6th Annual iTeach at Auburn University

Last week's 6th Annual iTeach at Auburn University had a great turnout with over 50 faculty and 20 support staff attenting.  The presentations ranged from a pedagogical framework to consider when teaching with ipads over how to use ipads in a class where all students have them to specific apps and how they benefit faculty and students.  A couple of faculty showcased their ibook for course materials and what students had created in ibooks.

We had lively discussions both off and online, but the definite highlight of the day was Dr. Robert Blaine's two presentations.
Jackson State University started giving out ipads to their incoming freshmen class two years ago, and they have developed an impressive system that allows faculty to develop their own textbooks and receive potentially credit for these text towards tenure and promotion.  Faculty lay out at the beginning of the term how they are planning on using technology to achieve goals of content creation by students and authentic learning -- it does not matter what technology and at what level, but that plan is used in their annual evaluations.

Robert Blaine in action

Seeing all of this in action in the later session really brought the concept of using a mobile platform for teaching and learning to life.  Dr. Blaine took us into his itunesU course, showed us the content he had added, the assignments students needed to work on, the methods they could use to get assignments back to him with evidence (in his case, student concerts) of the hard work the students were able to do on their own.  This, I think, is the concept that cannot be emphasized enough -- give students the tools to learn, the guidance to learn, the time to learn, and they will do it on their own, most likely surprising you how far they will go.