Nicole’s reflections and notes from eLCC conference, April 13-15, 2016
This year was another great conference! The first keynote was
by Susan Zvacek from DU. “Spurious Claims
and Zombie Factoids: What’s the big deal?” This topic was fun and
interesting and reminds us that we need to stay on our toes and have a healthy
amount of skepticism. Modeling skepticism and questioning with our students =
caring. We should at least explore statements that even well respected
professionals may claim and check the supporting research. Sometimes things
sort of make sense and we want to believe statements but is there valid
research to support such theories? Check out www.debunker.club
“This website is dedicated to the proposition that all information is not
created equal.” Another resource that Susan suggested that sounded interesting
is a book called “A skeptics guide to the mind: What neuroscience can and
cannot tell us about ourselves.”
Elevating Teaching
Excellence- DU
Molly and Chelsie from DU explained how they elevated
teaching excellence by establishing baseline faculty expectations. They created
an interactive website for faculty to explore, learn and go in depth for each
expectation. The expectations were carefully marketed and included underlying
purpose and the research that supports the expectations. I really liked how the
website was simple and easy to use and that it contained all the key elements
to support it. It seems like a tool that faculty could access and visit often
as needed to aid them in improvement and development of teaching excellence.
I sat in an interesting presentation that drew correlations
between Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to online courses. Dr. Lev Maslov from Aims
CC discussed the psychological aspects of learning with Maslow’s needs.
(Actualization, Esteem, Love/belonging, Safety, Physiological).
I attended a hands on workshop and learned about App Smashing. What is app smashing? I
wondered that myself? Was I recklessly stomping on my ipad? Or not using apps
properly? I found out that “App Smashing is the process
of using multiple apps to create projects or complete tasks. App
Smashing can provide your students with creative and inspired ways to
showcase their learning and allow you to assess their understanding and skills.”
http://k12technology.weebly.com/app-smashing.html
Shaun Beaty from CSU shared his App Smashing Presentation:
http://bit.ly/1SaeMg2
and you can take the app smashing challenge right now by looking at this google
doc http://bit.ly/1qI3XLm.
Another hands on workshop that I attended was on the app Explain Everything. I have heard of the
app and even tried it a while back when it first came out but I still
appreciated this session so that I can have time to dive into the tool and
practice using it. I was reminded about how awesome and easy this tool can be
to create a variety of quick on the fly teaching segments. There is a 30-day
free trial or the premium and edu versions for reasonable prices. The app is available
on the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Store, and Chrome Web Store. The
nice thing about Explain everything is that it can also be used by students to
demonstrate learning or walk through their thinking process.
Two random things I learned at the conference is that with
the current version of Office PowerPoint, a person can integrate
polleverywhere.com polls directly onto a slide and it would show real time
results. What a great alternative to clickers. Of course the free account for
polleverywhere has a limit of only 40 responses it is good for smaller classes
or presentations. The other thing I learned that was still related to polling
is that Google Forms can be used for
polls/surveys and not only is this a free option it has no limitations! And the
really cool feature is that you can use during classtime and display real time
results! Now this is a really great alternative to purchasing clickers or
clicker technology. Here’s an article that discusses http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-with-technology-articles/free-clickers-for-all-using-google-forms-to-survey-your-students/
Follow eLCC on Twitter @elccolorado
Nicole
No comments:
Post a Comment