The STEMtech Adventure Continued

STEMtech Continued Review – The adventures of Professor Josh at STEMtech 2010 (Don’t think I’ll get a movie deal out of this)

The session Avoid Death by Lecture: Wake’em and Shake’em with Technology was one of my first sessions of the day. This was presenter by EPI instructors from Polk State College which focused mainly on interacting with students with technology in class. This is really good information to pass along to my EPI students who are preparing to enter the classroom in K12.

Hot Dots was one of the in class tools that have certain hot dots (right answers) and cold dots (wrong answers) that are read by a pen, which will give you a sounds depending on if you get it right or wrong. Available at most teacher stores http://www.fatbraintoys.com/toy_companies/educational_insights/hot_dots_talking_pen.cfm

Another fun device for games such as jeopardy in the classroom are a Wireless Buzzer set available at Trainer Warehouse http://www.trainerswarehouse.com/quotMe-Firstquot-Wireless-Buzzers-12-user-set/productinfo/GAMFAD/

Awesome Highlighter lets you highlight text on web pages then gives you a small link to the highlighted page. Imagine sharing an online articles with that is 20 pages long but you really only want you students to read a certain section – this might be a great tool to use and great that shorten link. http://www.awesomehighlighter.com/

The next session was Good Things Come in Threes: Approaches to Increasing Online Students’ Success, which is always an important topic. The 3 approaches to increase student’s online success – pacing, student interaction, & social presence. All these are important to teach any faculty that will be involved with providing online educations, either it by online or hybrid.

It was lunch time – The Fountain inside the Dolphin is where I had lunch with Lisa & Wendi, while we joined the Computer Science & Technology professor from East Campus for some entertainment during lunch and a really good Buffalo Chicken Salad.

The next session was From A to Tweet: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies in the Classroom. Usually during these session I have heard or used the majority of the technology but you never know how someone else might be using it or what might be new in the world of Web 2.0. I was able to chime in on a few questions and add some additional information to the presentation on a few subjects I knew pretty well. I thought the use of Adobe Acrobat was interesting to add in audio commentary inside the PDF at different points. Of course Facebook and Twitter were discussed, which made me realize I need a new presentation on not just social media in the classroom but how to use, manage, and sort through social media. Aha!

Animoto might be a fun tools for students and teacher to utilize to build simple digital pictures show with music, photos, and more. Animoto.com it’s a website and iPhone App too.

Of course I had to attend the An Apple a Day Leads to Engaged Faculty – this was a great session not just on the fact it promoted the tools and hardware being Apple but it discussed training faculty to use these tools to build content. The faculty had to commit to 12 total trainings – 6 each semester on Fridays to receive their Macbook Pro and iPod touch (which replaced their standard desktop). The faculty learned all about the software available for Mac, such as iWorks, iMovie, Garage band, iLife, and more to utilize building materials for their course. They had to create at least one podcast, many of the created a bunch of them to upload to their iTunes U site for other instructors and students to access. I think the concept of utilize the Mac product, which has a lot of seamless integrating in easy to use products was one of the great ideas. The second was just the commitment to help faculty learn how to build multimedia products from start to finish utilizing several tools that can’t be taught in just one session and come out with quality products in the end to share in their learning community.

The last session for the day was titled The Next Wave of Technology Education: Mobile Application Development. Of course I attended this with Lisa Macon who is currently working on a course at Valencia 1/2 iPhone App Development (Her Half) and 1/2 Droid App Development. I found it interesting how this school mixes Information Technology with Administrative Management to produce students who are IT friendly but have management skills. Definitely sought after skills in the business world with everything having some type of IT involvement anymore. Want to build an iPhone app with no coding required? Use existing content or RSS feeds, such as blogs at http://www.appmakr.com/