Archive for March 2011

Upcoming event: Tech Expo, 4/4/11 in Lower Evans

Hello everyone! This coming Monday (4/4) I’ll be posted up in the lower conference rooms of Evans Dining Hall, along with my colleagues in the Educational Technology Center (as well as some intrepid folks from ITS) for our “Research and Teaching Technology Expo.” We’ll be there to answer any questions you may have regarding classroom technology, show off some of our latest knowledge, and give away training materials for your edu tech needs. Ask me about class blogging and related tools! I’ll also (try to) cover such broad topics as RSS feeds, education apps for mobile devices, and how to use WordPress as a content management system.

Hope to see y’all there!

Why Agnes Scott Needs the Digital Design Fellowship.

I’m a big fan of Worst Professor Ever’s blog, and if you’re at all involved with higher education (on a student, staff, faculty or administrative level), you should be too. She recently attended South by Southwest (aka, SXSW) in Austin, Texas, a huge festival for creative types looking to be discovered in a variety of fields (namely, music, film and interactive tech), specifically to volunteer for SXSW Interactive (or SXSW IA, if you’re into acronyms), a tech segment of the festival that you can read about by following the link. More to the point, Worst Professor Ever has published a couple of posts addressing edutech, and the digital humanities, that I think are super important right now. I’ll let you do some independent reading with links to the posts in question, respectively, and appropriately, titled “SXSW On A Stick (Or: So You Want Your Field to be Taken Seriously?)” and “Bummer Thoughts on the Digital Humanities” — once you’re done with that, come back to this Crafting the Digital Design Fellowship post. Consider it your spring reading assignment; it’s going to be food for thought for what I have to say next. And you might want to get comfortable, because I’ve got a lot to say.

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It’s (nearly) That Time of Year again …

What time is it?

(I’ve been itching for a reason to post that clip from Waiting for Guffman, otherwise known as one of my favorite movies of all time.)

Seriously, though. It’s mid-March, which means SpARC is right around the corner. What does this awkwardly-capitalized acronym stand for? (Confession: I have to sound it out every time I type it. No judging.) The Spring Annual Research Conference, held every year at Agnes Scott. Classes are canceled for the day, but that doesn’t mean vacation — students are not only strongly encouraged to present academic research topics of all stripes, but attend the presentations as well. Since I’m in the mood for personal disclosure today, I’ll be honest when I say I didn’t know much about SpARC (or how important it can be as a primer for future important presentations) until my sophomore year. And, as I may have mentioned many moons ago, I spent my junior year abroad, so I didn’t present until my last year of school. I can easily say that waiting until my senior year of college to present at the on-campus conference is one of the largest regrets I have about my time at Agnes Scott. Quelle chance manquée! (Read more about it on my other site.)

There is no substitute for this kind of experience, and nothing quite like defending your carefully chosen, endlessly researched topic of study to a room full of relative strangers. Take my word for it: seize the opportunity while you have it available to you, undergrads — the experience of presenting at this conference will prove invaluable in the long run.

Regrets aside, I have another chance to present at SpARC — though this year, instead of presenting my French thesis, I’ll be talking about e-Portfolios in our liberal arts community. In short, I’m going to discuss many of the points I’ve blogged about this year, possibly including (but not limited to):

• The benefits to (and relative ease of) creating individual e-Portfolios;
• Knowing, and Not Knowing, Your Audience: Ways in which blogging can enhance the quality of student writing;
• How class blogging enhances classroom discussion and collaboration, encouraging a heightened understanding of course material;
• How a student’s e-Portfolio can be an excellent representation of a liberal arts education;
• Super Important: Portability and accessibility of externally hosted e-Portfolios; and,
• Assessing success in the 2nd year of the Digital Design Fellowship: how’s the ASC e-Portfolio initiative coming along?

Well, cats and kittens, it’s obvious I have a lot of editing to do when it comes to writing my abstract. As a gentle reminder, those SpARC abstracts are due March 25; the conference itself will be held Thursday, April 28. I’ll keep you updated as to when my presentation will be that day (please come) — and strongly encourage all members of the ASC community to submit abstracts and present!!