Learning DevCamp 2020 - Days 1 & 2

Tonight I’m passing along a few interesting nuggets from the first couple of days at Learning DevCamp 2020. Usually held in Salt Lake City in June (which is one of my favorite conference venues on account of the view and the proximity to excellent hiking), as one of my workshop participants said, “This year, all conferences are local.”

I had a chance to sit in on Julie Dirksen’s keynote on matching learning & practice activities to the complexity of skill development and decision making required. Once again, Julie helps us turn research into practical constructs we can all use on the job. And speaking of practical, there’s nothing like the thoughtful way that Jeff Batt can lead a group through a discussion of learning tech how-to. Today it was the what-for and how-to of interactive video in Storyline and Camtasia.

In tonight’s general session, dozens of people all worked together in Miro on the same brainstorming challenge. Nick Floro set the activity up, giving us all 5 minutes of free play time in the tool – very little instruction required to get us all going and fluent. Judy Katz & Duncan Welder then set us all on a brainstorming task that was not only prolific, but also beautiful to watch unfold on the screen. As Judy said, “Y’all are my goldfish … I could watch this all night.”

Our MOOMiro (Massive Open Online Miro?) was an excellent follow-on to the conversation we had yesterday in my Agile Methods for Instructional Design workshop where we veered off on the interesting tangent of Alistair Cockburn’s communication effectiveness graph (2002), with face-to-face at a whiteboard his most rich and effective method of modeling collaboratively. The somewhat-less-fluid-than-a-marker Miro sticky note experience made me happy for my Surface Pro and stylus.

Jason Bickle spices up this conference with the daily Dream Crusher Giveaway which, whether live or online, usually starts out with some awkward silence while newcomers to the conference figure out that, yes, he is giving fun and valuable prizes away. And, yes, it's not only acceptable but encouraged to shout about this! There's nothing like bringing several dozen people off mute on Zoom to end the evening on a high note.

Why do I teach? Because I learn in the process, of course! (Pun not originally intended, but I left it there.) Yesterday in class, Zig Peacock summed up Agile as “a shorter variation of "Progressive Elaboration" with different artifacts. And Beverly Joyner introduced me to this parting thought that I will be pondering for days: 

"In the past, instructional designers have been invested with these tools for the purpose of "designing" instruction which, in effect, only constrained the learners. The only people who significantly benefit from the design process and the use of those tools were the designers, not the learners (Perkins, 1986)." (Citation)