The Fifth Annual Robert C. Heterick, Jr., Lecture

Despite dismissals, video games have emerged as an important research topic. Recent studies suggest that engagement in video games, particularly virtual worlds, promotes valued forms of thinking and learning. This session will review findings of a five-year investigation into the forms of cognition and learning that arise in virtual worlds and how they function as naturally occurring versions of successful online learning communities, present findings from across a range of topics, and highlight how certain intellectual practices coalesce into "pop cosmopolitanism"—a form of civic engagement that’s shaping the everyday lives of today's adolescents and young adults.

The annual Horizon Report, a joint publication of the NMC and the ELI, highlights new technologies for teaching, learning, and creative expression. This session will review the research and process behind the report. The 2009 Horizon Report and its findings will be officially released at this session.

Emerging media such as iPhones create both challenges and opportunities for educators. On the one hand, they provide ubiquitous access to resources and social networks. On the other hand, they disrupt existing power relationships. Whereas most efforts have conceptualized learning with mobile media in terms of "any time, any where," this session reframes the challenges and opportunities in terms of place. Mobile media enable deeper experiences of place, but they also create multiplicity and hybridities of place. Drawing on work done in 30 classrooms over the past two years, this session includes a framework for thinking about how mobile media might be better integrated into classrooms.

It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after speech, thousands more before the printing press was invented, and a few hundred more for the telegraph to arrive. Today, new ways of relating are constantly created and a new communication medium emerges every time someone creates a web application—a Flickr here, a Twitter there. How can we use new media to foster the kinds of communication and community we desire in education? This presentation will discuss both successful and unsuccessful attempts to integrate emerging technologies into the classroom to create a rich virtual learning environment.

Who would Thomas Jefferson have included in his “friends” list? What technologies did he use to stay in touch? This presentation will share how faculty and staff at the Virginia Center for Digital History are facilitating inquiry, collaboration, and innovation through the study of Thomas Jefferson's travels. The course, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, partners students with museum archivists and content specialists on project teams, helping build networks beyond the academy. As a result, students become stakeholders, the syllabus turns into an ever-changing document, and final presentations take on second lives as digital portfolios.

Mobile and ubiquitous computing may support a social constructivist learning process by helping students engage in learning activities in diverse locations, access resources at the point of learning, and communicate with distant collaborators anywhere, anytime. This session will describe the transformation of learning-related activities brought about by the introduction of ubiquitous and mobile technologies in learning environments and the relationship among applications (for example, social tagging, social networking, and context-aware computing). It will also describe how these technologies affect the physical setting as well as the forms of social participation within those settings.

Powered by the HUBzero.org cyberinfrastructure platform developed at Purdue University, nanoHUB.org presents nanotechnology learners with interactive, graphical simulation programs right in their web browsers. These immediate and sharable modeling tools invite active and collaborative learning. Consequently, using nanoHUB changes the classroom because we can expect learners to construct knowledge as much as receive it in prepackaged form. Furthermore, with cyberinfrastructure-enabled, model-based environments, formal learning and discovery environments form a continuum and begin to crossover with informal learning and play environments. This has positive implications for engaging "digital natives.”

Because much of the curriculum of the Masters of Digital Media Program at Great Northern Way involves real-time, team-based collaboration, we have been developing a virtual learning platform to enable geographically distributed students to work together in real-time immersive "spaces" supported by a strong sense of individual and team "presence." This session will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of several potential v-learning environments including Second Life, World of Warcraft, Sony Home, Sauerbraten, TokBox, Dimdim, Google Docs, Wonderland, Xbox LIVE, and our very own Great Northern World. The session will conclude by exploring the advantages of v-learning environments in times of economic downturn defined by shrinking education budgets and declining consumer spending power.

Online scholarly and research publishing isn’t new. Low cost, quick access, and high positive search rates promise easy success, yet high failure rates abound. Should such publishing be abandoned, as one publisher’s association has advised? Or are there new factors that could make an online publishing reformation work? We'll explore ideas for using promising new tools from the digital native, the millennium instructor, and the hooked-in editor. With a dash of economic models, a measure of credibility, and solid dose of sustainability, there’s hope for those who must publish or perish, and, more importantly, for all in our profession.

What makes some learning spaces robust seedbeds for interactivity, and others flat and unproductive? To what extent is the answer to this question in the mind of the beholder, and therefore challenging to address institutionally? How do we translate design principles and best practices to enrich our campus physical and virtual learning environments? Join panelists from academia and private practice to explore what’s happening to inform future directions in learning space design, the challenges we’re facing, and their perspectives on the “next big thing.”

Social networking sites and other Web 2.0 technologies offer rich tools for creation, collaboration, and community building. As such they have generated great excitement among faculty, staff, and students as they explore incorporating these technologies into their teaching and learning. Some of the most compelling features of these technologies—how quickly and easily materials can be shared and repurposed, how large and fluid Internet communities tend to be, how many cheap third-party services are available—are the same ones that raise questions about whether and how law and policy affect how we use these technologies in support of learning.

Beth Cate will review and answer questions commonly asked by faculty, staff, and university attorneys and talk about why, although technologies are continually evolving, the relevant legal and policy principles are generally quite familiar and not scary. She will highlight a few new wrinkles and some unknowns and offer practical strategies for maintaining good communications with your campus counsel as you and your institution navigate these promising new technologies and look ahead to Web 3.0.