Summer Boot Camp and Digital Buffet!

It's been about a month since our second summer Technology Boot Camp.

The first year it was heavily focused on technology but this summer the focus was equally pedagogy and course design along with technology. Our partnership with the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning also caused a change of name to the John P. Ellbogen Blended Learning Summer Institute.

With the extra funding available from this partnership we were able to bring in a blended learning expert, Brad Garner, Indiana Wesleyan University.

Faculty applied for the opportunity to participate in March and were awarded $500 in professional development funds at the completion of the project. 30 faculty were accepted and spent four days learning how to "flip" their classroom.

One of the most valuable resources that was created during this event was the Digital Buffet of technologies and ideas. http://www.uwyo.edu/outreach/ocp/instructional-support/tie/digitalbuffet.html

If you are interested in the next iteration of the Technology Boot Camp watch this page for updates.

http://www.uwyo.edu/outreach/ocp/instructional-support/tie/boot%20camp/index.html

ED-MEDIA 2013

I just returned from a fantastic trip to the AACE ED-MEDIA Conference in Victoria, British Columbia. http://www.aace.org/conf/edmedia/

I've been to this conference a couple of times and I am always impressed with the great information that  can be gleaned from the representatives from all around the world. I have been to numerous 'International Conferences' but none of them have ever had the truly international group that this one manages to attract year after year!

I tweeted a lot more than my followers probably thought reasonable and also took some notes specific to the impending change of the LMS and the subsequent training that will accompany it. You can find all these randome notes at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qLRQS0Xt2uhU66pTj1_TY0yvsXLLZGq8K47QJZ3_tqA/edit?usp=sharing

The focus of this conference is truly the use of technology to teach, in all arenas and all forms. Most of the presenters are either faculty or instructional designers or a combination and most of the papers and presentations are very useful. The full papers are published by AACE, including my own with co-author Rachel Watson:

Watson, R. & Boggs, C (June, 2013). Is There a Virtual Edge? An Investigation of the Use of Virtual Labs to Supplement Traditional Microbiology Labs. In-Press. Proceedings of ED-MEDIA, 2013, Victoria, Canada. (Refereed)

Next year's conference will be held in Finland and I'm hoping to be able to pool some of my other conference money and attend. If it is ever in your vicinity I would encourage attendance, you won't regret it!

WACTE Boot Camp

I just returned from a fantastic trip to Casper where Cody and I gave a mini Technology Boot Camp to high school teachers who are members of WACTE.

It was a great time. What an amazing group of people! Every time I work with K-12 teachers I am more inspired by their dedication and persistence in the face of continual criticism and regulation.

We started the session with a Poll Everywhere to find out what they most wanted to talk about from a fairly long technology list. We started with Poll Eaverywhere and video production and moved on through several topics. It was a fun day with great people!

You can see the resource list we developed for it at: http://bit.ly/WACTE2013

The return to the blog!

It has been awhile, almost 3 years, since my original attempt to be a blogger ended. After a conversation with a faculty member I have decided to make another attempt.

My stumbling block in the past is my hesitation that I have little to add to the multiple conversations around teaching and technology. Although I still feel that this is mostly true I also realize that due to the unique nature of my job I can spend more time sifting through the information than most people and certainly more than most faculty.

As an effort to support faculty I am willing to try my hand at blogging.

Wish my luck!