Can You Digg It? at Cengage English Event in San Antonio

Cengage, the publisher of The Wadsworth Guide to Research (the textbook Susan & I co-authored), hosted three English Professional Development events during the Spring 2010 semester: Orlando, San Antonio, and Phoenix. These two day events brought together "local" English faculty with Cengage authors (and a few others) who presented about various topics and issues in English, specifically Composition. Susan presented at the Orlando event, while I covered the San Antonio and Phoenix events. (Although I miss Susan terribly, sometimes it is handy to have us on different sides of the continent.)

Even before the 90 minute presentation started, I asked participants to do a pre-presentation survey (at first I called it "homework" and found I needed to figure out a new word quickly!). I asked them which technologies they wanted to cover, and which ones they didn’t recognize by name. I was then able to use the results to both drive the presentation and what we covered as well as demo what Google Forms can do (especially the automagic compilation of data to make simple charts). 

I also made a sample Diigo list through the entire event, both to take notes as well as demo what Diigo can do! 

Although I got fabulous feedback (they had evaluation forms and gave them to us on the spot), I know it was a little messy/chaotic:

• first, my laptop glitched right before the presentation and I had to reboot it. Although that is the typical price we pay for doing technology, it was frustrating to have to re-log back into everything with everyone watching & waiting. :-( Not much I can do about that (except maybe get Baylin, my mac, looked at...she’s been doing this more and more often).
• I try to demo technologies as alternative presentation methods, discussion starters, etc. The results of the Google Form were all over the place and I then bounced to much in my organization/presentation. So when I’m working from results like that, I need to just make a list and say "we’ll definitely get through the first ## and then cover more if we have time."

I’m also happy to say Tom came down for the weekend and we explored San Antonio, including the Alamo and walking around the River Walk "track"...twice! Although I did not take the picture below (I love Flickr!) we did do those stairs more than once! That walking got me motivated enough to come back to Phoenix and continue walking.

February 27 2010 | Posted in Workshops