I recently attended the 2012 Fusion conference by Desire2Learn and it was a very good conference. Being able to interact with the D2L staff in person provides great information that we don’t get as we don’t have the opportunity to interact with them throughout the year. I enjoyed Keynote speaker Sal Khan who is the founder of Khan Academy. His academy is a non-profit organization that provides self-paced instructional videos for k-12 in Math and Sciences. Students are able to start at a beginner level and progress to difficulties based on their skills. His methods have proven to enhance the skill level of all learners regardless if they are advanced or struggle with math. He is a firm believer that students can learn this material on their own, but the classroom should not be replaced.
My primary focus on sessions was mobile development and they were informative. Flash is no longer available on mobile devices and we need to be able to deliver content to mobile devices. We hear that html5 is the new technology that is being utilized for the web. Responsive design and Media queries are two new terms I have not heard before being used for mobile development. These are going to be great resources for me as I continue to investigate mobile technology.
I also went to a session on Kaltura and it’s always interesting to see how other universities are using the product. The University of Wisconsin is using the Kaltura integration with D2L and I am excited to use this feature as soon as it is available. This will allows instructors to embed videos in this course streamlining the process.
