Once the cold rain stopped, spring

came to Baltimore.

Jim at the burial site of Poe.

DK at the B & O Railroad Museum. Doesn't he look

like a conductor, ready to punch your ticket?

Pictures from the Conference and Hotel

The conference hotel gym overlooked Camden Yards.

Here are live posts at a presentation. This is wiffiti.com,

and the posts are from cell phone texts.

Jim and DK's Great Adventure

DK and I presented at the 2010 Baltimore League of Innovation in the Community Colleges in the last week of March. Our presentation was on Universal Design in Learning, and how we applied it to our online classes. The presentation was very well received, and we received numerous compliments from participants throughout the duration of the conference.

Other than our own presentation, we attended several very interesting sessions (as well as several snoozers). The best of the presentations was an energetic presentation by Dru Ryan (who also presented a hip-hop history class to the UN and was voted as having the 14th coolest class in the US), who quickly ran through several dozen Mac applications designed to liven up both online and live classes.

We're going to try to get him to send us all of his links so we can share them with you, but here are a few of our favorites:

Wiffiti --a site for using cell phone texts to poll a class (like clickers) or elicit feedback

OmniDazzle (Mac) - Download (cool mouse tricks for your presentation]

Lighthead - Caffeine --keeps the computer from going to sleep during presentations

Plum Amazing :: Plum Amazing - CopyPaste Pro--cool utility, remembers your most common cut/paste jobs

KeyCue (Mac) - Download--every odd key combo at a glance, for every application

These just work on Mac (ha, ha). Ok, some might be cross platform, but that's not our problem. Most are either free or very cheap.

Second outstanding presentation was on using cell phones in the classroom. The presentation looked at ways to tap into the "millenial's" fascination with texting. The use of two free programs, Wiffitti (see above) and www.polleverywhere.com allowed teachers to use the one piece of tech that almost all students have--a cell phone that texts. We're going to be trying this in class this next week.

DK attended a really good presentation that demonstrated tools and methods to personalize your online class and included a live web conference with active students back in California (although it was 5:00 in the morning in Cali, the lure of ten extra points got them up and participating). He demonstrated the use of a wireless sketch pad to interact real-time with his online students, as they worked to solve a calculus problem. This was via smart board software, which we have. He also demonstrated how he produces 5 to 10 minute videos on particular topics in mathematics.

Other presentations included one on using google earth as a tool for collaborative projects in English and Speech classes, and there were many presentations that focused on learning outcomes. The buzz back East is that it is inevitable that DL classes will have to have 30% authenticated assessment sometime in the future. The mid-atlantic version of WASC seems to be threatening everyone with this, without any clue of how to do it. Time will tell. The keynote belabored the point that community colleges are a unique American innovation. Of course, so is the Twinkie, but CC's have done much more beneficial work. This is the one unique American contribution to higher education.

Overall, it was an energetic and interesting conference. As always, we find that in many ways AHC is well ahead of the curve in distance learning, particularly in terms of accessibility. When I find my photo card reader, pictures will be posted.