What's your thing??

As I've been working to develop my blog, it has occured to me that it might be useful to begin a collection of materials and resources specific to a topic or area of interest. For me, at this time, that area is blended learning. Toward that end, I've started a wiki on blended learning resources. Over time, I'm sure this will grow, evolve, and attract readers :)

iTunes U + Maricopa

iTunes U has arrived at the Maricopa Community Colleges, forever blurring the lines between education and entertainment. At least, this is one of many desired effects. A few universities have adopted iTunes U: University of Wisconsin, Stanford U, Duke U, ASU, and now.... Maricopa.

At this time, most of our sites are private while we work out authentication and copyright issues. We plan to roll out a few iTunes U events in the fall and continue to work on developing podcasting in teaching and learning. More to come...

Podcasting 101, 201, 301...you get the idea

Since I've been at Maricopa, it seems that our prof-lings (professors in pursuit of excellent teaching and learning) are extremely interested in podcasting. Toward furthering that interest, we've sponsored one of our faculty members to support and develop in that area. Behold, Alisa Cooper: http://soul4real.wordpress.com/. I won't take up your time here, but to go to this comprehensive site to learn about podcasts in education, how to create a podcast, where to locate free music for your podcast, and much more.

Sloaning to the Blended World

I just returned from the Sloan-C Blended Learning Workshop in Chicago. This was my first Sloan/Blended Learning-dedicated event. It turns out the number of blended learning pioneers is smaller than I thought, much smaller, with only about 150 participants. Who are the leaders? Well, the UCF gang was there: Joel Hartman and Charles Dziuban (the data wizard). Also notable is the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee: Bob Kaleta. Between these two organization, you have everything you ever wanted to know about blended learning and then some.

The surprise here was how many blended learning "newbies" are actually out there. Sloan has a vast collection of blended learning resources, including data, best practices, models, contacts, etc. The workshop had two tracks: one for foundational knowledge and another for those who are interested in expanding their current initiatives.

The takeaways..... 1) figure out how you're going to collect data on everything you do--this will help tremendously as your program matures and you need to justify its existence (trust me on this one); 2) don't reinvent the wheel--even though this area is relatively new, a few leaders and leading organizations can really help get you started and avoid mistakes; 3) this is a hugely exciting field that brings together many exciting educational movements: instructional technology, course redesign, and hybrid education.

Well, it's exciting for some of us anyway :)

Glendale CC's Self-Paced Emerging Tech Tool

I recently discovered a self-paced, collaborative, emerging technology tool developed by one of Maricopa's Colleges: Glendale CC. It's called 23 Things and is similar to ELI's 7 Things. It seems that the tool is a blog that allows faculty members to move through emerging technologies (blogging, photos and images, RSS & Newsreaders, Tagging, Wikis, Online Apps, and Podcasting). It's designed to be completed in 10 weeks (over the summer) and is self-paced--genius!

Interesting how successful short chunks of content are. More manageable and digestible for busy folks.

Also interesting is how this fits in to the School 1.0/School 2.0 concept.

Here is the School 1.0 model, which as Warlick points out, illustrates instructors delivering content and skills and students acting as mirrors, reflecting content and skills back to the teacher.


Warlick says that in School 2.0 teacher’s become learners and learners become teachers, and each side is empowered with conversation, control over their information landscape, and connections with each other — with almost no constraints of hierarchy.

Students stop being mirrors, and instead become amplifiers. Their job is not merely to reflect what they encounter, but to add value to it. Content and skills are no longer the end product, but they become raw materials, with which students learn to work and play and share. Information is captured by the learner, processed, added to, remixed, and then shared back, to be captured by another learner/teacher and reprocessed.

Sound good? Are our learners ready for this heightened role? How can we make them ready?

My First Maricopa Tech Conference

After several months of careful planning, the day of the 20th (whew, talk about pressure) Annual Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference finally arrived. Just about 200 Maricopa faculty came to listen to the over 25 sessions--also put on by Maricopa faculty. We heard an informative and entertaining talk on Net Gen learners from Joel Hartman from UCF--blended learning guru. Over lunch, Cole Camplese from Penn State spoke to us about students' uses of emerging technologies and web 2.0 tools and school 2.0--an interesting concept.

Biggest compliment: "Wow, there are lots of new faces here." We suffer from "serial attenders," the usual suspects (often few) who show up to all things technology. How do we reach out to newbies?

Biggest criticism: "I feel like I needed a glossary to understand all the terminology here, I needed a beginner's conference before coming to this." How do we offer enough "emerging" stuff without leaving behind those that are new and want to sample a few things? And...how can we help faculty navigate through the sea of technology? What could/should guide them?

Overall, this was a great day and a wonderful way to kick off the summer for many faculty members.