Wed. 6pm
"Okay - so what happened to Day One?" you might ask. Well I am going to cover both in this post...and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact I stayed late at a reception titled "A Taste of New Orleans" including a taste (or 6) of Merlot ;-)
No, seriously, this is really Day One - Tuesday was the pre-conference activities day, and Mary Elizabeth and I made sure we took in some strategic sessions. While Mary Elizabeth took in a technical pre-conference in which she deployed a new wiki for faculty development, I snuck into the MERLOT presentation "Cultivating a taste for Merlot: How to enhance faculty development on your campus". We were both delighted with the outcomes and I was particularly happy to find out that anyone can become a member of MERLOT for free; to consume, develop and publish learning objects and to develop personal collections of learning objects. Go to MERLOT now! Become a member! Get some stuff! Add some stuff! It is amazing the content that is there...and unlike some collections (like Wikipedia for example), the content is peer reviewed by folks who know what they are doing. You could become a peer reviewer in some area, and I'd encourage anyone who develops courses, whether face-to-face, online or blended to start using this amazing resource.
The reception was great, if a little sparse for delegates (excellent for me, lots of extra food to choose from). We caught some jazz from the LSU Jazz Stars. Counting the evening before and today, it looks like we have finally hit nearly all the major food groups of New Orleans diet including gumbo, jambalaya, alligator (yes, it tastes like chicken), remoullade, beaudion, po'boys, crawfish pie and white chocolate bread pudding. I guess the only thing left is cajun/blackened gulf fish and I think we'll cover that tonight...maybe a little catfish at the Napolean House Restauarant.
Today was definitely a full day of learning although I have finally learned to pace myself in terms of overall learning absorbption at these events...considering of course that we also delivered our 2 hour workshop today. The morning plenary "The Coming of Age of Online Learning - Now What?" was delivered by Bruce Chaloux, Director of Southern Regional Education Board. Among the points he made are many that pertain to our focus this week on strategic decision-making on digital assets, processes, products, applications and intelligence as well as the suggestion that we need new ways to measure scholarship in teaching.
After breakfast, we toured the connections room and browsed the vendor swag collecting the obligatory stamps and signatures for our raffle entry. The swag wasn't as rich as some conferences I have attended, but the raffle prizes look awesome (lots of tech toys) so I pressed the flesh and made the rounds without looking too interested in anyone's software and services. The first morning session fro me was with IMS Global Consortium "The Common Cartridge: Educational Content Standard". It wasn't for the uninitiated and many left the room with glzed eyes after the first 5 minutes recognizing they wouldn't know an XML feed from a runtime engine...yup, really super-geeky stuff that had me riveted!
IMS has defined a number of global standards for learning objects including ePortfolio standards that could really help to reduce the complexity of the market that accompanied the evolution of pre-SCORM e-learning software proliferation. More than just a set of meta-tags and XML standards, it covers formats for nearly everything in the overall learning object development field from inline testing to built in multimedia engines, packaging drawn from best practices of the SOA, Web 2.0 and Web Services experience.
Our own presentation was received very warmly, and we made sure that folks attending our workshop didn't think it was the after-lunch nap...we got them into a pretty neat rotating thought-builder around strategic considerations for the adoption and implementation of ePortfolio for Faculty Development. The level of questions, comments and participation (even though there were only ten participants) throughout the session seemed to be well appreciated by the fine group we facilitated.
Although our session didn't end until 3:30, I was still able to catch a couple of short sessions at the end of the day including "Where is the scholarship?" - adiscussion on Research and Scholarship that suggest that where publication is a standard for tenure and promotion, online development shoudl be seen as an equally valuable scholarly activity. The final session I joined was on motivating faculty to complete digital portfolios...which I guess I didn't find too awfully relevant since the speaker comes from a university where faculty are "required" to complete a very specific form of digital portfolio. Some intersting strategies there, though and I'll report them in my final report for this conference.
OK - well it's off to the Napolean (which, by the way Napolean never visited, but was invited to - sort of like "George Washington almost slept here"?). Catch you on Day Three...or two, or something. ;-)
"Okay - so what happened to Day One?" you might ask. Well I am going to cover both in this post...and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact I stayed late at a reception titled "A Taste of New Orleans" including a taste (or 6) of Merlot ;-)
No, seriously, this is really Day One - Tuesday was the pre-conference activities day, and Mary Elizabeth and I made sure we took in some strategic sessions. While Mary Elizabeth took in a technical pre-conference in which she deployed a new wiki for faculty development, I snuck into the MERLOT presentation "Cultivating a taste for Merlot: How to enhance faculty development on your campus". We were both delighted with the outcomes and I was particularly happy to find out that anyone can become a member of MERLOT for free; to consume, develop and publish learning objects and to develop personal collections of learning objects. Go to MERLOT now! Become a member! Get some stuff! Add some stuff! It is amazing the content that is there...and unlike some collections (like Wikipedia for example), the content is peer reviewed by folks who know what they are doing. You could become a peer reviewer in some area, and I'd encourage anyone who develops courses, whether face-to-face, online or blended to start using this amazing resource.
The reception was great, if a little sparse for delegates (excellent for me, lots of extra food to choose from). We caught some jazz from the LSU Jazz Stars. Counting the evening before and today, it looks like we have finally hit nearly all the major food groups of New Orleans diet including gumbo, jambalaya, alligator (yes, it tastes like chicken), remoullade, beaudion, po'boys, crawfish pie and white chocolate bread pudding. I guess the only thing left is cajun/blackened gulf fish and I think we'll cover that tonight...maybe a little catfish at the Napolean House Restauarant.
Today was definitely a full day of learning although I have finally learned to pace myself in terms of overall learning absorbption at these events...considering of course that we also delivered our 2 hour workshop today. The morning plenary "The Coming of Age of Online Learning - Now What?" was delivered by Bruce Chaloux, Director of Southern Regional Education Board. Among the points he made are many that pertain to our focus this week on strategic decision-making on digital assets, processes, products, applications and intelligence as well as the suggestion that we need new ways to measure scholarship in teaching.
After breakfast, we toured the connections room and browsed the vendor swag collecting the obligatory stamps and signatures for our raffle entry. The swag wasn't as rich as some conferences I have attended, but the raffle prizes look awesome (lots of tech toys) so I pressed the flesh and made the rounds without looking too interested in anyone's software and services. The first morning session fro me was with IMS Global Consortium "The Common Cartridge: Educational Content Standard". It wasn't for the uninitiated and many left the room with glzed eyes after the first 5 minutes recognizing they wouldn't know an XML feed from a runtime engine...yup, really super-geeky stuff that had me riveted!
IMS has defined a number of global standards for learning objects including ePortfolio standards that could really help to reduce the complexity of the market that accompanied the evolution of pre-SCORM e-learning software proliferation. More than just a set of meta-tags and XML standards, it covers formats for nearly everything in the overall learning object development field from inline testing to built in multimedia engines, packaging drawn from best practices of the SOA, Web 2.0 and Web Services experience.
Our own presentation was received very warmly, and we made sure that folks attending our workshop didn't think it was the after-lunch nap...we got them into a pretty neat rotating thought-builder around strategic considerations for the adoption and implementation of ePortfolio for Faculty Development. The level of questions, comments and participation (even though there were only ten participants) throughout the session seemed to be well appreciated by the fine group we facilitated.
Although our session didn't end until 3:30, I was still able to catch a couple of short sessions at the end of the day including "Where is the scholarship?" - adiscussion on Research and Scholarship that suggest that where publication is a standard for tenure and promotion, online development shoudl be seen as an equally valuable scholarly activity. The final session I joined was on motivating faculty to complete digital portfolios...which I guess I didn't find too awfully relevant since the speaker comes from a university where faculty are "required" to complete a very specific form of digital portfolio. Some intersting strategies there, though and I'll report them in my final report for this conference.
OK - well it's off to the Napolean (which, by the way Napolean never visited, but was invited to - sort of like "George Washington almost slept here"?). Catch you on Day Three...or two, or something. ;-)
1 comment:
Thanks for the great posts Stephen - I'm a big fan of conference blogging - a great way to get info out and to do some immediate reflection too.
Well done on your workshop and the food sounds amazing too - like chicken huh?
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