2011 Educational Technology Conference – Thank you!

Leave a reply

Thank you to everyone that presented a concurrent session or workshop or that attended our annual educational technology conference this past weekend. It was great to see so many old and new faces in attendance with such enthusiasm for technology. Handouts from presenters will be posted to a Google document in the next week. Also, if you have not filled out the conference survey, please take the time to do so online at: goo.gl/ALhGs. We appreciate any and all feedback to help us make improvements from year-to-year. A special thank you to the keynote speaker, Dr. Troy Hicks, for his presentation on teaching the iGeneration and why digital writing matters. Please save the date for next year’s conference which will be held on Saturday, October 27, 2012.

2011 Technology Conference Registartion – Open

Leave a reply

Registration is now open for the 2011 MSU College of Education Technology Conference. To find out more details, please visit the conference website and follow the links on that page to detailed descriptions of the keynote, concurrent sessions, and workshops. A link to the registration form is also included on the site. We are please to welcome MSU alumnus, Dr. Troy Hicks, as our keynote speaker at 9:00 a.m. on the day of the conference. Dr. Hicks is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University and focuses his work on the teaching of writing, literacy and technology, and teacher education and professional development. In his research, he collaborates with K–12 teachers and explores how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. Hicks is director of CMU’s Chippewa River Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and he frequently conducts professional development workshops related to writing and technology.

Welcome Back – Fall Semester 2011

Leave a reply

The start of fall semester 2011 is quickly approaching and myself and the Technical Interns at Center for Teaching & Technology are working hard to make sure all of the technology classrooms are in working order and all of our equipment is charged up. Over the summer, work was done in rooms 128 and 130 Erickson Hall to improve the rooms. 128 Erickson Hall had minor changes completed including removing the out-of-date mini-dv decks on the computer tables and the unused shelving on the underside of the desks. The room also had an instructor station installed with an Elmo document camera. Finally, an HD Polycom video conferencing system was installed for distance learning opportunities. Room 128 Erickson still has the same number of iMac workstations and movable tables for different classroom configurations. In addition, it also has an Echo360 lecture capture (recording) system. Please email Terri to schedule your course to be recorded or a one time event.

Room 130 Erickson Hall has been completely remodeled. You can see the new look by looking at the photo slideshow below. There are now 8 iMac stations around the rooms, the SMART Board has been moved to the back wall, an HD Polycom video conferencing system has been installed, as well as an Echo360 lecture capture system. For those that were familiar with the large number of iMacs in the old configuration, we have added a MacBook Pro cart that can be checked out through the Technical Interns. It has 10 MacBook Pros and 10 iPad2 tablets. Lastly, the room will also be getting new whiteboards in early fall semester that will cover three walls and include moveable magnetic marker holders and magnets for pinning up documents, posters, or other student work.

Other notable changes in Erickson Hall include a new projector in room 113 (the old one stopped working over the summer), new videos posted by the Technical Interns about how to use the touchscreen interface in the technology classrooms, and software upgrades to Vidyo and Echo360. The how-to video for the technology classrooms can be found on YouTube or can be watched on mobile phones by scanning the QR code with a barcode app on the touchscreen interface in the classrooms. The technical interns also created how-to videos for SMART Boards and M-Audio Digital Audio recorders.

2011 Educational Technology Conference – Open for proposals

Leave a reply

The Call for Presentation and Workshop Proposals is OPEN!

What: 28th Annual Educational Technology Conference
When: November 12, 2011 – 8:30 am – 3:30 pm
Where: Erickson Hall, Michigan State University
Proposals Due: September 9, 2011
Submit proposals here: http://goo.gl/vj6KJ

Presentations will be 50 minutes long and workshops will be 2 hours long. All workshops will be hands-on instruction. Presenters will be informed of their acceptance by September 15th and will receive information about session times by October 1, 2011. Please contact Terri with any questions.

Summer projects & thinking ahead to Fall 2011

Leave a reply

Summer at the Center for Teaching and Technology doesn’t mean that things slow down in 133 Erickson Hall. We are supporting summer courses taking place in the Erickson Hall technology classrooms and several summer camps and programs that take place through early August. Events include the Chinese Language & Culture camps taught by the MSU Confucius Institute, Grandparents University, the EPET summer cohorts, and the Summer High School Scholars Program. In addition, rooms 128 and 130 Erickson Hall are getting updates to room equipment in the month of August. The Technical Interns that are here during the summer have also been busy creating instructional videos about popular equipment like Smart Boards, digital audio recorders, and handheld (Flip video & other Flip-like) cameras. They are also creating short how-to videos for the touchscreens, document cameras & other media devices in the technology classrooms on the first floor of Erickson Hall. QR codes will be posted by all work stations in the rooms that will link to videos via smart phone apps that read QR codes and bar codes. The videos will also be linked from this web page and distributed from our social media outlets like Twitter (@Centr4TeachTech) and Facebook.

Fall semester 2011 will once again bring the annual educational technology conference that is co-sponsored by the College of Education Alumni Association and MACUL (Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning). The single-day conference will take place on Saturday, November 12, 2011. There will be some small changes to the format of the conference, but for the most part the schedule will remain the same, beginning with the featured presenter to start the day at 9:00 a.m. Dr. Troy Hicks, an alumnus of Michigan State University and the College of Education will be the featured presenter this fall. Dr. Hicks is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University and focuses his work on the teaching of writing, literacy and technology, and teacher education and professional development. In his research, he collaborates with K–12 teachers and explores how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. Hicks is director of CMU’s Chippewa River Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project, and he frequently conducts professional development workshops related to writing and technology. Also, Hicks is author of the The Digital Writing Workshop (Heinemann, 2009) and a co-author of Because Digital Writing Matters (Jossey-Bass, 2010). In March 2011, Hicks was honored with CMU’s Provost’s Award for junior faculty who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in research and creative activity. Most importantly, he is the father of six digital natives and is always learning something new about technology from them.

Productivity Apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Android phones

Leave a reply

EVENT: There’s An App For That: Productivity Apps to Keep You Organized

DATE: Friday, April 22nd ****CHANGED

PLACE: 133F Erickson Hall

TIME: 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.

SIGN-UP: http://bit.ly/dTuRA4

OVERVIEW:
Chances are many of you have any one of the devices mentioned in the title of this blog post with you all the time, somewhere at home, or are considering purchasing one of them. Apple is dominant in that market, but phones built on the Android platform (and soon more tablets) are popping up in the hands of consumers. Productivity apps on both platforms make tasks like file sharing, group texting, to-do lists, document editing and collaboration, voice-to-text recording, and project management seamless and convenient. Many of the apps are linked to cloud based applications enabling users to access their folders, files, and to-do lists on their mobile device or any computer connected to the Internet. In this hour-long session, apps like Evernote, Dragon Dictation, DropBox, GroupMe, and Wunderlist will be demonstrated. In addition, I’ll touch on some PC/Mac applications that also help with productivity.

MSU Moodle 2.0 Preview

Leave a reply

MSU Virtual University Design and Technology (VuDAT) invites you to attend the next session in our ongoing Breakfast Series: Conversations on Online Pedagogy and Best Practices

DATE: Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

PLACE: MSU Main Library, North Conference Room, 4th floor, west wing

TIME: 8:45am – 10:00am (8:30am for refreshments)

TOPIC: Moodle 2.0 Preview

PRESENTER: Tory Sawyer and Ryan Yang

OVERVIEW:
Join VuDAT in a limited preview of Moodle 2.0 and its features. Moodle is an open source course management system which is used to create learning communities or courseware. Moodle is being considered as an open-source alternative to ANGEL. The presentation will compare ANGEL and Moodle features and provide a brief overview of adding resources and activities to a Moodle course. A quick look at file management, the gradebook, quizzes and repositories will be included. Please join us if you are interested in exploring the possibility of Moodle.

Still to come…

Leave a reply

Still to come for the Spring 2011 semester will be presentations on iPad and iPod Apps and on Moodle. Dates will be announced soon for April. As a follow-up to the previous post about the Google Apps, sessions were held just before and after the December holiday season to introduce Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites to a variety of people in the College of Education. Many people did not know about the collaborative functions of Google Docs and were surprised to learn about the multiple calendar and privacy functions of Google Calendar. A repeat of the same content will be held during Spring Break and during the week of March 21st to grab folks that could not make the sessions offered in December and early January. To sign up for the sessions, go to this Google Form to see dates and times.

I am always looking for new ideas for workshops and fall semester colloquium topics and presenters. Please take some time to make a suggestion or two using this quick survey. You’ll need to log in with your MSU Net ID to fill it out.

Lastly, I’ll be attending the 2011 MACUL Conference in a couple weeks and I’ll be sure to post about the great presenters and ideas that seem to always come out of the sessions and workshops. There are great things happening in the K-12 world with instructional technology, with some very creative and innovative teachers out there doing their best to integrate technology into their lesson plans to prepare the next generation of learners.

Coming soon – Getting to know Google Apps for Education, Vidyo, iPod/iPad and Android apps, and Moodle

Leave a reply

In December 2010, the Center for Teaching and Technology will begin hosting short brown bag sessions to introduce faculty and staff to several different technologies that can be used for everyday productivity, teaching, communication, and instructional design. A notice will go out with a sign up form to attend these sessions. Google Apps for Education will be broken down into Google Docs, Google Calendar, and iGoogle individual sessions. The other topics, Vidyo, iPod/iPad & Android apps, and Moodle will be single sessions. All sessions will be repeated in January and February of 2011.

To learn more about Google Apps for Education ahead of time, please refer to these resources provided by Michigan State University: http://techbase.msu.edu/article.asp?id=13275&service= . In addition, Google offers help for Google docs at: http://docs.google.com/support/?hl=en . iGoogle allows users to create a personal homepage that can include RSS feeds, news, photos, weather, calendars, and other items all in one web page using Google gadgets.

Vidyo is a new service acquired by the College of Education for telepresence conferencing for PCs, Macs, and HD video conferencing systems. This new technology enables multiple platforms to connect for video conferencing, reducing the need for each participant to travel to a dedicated Polycom (or other video conferencing system) location. Vidyo features multiple user screen sharing with HD quality video over converged IP networks.

Photo credit: CrunchBase

2010 Educational Technology Conference Registration Open

Leave a reply

Registration for the 2010 MSU College of Education Technology Conference is now open and will continue until the day of the event on Saturday, November 13th. We are excited to present great topics like Google apps in the classroom, mobile apps, the power of SmartBoards, wikis for classroom management, the power of personal learning networks (PLNs), and much, much, more for the K-12 educator. Please join us for a great day of exploration and technology integration ideas.

To find out more you can visit the 2010 conference website. To register, visit our registration portal.