The Backchannel Boom

Mobile technologies are continuing to open new doors for transforming a presentation from a passive to an active experience for an audience member or student.  Currently, some college professors are exploring the possibilities of integrating a Twitter backchannel into a live presentation, as a method of engaging the thoughts and reflections of audience members.   Others use alternative methods like Wall Wisher, Poll Everywhere, and Wiffiti. 

They each have their own unique characteristics and possibilities -- some require more set up on the part of the presenter and all require audience members (or students) to have some type of mobile access.  Despite the array of options that exist today, most college lectures remain static, passive experiences for students.  Integrating a backchannel is far more complex than just learning a new tool.  It introduces a dramatic power shift, flattening out the traditional hierarchy between presenter and audience member and weaving in the flow of otherwise silent ideas, reflections, and questions into the presenter's experiences.  Like all effective online participation experiences, both presenter and participants require a new set of etiquette rules which can make or break the experience. 


Shakespeak
I was recently contacted by Nastasiya Koval from Amsterdam who shared a new (well, new to me) product with me called Shakespeak.  It looks promising and there is evidence from use at Dutch Universities demonstrating increased exam results.  What I like about it is that it extends options for participating in the backchannel via text, web, or Twitter.  These options are nice, as they include students who have a feature phone (phone with text messaging) or smartphone (phone with internet) -- tools that all college students have today.

You can try Shakespeak out for free with up to 20 participants and then a premium account is necessary.  Which to me, raises the question, how are institutions stepping up to support professor use of technologies like this one?  Free tools are great but standardizing our students' experiences is an effective step towards eliminating their necessity to learn and use an array new tools.

Are you Using a Backchannel? Please Share Your Experiences.
If your college or university has a paid subscription to a tool that supports mobile backchannel participation, let me know! If you are experimenting with backchannels on your own, I'd love to hear how it's going and what tool(s) you use.  Please leave a comment -- this topic will be included in a my forthcoming book and your voices are valuable!

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture (ADEC Summit Presentation)

Today I am presenting at the 22nd ADEC (Association for Distance Education in California) Summit in Palm Springs. I have shared a (static) version of my presentation on Slideshare. You may view it below or on Slideshare.

Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture

View more presentations from Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Educause: 7 Things You Should Know About Next Gen Presentation Tools

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the Educause "7 Things You Should Know About..." series.  This is a link every educator integrating web-based technologies should have on their radar and share with everyone in their professional networks.

Ironically, today I received an RSS update from Educause noting their most recent addition to the "7 Things" library which showcases the topic of my last two posts "Next Generation Presentation Tools."  If you've enjoyed the posts "So Long Powerpoint, Hello Prezi" and "Zooming into the Future of Visual Learning" then you'll certainly enjoy the well done Educause abstract which includes an excellent scenario describing why and how a student in a face-to-face class could benefit from the innovative features of the Prezi interface.


For those of you who are new to the format, here are the "7 Things" each abstract explores:

1. What is it?
2. Who is doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Also see my June 26, 2009 post discussing the "7 Things You Should Know About VoiceThread" resource.

Zooming Into the Future of Visual Learning

It seems that my post earlier this week was the equivalent of discovering an entire subculture of web 2.0 tools that have been thriving right under my nose! My Prezi post received one comment thus far from "anonymous" (thank you!) who shared links to ahead.com and zoomorama.com, two more intriguing tools that demonstrate how flash technology is providing a new platform and entirely new anatomy of a visual presentation. Based on "zooming" in an out, rather than clicking linearly from slide to slide, all of these slides are based on similar design concepts but each seem to have individual interfaces. I'm a novice to them all and, by no means, have this mastered but I really like what I see.

Of course, I keep thinking about creating educational content with these tools for online classes. Keeping in mind that the majority of online enrollments in the United States occur at community colleges and most CC faculty need to rely upon their own skills rather than those of an instructional designer or multimedia support specialist to create content for them, at least this has been my own reality as a community college faculty member (and not one that I think is effective by any means), the interactive content created with these visual tools is beautifully engaging and dynamic and easy to put together.

But, as is commonly the case, here is the predicament...flash is a technology that does not engage with a screen reader, an accessible technology that blind users rely upon to decipher the content that appears in the window of their web browser.

I found this stellar example of an educational example about modern art on Zoomorama which appears to be a collaboration between Adobe and Bridgeman Art. If I were teaching online, I would love to use this link as an online activity for my students to engage and leverage content about modern art.

Finally, I'm left envisioning a college classroom twenty years from now. If Prezi, Ahead and Zoomorama offer us tastes of the wave of online visual presentations online, how will we ensure the content our students are shared through academic presentations in the classroom break from the static, linear, text-driven model. The visual content in which we are immersed each day -- through the media, easy to access video on iPods and phones, YouTube sharing, web 2.0 editing, and now these dynamic presentation tools -- has created and continuous to retexture a new generation of visual learners.

Hello Prezi - So Long Powerpoint!

For years I've been part of the anti-Powerpoint movement -- the group of individuals painfully opposed to educators who presumably "teach" with their entire lecture written on their slides, transforming their physical existence into a mere auditory translation of the text for the bored-out-of-their-mind students. I've considered the importance of teaching the "art" of designing effective presentations but today, I think I stumbled upon the answer.

Web 2.0 does it again -- another beautifully integrated, easy to use tool that turns the concept of a presentation inside out by focusing on key words and visuals spread out over a continuous two dimensional canvas, using hierarchy and zoom to convey importance. Now I can't help but draw the lovely metaphor between an artist's toolkit and the Prezi interface, as we embrace our new methods of creating in the 21st century (as an art history I rejoice in seeing the arts influence business innovations processes so inherently).

Here is a simple demo of Prezi so you can get the idea then you can take a trip over to the Prezi showcase to view lots more samples (many which are simply mimicking the Powerpoint interface, you'll catch on to them after awhile).




I also rejoice in a move towards a visually-centric content creation tool. This makes all the difference. Moving away from an interface that requires a user to click through pages or slides is a huge leap for the western user ... bravo Prezi! I have felt constrained and challenged as an art historian, and I've been very vocal about this in presentations I've given in recent years, as I've attempted to craft learning activities for my students to effectively achieve objectives focused on visual learning. But how does one have students engage, critique, analyze and study an image in a text-centric learning management system (like Blackboard)? That has been my biggest challenge as an online educator and that was specifically why I began to migrate outside of Blackboard and started to dabble with web 2.0 tools (like VoiceThread and Ning).

So, check out Prezi. It's quite amazing. Hmmm. Prezi training for educators and students-generated Prezi projects? Sounds like a turning point! And for those of you who are eager to ask the question, yes, Prezi offers subscription options that give you the ability to keep your content private. There is also an option for a "Public License" for students and teachers which I wasn't able to get more details about, as I am not currently teaching right now (unless somebody wants to hire me?? Grin.).

To learn more about Prezi, visit the Learning Center which provides many beautifully done, easy-to-follow video tutorials.