I will be presenting a quick 15-20 minute session at the Council of Independent Colleges conference focusing on History and Information Fluency. I was pretty inspired by James Grossman’s talk tonight about how information can be understood in terms of engaging the new medium of the web on its own terms—rather than remediating it though the lens of what we already know and are comfortable with. He touched on 3 major points: 1) how we can have students think more about how resources are created and discovered online (I interpreted this as them building resource sites and understanding how they are discovered through Google a la UMW Blogs); 2) the power of Wikipedia as a teaching tool (thank you Jon Beasley-Murray for your awesome example in Murder, Madness, Mayhem); and 3) allowing students to help build the syllabus (or crowdsourcing the course as we are bearing witness to in ds106).

So, I basically reproduced some examples of all his talking points, and will offer a quick explanation of how it is rather fast, cheap, and out of control, but demands an investment in people and the willingness to let go of some notions of control we often hold dear and which kill innovation. I’ll also then talk about how we now own the vertical and horizontal with #ds106radio.

All this in 15 minutes, and if the internet gods align I will be broadcasting it live at 9:15 am (central time).

Update: Presentation has been transmitted, and below is the ds106 radio archive

We Can Control Transmission