Johannes Shoening has posted some great videos, pictures, and links about ACM-CHI 2011, a conference that recently took place in Vancouver, Canada. Johannes is the author of the Perspectivevoxel blog, where he shares information about interactive and emerging technologies.
Howard Rheingold was the opening keynote speaker at the ACM-CHI 2011 conference on May 9th, in Vancouver, Canada. In his delightful talk, Rheingold discussed his exploration of social media and social media literacies in teaching and learning, drawing upon his experience teaching university courses. According to Rheingold, these literacies include mindful infotention; participation; collaboration, and critical consumption, or in his words, crap detection.
In traditional classrooms, students are given a number of reading assignments, and then called upon to respond to the instructor's questions, demonstrating that they "did the reading". From Rheingold's perspective, this is off-track, as cold-calling students isn't the way to foster "thinking, reflection, inquiry, and the ability to contribute to a broader conversation."
Rheingold suggests that it is a myth that "tech-savvy" digital natives know how to use technology for learning and connecting with others effectively, drawing from his recent experience teaching university students. Rheingold believes that the goal of learning is not to get the right answer, but to learn strategies such as inquiry, exploration, and collaboration. Learning is not limited to the classroom walls, but takes place (within a network of other co-learners, linked to one another, and also linked to the wealth of resources that are available on-line.
In this way, a "culture of conversation" is built that extends well beyond the classroom, and takes place after the official class period has ended. Technology is not the solution- it is a tool that when harnessed thoughtfully, can support co-learning activities in a variety and combination of ways. This process, Rheingold stresses, can facilitate engaged learning, and amplify intelligence.
If you are interested in exploring the wisdom of Rheingold, take some time to soak in the videos below, as well as the links to resources provided at the end of this post.
As early as the mid-1990's, Howard was clear that the future of technology would be visual and multimedia, and that technology would improve access to a wealth of information as well as provide opportunities for increasing connections between people. Rheingold is known for his 2002 book, SmartMobs: The Next Social Revolution- Transforming Cultures and Communities in the Age of Instant Access. He has taught courses such as Digital Journalismat Stanford University and Virtual Community/Social Mediaat the University of California, Berkeley, and his approach to teaching breaks the traditional mold, given the comments from his former students.
Since most people don't have the means to attend Stanford or Berkeley, Rheingold recently established Rheingold U, an on-line learning community offering courses that run about 5 weeks, through live sessions and the use of forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, and social bookmarks.
If you are unfamiliar with the acronyms, ACM stands for the Association for Computing Machinery, and is known as the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, with over 108,000 members. Within the ACM are a number of special interest groups, known as SIGs. SIG-CHI is an interdisciplinary group of practitioners, industry researchers, students, and academicians who represent fields of design, engineering, management, and user experience. All members of SIG-CHI are interested in topics related to Computer-Human Interaction in some way. Communities featured at the CHI-2011 conference are Child-Computer Interaction; Games and Entertainment; Health; and Sustainability.
I've been attending CHI 2011 for the past few days and have been impressed by the depth and breadth of the conference. In addition to attending a number of interesting, high-quality presentations, I had the chance to interview several key contributors to the HCI field, explore a variety of awesome interactive applications, and participate in an interactive musical multimedia performance. Below is a video taken of part of the performance, taken by someone at the conference:
I also had a chance to explore Bill Buxton's exhibit of his historical archive of input and interactive devices. To see the interactive online version of the exhibit, take a look at Buxton Collection.You won't be disappointed.
I will be sharing my "take aways" from the conference in a series of posts on this blog over the next couple of weeks. I meantime, take a look at some of the CHI "Madness" videos below. The video clips are about 20-seconds long and are created by CHI presenters as previews to help conference attendees plan their schedules, since there are many sessions that are held concurrently.
I'm happy to share that I was approved for a press pass for the CHI 2011 conference I'm attending in Vancouver, Canada. (I was one of the organizers for a pre-conference workshop held on Saturday, "Child Computer Interaction: Workshop on UI Technologies and Educational Pedagogy" and will share more information from the workshop in future blog posts.)
The press pass will provide me the opportunity to meet a number of key thinkers/researchers related to the field of Human Factors/Human Computer Interaction. Here are a few of today's press highlights:
A conversation with ...Howard Rheingold CHI 2011’s opening session features Howard Rheingold, an acknowledged authority on mobile communications, discussing the evolution and future of social media in teaching and learning. Rheingold, the author of Smart Mobs, innovator, and Stanford University lecturer, explains, "use of social media in higher education teaching sessions can provide opportunities for innovative and meaningful interactions that extend far beyond the traditional face-to-face classroom experience." -CHI 2011
An Interview with Conference Organizers and Interaction Researchers ... Desney Tan, Conference Chair and Microsoft Research
Bo Begole, Technical Program Co-Char and XEROX Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
Wendy Kellogg, Technical Program Co-Chair and IBM
I can't wait until 4:00 PM - a special tour of the interactive demonstrations - here is the information I received from the CHI 2011 PR coordinator:
I'm sure this will be interesting: Collecting the History of Interactive Devices "An exhibit of interactive devices from the past 35 years that point to ways of interacting with computers in the future. First shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2004 (and updated for 2011), the collection documents the history of pen computing, pointing devices, touch technologies, and illustrates the nature of how new technologies emerge." - CHI 2011
Stay updated! To keep up with my blog posts during the CHI 2011 conference and afterwards, sign up for the RSS feed. Another option is to follow me on Twitter, and you'll receive an automatic "tweet" with a link whenever I post something on this blog.
The Future... thoughts shared by Allison Druin at CHI 2011:
Rethinking the meaning of interaction- well beyond the mouse, beyond the icon
Rethinking our relationships we have with our technologies
Rethinking how to transform technology
Rethinking ho transforming technology can change learning, to really change the future...
Paraphrasing ....."It starts with the experience of the child. Have you ever asked them what they think about the future? Backpacks with ice cream, storytelling machines that fly... layered stories that are tall as building?
How do you get from low-tech prototyping to what gets on tech devices? It's not about data analysis, analyzing things that are easy to analyse."
Allison works with kids and adults together, in a participatory manner, at her lab at the University of Maryland...
Video demonstrating design techniques, including low-tech prototyping, involving children and ideas:
The researchers look at what children are doing today, in homes and in schools. More recently, children's use of search at home, away from the eyes of their teachers.
How do we figure out how designs and ideas become new technologies?
Here is one example: Story kit is a freely available app for the iPhone that can be used as a prototyping tool. Kids are asked to design music and create what it might sound like. It is considered to be a "mid-tech" tool, and supports creativity in the design process.
Three things that will happen in the future, according to Druin:
Technology Ecology - apps are cross platforms and technologies. Where ever kids are and need it (tech agnostic)
Physical/Virtual Switching --- interaction "bursts". Designing for an activity that can be interrupted, in a good way.
Creation of new neighborhood for learning. A blur between the local and the global, "Local 2.0", beyond the walls. Technologies need to accept this, and embrace this.
Allison's inspiration comes from her many years of working with children in innovative and creative ways.
RELATED From the Q and A: Kids now know that technology rapidly changes. Kids continue to be creative. Kids seem to be more confident in their creativity, and that it matters. Kids aren't given enough opportunities to be creative these days, given all of the testing that they endure at school.
"There is a feeling that anything is possible....it does happen!"
The workshop agenda has been changed slightly, and I will update the blog to reflect the changes soon. Here is a link to a previous post about the workshop:
