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October 24, 2005
CIT session 10/24/2005
I attended a number of sessions at the League's CIT conference today. Here are some highlights of some of those session, including:
* Harnessing the Power of Technology to Enhance Educational Achievement Opportunity
* 3dh HoloProjection
* Enabling Teamwork and Collaboration with Windows SharePoint Services
The General Session at the CIT conference was Harnessing the Power of Technology to Enhance Educational Achievement Opportunity presented by Piedad Robertson, President, Education Commission of the States (ECS).
I was not aware of the ECS prior to coming to the conference, but now on two separate occasions, they have been introduced to me. I think I will have to do some more research on what ECS does and I will be sure to let you know. ECS works with all 50 States one education policy and has a number of initiatives. ECS has been developed from a compact among the states that they needed a separate organization that will research and provide recommendations on policy.
Her objective was to discuss the opportunities that technology still has for us that we have not yet explored. Technology is growing in significance for us to provide the tools needed for our workforce.
Technology is currently viewed as an add-on to teaching and learning. It is constrained by funding, psychological, political and cultural issues. 37% of K-12 students use wireless networks, 42% use laptops. It is still limited.
She felt that in the horizon was the impact of technology over next 5 years on K-12 – if supported by broadband, WANS for data, voice and video. She envisions students will share applications, work on docs and play games in real-time and take advantage of outdoor classroom to gather data, use intelligent tutoring technology to serve individual needs and learning styles. Pursue topics across the disciplines = new model of education. Students will be better prepared for college, the workplace and an information-driven society. This reshapes and restores the role of teacher to guide. Teachers will serve as a mentor and coach to reinforce the learning process.
She discussed the importance of the Internet and how students can use real-time data and other innovative and real-time resources just as we have been discussing this in the RWLO project.
Our students have been raised in a digital world. They use technology differently and approach lives and daily activities differently because of technology.
She believes that we cling to a belief that education must occur in classrooms. We need to be liberating for students and teachers. We are competing in a dynamic global market where skilled workforce that is adaptive gets the leading edge. Companies have alternatives to finding their workforce if schools do not provide trained workers. We must prepare our students for a world of technology fluency, life-long learning, and collaboration.
She indicated that we must go beyond repacking our educational models in a digital format. It is time to look outside of the box to see change. I would be interested in hearing from you as to how you think we can use technology in manners outside of the box to enhance teaching and learning?
Do you think that some of the things we are doing with Ocotillo, looking at RLOs, hybrid learning, e-portfolios and emerging learning technologies are outside of the box? Do you think there is a place for us to start thinking about some more innovative ways to help our students learn using technology?
I attended a presentation on 3dh HoloProjection – an up and coming virtual reality technology.
The equipment in this demo is very similar to that with the GeoWall at SMCC. It differs from the GeoWall in that they have a production house to create the learning objects to be used with the technology and they have real-time rendering capabilities.
It was quite fascinating to see them take MRI data and render it to be able to visualize it immediately.
They’ve stated that the use of 3d imaging has had a marked increase in student comprehension. They also discussed the ability to have one lecturer holoconferenced to several different locations so that one person could deliver the content to many classrooms.
They intend to have certified rendering centers where productions for the technology can be created and be a funding source for the schools that produce the content.
They demonstrated technologies including:
• 3-d scan
• Holoconferencing
• MR datasets for medical courses
I thought that it was pretty exciting and has a great deal of possibility, it is just a very costly expenditure at this time.
I attended the session Enabling Teamwork and Collaboration with Windows SharePoint Services I was very interested in t his as I know it is a technology coming to my College very soon!
Windows SharePoint Services allows those with a MS Windows 2003 Server to download software that includes:
Shared document library
Calendars (can have a number of event calendars and view them in many ways – additionally you can create a workplace for the event – neato!! And it links to outlook)
Surveys
Discussions boards
Specialized alerts
Tasks and assignments
Their website includes 33 tutorials for training purposed on the features
Not only were we introduced to the SharePoint technology but also to the use of Tablet PCs. I’ve had the pleasure to use them before and I love the things that you can do with them. Specifically the flexibility and the ability to annotate, etc. I love that it converts handwritten text into typed text and the ability to capture drawing and hand writing!
They demonstrated the power of the Tablet PC using Microsoft's Physics Illustrator, developed by MIT. I have seen that several times and it always amazes me how incredible it is that we have such rich learning resources available to us free of charge.
According to the presenters, Des Moines Area Community College has done a good implementation of SharePoint on their campus. They recommended that they be contacted if you are interested in hearing about the implementation.
You can add Web Parts created in either FrontPage or Visual Studio.
Per the presenters, Blackboard has announced support for SharePoint and supports the ad hoc creation of parts. Allows faculty and students to have control over individual parts and empowers them to manage the sites. They’ve created a series of webparts to expose it to the SharePoint interface.
This was a great presentation – I loved that it was teaching a software using emerging technologies and was interactive and hands-on!
Posted by lyoung at October 24, 2005 06:40 PM in category
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Comments...
Wow! You guys are busy over here. Sounds like the conference has been very informative. Thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Alisa Cooper at October 25, 2005 04:49 PM
