What is the JSRCC Virtual Conference?

A Virtual Conference is a FREE conference where the meetings and sessions are presented virtually asynchronously or synchronously. You can attend sessions of interest at your convenience.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to view the Blackboard 9 course management system from the student perspective as they engage in small roundtable discussions, large group (conference) discussions, participate in synchronous chats, experience some of the latest technology for instruction, and download and view video clips. Participants who complete the conference schedule may request a certificate of completion and certification of 10 hours of professional development credit (PDO credit).

A Gift to All Technology Chalkies

I am signing off-line and into the Summit. Now that I have learned much about using technology these two weeks, I'm leaving you with my puzzle that I think reflects the the many pieces that create the perfect technology chalkie ( I love that Aussie idiom). Click image to enlarge it.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Discussion Board

I was signing into the conference over coffee this morning when a funny thing happened. I hit some key and landed outside of the conference on a Google site. There I saw a hotlink designated by a phrase that I had not heard of ( not that I know everything). Digital Chalkie was the phrase. Ah! I thought, CJ Bracken missed a least one free resource in his Panel presentation last week. I clicked the hotlink and found myself in an Australian, really an Oceania website, dedicated to this thing, Thinking I had found out about a new type of digital coloring stick, I went on. I could see I was on an educational web page, but this digital chalkie was never described, but revealed a synonym, technology chalkie. I became so curious that I could not come back to the Conference until I found out what a digital chalkie is. I launched another search and found my answer. A digital (or technology) chalkie is an online teacher – chalkie being “an affectionately defunct Aussie term for teachers.” So now that I know the term refers to people like those of us “attending” the conference, I realize just how important we teachers are. Australia and the surrounding islands even coined a name for us.
My lesson was not over, however. Did you know that "e-mail is for old people"? That is what one of the web logs, or blogs, linked on the site pointed out (http://www.digitalchalkie.com/). Now here is the point of my madness. “E-mail,” the blogger went on to say, “is for old people,” ( probably, a metaphor for anacronistic) with the innovative ways we are now capable of interacting with students and other professionals. And if I were not cognizant of this before, this free virtual conference is letting me know it by covering a broad spectrum of teaching and learning devices and approaches for facilitating thinking processes that lead students to know how it is that they know.
My eyes caught another connection while I was still wandering (sort of like the students are doing when they get all glassy-eyed or look down on the desks or don’t come into the class discussion board for days). Somehow, I felt compelled to visit the vendors before getting back to the discussion boards. The Blackboard site gave me information on its Building Blocks, its built-in wiki plug-in. The more I use this Blackboard template, the more respect I have for it. But, enough with my tardiness - the discussion boards are waiting.

Lost in Translation?

With so much from which to choose in the conference today, I am resorting to cyber snooping because I want it all. I have to absorb Camtasia to be able to combine it with the upcoming tutorial on voice-over tomorrow. It’s the applied learning syndrome. The Program Heads and Deans Panel is dragging today, so far. Where “arrrr” you? (That’s the way we’ve learned to get our puppy to come from behind the trees.) I’ve just learned that I probably have not won a prize from one of the vendors because I’ve not sent an e-mail to the vendor. Now that I’ve said that, I guess I will still not win among all the competition. Do you know what? I’m not sure whether I’m blogging or twittering.

All I Needed to Know About Being Tech Savvy, I Learned in Elementary School

I went to Grandparents’ Day at my grandsons’ school only to have an “Ah Ha” moment. The importance of this conference became ever so clear to me when I made a connection between what the teachers are doing there with these young students and what we need to know to simply keep up with our college students’ technological capabilities. First, I spent time in my fourth grader’s class, where during our one-on-one time together, he introduced me to the online stock market applications he and his classmates use to purchase, sell, and tract their investments. Then he showed me the digital story he had created on Booker T Washington. He had enhanced the text with music, pictures – some with animation. By the time I got to the first grader’s classroom, I was sure there would be the usual game playing and reading time. But, no, he took me to the website where he, too, had composed a chapter in a collaborative class narrative. Using Story Maker, each boy had learned to incorporate pictures and music in his chapter for the rest of the class to critique. I felt momentarily like Rip Van Winkle returning to a different world after a twenty-year sleep. But I quickly came back to the rich professional development in technology we are getting through tutorials, synchronous demonstrations, panel and group discussion in this free online conference. Now that I know how to collaborate in Google or conference in Dimdim, paste notes in an alternative way, and voice-over more effectively– all simple orchestrations, I will be going to IT to set up a more functional organization site in Blackboard. If any of the IT people are surfing through, I promise to only use what IT can support.

A Step Back and a Leap Forward

DAY SIX, Monday, April 20th Good day, Colleagues. I’m Barbara Glenn, Blogger # 2 now logged in for this second week of the JSRCC Virtual Distance Learning Conference. Looking back ion last week momentarily, I was quite surprised to have met someone, not an "Old R" who knows the "very Richmond-speak." I met someone who calls herself an old fogy, and even someone not afraid to call himself a digital immigrant in the Twitter Age. Of the 123 conferees last week, half of them are originally from out-of-state. I feel fortunate to be among those whose institutions implemented long-term professional development programs back in the nineties to prepare early adopters for quality online instruction. Remember, last week’s keynote speaker, who moved from computer lab to Director of Distance Learning at Halifax? As we continue discussions from last week, especially the Faculty Research Symposium held last Friday, be sure to take advantage of the full programming for this final conference week (Conference at-a-glance appears below). And if you have not yet signed up for the spring 2009 Technology Summit on Friday, April 24th, hurry! I’ve already selected my concurrent sessions and look forward to the hearing our keynote speaker present again on that day.

Second Week: 2009Teaching and Learning with Technology Barbara Glenn, blogging

Please click on image for a better view

Conference Day Five: Play it Again, Harry!

Asynchronous deliveries are sweet: you can keep playin' them again. Why not take a second spin round some of the presentations? ---and it's not too late to sign up for additional round-tables.

http://inside.reynolds.edu/profdev/FacultySymposium.2009/default.htm

Today's a BIG day: JSRCC Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences is hosting a CC-wide Faculty Research Symposium. Place the link above into your browser to check out the conference sessions. Co-coordinator Ashley Bourne did a GREAT job of putting the project together. Come say 'hello' in person (10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.) in the Gallery, Georgiadis Hall, Parham Road Campus--or virtually.

To participate in the Faculty Research Symposium Q&A session, go to the designated Discussion Board in our Virtual Conference (Remember you will find our Virtual Conference in your Blackboard program: See My Organizations). To find the Q&A Research Symposium Discussion Forum, go to the Confernce in your BB program. See the Conference Menu at the left-hand side of your screen. Click the link Faculty Symposium.

About the Faculty Research Symposium presenters: Not to be missed (RESCHEDULED) for 10:00 a.m. is Richard Goover's presentation on Dragonflies of Hanover County, Virginia (now how cool is this?). Check out Gayle D’Andrea's Dropping Back in: Navigating a Path to a GED and toward a College Degree. Gayle is excited: she has just earned her Ph.D. (University of Virginia): her presentation recaps her dissertation. Better yet, Gayle’s research centers on the Middle-College initiative here at Reynolds (this is way past cool).


TTFN

Looking forward to Day Five of our Virtual Conference

This is Bev's last stint at being the roving e-reporter for our Virtual Conference. What compelling discussions await us tomorrow? I'll check in. Here's lookin' attacha, kiddos.

Our Fourth Conference Day: Web 2.0 tools; Hybrid Course Deliveries

I'm listening in and sometimes contributing. Your trusty, roving e-reporter will check in tonight and report on the day's activities.

The roundtable on social networking such as Facebook and My Space ponders the imaginative uses of these Web 2.0 tools as well as its dangers. Amanda Hartman suggests that when adults join the Facebook community they should wait to be 'friended' rather than actively seek 'friends' among the younger set, thereby insuring their integrity and inviting respect.

At his roundtable today, Justin Cary presents 21st century composition: building a website IS composing, right? How might we utilize a resource like this to facilitate different methods of student writing in the composition curriculum?

http://www.wix.com/

Justin invites us to take a "look at a website built by one of [his] creative writing students during our poetry unit. [Justin] challenged the students to use the tools of technology to think about new ways to express poetry."
http://www.wix.com/holyllama/poetryetc

Consensus reigns at the Hybrid Roundtable: this part distance/part in-class delivery makes demands on the instructor to 1) produce and manage a coherent structure between the two modes 2) maintain a focused and timely instructor-student interaction, 3) be timely to respond to students’ contributions on the discussion boards. This group ponders compensation for the hybrid instructor's heightened activity such as caps on class size, merit pay, and other recognitions.

Also discussed are strategies to prompt students' "critical thinking": post "provocative" news articles to invite interactive thinking into postings on the BB Discussion Board. Another thread offers suggestions about how the BB Discussion Board activities could support students' learning of 'difficult' in-class lectures by uploading PowerPoints with voice over or providing study prompts before and after a scheduled lecture.

Wednesday, April 15. Our Third Conference Day

Your trusty roving e-reporter is checking in. Can't wait to have an e-lunch with Joyce at 2:00 to trade cheap-eats. e-get-togethers on this rainy day save us from putting on our trenches and getting into that old auto--not to mention saving gas and avoiding accidents.

Have you noticed that the developers of our conference are teaching us how to use features in Blackboard? Can't say that I am a fan of synchronous online deliveries such as the BB white board. Maybe I'll be coaxed to revise my judgment? Talk to ya about that after 2:30.

Well, I've just returned from our virtual chat (synchronously). Marti offered that this venue might be used to go over the results of an exam. Joyce reported that one instructor had her students tune into a TV program connected to issues in the course: as they watched they chatted via the virtual chat with congenial and productive outcomes that forwarded the learning objectives.

TTFN

Marti's Roundtable on Hybrid Teaching & Learning begins tomorrow.

Have you signed into Blackboard yet?

Remember the Virtual Conference is found in Blackboard, under the Organization titled: VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH TECHNOLOGY (SPRING 2009). Organizations can be found under the College Connect Tab.

Tuesday, April 14: Our Second Conference Day

Noted to the left of your screen is an update of the Amazon brouhaha: we are relieved that a computer glitch was to blame. The links to your left provide interesting reading about how our media, social connections, and instructional deliveries are being revised in a Web 2.0 environment.

Monday, April 13, 2009 and Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Welcome!

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date: no time to say 'hello,' 'goodbye,' I'm late, I'm late, I'm late . . . Are you like me? I didn't know the conference is linked to My Organizations in BB: just in case, point your browser to http://learn.vccs.edu Sign in and see the Virtual Conference 2009 link to the right of your BB screen.

Have you created your home page? Our Conference Developers, Marian and Joyce, publish announcements each day: please check these out to be directed to the day's activities.

Now, to take up my reporting duties. . .

Beth Gray-Robertson (Director of distance learning at Halifax Community College in Weldon, North Carolina) gives us a rousing and common-sense introduction: KEY POINTS: if you don't enjoy distance deliveries--don't do it! But if you want to give it a try, 'being organized' is key. If you commit, you will LEARN by DOING.

Beth's is sound advice--and we will hear more of her (energetic) ideas on Friday, April 24th a 9:00 a.m.: (Bricks & Mortar) Summit.

A question to blog followers: how did you find your way to distance deliveries? Did you 'ease on down a path,' get unceremoniously dumped into the road. . ? Tell a story--if you will, then I'll tell mine.

Listening in: Reynolds Virtual Conference 2009

Hello! Bev here: I'll be surfing the conference sessions, listening in, and reporting the conversations. I welcome you to participate by sharing your comments, your impressions during the first conference week: Monday, April 13 through Friday, April 17.
Talk to you soon!

Listening in: Reynolds Virtual Conference 2009

Hello! Bev here: I'll be surfing the conference sessions, listening in, and reporting the conversations. I welcome you to participate by sharing your comments, your impressions during the first conference week: Monday, April 13 through Friday, April 17.
Talk to you soon!

A preview of some of the Virtual Conference topics!

• Dealing with disruptive students


• Free tools for teachers


• Adjunct issues, questions, problems


• Social networking with Facebook or MySpace


• A special forum for Deans and Program Heads


• Hybrids


• Knowledge Center


• Library Tutorial


• and much more! prizes too! virtual tours! connect with your peers!

Register for the 2009 Virtual Conference by clicking this link (created with Google docs)

What to expect from the JSRCC Virtual Conference

Conference participants will have the opportunity to view the Blackboard course management system from the student perspective as they engage in small roundtable discussions, large group (conference) discussions, participate in synchronous chats, experience some of the latest technology for instruction, and download and view video clips. Participants who complete the conference schedule may request a certificate of completion and certification of 10 hours of professional development credit (PDO credit).