Welcome

Welcome to our first blog. We had the opportunity to travel to Albuquerque, Feb. 17-20, to attend the e-Learning 2007 Conference. This blog will be our way of sharing perceptions, experiences and web-links from our Albuquerque adventure. We have chosen this form of communication in order to put into practice one of the new technologies that many instructors are using in their online courses. Linc and Doug

Site Resources-Links

Experience the trip with us! Check out the e-Learning Conference program schedule. If that doesn't interest you, I would suggest "visiting" some of the places we had a chance to explore. Try out the "Old Town Ghost Tours," Acoma Pueblo (Acoma is the oldest continually inhabited community in North America), Albuquerque's Offical Visitor's Site, or the Petroglyphs National Monument.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Podcasting??

One of the major issues raised repeatedly during the conference focused on what was driving our use of new technologies. Do we use the new "toys" because they are available or do we wrestle with whether those tools really enhance the teaching/learning process? Dr. Patrick Jackson explored this issue regarding the use of podcasting lecture/content materials for students to upload and listen to at their convenience. He emphasized the "what" and "why" questions relative to the technology before going on to the "how" of podcasting. You can access his slide presentation and/or podcast of his session by going to http://www.kittenboo.com/blog/ . I appreciated his focus, however I wonder if we sometimes defend our pedagogical methods because we are trying to convince ourselves that our motives are "pure" consequently justifying our use of every new bell and whistle, not necessarily because it is appropriate but because we are fascinated by novelty and innovative technologies? Doug

2 comments:

LJB said...

Did they discuss anything about using Wiki?

ProfPTJ said...

This is something I worry about myself a fair amount, which is why I always make sure to start with the pedagogy rather than with the technology. That way, the door is always opened for someone else to call me to account and force me to justify the technology pedagogically. Does this completely prevent the kind of self-serving rationalizations that you are worried about? No. But maybe it can minimize them, at any rate.