Virtual High School Meanderings: CIDER: You are invited to a CIDER Session with Dr. Jon Dron

In keeping with the listings of webinars and online presentations about social networking and this next generation of students, here's another.

Dear CIDER member:

We are currently building the 2008 schedule of free CIDER presentations, and we are looking for distance education researchers who are willing to share a recent project or research related work with our community. The CIDER sessions are scheduled for every second Friday from 11:00am-12:00pm MST. They usually consist of 30-40 minutes of presentation, followed by 20-30 minutes of questions and discussion. If you are interested in presenting your work in an upcoming CIDER presentation, please contact Lynn Anderson at lynnlo@cogeco.ca

We would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to the next presentation in our series of free CIDER sessions. This session will feature a presentation and discussion with Dr. Jon Dron, Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University.

Title: Designing the Undesignable: Social Software and Control

In this presentation, Dr. Jon Dron will discuss his recently published article, "Designing the Undesignable: Social Software and Control". In this article, Dr. Dron states that social software, such as blogs, wikis, tagging systems and collaborative filters, treats the group as a first-class object within the system. Drawing from theories of transactional distance and control, he proposes a model of e-learning that extends traditional concepts of learner-teacher-content interactions to include these emergent properties of the group. Some of the dangers and issues that need to be addressed in order for this new model to fulfill its promise will be explored, and a framework of principles to be used by designers of educationally-oriented social software will be discussed.

When: Friday, December 14, 2007, 11am-12pm MST (Alberta)

Where: Online via Elluminate at:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?password=M.8B71B60F2931D029AC3837DC06B70D

Pre-Configuration
Please make sure your Mac or PC is equipped with a microphone and speakers, so that we can use the Voice over IP functionality built into the web conferencing software. Please note that it is extremely important that you get your system set up prior to the start of the event. Please don't wait until the day of the session to do this. Information on installing the necessary software and configuring your PC is available at http://www.elluminate.com/support/ in the "First Time Users" section. If necessary, Elluminate customer care technicians are available to assist you toll-free at 866-388-8674 option 2. International users can dial 703-956-3812.

The session will be recorded and available for future playback from http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/

CIDER is a Community Partner of Elluminate - http://www.elluminate.com - who proudly sponsors our web conferencing needs. To sign up for a free, no obligation three-user version of Elluminate, please visit http://www.getvroom.com

Unlike the last two I posted, this one is free - and I heard Dr. Dron speak at e-Learn a few years ago and he is entertaining, so make sure you check it out.