Grab a seat by the fire and listen to the story of how a bunch of happy campers at Penn State created the Learning Design Summer Camp. This tale/poster demonstrates how open planning, with the occasional burned marshmallow, created a two-day event that taught the Penn State community the meaning of engagement and how to keep a sense of wonder in the work we do.
By creating a wiki, establishing a bare-bones event outline, and then inviting the community to contribute, the event planning began. The excitement started with a logo, and the ensuing discussion created an energy that spilled into other areas. Wiki work exploded, new ideas popped up, and the event took on a life of its own--new people began to contribute, and community involvement grew to new levels as the event (in this case, the planning actually became an event in itself) unfolded. Add value to event day with Web 2.0 tools like tagging, Pandora, Twitter, avatar creators and Harvard's Live Question tool; introduce wonder and willingness to try new things, and the story continues to live on in backchannels, blogs and Flickr streams like satisfying s'mores of yummy goodness. As this experience showed, people clearly become engaged and invested when the community takes over.
An instructional specialist for Penn State's World Campus Learning Design group, Robin has a background in design and marketing, a degree in Information Sciences & Technology, and a passion for social media and community engagement. She likes to explore how emerging technologies can be used in teaching and learning, both in the classroom and, perhaps more importantly, in the online learning environment.
Tuesday, 3:30PM