channels (IRC, jokes, comments, google searches being added by students as the presentation goes on)
- Is it better to create more functionality in Sakai, or extend Sakai with external (commercial) services like Google, Flickr and del.icio.us?
- How do you keep the fun in social software when it is institutionally supported?
- Digital divide between students use of this tech and faculty use.
Faculty led pedagogy sessions
In particular Course Management Tools for the Humanities and Wouldn't it be great if.. - Exploring instructional methods using Sakai. I would love to see a conference based entirely around how instructors want to teach, and their ideas about what they would like educational technology to do.
Hearing about other schools' work
I'm thinking in particular of the oddly titled Is Linking Thinking? Web Pedagogies and Tools for Teaching and Learning in which Paul Bergen (Harvard), Tom Lewis (U Wash), and Dirk Herr-Hoyman (U Wisc.) described the homegrown non-Sakai (and non-Java) tools they use to help people teach and learn. It was the most persuasive thing I saw for showing the reasons Sakai should take 'loosely coupled' approach to technology that makes it easy for schools to mix and match in the tools they like with Sakai tools.
Sharing Stellar Images at the Technical Demos
I loved showing off the work we've done to date on Stellar Images and having the chance to talk to so many people from so many schools about it over just 90 minutes. It was absolutely exhausting.
Austin
I just love Austin, in a way I haven't quite defined. This was my third visit, and it just keeps growing on me.
Tags: sakaiaustin05 sakai