Educause, Day 1

I just came back from Educause but did not really have a lot of time to blog while I was there, so I am going to do this now, one day at a time.

My first day covered a couple of very useful workshops focused on wireless technologies in teaching situations.  One session helped us explore various wireless presentation systems while the other session helped us work through some of the issues of having a common mobile platform on one's campus.

Eric Kunnen, Associate Director of eLearning and Emerging Technologies, Grand Valley Stare University,  and Kevin Reeve, Head Explainer of Things at Utah State University facilitated a great session on "Wireless Presentation Systems:  Ad Hoc and Enterprise Solutions for the Interactive Classroom."

One of the hardware solutions

They set up the space into multiple groups with each table cluster having access to a monitor or projector, and each group got to test the wireless presentation systems that were set up at a particular table, write on a white board pros and cons, and then move on to the next table.  All in all, we tested nine different solutions.  The biggest drawbacks for all of them is that they do not easily, if at all, integrate into an enterprise wireless infrastructure, though Aruba Clearpass is making this a little easier now.  The next set of drawbacks was that a system would work well with one OS but not others, and as we had a nice mix of devices at each table, we tested from these various perspectives.  One of the more promising solutions appeared to be Mersive Solstice, as it was rather intuitive to use and worked well on all devices.  Systems ranged from Hardware based solutions, like Apple TV, Crestron, Air Media and Screenbeam, over Software based solutions, such as AirServer, Reflector and Solstice.  We did not get a chance to test Projector based solutions, offered by EPSON and NEC.

The second seminar focused on "A Roadmap for Using Mobile Technology to Transform the Teaching and Learning Experience," and took us through the considerations and planning process that Anderson University went through for implementing iPads as their common mobile platform.  The discussion covered the faculty perspective, represented through faculty from English and Art, upper administration through the Provost, instructional design through the Center for Innovation and Digital Learning, and information technology, through their CIO.  The worksheets were helpful, and their discussions of faculty development, inclusive conversations, and ideas for teaching were very helpful.