Howard Rheingold has written a case study using ds106 (UMW’s open, online version of the Computer Science Digital Storytelling course) as a model of participatory learning. The case study was published by the Connected Learning site, which is the community arm of the Digital Media Lab and Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Irvine. ds106 was [...] … [Read more...]
DTLT Today: Episode 104, UMW’s Domain of One’s Own
July 21, 2013 by 1 Comment
Note: At two points in the above video (roughly at 12 minutes and 22 minutes) there’s cacophonous feedback when we go to the shot of the laptop. Andy picks it up and fixes it soon after the 22 minute mark. I’ll be editing this out sometime soon, apologies in the meantime. After a year and a half hiatus DTLT Today is finally back in action with episode 104. Even better, we had the whole old gold crew together (i.e. Martha Burtis, Andy Rush, Tim Owens, and myself) to talk about the Domain of One’s Own project we’re kicking off this Fall for 1000 freshman. I pushed for this episode because I was blown away by how streamlined Tim Owens and Martha Burtis had engineered the sign-up using the client management software WHMCS. It’s extremely slick; a two step process that gives students and faculty alike their own domain and web hosting immediately. What’s more, the domain propagates in less than 10 minutes. It’s amazing to see how cleanly and … [Read more...]
DTLT Today: Episode 104, UMW’s Domain of One’s Own
July 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Note: At two points in the above video (roughly at 12 minutes and 22 minutes) there’s cacophonous feedback when we go to the shot of the laptop. Andy picks it up and fixes it soon after the 22 minute mark. I’ll be editing this out sometime soon, apologies in the meantime. Those clips with heavy feedback loop have been edited out. After a year and a half hiatus DTLT Today is finally back in action with episode 104. Even better, we had the whole old gold crew together (i.e. Martha Burtis, Andy Rush, Tim Owens, and myself) to talk about the Domain of One’s Own project we’re kicking off this Fall for 1000 freshman. I pushed for this episode because I was blown away by how streamlined Tim Owens and Martha Burtis had engineered the sign-up using the client management software WHMCS. It’s extremely slick; a two step process that gives students and faculty alike their own domain and web hosting immediately. What’s more, the domain propagates in less than 10 … [Read more...]
DTLT’s Innovative Work featured in The Blue Review
May 9, 2013 by
Leslie Madsen-Brooks featured the long history of innovative work coming out of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technology in her article “Beyond Disruption” for The Blue Review. Below is a somewhat extensive quote from the article: Those who have been paying attention only to partnerships among Silicon Valley companies and the Ivies may be surprised that the beating heart of a tremendous amount of academic technology innovation is a small state university in Fredericksburg, Virginia. At theUniversity of Mary Washington, the Division of Teaching and Learning Technology has launched at least four amazing initiatives that should be replicated widely because it’s clear to even casual observers that they advance teaching and learning in myriad ways. For one, evidence of student learning appears on the open web, and I encourage you to check out the current blogs developed for courses. Faculty, too—and I know this from first-hand experience—benefit from knowing what … [Read more...]
Jim Groom Interviewed for Ohio State University’s Writers Talk series
May 9, 2013 by
On May 6th an interview with Jim Groom was aired on the Ohio State University’s radio program Writers Talk. The discussion focuses on the work he has done as part of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technology: ranging from the formation of UMW Blogs, the popular appeal of the Digital Storytelling class affectionately known as ds106 and its relationship to those confounded MOOCs, as well as DTLT’s current groundbreaking project Domain of One’s Own. The interview runs 30 minutes and you can listen to it below. OSU Writers Talk … [Read more...]
DTLT Projects Featured in 2013 Horizon Report
February 11, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The 2013 NMC Horizon Report for Higher Education, a publication that identifies technologies likely to have an impact on learning, has featured not one but two separate projects born out of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. Referencing Massive Open Online Courses as a development likely to be adopted in one year or less, the work of ds106, the open digital storytelling course at UMW, is cited as an example of early experimentation in this space. Under a section on 3D printing technology, the work of Tim Owens and George Meadows on the ThinkLab in the Simpson Library is featured as an example of work that is incorporating this technology into course curriculum. The full report can be downloaded at the NMC website here. … [Read more...]
UMW’s Digital Storytelling Course featured in EDUCAUSE Review
February 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A certain strand of the Computer Science 106 course (a.k.a ds106, a nickname for Digital Storytelling 106) is the subject of an article by Alan Levine in the recent issue of EDUCAUSE Review Online called "ds106: Not a Course, Not Like Any MOOC" . The article frames the experimentation that went on here at Mary Washington with the open, online versions of this course from Spring 2011 up and until the present. The vision of the open online course ds106 is described as thus: Characteristic of ds106 is its distributed structure, mimicking the Internet itself, and its open-source non-LMS platform. Students are charged with registering their own domain, managing their own personal cyberinfrastructure, and publishing to their own website. Via the WordPress plugin FeedWordPress, all content from students is automatically aggregated to the main ds106 site—but all links go back directly to the students' sites. What's more, the course challenges conventions surrounding digital storytelling, … [Read more...]
The Credit She Never Gets
July 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Earlier today I posted a quick video about using the ds106 assignments repository to create engagement in an online learning experience. To be clear there are many things that go into such an experience, but I’ve found the ds106 assignment repository has allowed me to re-think ds106 over the last year and a half. The ability to syndicate filtered assignment posts, rate the difficulty level, relate tutorials, and create new assignments puts the course in the unique position to allow students to shape the experience. The simple act that has proven powerful, fun, and created a sense of community. The current state of the assignment repository came out of an experimental model Martha Burtis has been iterating on since December 2010. It’s pretty amazing because that was the beginning of the idea of ds106 as open architecture, a space that others can build sites onto, like Alan Levine’s Remix site, Tim Owens’ Daily Create, and Linda McKenna and Rachel McGuirk’s … [Read more...]
Alan Levine and Jim Groom Present at SXSWedu
March 29, 2012 by
Newest DTLT team member Alan Levine joined Jim Groom as invited speakers at the March 6-8, 2012 SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas. Sharing their experiences in teaching the ds106 Digital Storytelling Conference, Levine and Groom joined Philipp Schmidt (P2PU) and Karen Fasinpaur (K12 Open Ed) in a lively panel discussion on Developing a Culture of Openness. Levine also led a hands on session, Create Something from the StoryBox where participants explored a storytelling digital time capsule project he conducted during a year of travel in 2011. … [Read more...]