|
Thursday, November 6, 2008 Curtis Bonk, Professor, Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University
Abstract: According to Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat, worldwide economic trends are flattening. In education, however, opportunities for learning are actually expanding through a myriad of emerging distance technologies. From online content in the form of e-books, podcasts, streamed videos, and satellite maps to participatory environments such as social networking, wikis, and alternate reality worlds, technology-based learning continues to open new learning pathways. At the same time, more instructors are sharing their course materials and teaching ideas globally, thereby expanding learning opportunities and resources. And the software used to deliver such online learning contents and experiences is increasingly available as open source. Naturally, many questions surround such systems, sites, and resources. For example, how can instructors and learners in developed and developing countries take advantage of these trends? For what purpose will people share? How can these trends converge to address individual learner's needs worldwide? Curt Bonk will address these issues while enticing participants to think of implications for their organizations, countries, and regions of the world as well as for themselves as leaders and learners. Curt Bonk is a former corporate controller and CPA, who, after becoming sufficiently bored with that, received his master's and Ph.D. degrees in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin. He is Professor of Instructional Systems Technology and adjunct in the School of Informatics at Indiana University (IU). In 2007, he was named Visiting Professor at the University of Glamorgan in Wales. Dr. Bonk was recently a Senior Research Fellow with the Advanced Distributed Learning Lab within the Department of Defense. He has received numerous teaching and mentoring awards from IU as well as the CyberStar Award from the Indiana Information Technology Association, the Most Outstanding Achievement Award from the U.S. Distance Learning Association, and the Most Innovative Teaching in a Distance Education Program Award from the State of Indiana. Curt has given over 800 talks around the globe related to online teaching and learning, including ones at universities in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Korea, Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Spain, Iceland, the UK, and the Saudi Arabia. In addition, he has over 200 publications on topics such as online learning pedagogy, massive multiplayer online gaming, Wikibooks, blogging, open source software, collaborative technologies, and synchronous and asynchronous computer conferencing. He is author of the Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, Local Designs (2006) as well as Empowering Online Learning: 100+ Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing (2008). Finally, he is President of CourseShare and SurveyShare and can be contacted at cjbonk@indiana.edu or via his homepage at http://mypage.iu.edu/~cjbonk/.
For more information or questions contact 1-866-232-5834 or email aln@mail.ucf.edu |
 |
| Conference Home |
