1) 
Panel II: Implications of Cyberspace
These are my personal thoughts and reflections on this panel. Please feel free to comment or post your own summary!
Panel includes:
Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch
Aaron Doering
Sumanth Gopinath
Joan Hughes
Jeremy Iggers
PZ Meyers
Loren Terveen
Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch: She teaches 1 of about 70 required freshman English composition courses. UTHINK blog - What is the best use of the UTHINK blog for classes? Some instructors are resistant to moving away from the face-to-face writing workshop, which is a very pedagogically-tested commodity. But the blog allows people to connect (and write) in new ways. There are successful examples of moving the writing group online.
Does putting required writings online cause students to become more engaged in the writing process (i.e. they want to look good when their friends visit their blog).
Can be used to address digital plagiarism.
Aaron Doering: Go North! Polar Husky “Adventure Learning” project. Millions of students and thousands of teachers around the globe participate in this daily, live adventure learning experience. Go North! immerses students in an issue - this year it is “Mineral Exploration” under the main theme of “Climate Change”. Students are now becoming the experts in that they are gathering local data and submitting it to the website as well as blogging for other students to learn from.
How do we teach inservice teachers how to teach? Doering is trying to figure out how to use the Go North! project to help prospective teachers learn about the teaching experience (and gain experience teaching).
Jeremy Iggers: Intersection of virtual and physical space was a violent collision. Newspapers and news outlets are shifting resources away from public watchdog activities, which has led to a degradation of society. But this didn’t start with the Internet; rather television was the start of the decline of civic activity and the Internet increased this decline. The destructive forces that we see also show promise. For example, “The balance of power has changed.” Ordinary citizens can now participate in journalism/reporting more readily as blogs, etc. become more pervasive. Professional journalists need to change to accommodate this new reality.
Iggers is one of the founders of Twin Cities Daily Planet. The Daily Planet is seeking to encourage more civic involvement and responsible citizen journalism.
PZ Meyers: Owns the opinionated and Squid-driven blog, Pharyngula. He had his students contribute directly to his blog (under a pseudonym) and didn’t evaluate them on the actual writing. One of his students posted a blog that outraged many of PZ’s readers.
Loren Terveen: Amazon collects all sorts of data that helps people to navigate their enormous online store. Target collects similar data to improve their store. Terveen noticed that this idea started in the real world (notes on recipes, etc.). The more someone knows about you, the better service they can give you. What is the balance that needs to be struck between privacy and usability. Cell phones can now collect data about where you are at what time of day. They can then use that data to sell you goods or help you to find directions to somewhere. How much privacy are we willing to trade for convenience?
COMMENTS:
Terveen: The software to do some of the more useful position-awareness things with cellphones isn’t universally-installed, which makes it difficult to test and find.
Doering: To what common denominator do you want to develop for? Should we develop in Flash? Hopefully when the students see what they COULD have, they’ll get it taken care of. We want to provide the BEST online learning experience possible, and sometimes you have to use less accessible stuff (Flash) to do it.
Audience Member: How does computer technology effect the way that the brain develops? Would we have different brains if the cavemen grew up on computers? Will technology negatively affect the way humans will grow from here on out?
Myers: Yes, we would have very different brains, but there’s no way to tell if they would be better brains or worse brains.
Gopinath: We don’t always consider the idea that technologies can have negative consequences on brain/human development and in other areas.
Audience Member: How do we create an international code of Internet ethics while avoiding the 1984 phenomenom (i.e. authoritarianism)?
Terveen: There are good and bad things that come with more online regulation.
Myers: What is the alternative? These collisions that happen between online and physical are good and bad, but “change is good.”
Audience Member: How do we make everyone aware of the advantages and dangers of using new technology?
Hughes: Technology can be used to do things we always did or it can amplify things we have done in the past. But how do we push universities to change the they think about technology to impliment NEW uses of technology? Example: Some school have policies that forbid email and mySpace rather than figuring out ways to utilize these technologies to enhance learning.
Kastman Breuch: Internet is changing the way we do things. Faculty have to do a better job of exploring new technologies and integrating it into our curriculum.
Gopinath: There is a “creative destruction” in capitalism. There are currently battles of distance learning taking place as a result of both a desire to increase access and turn a profit. So “content delivery” could become the new university model (or not). There is an urge to hold onto the old ways of doing things (not necessarily a bad thing).
Iggers: There is an unprecedented ability for these social networking tools to bring people together. You see it on political campaigns and in Wikipedia.
Audience Member: How do we assess the benefits of using new technologies in the K-12 classroom?
Terveen: If the goal is to “replace” things, then the result will be bad. You have to think, “What can we DO with the new technology.” Wikipedia - “It’s crazy that it works.” One reason Wikipedia works is that the software features make sense for that technology. They built a piece of software that created a resource; they didn’t try to remake the encyclopedia.
Doering: The research indicates that there “is no significant difference” between online learning and face-to-face learning, which is a good thing, because it means that we can deliver education in a more flexible manner (and to more people).
Audience Member: What is the best way to set up an online community for a local neighborhood?
Iggers: Check out Twin Cities Daily Planet. We are currently working on this initiative.
