DML Conference Day One: Day in Reverse

At least that’s how I’d term this first day of the Digital Media & Learning Conference in Long Beach.  After traveling for what felt like an eternity yesterday, today’s laid back pace was welcome – at least at first.  Registration started at 8:00 am on the second floor here at the Hilton with workshops following at 9:00.  Each session was paired with four others, making choosing a track somewhat difficult, as many interesting title ran concurrently.  This promoted quite a bit of room-hopping which did make the conversations between participants a bit difficult, as it seemed like quite a few attendees were plotting their escape midway through each two hour block.  

My morning session on “Designing for Designers” was a good cross section of the participant backgrounds in attendance, though.  In just my circle were two grad students studying social media and youth culture, a project manager from Google, a curriculum developer for a K-12 initiative, an media space coordinator from Singapore and a LA-based social advocacy programming producer.  I learned a lot about how each of these different people thought of the questions we were asked, which included such topics as “how to negotiate designer vs. content creator rights in communities.”  While I looked at this from a physical space perspective (Media Commons installations), the K-12 developer saw it as it related to the classroom, the Google employee saw it as online products and services, the woman from Singapore saw it as how interactive exhibits were developed, etc.  And our session organizers from MIT’s Scratch project saw it as something entirely different, making providing an answer a bit of a challenge.

The conversations held between sessions with fellow attendees made up for the awkward workshops, though and the delightful keynote from Alice Taylor – former gaming content coordinator for Channel 4 – really made the day worthwhile.  In fact, the entire welcome session this evening really connected the dots on how the day was conceived and made sense of the disparate tracks and presenters in each workshop.  I hate to be traditional about it because I know what the conference organizers were going for by structuring the day as freeform as it was, but I would almost have preferred the day’s last formal session to be its first.  In talking with other participants, I am not alone in this sentiment.

Oh well – onward into the first day of official lecture sessions tomorrow.  If they are a fraction as compelling as Alice’s, I’m going to be pleased this time tomorrow.

Forum on Media + Gaming

It’s been just over 24 hours since the Forum on Media + Gaming wrapped up at Penn State Harrisburg and I have had some time to think about what worked so well at this event.

The aspect of the Forum that was pivotal to it going so great was the location.  The Penn State Harrisburg campus was an ideal spot for bringing together participants from York, Mont Alto, Altoona, Lehigh Valley and Hazleton as well as Harrisburg itself and University Park. Attendees were primarily from Harrisburg (62.8%) and University Park (23.3%) with York and Altoona sending 9.2% of visitors and Hazleton and Berks adding another 4.6%.  Of these attendees, 30.2% were faculty, 55.8% staff, 7.0% administration and 4.7% students.

The Morrison Gallery was a really beautiful space that afforded us a blank canvas to create an inviting “conference in the round” with screens on all side of the participants.  Seating faculty and staff at circular tables in the center of the room encouraged conversation while the student art on the walls and gallery lighting kept the creative process at the forefront of discussion.

Despite less than ideal weather, 32 people made it to Penn State Harrisburg for the 9:00 am kick off.  We were lucky to have the Chancellor, Dr. Mukund Kulkarni deliver opening remarks which included much enthusiasm about the future of technology and for opportunities to pilot new strategies for teaching and learning via the Media Commons and EGC.  Afterwards, Chris Millet shared a run down of the latest Media Commons stats and talked about the educational trends we are investigating and the upcoming tools that we see taking them into the classroom.

The faculty panel really started the conversational aspect of the day. This panel gave not just the three panelists (Sherry Robinson from Hazleton, Peter Linehan from Mont Alto and Suzanne Shaffer from York) a chance to talk about their own use of tech in education but also plenty of opportunities for audience questions and feedback.  The subtitle of the Forum foreshadowed “The Commons in Conversation” and this portion really delivered on that promise.

Much more conversation followed an engaging presentation by Chris Stubbs about the Educational Gaming Commons. Chris focused on ways in which games, game-like elements and the general concept of gamification can improve and embellish the existing classroom experience – as well as how the EGC can help to plan and foster these efforts.  Clickers were employed to gauge knowledge of specific interest in the EGC’s offerings before and after this segment.

Participants were then asked up out of their seats to get hands on with the new technologies that had been presented earlier on.  Justin Miller demonstrated the fast-maturing One Button Studio and fielded questions about its implementation while Chris Stubbs continued the dialogue started during his presentation from moments before.  I detailed the current iOS pilot program and handed out iPod touch devices to interested attendees as well as providing ideas for how the gadgets might be used.  Other Media Commons staffers – Hannah Inzko, Carla Rapp, Lauren Beal and Trace Brown – were on hand to talk with faculty and staff throughout the Hands On session.

It must be said:  the benefit of having the generous and far-reaching assistance of Instructional and Information Technologies Director, John Hoh as well as that of Mike Lackey in ITS and JoAnn Coleman in Capitol Catering on the ground at Harrisburg leading up to the event cannot be underestimated.  Without a doubt, the Forum on Media + Gaming would not have been nearly as successful from planning to execution without them.

There were two changes I would have made from a planning point of view.  First would have been to place the faculty panel seating in a slightly more visible spot for attendees at the farthest table.  Second, I would have asked that lunch start fifteen minutes after the end of the Hands On session, not thirty (though the half hour break did allow for informal interaction and impromptu explorations of the lovely Harrisburg campus library).

Overall, the event seems to have been a success with entirely positive feedback from attendees who shared their thoughts in person.  I look forward to hearing from participants via the web-based survey that was shared with them last night – as well as seeing their own reflections on the event and other “mctg” tagged media appear on the Forum’s collaborative corkboard.

Update: Your Feedback

I wanted to share the feedback that the Media Commons has received so far on the Forum on Media + Gaming.  Nine individuals have let us know what they thought about the event (about 28% of participants) and the general opinion is that the Forum was a success.  First, the numbers:

1. We asked you how you felt about the quality of the planning of this event in areas of Organization, Pacing, Venue, Web Presence, Communications and Refreshments on a scale of Excellent, Good, Okay, Poor and Very Poor.  Respondents chose either Excellent or Good for all areas.

2. We also asked attendees to share their opinion of the quality of the day’s events at Harrisburg, including the categories Relevant Information, Interesting Information, Varied Presenters, Appropriate Topics and Clear Logistics.  Choices for these questions ranged from Strongly Agree through Strongly Disagree.  In all but one category, responses were positive, primarily Strongly Agree.  Only one response was Neutral for all categories.

3. Finally, we asked our guests to rate what they thought of each component of the Forum agenda.  The choices were again Excellent through Very Poor and the responses were almost entirely positive, with only two people choosing Okay in all categories.

In addition to these metrics, we received some good comments that will be helpful in structure future Forum events, including tips on how to better lay out the space as well as ideas on timing and agenda topics.  The most important feedback was pulled from the question “Would you attend this event in the future?”, to which 100% of respondents replied “Yes”.  All in all, very encouraging indeed as we move towards the next Forum on Media + Gaming at Greater Allegheny on April 4th.

To all of you who have submitted feedback, thank you very much.  It’s not too late to contribute – just visit the online survey!