This week I attended an interesting symposium at the University of Minnesota. The Chair of the symposium was Christine Greenhow, Learning Technologies, College of Education and Human Development. Panel conversations touch on some of the key issues that may be obstacles social networks among them, institutional cultures that limit sharing, and access to computers and the Internet by low income populations. One of the audience members also aptly raised the issue of access to the neighborhoods by those with hearing and sight disabilities.

The Symposium featured panelists of different disciplines in education and their work with social communities. It brought together educators from science, technology, history, languages, and many others. The end game from their symposium

Twitter Scan of the event with the symbol #NNinC. They also have a blog of the panels nice reading, I particularly enjoyed Darlyne Bailey, Dean of the College of Education and Human Development. Here are her highlights about multi-disciplinary teaching. Her approach is for two teachers from separate disciplines to work together “2 teachers stand in their own discipline, are open to the ideas of each other, and create a syllabus with the “fruits of” their relationship. Create something that has NEVER been created before. They stay open to the students’ influencing their syllabus” quoted from the highlights on the Networks in Cyberspace blog.

It’s a concept that to me sounds a lot like a structure way of organizing a twitter stream with two leaders with the objective being to focus on a specific topic and see what the group learns from each other. Bailey’s approach is two different disciplines = a new one

Greenhow also referenced the early observations of a survey of low income students. While it is still early in the analysis of this survey, Greenhow discusses her thoughts in an Utterz conversation I recorded on Monday, January 11 during a break in the symposium.

I will keep an eye on the University of Minnesota as they continue to carve a nice place among social media academia.

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