Monday, March 4, 2013

Day 1, SXSWedu

Here follow some random musings on what I've seen today.

1:30p session: Advances in Open Textbook Publishing Technology

An idea whose time has come. Awhile ago, actually. Although, to be fair, the staying power of "proprietarism" in education is perversely strong: you'd think that educators, if anyone, would be early adopters of technologies and practices which are fundamentally aligned with the free sharing of knowledge. The panelists here are pursuing several OSS projects around the development of ebook publishing platforms with friendly GUIs, based on HTML5 for native cross-platform presentation of media. The coolest stuff imaginable. As per usual, tech outstrips our readiness to deploy it. Key question: how long will it take until a faculty member in a "publish-or-perish" institution will be able to self-publish a CC BY text on archive.org ... and have it count toward her tenure file?

3:00p session: Got Game? Learning Through Play. Seriously.

The more I see of the administrative side of education, the more I'm amazed every time I see people who are - somehow! - able to resist, to any degree, the pressures of commodification. It's particularly acute in re: edtech, which is right about now fresh enough to be exciting, yet mature enough to exploit at scale. The fact that "gamification" has acquired a slimy connotative patina among edtech folk is a case in point. But to get off my soapbox... The panelists here represent companies trying to make a living, accommodate administrators' requirements, and preserve the basic equivalence of learning and playing. All at once. And I have no frakking clue how they do it. But I hope, very deeply, that enough people keep trying.

Today's cool Dungeons & Discourse tidbit: after a session, I met, purely at random, a fellow who complimented me on my shirt. What shirt? Why, the Dresden Codak t-shirt pictured here. And of course, dresdencodak.com is the wonderful webcomic site whose author created, and has graciously permitted me to use, the Dungeons & Discourse idea. (In case you haven't already, go support his awesome Kickstarter, "Tomorrow Girl".)

After posting this, I intend to get a bit of fresh air, and take a leisurely walk to find some tasty vegan food. Later this evening, the first SXSWedu social event!

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