ITC Conference 2016

schooling 4 comments

Instructional Technology Conference 2016

February 14th to 17th, Scottsdale Arizona

Last year we saw Phil Hill ( https://twitter.com/PhilOnEdTech ) from http://mfeldstein.com/ and this year we had his partner in crime Michael Feldstein. These guys are always great to read as they are both informative and casual. Funny too. This year Matt spoke of personalized learning and the variations of how we understand the term. From adaptive learning in proprietary software to the old “PLN” we saw rise and fall as a popular acronym several years ago, he shared some thoughts about the value and trajectory of the tools in the near future.

Both keynote sessions explored community, or community of practice in online spaces, and it is a great message in a time when the smartest person in the room is no longer “in the room” but floating on the bandwidth filling the room.

In her keynote, Bonnie Stewart spoke about this day of Networked Learning and between my experiences in #ds106 and The Program for Online Teaching I could go on and on. I won’t, except to say that the smartest person in the room is no longer…. Oh wait, I already said that. It is true, if you do not have a rich well of friends online from places far away, you are missing the opportunity of learning from people who may well be wiser than those you are physically surrounded by.

Monday

The 9x9x25 session went over well. Of course, we gave all the participants Ben and Jerrys which never hurts the reviews you get as a presenter.

Both Alisa Cooper and Megan Kennedy shared their experiences with the Write6x6 from Glendale Community College. It is always nice to share the stage with someone I admire as much as I do Alisa.

Here is Matthew Evins review of the session. http://evinsmj.net/blog/2016/02/9x9x25-challenge/

I attended two sessions on OER. On Tuesday I attended another two looking for some way to kickstart the conversation here at Yavapai. I love pockets of innovation, and they are where these types of “innovative endeavours” begin, but it takes soooooo long….

I am wildly impatient. There are colleges that have entire programs online with no textbook costs. We have pockets of innovation where one faculty member has one class using an OER text. The Maricopa Millions project is still so inspiring. This year, the ITC conference had a clear OER presence. Good to see.

But it is good to be reminded of where I want to go and as always, I was further inspired to continue down the OER path here at the college. One great opportunity to sell the idea will be over the Open Education Week. Sadly, it falls during our Spring Break. I’ll still blast the news out to all faculty in the hopes that they will read about it at some point.

On Tuesday I attended on session about faculty training that was good, but we have our institutes and the session focused on a college that was also doing something similar. I think we do a better job of running ours.

Wednesday morning was very short and one session about using the Park Service as a learning opportunity in courses and one about creating a community of faculty while teaching them to teach online. It was very similar to our two week long class that helps faculty to become familiar with online learning.

I was able to spend some time with Brenda Boyd, the Director of Professional Development at Quality Matters. We talked about getting a March for Best Practice going at QM where there could be an easy to navigate place to see short videos that share how faculty address the specific standard. It looks like they may have that going soon.

The conference was a great opportunity to see good people doing good work. I need that. Talking with the amazing Lisa Young, Jennifer Strickland, Alisa Cooper, Megan Kennedy, and others is always inspiring and insightful.

Perhaps the best idea I walked away with was possibly adding a month long “challenge” to the summer institute that had faculty do certain tasks related to online teaching. I think that the hour long workshops are one way to reach our faculty, but if we could create an event that begins with a face2 face session at the institute and follow it up with some inspiring activities… Still working on it. Usually, when I am running.

4 comments

  1. I heard you ate half the ice cream yourself!
    I’m sorry to have missed the keynote, but maybe we can get one of these guys for our institute 🙂
    It’s just fine to lose patience sometimes, as long as we come back to it.
    My freedom sign for you today is: My life is incredibly awesome!

  2. Thanks for sharing your perspective and expertise from the conference! There’s some great individuals out there doing wonderful things! What’s going on with the freedom signs for inspiration? The best freedom is being yourself!

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