Row 1: Sonya Christian, Leah Carter, Kristen Rabe, Tracy Lovelace, Lisa Harding, Carla Gard, Jennifer Johnson
Row 2: Dave Barnett, Todd Coston, Bill Moseley

What a day!  Full of activity in the real and virtual worlds.  Over 800 people here in person and over 800 participating virtually.  From BC, we have 10 here at the conference, with two participating virtually and a third who skyped with the team when we gathered together over lunch to debrief.  You can also track my tweets (see my twitter feed to the right of this post) during the keynote presentation.

Nick Strobel and Isabel Stierle participated by skyping into our team lunch session.  This is what Nick had to say about this experience.

From Nick Strobel:

“Isabel Stierle and I joined the lunch conversation with the Sloan Conference attendees via Skype in L182 (the Information Services’ teleconference room). Pretty amazing what you can do over the internet with the free tools available to us. Participants at the conference briefed each other while talking to us as they passed the laptop around. Could we use video tools like this for holding office hours? Not sure how many people can Skype in simultaneously but we could always check into something like Google Hangout. We’ll be skype’ing in for the Wednesday lunch session at 12:45.

 [One of the PowerPoint slides of the Cognitive Psychology session mentioned Daniel Simon’s work on Change Blindness. I showed Isabel the youtube video from Simon’s TEDxUIUC talk about his and Levan’s work on the fallibility of human attention of which Change Blindness is one aspect.

You need to see his TED talk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb4TM19DYDY&feature=player_embedded  . I use that in my astronomy classes to show why peer review in the scientific method is so critical to the method’s success.]

I’ve signed in as Bernadette to view the Keynote “What’s That Coming Over the Hill? Digital Futures, Emerging Cultures, New Learning” that was supposed to start at 4 PM. It’s 4:20 PM now and I just have the presenter’s name splash image. Bernadette did get into one of the sessions and asked the presenter about accessibility to which the presenter didn’t have a good answer. Just goes to remind us that with all of these cool internet tools, we need to keep in mind the requirement for universal accessibility and keeping things 508/ADA compliant.”

Looking over Tracy’s shoulder at Nick Strobel and Isabel Stierle skyping in for our lunch team meeting.

Here are some highlights from the BC team:

Bill Moseley:

I attended a workshop focusing on the use of Cog. Psychology research and principles to make course design more effective.  Some really good ideas there, which will make appearances in some of the staff development work we will be doing.  The second session has had a much more practical focus, featuring some really great tech tools for faculty, including communication tools, teaching tools, and also some great tools for organization.  I have made numerous app store purchases already.  As we look at iPad use for instruction, there are some really great tools there as well.  So far, the sessions have been very good.

Kristen Rabe:

1. Great sessions on helpful apps that will assist our faculty engaging with students

2. Informative and engaging presentations that seem to be on the money…

3. From where the CIO sits – Challenges in Online Education – We are in the same boat – everyone across the country is moving towards more assessment based budget decisions.  We all need to communicate with each other what works and what doesn’t.  Interesting material and would’ve like the discussion to continue.

4. Attending the Online Orientation and learning what Ashford University is doing and how we can best serve our students at Bakersfield College.  It’s great that they are sharing the good and the bad with assessments. Should look at SmarterMeasure Readiness Assessment.

Looking forward to the keynote speaker – which I’m sure will be interesting.

It was great to Skype with the campus at lunch and share … Also helped our faculty become aware of our video production services of which they were not aware 🙂

It’s been an interesting and informative day!

Bernadette Towns (virtually):

The session I would like to highlight is entitled, Common Success Factors Using Educational Technologies for Collaborative Learning. The four factors of success revealed by presenters from six case studies, that must be linked to any technology implemented in the classroom were, technical, social, cognitive, and epistemological.   Technical referred to how technical was the technology you planned to implement.  Social referred to making sure that the activity had a social aspect to it, because students participated more when they connected and had a sense of community. The cognitive component mentioned that the technology assignments must be linked to a reflective function where students are engaging in an activity that produces an artifact or a real life connection.  The final key to success epistemological was that the assignment should promote the nature of knowledge of the subject taught. What I heard from the case studies was that whether we use twitter, face book, webinars, or web conferencing for an assignment, the important part is to teach students to be competent with the technology from day one of class, to make the assignment interactive with classmates, useful in real life and applicable to what was being taught in class. The assignments should not be disconnected from what is happening in class and teachers must inform students before the semester begins that the class will require a technological component.

Dave Barnett:

In the online orientation session, Ashford University outlined their evolution of their online orientation program.  Their analytics data around what they capture (Their REAL data – Reading, Engagement, Assignments and Logins) in that online orientation and how it relates to future student success.   Their orientation increased their retention and student success and they gave us specific patterns and what worked and what didn’t and why.

Lisa Harding:

What I have learned from the Sloan Conference day 1 Wow-an amazing faculty set to be here with that have a vast knowledge. As I listen to other schools and the perceived lack of support for IT, I am sitting alongside some innovative leaders from BC who are readily able to answer my implementation questions and promote higher level teaching. Smartphones and use of tablets/laptops in the classroom, have proven to improve student engagement. When students are more connected, they are more interested. The use and demonstration of polleverywhere.com has been used in each one of the sessions and offers a great, low cost option in to have students give immediate feedback (similar to iclicker) without use of other technology.

Lots of different “apps” have been demonstrated and explained. To sum up day 1:

• Technology-

o students love it- it proves relevance, empowers creativity

oTeachers love it- students stay engaged, its enjoyable to grade, develops an inventory of reusable objects for future topics to be used.

Carla Gard:

I feel very privileged to be a part of the Sloan conference!  My personal goal was to leave the conference armed with ways to help me effectively flip my classroom. I also want to meet my students learning styles in a format which promotes active learning, and create interactive podcasts.

Well that ole “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is apparently NOT always true!  I have been introduced to a variety of apps, applications, and programs which I am excited to bring home, share and explore. J  Here are the highlights from today’s sessions:

1)    Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Pyramid – who knew? But it totally makes sense J

2)    Tools / recommendations to create customized media:

• Script videos prior to recording
• Use a tele prompter while recording to produce more professional outcomes
• Embed interactive elements within podcasts, like video clips, quizzes, surveys, case studies,
• Keep videos short (2-4 min preferably) If you have longer videos, break them into smaller chunks.

3)    Available programs, software, apps:  Articulate, Lectora, Scoopit, Tube Chop, flickr, AudioBoo

4)    Project based assignments using Smartphones/ mobile devices, including Infographics, PhotoVoice,

Five- photo story, one minute video clips.  All of these assignments can be completed with FREE apps/ programs including Polleverywhere.com, photovoice.org, flickr, youtube, vimeo, theoneminutes.org.

5)    A quote by Rabindranath Tagore,  “Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.”

Jennifer Johnson:

1) Social media is a personal learning network.  Using social media successfully to share the knowledge involves starting with identifying what interests you , then figure out how to aggregate the  information. An example of the aggregator tools are Google doc, tumbler, pintrest., and evernote to name a few.  It make sense to organize  the information allowing you to disseminate with thoughtful discrimination. once you aggregate then you can use google forms (similar to survey monkey) and its free…just another resource I will use as an assessment tool, specifically for evaluation integration of new technology

2)Learners need to have digital literacy, not just navigational skills

3) Don’t stifle the creativity in your students because you are unable to see out side the box. You have to role model creativity before you can teach it. This requires  taking a risk in trying new methodologies. Harnessing creativity limits what a student CAN do but students have to be able to ‘practice’ creativity. it is a skill that has to be nurtured, it doesn’t just ‘happen’ .

4) Lastly, it is best to tweet between 12-3 pm and if you want to increase the number of interest/re-tweet do so on Friday between 12-3pm adding #party at the end 🙂

Tagged: Bakersfield College, Sloan Conference, Sonya Christian