ELI Day 3

On the last day of the conference, we learned about such fun things as

1.  how to turn a swimming pool into an active learning classroom that is rather large.  For more information on this, see this video:


notice the massive video wall!

2.  how to turn work towards turning lectures that are captured in their complete length into chunks that can be used as reminders, in online settings, or by other faculty as part of a repository.  A starting point is My Dante:  https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/mydante/

3.  how to engage people to build resources outside of the classroom that can be used by others outside the classroom to explore particular features of the environment.:  http://tourguide.cal.msu.edu/

4.  and all of this was nicely rounded off by bits of doom and gloom portraying the future of higher education in this country -- one of the key points is that core courses at established institutions will shrink in size and numbers because there are so many other places that will offer this content cheaper or for free.

Hanging out at ELI -- Day 2

Today's sessions were a mix of vision, strategy, challenges, tools, connections, and ideas -- no major surprises, some nice confirmations, and some unexpected uses of terms that I had not heard before.

For example, I did not know what it means to flip a web site -- I have to admit, I am still not sure I understand it, though it sounded like adding interactivity and responsiveness to audience needs was the definition.

Talk more with students -- as a whole -- whether it is for vision, strategy, tools, connections -- they are part of the vision, they can help with the strategy, they know the tools and can create the connections.

When implementing new technologies, keep the tone exploratory and playful to lower the stress level -- everyone is already stressed out enough about getting it right.

Culture trumps strategy -- I guess that means you have to bluff really well for strategy to be successful.

Yes, there were other things, more hands on, like 3-d printing -- and what does that do to copyright and entrepreneur questions?  Customized textbooks -- and what does that do to copyright, creative commons if you embed such videos into the text and then have students pay for the compilation? Medical students studying in a cohort that will have as a problem/project to solve the issue of lower life expectancy in low income neighborhoods -- and how to raise the expectancy.

Hanging out at ELI -- Day 1

Hanging out at ELI -- in New Orleans

 As our poster session happened this afternoon, focusing on "Changing the Culture of Learning One Class at a Time," we got involved with lots of conference attendees who chatted with us for almost two hours about designing classrooms and faculty development.  We received lots of good ideas, some new technologies to follow up on, and new connections.
Oh, and who is we?  Vicky Cardullo from Auburn's College of Education and Scott Simkins from Auburn's College of Liberal Arts worked with me on the poster presentation and came along to the conference to give the faculty side of the story.  All around, a great success.

Scott, Wiebke, and Vicky at ELI

In the meantime, we also had a great keynote by John Medina on The Learning Brain, which is partly based on his book Brain Rules -- very engaging, with great stories, examples and memories -- and some of them made it even past my working memory into the nomadic phase of my memory...
Clearly, learning more about how the brain works can lead to some interesting discussions in education.