1. What to Bring. As you will see in the schedule below, there will be a lot of interaction with various online technologies.

• If possible, bring a laptop or something else with a web browser (like an iPhone).
• You may also want to bring something to help make a media-rich record of the event: a digital camera, voice recorder, or video camera (like a cheap “Flip video” camera if you have one).
• Bring your business cards.  You are sure to meet new people.
• Finally, bring an open mind — this event is more loosely organized than a traditional conference.  There will be some creative elements.  You’ll get more out of it if you put in your own questions and ideas.

2. Narrative Schedule.  In this story, Kim is a fictional attendee from the Hazleton campus.  You can also check out the normal Schedule of Events listed in the wiki.

August 11, afternoon.  Kim arrives in State College and checks into her hotel.  After getting settled in her room, she gets together with the other out-of-town people who have signed up and expressed interest in getting together before the event.

August 12, 9:30 AM.  Kim leaves her hotel room and heads toward Pattee Library.  She has her laptop (with power cord), a voice recorder, and a digital camera with her.  She gets to Foster Auditorium a little early, so she finds a couple of the stickers she submitted and fills out one of the special “name badges”.  Kim’s badge says “Hello, I’m curious about … using a green screen”.

August 12, 9:50 AM.  Foster Auditorium is pretty full now.  Kim has a seat next to some people they know.  They strike up a conversation about the green screens that are used in the Digital Commons studios.  A friend points out Matt and Justin, who travel to the Digital Commons campuses.  Kim plans to meet them during one of the breaks.

August 12, 10:00 AM.  Allan welcomes everyone to the Summer Camp, runs through some housekeeping issues, and talks about the technologies that have been used to shape the event.

August 12, 10:30 AM.  Cole Camplese, Scott McDonald, and one of their students from a course on disruptive technologies talk for about 15 minutes about their course and how they integrated social software.  This discussion is followed by 45 minutes of discussion with the audience.  During this session, Kim uses the Live Question Tool to anonymously submit a question about differences in student willingness to use social software.

August 12, 11:30 AM.  Time for lunch.  As Allan and some voluneers hand out on-campus dining cards and library-friendly mugs, people who have organized lunch sessions introduce themselves and give a brief overview of their topics.  Kim decides to attend Ellysa Cahoy’s session on Digital Literacy, so she meets up with the group that is gathering around Ellysa and they decide to head to the HUB for lunch.  During lunch, Kim uses her voice recorder to record the discussion for her own reference and to share with other people at her campus.  She also takes a few pictures.

August 12, 1:00 PM. Lightning Talks.  Kim and her group return to Foster Auditorium just as the Lightning Talks start.  Allan goes first and does a 10-minute presentation about using wikis and Google Docs for educational purposes.  Allan exceeds his 10-minute time allotment, so the timekeeper rings a bell and kicks Allan off the podium.  The rest of the 10-minute presentations continue and finish around 3:00.

August 12, 3:00 PM.  Break time.  There is a scheduled half hour break, so Kim takes the opportunity to talk to Chris Millet, who is leading the Digital Commons project.  Chris tells Kim about the green screen tutorials that are on the Digital Commons web site.

August 12, 3:30 PM. Matt Jackson from the College of Communications gives a 15-minute presentation about some basic principles of legal use of copyrighted material.  This is followed by a 45-minute discussion using another instance of the Live Question Tool.  Kim doesn’t submit a question this time, but she does vote on a question about Fair Use guidelines.

August 12, 4:30 PM. The Pitch Session.  At this time, anyone who has a topic for Day 2 is given a chance to stand up and “pitch” their topic to the rest of the Summer Camp attendees.  These topics will be discussed on Day 2, either in the morning or over lunch.  Someone pitches the idea of getting a group of people together over lunch to discuss lessons learned from the first year of supporting a Digital Commons studio.

August 12, 6:30 PM.  Since Kim is in town for another night, she signs up for one of the dinner meetings.  She heads to the Golden Wok to have an informal discussion about instructional technologies.

August 13, 7:30 AM.  Kim is staying at the Nittany Lion Inn, so on her way in, she stops at Otto’s Cafe (in Kern) and gets some coffee in the mug that the University Libraries staff handed out yesterday.

August 13, 8:30 AM.  Kim sits with some of the people that she met at Golden Wok last night.  Carla Zembal-Saul gives a 15-minute presentation about using blogs as a way for students to start building a portfolio as soon as they come to Penn State.  The Live Question Tool is used again.

August 13, 9:30 AM.  Small group discussions.  Kim meets up with Allan and Robin Smail to talk about educational podcasting.  They meet with 10 other people in one of the group meeting rooms in the library.

August 13, 10:30 AM. Everyone gathers back in Foster Auditorium.  Ken Udas and David DiBiase give a short presentation about their ideas on using tools like wikis and content management systems to enable a community to easily create and share educational resources.  The discussion is managed through the Live Question Tool.

August 13, 11:30 AM.  Lunch.  Kim goes off to lunch at Otto’s Cafe and discusses one of the topics she heard at yesterday’s pitch session: supporting a Digital Commons studio.

August 13, 1:00 PM. After coming back from lunch, each of the discussion groups is given the opportunity to make a short (5-10 minute) summary of what issues came up and any outcomes.  During this presentation, Kim reports to the group that she met with the educational podcasting group and they decided to create a “Faculty Guide to Educational Podcasting” document that would help faculty and instructional designers understand what they needed to do to get started.

August 13, 3:00 PM. Onward! In the final session of the day, Cole wraps up the Learning Design Summer camp and the community has a discussion moving forward from where we are now.  What are our common issues?  What else does the university need?  How can we help each other?

August 13, 6:30 PM.  Kim decides to stick around town and go to one of the final “Food for Thought” dinners.  She goes to the one at Champs, where the group discusses the conferences they have attended and which ones were the most helpful.  Kim gets some ideas for next year’s professional development plans.

… So that’s how I see this event unfolding in my head.  Your experience is sure to vary.  And believe me, if you need to take a break and have lunch on your own or skip the dinner gatherings, I won’t be offended.  However, I would appreciate it if you made an effort to participate in the discussions.  The more people who take an active role in participating, the richer the experience will be for everyone.

1. Small Group Signups – There are three times during Camp where you’ll have the opportunity to meet with a small group to discuss a topic of interest: lunch during Day 1, one hour in the morning of Day 2, and lunch on Day 2.  Go to the wiki and review the discussion topics.  If you seen one that you like, go into its page and add your name to the list so we know how big of a group we’ll be having.  If you don’t see anything of interest and want to add your own topic, please do so.  If you need help setting it up, please contact me (Allan asg102@psu.edu).

2. Optional “Food for Thought” Dinners – If you would like to continue the discussion in the evening of Day 1 or Day 2, we’ll be meeting at several local restaurants.  On Day 1, the options are Otto’s, Golden Wok, or Mad Mex.  On Day 2, we’ll be going to Champs or India Pavilion.  If you would like to join in, please add your name to the restaurant as well as some discussion topic ideas. For instance, on Day 2, I’d like to talk about organizing an event like the Learning Design Summer Camp in case anyone else would like to try something similar.

3. Blogging Streak – This isn’t directly related to the Summer Camp, but it is related to more general themes of professional development and community.  Cole has set a goal of writing one blog post during every weekday in August.  Personally, I haven’t gotten into the habit of blogging about my work, so I thought I’d give this a try to see what happens and whether blogging helps me think about my work differently.  Other people are going to try it as well.  If you have wanted to get into the habit of blogging, now may be the right time.

4. Summer Camp Podcast: Jamie Oberdick interviewed me and Cole about the planning and organization of the Learning Design Summer Camp.  That interview is online now if you’d like to listen to it.

If you recently registered for the Learning Design Summer Camp and would like to see “Countdown to Camp” notes 1-3, they can be found on the ETS Web site.  Previous notes included topics like the community-created stickers, technology frameworks, Twitter, RSS feeds, the official tag (LDSC08), and a preview of some of our main discussion topics.

The Learning Design Summer Camp is different both in how it is being planned and who will attend. While you think an event on learning design would be exclusive to instructional designers, this event has people from other disciplines attending. And the Summer Camp planning is unique in several ways, including attendees volunteering to help organize the event.

To find out more, I interviewed Cole Camplese, ETS director, and Allan Gyorke, education technology manager. Allan and Cole talked about the event, how it is being planned, and what you can do to help plan and execute this unique event.

Listen to the Podcast.

1. Scott McDonald and Cole Camplese used a variety of technologies in a Curriculum and Instruction course that they co-taught this spring.  One of these technologies pulled together blog posts that students were writing to a central location, where they were rated and discussed.  The most highly rated posts became topics for future class discussions.  All of this happened in the open and can be viewed online by going to their class social rating site.  We also have a whitepaper about social rating systems if you would like to learn more about these kinds of technologies.

2. Matt Jackson, from the College of Communications, will be talking about topics such as copyright, digital media, mashups, the TEACH Act, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. The Digital Commons staff and I talked with Matt Jackson (which we recorded) a couple of months ago and he was able to clarify some misconceptions that we had about the use of digital media for educational purposes.  This was a nice compliment to Lawrence Lessig’s keynote presentation at the 2008 TLT Symposium.

3.Carla Zembal-Saul is working with ETS over the summer on the idea of Blogs as Portfolio.  She has been using a wiki to keep track of her thoughts, plans, and resources.  If Carla’s name sounds familiar, it may be because she and Scott McDonald were featured at the TLT Symposium’s “Faculty Success Stories” series for their use of Studiocode to help students analyze their teaching practice.  Carla also participated in the pilot of the Podcasts at Penn State project and got attention for her class’s podcast about Honey Bee Colony Collapse.

4. Finally, I have begun shaping the Discussion Topics that you have submitted into our two lunch times and the morning of Day 2.  During lunch on Day 1, we will break up into groups to discuss topics like harnessing backchannel communication, building online communities, accessibile courseware and tools, educational gaming, competencies for online teaching, and creating new learning environments.  At the end of Day 1, we will have a “pitch session” where people can describe topics that they would like to discuss during Day 2.  These topics can be set before the Summer Camp or topics based on new ideas or questions that come up during camp.  Read more about these sessions in the Summer Camp wiki and propose your own discussion ideas.

Remember that this is a community-shaped event, so if you are interested in a different kind of topic, if you have a particular educational issue that you need to work through, or if you have a pilot project that you want to discuss, please add it to the list of discussion topics.  This is a rare opportunity to discuss your ideas with a group of very smart people from across the university, so make the most of it.

1. Official Tag: LDSC08 is the official tag for the Learning Design Summer Camp.  Use this tag when uploading related photos or videos, making blog posts, bookmarking sites in del.icio.us, using Twitter, etc…  That way they will be easier to find and aggregate.

2. Blogs: During the Summer Camp, one of the discussion topics will be Carla Zembal-Saul’s investigation of blogs as ePortfolios.  Now is also a good time to sign up for your Penn State Blog if you don’t already have one.  If you want to find out more about blogs, I recommend these videos: Blogs in Plain English, RSS in Plain English, and the ETS Briefing on Blogs at Penn State.

3. RSS Feed: If you are already a user of blogs and are familiar with RSS readers (like Google Reader), you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed for the Learning Design Summer Camp so you can track these kinds of announcements and camp-related items.

4. Technology Frameworks: We don’t want the technology discussed during the Learning Design Summer Camp to be overwhelming to people who haven’t used tools like blogs, wikis, and Twitter.  So to help level the playingfield, we are working on Technology Frameworks that provide basic information and educational uses.  If you are a more experienced user, please take a look at these frameworks, pick one, and fill in some of the sections.

1. Technology Frameworks: For the “Lightning Talk” session of the Summer Camp, we will be having 10-minute presentations about 10 different projects and technologies. In the next month, it would be nice to have some quick community-written pages about each of these technologies so people who haven’t used them can understand what they are, how to get started, and what their educational applications are. So if you can, go to the following URL, pick one of the technologies, and answer a few of the questions. Don’t worry about being perfect the first time — the community will help to shape these pages. And if you’re looking for a fairly complete description, look at the page that people have created for Twitter.

2. Twitter: So far, 30 people on the registration list have shared their Twitter userids. If you are a current Twitter user, you may want to list your userid as well. If you are not using Twitter, this is the right time to give it a try. Create a free account at twitter.com and add other people who are registered for the Summer Camp. Try it for one month – from now until the Summer Camp. If you don’t see value in it by that time, it probably just isn’t the tool for you. However, it may be a way for you to connect to a large network of very smart faculty, librarians, designers, technologists, and eLearning Leaders, 140 characters at a time. To read more about Twitter and its educational uses, see the Twitter Framework.

3. Stickers: As a final reminder, we are ordering community-created stickers for the Summer Camp, but if you want to submit a design, please do so by the end of the day tomorrow. That way, we can make sure that they arrive in time. If you happen to miss that deadline, we can place a second order, but they may arrive after the Summer Camp. See all of the details and the designs that everyone has created so far at the Learning Design Sticker Page.

4. Blog space: If you prefer to stay current with this sort of stuff via RSS, subscribe to the ETS webspace category RSS feed for the camp.