On Oct. 18, 2013 Jim Groom delivered a TEDx presentation at the University of Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The invited talk focused on the philosophy behind the Domain of One’s Own initiative happening currently at UMW. The video of the 14 minute presentation can be seen below.
Instructure To Award $100,000 in Education Innovation Grants (Campus Technology.Com)
ds106 Wins Innovation Award from Reclaim Learning
This week, ds106, the open online digital storytelling community that grew out of CPSC106 at UMW, was awarded the Innovation Contest from Reclaim Open Learning. The award is meant to honor projects that embody principles of open education and participatory learning. ds106 is one of five projects to receive the award this year.
Reclaim Open learning is a collaboration between the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine and the MIT Media Lab. It’s goal it to bring together like-minded researchers and educators who are interested in issues of open education. The Innovation Contest is one program of the project.
ds106 is an open, online digital storytelling community that was originally architected by Jim Groom, director of teaching and learning technologies at UMW. After teaching UMW’s digital storytelling class, CPSC106, for two semesters, in spring 2011 Groom became interested in opening the course up more broadly. Working with Martha Burtis, special projects coordinator in DTLT and another CPSC106 instructor, and colleagues at other institutions, Groom launched ds106.us and invited anyone to join the course and participate in the activities.
During the first semester, over 200 participants signed up for ds106 from around the world and explored the art and meaning of digital storytelling. Since then, the community has spawned a crowd-sourced assignment repository, a Web radio station, The Daily Create (a site that provides daily prompts for those interested in exercising their creative muscles), and In[spire] (a student-created site that showcases the finest work in the community). In addition, faculty at other schools have used the ds106 community to model similar courses at their own institutions.
As part of the award, Burtis will attend and present at the Reclaim Open Learning Symposium in Newport Beach, California on September 26 & 27.
UMW Freshmen Build Digital Identities Through Innovative Project
This fall, incoming freshmen at the University of Mary Washington will have the opportunity to create their digital identities through the Domain of One’s Own initiative.
The pioneering project provides free, personal domain names and web hosting to help students take responsibility for their online identities, as well as explore the implications of what it might mean for them to take control of their work and manage their own portfolios.
Domain of One’s Own reinforces UMW as a leader in higher education, according to Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies Jim Groom, since it is evidence that emerging technologies are central to the university’s student and faculty experience, not afterthoughts.
“Domain of One’s Own is an opportunity to build on a tradition we have had for the past 10 years to build the Web into the curriculum,” said Groom, whom the Chronicle of Higher Education named one of a dozen top tech innovators in 2012. “UMW is one of the first [colleges and universities] to think about this in a central way. Mary Washington is suggesting and doing something radically different. We are building the Web into the fabric of how we teach and learn here.”
Domain of One’s Own started as a pilot project in 2012, with more than 400 students and 30 faculty participating. It is the brainchild of Groom and his colleagues in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies.
The initiative has two main goals, Instructional Technology Specialist Tim Owens explained, with the first focused on the value of archives and portfolios for students’ future professional and academic endeavors.
“The other side of it is that it is valuable for students just to inhabit the Web and understand how the Web works,” he said. “It’s important for us to have those conversations with students about how stuff happens on the Web and how they can control it.”
Haley Campbell ’13 has used her http://aetherbunny.com/ domain as everything from a portfolio to an academic blog to a place to experiment with online editing tools.
“A lot of people take the Internet for granted,” Campbell said. “They know they have to use it, but they don’t necessarily think about how they’re using it. [Domain of One’s Own] encourages critical thinking about those tools.”
The initiative has created a buzz on and off campus, including in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired, The Web Host Industry Review and The Center for Digital Education.
The idea for the initiative started when the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies’ staff received their own domains and web spaces in 2004.
“Two years later, after we saw how it empowered us in so many ways, we informally banded around this idea of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we could give this to every student?’” said Martha Burtis, special projects coordinator. “It really evolved over about 10 years to where we are now.”
For Burtis, Domain of One’s Own isn’t just about technology, it’s about transforming students through meaningful interactions.
“That kind of empowerment is huge in terms of what we can do for our students,” she said.
The pioneering project provides free, personal domain names and web hosting to help students take responsibility for their online identities, as well as explore the implications of what it might mean for them to take control of their work and manage their own portfolios.
Domain of One’s Own reinforces UMW as a leader in higher education, according to Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies Jim Groom, since it is evidence that emerging technologies are central to the university’s student and faculty experience, not afterthoughts.
“Domain of One’s Own is an opportunity to build on a tradition we have had for the past 10 years to build the Web into the curriculum,” said Groom, whom the Chronicle of Higher Education named one of a dozen top tech innovators in 2012. “UMW is one of the first [colleges and universities] to think about this in a central way. Mary Washington is suggesting and doing something radically different. We are building the Web into the fabric of how we teach and learn here.”
Domain of One’s Own started as a pilot project in 2012, with more than 400 students and 30 faculty participating. It is the brainchild of Groom and his colleagues in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies.
The initiative has two main goals, Instructional Technology Specialist Tim Owens explained, with the first focused on the value of archives and portfolios for students’ future professional and academic endeavors.
“The other side of it is that it is valuable for students just to inhabit the Web and understand how the Web works,” he said. “It’s important for us to have those conversations with students about how stuff happens on the Web and how they can control it.”
Haley Campbell ’13 has used her http://aetherbunny.com/ domain as everything from a portfolio to an academic blog to a place to experiment with online editing tools.
“A lot of people take the Internet for granted,” Campbell said. “They know they have to use it, but they don’t necessarily think about how they’re using it. [Domain of One’s Own] encourages critical thinking about those tools.”
The initiative has created a buzz on and off campus, including in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wired, The Web Host Industry Review and The Center for Digital Education.
The idea for the initiative started when the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies’ staff received their own domains and web spaces in 2004.
“Two years later, after we saw how it empowered us in so many ways, we informally banded around this idea of ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we could give this to every student?’” said Martha Burtis, special projects coordinator. “It really evolved over about 10 years to where we are now.”
For Burtis, Domain of One’s Own isn’t just about technology, it’s about transforming students through meaningful interactions.
“That kind of empowerment is huge in terms of what we can do for our students,” she said.Domain of One’s Own Project and DTLT Featured in Center for Digital Education
The Domain of One’s Own project, an initiative being run at the University of Mary Washington by the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, was featured in the Center for Digital Education in an article by Tanya Roscorla. The article notes the unique nature of the program amongst peer institutions across the nation, as well as the profound need for such a program to exist. The Domain of One’s Own project successfully ran a pilot with over 400 students and faculty, and will open fully to the incoming freshman class this fall.
Jim Groom Delivers Three Invited Presentations
Over the course of two weeks, Jim Groom was invited to give presentations about the innovative work the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies has been doing recently. On May 16th, Jim Groom delivered a talk titled “Syndication-Oriented Architecture: a Solution to Problem of Coherence” for Campus Technology’s Virtual Leadership Summit. You can read more about the conceptual thinking about the ideas presented here.
On May 22, he was invited to speak about the open, online class ds106 to the College of Wooster, you can watch the presentation in its entirety below, and read more details here.
Finally, on May 30 he presented once gain about ds106 to the University System of New Hampshire, a presentation you can read more about and listen to the audio here. The slides can be found below.
Jim Groom Interviewed for Ohio State University’s Writers Talk series
On May 6th an interview with Jim Groom was aired on the Ohio State University’s radio program Writers Talk. The discussion focuses on the work he has done as part of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technology: ranging from the formation of UMW Blogs, the popular appeal of the Digital Storytelling class affectionately known as ds106 and its relationship to those confounded MOOCs, as well as DTLT’s current groundbreaking project Domain of One’s Own. The interview runs 30 minutes and you can listen to it below.
Jim Groom Keynotes OSU’s Ed Tech Conference
Image credit: innovateOSU “Jim Groom Keynote”
Jim Groom delivered the keynote presentation at Ohio State University’s fourth annual educational technology conference, innovateOSU, titled “Domain of One’s Own: Open Educational Experiences.” The presentation shared the work that has been happening at UMW over the past eight years, chronicling the fruits of DTLT‘s experimentations with commodity web hosting which led to innovative projects such as UMW Blogs, Digital Storytelling (ds106), and most recently Domain of One’s Own. You can see the slides for this presentation here. To see an archived video of the live presentation click here.
Jim Groom Keynotes Regional Technology Conference
Jim Groom delivered the keynote presentation titled “A Domain of One’s Own: A Novel Approach to Open” at the Association of Collegiate Computing Services of Virginia conference. This presentation contextualized the history of innovative work in UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies since 2004 to frame the current Domain of One’s Own pilot that will provide a domain and web hosting account to all Freshman and Transfer students come Fall 2013.
Jim Groom Presents at SUNY’s Online Summit Conference
Jim Groom presented a talk titled “Open by Design: Open Educational Experiences” at SUNY’s 14th annual Learning Network Summit for Online Learning conference on February 28th, 2013. Below are the slides for the talk and you can see a video archive of the session here.