Virtual Conference Call for Proposals

The Center for Distance Learning at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College is hosting its sixth Virtual Conference--Teaching and Learning With Technology. While the conference will include sessions on a wide range of topics, of special interest will be sessions and presentations on connecting the current pedagogy/andragogy to helping students be successful in a technology-enhanced learning environment. Because the Virtual Conference will be delivered via the VCCS Blackboard course management system, conference participants will be able to explore Blackboard 9 before its official deployment in the Summer 2010.

Help to make this your conference! You can participate in many ways:

• Submit a draft paper or extended abstract for a refereed paper on which you would like colleague feedback and further discussion.

• Propose a tutorial, a step by step guide demonstrating how to use a technology tool or course material.

• Prepare a poster session in which you showcase a special use of technology in teaching or learning, showcase an effective assignment that engaged your students, or other learning activities and instructional strategies that have worked well for your classes.

• Suggest a speaker or topic. The topic need not be new or unique but should be connected to promoting/supporting student success in a technology-enhanced learning environment and be timely, relevant and, perhaps, entertaining.

• Submit a proposal for a workshop. Workshops are hands-on, participatory, interactive sessions where small groups have discussions ranging from highly detailed “how to” sessions to discussions of practical applications of current technologies and even futuristic discussions.

• Organize a Birds of a Feather session –BOF or Roundtable-. These may be discipline specific sessions to discuss the use of technology to improve teaching and learning in the discipline. This is an opportunity for colleagues to discuss the benefits and challenges of using technology to teach the discipline and to improve student success. Also, this is an invitation to those who are responsible for the administration of academic courses and programs to discuss the challenges in areas such as faculty evaluation, class size/workload/efficiency, recruiting, supporting, and supervising adjunct faculty.

• Organize or join a “Talking Circle” – The Talking Circle, a community-building communication strategy that has its roots in Native American culture, is an opportunity for a very small group of participants (3 -5) to engage in focused “listening” and sharing on topics of particular interest to individuals in the group. Anticipated outcomes for this experience are better understanding of the interests and points-of-view of colleagues, possible consensus on actions, or at least clarification of concerns and questions that need to be explored by the larger community and/or administrative leadership.

• Serve as conference recorder for a session. The recorder will post a short summary of the discussion at the end of the session.

• Lead a Sandbox Session. The sandbox is where you get to play with the technology, possibly exploring the use of new “free stuff” .

• Serve as a conference blogger during the first or second week of the conference. This blog will be a place where conference participants can have ongoing exchange about conference activities.

• Set up and moderate a topic or discipline specific blog.

• Join the conference Tweeters.

• Suggest vendors. Let us know contact information for your book publishers’ reps and others who might be interested in promoting their products and services to conference attendees.

• Email any ideas for the virtual conference to mmacbeth@reynolds.edu, or jmbarnes@reynolds.edu.

This conference continues to be successful only because of your active participation. To submit a proposal or to volunteer for other conference activities, submit the Call for Proposals form by February 23, 2010.

What is the JSRCC Virtual Conference?

A Virtual Conference is a FREE conference where the meetings and sessions are presented virtually asynchronously or synchronously. You can attend sessions of interest at your convenience.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to view the Blackboard 9 course management system from the student perspective as they engage in small roundtable discussions, large group (conference) discussions, participate in synchronous chats, experience some of the latest technology for instruction, and download and view video clips. Participants who complete the conference schedule may request a certificate of completion and certification of 10 hours of professional development credit (PDO credit).

A Gift to All Technology Chalkies

I am signing off-line and into the Summit. Now that I have learned much about using technology these two weeks, I'm leaving you with my puzzle that I think reflects the the many pieces that create the perfect technology chalkie ( I love that Aussie idiom). Click image to enlarge it.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Discussion Board

I was signing into the conference over coffee this morning when a funny thing happened. I hit some key and landed outside of the conference on a Google site. There I saw a hotlink designated by a phrase that I had not heard of ( not that I know everything). Digital Chalkie was the phrase. Ah! I thought, CJ Bracken missed a least one free resource in his Panel presentation last week. I clicked the hotlink and found myself in an Australian, really an Oceania website, dedicated to this thing, Thinking I had found out about a new type of digital coloring stick, I went on. I could see I was on an educational web page, but this digital chalkie was never described, but revealed a synonym, technology chalkie. I became so curious that I could not come back to the Conference until I found out what a digital chalkie is. I launched another search and found my answer. A digital (or technology) chalkie is an online teacher – chalkie being “an affectionately defunct Aussie term for teachers.” So now that I know the term refers to people like those of us “attending” the conference, I realize just how important we teachers are. Australia and the surrounding islands even coined a name for us.
My lesson was not over, however. Did you know that "e-mail is for old people"? That is what one of the web logs, or blogs, linked on the site pointed out (http://www.digitalchalkie.com/). Now here is the point of my madness. “E-mail,” the blogger went on to say, “is for old people,” ( probably, a metaphor for anacronistic) with the innovative ways we are now capable of interacting with students and other professionals. And if I were not cognizant of this before, this free virtual conference is letting me know it by covering a broad spectrum of teaching and learning devices and approaches for facilitating thinking processes that lead students to know how it is that they know.
My eyes caught another connection while I was still wandering (sort of like the students are doing when they get all glassy-eyed or look down on the desks or don’t come into the class discussion board for days). Somehow, I felt compelled to visit the vendors before getting back to the discussion boards. The Blackboard site gave me information on its Building Blocks, its built-in wiki plug-in. The more I use this Blackboard template, the more respect I have for it. But, enough with my tardiness - the discussion boards are waiting.

Lost in Translation?

With so much from which to choose in the conference today, I am resorting to cyber snooping because I want it all. I have to absorb Camtasia to be able to combine it with the upcoming tutorial on voice-over tomorrow. It’s the applied learning syndrome. The Program Heads and Deans Panel is dragging today, so far. Where “arrrr” you? (That’s the way we’ve learned to get our puppy to come from behind the trees.) I’ve just learned that I probably have not won a prize from one of the vendors because I’ve not sent an e-mail to the vendor. Now that I’ve said that, I guess I will still not win among all the competition. Do you know what? I’m not sure whether I’m blogging or twittering.

All I Needed to Know About Being Tech Savvy, I Learned in Elementary School

I went to Grandparents’ Day at my grandsons’ school only to have an “Ah Ha” moment. The importance of this conference became ever so clear to me when I made a connection between what the teachers are doing there with these young students and what we need to know to simply keep up with our college students’ technological capabilities. First, I spent time in my fourth grader’s class, where during our one-on-one time together, he introduced me to the online stock market applications he and his classmates use to purchase, sell, and tract their investments. Then he showed me the digital story he had created on Booker T Washington. He had enhanced the text with music, pictures – some with animation. By the time I got to the first grader’s classroom, I was sure there would be the usual game playing and reading time. But, no, he took me to the website where he, too, had composed a chapter in a collaborative class narrative. Using Story Maker, each boy had learned to incorporate pictures and music in his chapter for the rest of the class to critique. I felt momentarily like Rip Van Winkle returning to a different world after a twenty-year sleep. But I quickly came back to the rich professional development in technology we are getting through tutorials, synchronous demonstrations, panel and group discussion in this free online conference. Now that I know how to collaborate in Google or conference in Dimdim, paste notes in an alternative way, and voice-over more effectively– all simple orchestrations, I will be going to IT to set up a more functional organization site in Blackboard. If any of the IT people are surfing through, I promise to only use what IT can support.

A Step Back and a Leap Forward

DAY SIX, Monday, April 20th Good day, Colleagues. I’m Barbara Glenn, Blogger # 2 now logged in for this second week of the JSRCC Virtual Distance Learning Conference. Looking back ion last week momentarily, I was quite surprised to have met someone, not an "Old R" who knows the "very Richmond-speak." I met someone who calls herself an old fogy, and even someone not afraid to call himself a digital immigrant in the Twitter Age. Of the 123 conferees last week, half of them are originally from out-of-state. I feel fortunate to be among those whose institutions implemented long-term professional development programs back in the nineties to prepare early adopters for quality online instruction. Remember, last week’s keynote speaker, who moved from computer lab to Director of Distance Learning at Halifax? As we continue discussions from last week, especially the Faculty Research Symposium held last Friday, be sure to take advantage of the full programming for this final conference week (Conference at-a-glance appears below). And if you have not yet signed up for the spring 2009 Technology Summit on Friday, April 24th, hurry! I’ve already selected my concurrent sessions and look forward to the hearing our keynote speaker present again on that day.

Second Week: 2009Teaching and Learning with Technology Barbara Glenn, blogging

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