# Michael Wesch strikes again - must see video about innovation in higher ed


![](http://andymee.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/michael_wesch.jpg)I’ve
been aware of [Michael
Wesch](http://www.ksu.edu/sasw/anthro/wesch.htm)’s work for quite some
time, and I loved both [The Machine is Us/ing
Us](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g) and [A Vision of
Students Today](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o). The last
movie, I showed in a class I taught about higher education around the
world. It also inspired me to try to have students use Google documents
to collaboratively author class notes during class, which failed (I hate
[collaborative
authoring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_writing "Collaborative writing")
sites that require each user to establish an account).

Recently he gave a presentation at [University of
Manitoba](http://www.umanitoba.ca/ "University of Manitoba") about how
he teaches his courses, which I found incredibly fascinating. He gives
examples from two courses he teaches, one large class (the one that
produced the A Vision of Students Today video), and one small class (7
students). He gave many examples of using technology to increase the
level of interaction and participation in the classroom, and I love how
he uses RSS feeds, wikis, PageFlake and other technologies,
![](https://www.cci.utk.edu/files/u24/Wesch.jpg)where the information
just seems to stream seamlessly from one platform to another.

I am currently doing a class with, and working in the lab of, [Marlene
Scardamalia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene_Scardamalia "Marlene Scardamalia")
at the [Institute for Knowledge Innovation and
Technology](http://www.ikit.org) lab at [University of
Toronto](http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=43.6617,-79.3951&spn=1.0,1.0&q=43.6617,-79.3951%20%28University%20of%20Toronto%29&t=h "University of Toronto"),
and we are studying the idea of integrating knowledge building in
education. I have also been dipping into [Stephen
Downes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Downes "Stephen Downes")
and [George
Siemens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Siemens "George Siemens")‘
course on connectivism. I am still struggling with all these concepts,
and integrating them both with my own history of learning, and also my
experiences teaching. It’s challenging, but very exciting and promising.

Please [watch the
video](http://umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html),
it’s an hour extremely well spent. (PS: For me, the [RealAudio
version](http://media.cc.umanitoba.ca:8080/ramgen/departments/ist/wesch_portal.rm)
worked better).

Stian

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