Michael Wesch at STLHE 2010

A short Michael Wesch youtube video filmed by Tatian Diniz of University of Wales, about his keynote at STLHE 2010 June 24th at Ryerson. He created a mashup video and encouraged all educators to become comfortable with this technology.

He is a Digital Ethnographer and has also posted these more popular youtube videos:

A Vision of Students Today
The Machine is Us/ing Us
An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

Tonya Noel and I presented on Avatars: Usefulness in Collaborative Online Learning Environments. See program details.

Challenges of effective online learning are well documented. Two playful activities attempted to address the issue of creating a community of learners in a collaborative online environment. The first was to create a depiction of oneself using character building tools. Avatars, complete with props, were self‐created to represent online identities of class members and to provide opportunities for comment, discussion and engagement. The second activity required participants to creatively express their thoughts on an abstract topic without using text. Participants were then invited to guess the information their peers were trying to portray and intentions vs. interpretations were discussed. These simple and ludic activities were favourably welcomed with high participation by the group. The outcomes reflected stronger senses of engagement, belonging and trust. Our session is intended to provide an overview of the activities' benefits and challenges, discuss related literature on online collaboration, sense of community, and learner identities, and engage attendees in creation activities of their own.