Conference Schedule

The preliminary conference schedule was as follows:

Monday, September 22

5:30 – 7:30 pm
Registration/Info Desk Open

5:30 – 7:30 pm
Welcome Reception

Tuesday, September 23

8:00 – 4:45 pm
Registration/Info Desk Open

8:00 – 8:30 am
Continental Breakfast

8:30 – 9:30 am
Opening Plenary Session

The Instructional Power of Storytelling
Patricia McGee, The University of Texas at San Antonio
The value and power of storytelling is universal across cultures, across disciplines, and over time; there is evidence that preliterate cultures relied on storytelling to educate their members and that these oral retellings were exceptionally accurate. In the 20th century, telling stories in the form of entertainment is something we know and understand from our earliest memories and experiences. If our life is replayed through our stories, then it makes sense that stories used in learning experiences help us to integrate new meaning into existing schemas. Yet research in this area is fragmented and situated in a variety of fields, and is therefore difficult to understand as an instructional method.

9:30 – 10:00 am
Coffee Break

11:00 am – 12:00 noon
Special Keynote Workshop

Narrative Frameworks for Interactive Storytelling
Ruben Puentedura, Hippasus
Interactive media tools such as Pachyderm present authors with a challenge: how does one tell a coherent branching story, where readers can leap in - or out - at multiple points that they choose? This challenge is not new: the cave painters at Lascaux and the builders of the cathedrals had to deal with similar issues. Starting from these historical examples, we will look at processes and tools that allow us to harness the complexities and richness of interactive storytelling, develop frameworks for their use, and apply them productively to educational project design.

12:00 noon – 1:30 pm
Lunch and Open Space Signup

1:30 – 3:00 pm

Open Space Sessions
The 2008 Pachyderm Conference will combine traditional, scheduled sessions with an Open Space model that encourages on-the-spot session suggestions. At the signup session, a facilitator will introduce the model, explain the single “law”—the Law of Two Feet—and describe how the signup will happen. During the signup, attendees have the opportunity to suggest topics that they would like to speak about or learn about, and then to sign up for the sessions that interest them. Once the signup process is complete, each group goes to its respective space and the sessions begin.

While additional topics will arise at the conference itself, a few have been offered already:

• Activity from the Keynote Workshop (Ruben Puentedura)
• Critically Thinking about Storytelling (Anne Rudnicki)
• Crossing Boundaries: Artwork from the Southwest School of Art and Craft (Cathy Brillson)

3:00 – 3:30 pm
Refreshment Break

3:30 – 4:30 pm
General Session

Who Does Pachyderm Serve Best?
Jared Bendis, Case Western Reserve University
Who does Pachyderm serve best? While institutional developers adore Pachyderm for streamlining both their authoring and content management, one might argue that they (as a group) are a population that would have created their learning objects anyway, one way or another. However, Pachyderm’s ability to serve individual authors (such as students or faculty members) introduces to them not just a new tool but a new form of media expression that can be both challenging and transformative. To aid these new authors, Pachyderm must be couched in a greater field of non-linear multimedia authoring, including an understanding of asset creation and management. This session will discuss these issues and propose a Pachyderm modification aimed expressly at this population.

4:30 – 5:00 pm
Day One Wrap Up and Open Space Signup for Wednesday

5:00 pm
Evening on Your Own

Wednesday, September 24

8:00 – 12:00 noon
Registration/Info Desk Open

8:00 – 8:30 am
Continental Breakfast

8:30 – 9:00 am
General Session

Pachyderm 2.1 Overview
Scott Sayre, Sandbox Studios; Clayton Black
Pachyderm Council Chair Scott Sayre and lead developer Clayton Black will give an overview of the new features and changes in Pachyderm 2.1, the 2008 Pachyderm release.

9:00 – 9:45 am
Special Sessions

Marcus Foundation Digital Education Project Meeting
M’Lou Bancroft, Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation; Larry Johnson, The New Media Consortium
Learn about the Edward and Betty Marcus Digital Education Project for Texas Art Museums! We will show some of the projects that were completed under the minigrant program in the spring, share the soon-to-be-released white paper Into the Breach: How Creative Philanthropy Can Reverse the Eroding Landscape of Arts Education, and talk about the current and future activities of the project. Project participants are encouraged to come and share their perspectives and current work.

Pachyderm 2.1 in Detail
Scott Sayre, Sandbox Studios; Clayton Black
Dive deeper into the technical details of the 2.1 release in this developers’ session. Find out how to install 2.1, upgrade your current Pachyderm instance, work with the new code, and create extensions that are compatible with Pachyderm 2.1.

9:45 – 10:15 am
Coffee Break and Open Space Signup

10:15 – 11:45 am

Open Space Sessions
The 2008 Pachyderm Conference will combine traditional, scheduled sessions with an Open Space model that encourages on-the-spot session suggestions. At the signup session, a facilitator will introduce the model, explain the single “law”—the Law of Two Feet—and describe how the signup will happen. During the signup, attendees have the opportunity to suggest topics that they would like to speak about or learn about, and then to sign up for the sessions that interest them. Once the signup process is complete, each group goes to its respective space and the sessions begin.

While additional topics will arise at the conference itself, a few have been offered already:

• Customizing Pachyderm in Post-Production (Rachel Varon)
• Administering Your Pachyderm Server (Clayton Black)

11:45 am – 12:00 noon
Conference Wrap-Up

12:00 noon
Conference Adjourns