Do the implications of digital media turn our educational institutions inside out? Can educators learn to stop worrying and love the remix?  Is originality overrated?  What’s the difference between reuse and plagiarism? Is openness our only hope? Where’s the RSS feed? What does “data literacy” look like? Are Web 2.0 companies a teacher’s best friend, or a bunch of creeps converting our work, our relationships and our private data into marketshare? Has the Web 2.0 bubble popped, and if so now what? How do we teach our students, our colleagues and ourselves to be technology strategists? How many copyright violations can be jammed into one presentation?

Brian Lamb’s presentation and discussion will review the opportunities and initiatives resulting from the convergence of open source, free culture, open access and open educational resources.

We are pleased to announce that this year’s conference will feature the following keynote speakers:

• Brian Lamb, Manager, Emerging Technologies and Digital Content, Office of Learning Technology, University of British Columbia
• Scott Leslie, Manager, Shareable Online Learning Resources, BCcampus
• Chris Lott, Disruptive Technologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

These educational technologists and social media thinkers deliver three more great reasons to come to Orem, Utah June 4 & 5 for TTIX 2009. Keynote pages with more details are coming soon.

by Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void (CC by-nc-nd)

Presenter: Chris Lott

We create, discover, discuss and exchange ideas, but what are they, really? How does an idea mean? And once we have one, can collaboration and creation of the highest order even co-exist, much less be meaningfully combined?

The contrary history of the idea of the idea, from Plato and the poets to the Perl Parrot, not only sheds new light on the contemporary world of memes and microblogs but provides valuable insight into fundamental– and too often forgotten– aspects of the practice of teaching and learning, such as fostering creativity, allowing for originality and making sense of individual insight in the connected and networked world.

Presenter: Scott Leslie

The metaphor of “Teacher as DJ” isn’t that new – as Wiley noted (http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/227), ever since the phrase “Rip, Mix, Burn” entered the popular consciousness via Apple’s advertising campaign, it began to be applied to how educators might approach digital educational resources.

But with the ever increasing number of quality free open educational resources, the advent of ‘mashups’ as a widespread model of innovation both artistic and commerical, as well as the new breeds of online media tools and alternative interfaces, the “Educator as DJ” is fast moving from high level metaphor to practical art. This presentation will dig deeper into this metaphor (and indeed into the usefulness of metaphors in approaching our teaching practices) and attempt to demonstrate what the actual practice of the open educator as DJ might look like. So get ready to dance!

The TTIX 2009 planning committee is proud to present three exciting, engaging, and thoughtful keynotes this year: