NMC 2006 Regional—Trinity University, San Antonio TX
I have to admit, as much as I love the New Media Consortium (nmc), I was a little frustrated with the 2006 regional conference. One of their tracks was on the future of scholarship. As a two year college faculty member, I find that various new media make scholarly activities more doable with a high teaching load. I am especially excited by the ways that blogs and internet journals might change how we think about and publish our research. In my mind, it can become more process oriented. Instead …
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| January 29 2007 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Blogging about Conferences
When I got approved for funding to attend the NMC conference (thanks Alan for leaving a little money hanging around when you left!), I also agreed to somehow document my experiences as a way to give back to the institution (the Maricopa Community College District) in this instance. When attending the online 2006 Technology, Colleges, and Community conference I found a file by the Learning Times folks about how to blog about your attendance at a conference. Whereas I didn’t bring a digital camera or audio recorder (as per their suggestion), …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
It seems you are only as good as your metadata
Isn’t this a great line? Someone in the audience at the OKI session I went to made this statement. What I love about this is how it related to theories of learning. If we believe that people learn by making connections to other stuff in their experiences, then we are truly only as good as are ability to make, and connect to, our own metadata. In other words, this statement supports my recent revisioning of my eng102 (second semester first year composition) course that has a lot of meta-reflective assignments about …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Bare Bones
Tangibles I Gained from the NMC conferenceInteractive Posters—This one woman who was talking about student access to planning, designing, and printing large posters for course projects had made her poster interactive by building handouts into the poster itself. I love that idea! Programs/software/tech tools to try out: VUE—visual understanding environment (mind mapping): http://vue.tccs.tufts.edu/ MediaBASE—multimodal discourse tool: http://pages.emerson.edu/faculty/E/Eric_Gordon/html/mediabase.html) XMAS (Cross-Media Annotation System): http://icampus.mit.edu/projects/xmas.shtml iPod as audio recorder play with wikis more (playing back the various versions of a document’s construction) TeamSpot: http://tidebreak.com/prodteamspot.shtml Online Syllabus Generator: http://www.clt.odu.edu/sgen/sg_help.php Pachyderm …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Plug and Play as Interface
—on some level, this has nothing to do w/NMC Brilliant technology folks have come up with a method to interface (OKI, OSID, and Pachyderm?? Still not quite sure…http://www.okiproject.org/) different repositories, with different coding schemes, to allow faculty and students to access a variety of material when searching. What I find fascinating about this discussion (of what I can follow) is that the reason they can interface with the different repositories and their different content through a plug and play method (that is the metaphor for how the interfacing technology works). …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Teaching w/Tech Certificates
The first session I attended conference was about the Houston Community College system’s construction of a Teaching with Technology Certificate program (http://www.hccs.edu/system/InsDev/IT/ICRC/technology/certification.htm). Cool Stuff! They have a two tiered program (with a portfolio requirement in the second tier) that has faculty learning both technologies and pedagogy for teaching with technology. Now, I’ll admit, I think they had a little more “how does this technology work” classes instead of a more focus on pedagogy. However, I also know that many of my colleagues demand the “how do I do this?” element …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Social Play…kissing hands and shaking babies
One of my “gifts” is my social nature! I have no problem walking into a room without knowing anyone and walking out with numerous new friends and colleagues. Although I did have a pile of colleagues who were attending this conference, it was also smashing to meet new people. I loved that I got a pile of business cards of people who wanted me to send information, or that I’m requesting information from them. I guess this posting is just to say that although my institution “gets” the information that I …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
It’s All Relative; and It’s All Good, All the Time
One of the things I love about this conference is that it keeps me challenged. I’ve learned about technologies, or the applications of technologies, that I’ve never heard of, or imagined. I’ve had wonderful conversations with people who know a whole heck of a lot more about technology than I do. Part of the reason is that I’m a faculty member…we are in the minority here (my first conference where this is the case). And, I’m finding that a lot of the faculty here are new media faculty…they teach websites, digital …
...Continued | June 10 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Among other things, I’m a theory Whore
My partner in scholarly crime, SKM-C, and I always talk about the need to critically engage, even theorize, the use of technology in teaching (or other scholarly acts). However, we recognize that we rarely see someone move beyond…I did this cool thing while teaching with XXX techno-gadget. And don’t get me wrong, I greatly appreciate people sharing what they have done; however, I want to know why they did it that way? How doe sit support their teaching philosophy? Their understanding of teaching and learning? Course outcomes? Etc. Yesterday I attended …
...Continued | June 09 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc
Feeling at Home @ NMC
I love fate…my posting about that faculty member banning laptops is so timely as I attend this conference. In all the sessions I’ve attended, I’ve found myself surrounded by people with their laptops flipped open working away on…whatever. Personally, I’ve been emailing, grading the online courses I’m currently teaching, googling information being presented, adding authors and their texts to my amazon wish list based on who people are talking about in their presentations, blogging, etc. I’m sitting in a session about educational gaming as I type this blog. Are some of …
...Continued | June 08 2006 | CommentsPosted in nmc