2016 TLT Symposium

Here are my immediate thoughts after the 2016 Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5U5iC3Gm1E

To learn more about Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State click here.

Two conferences. One week. Exponential opportunity. At the beginning of the week I attended the North American Natural Resources Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The network opportunities on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday had me on an academic high. Therefore, I had been looking forward to the TLT symposium all week and (fortunately) it lived up to my expectations. I am always impressed with Penn State events that feed their participants; the food is always amazing. However, looking beyond a graduate student’s largest weakness, the event was well organized and energizing. Let’s review the day through a series of tweets. (Sidenote: The most tweeting I have ever done was conducted during this event. The ability to share thoughts and hear those of others in real time certainly helped me stay engaged.)

The day started off strong as we listened to Dr. Jones’ keynote. It is satisfying to hear that the university is on board with what TLT and its users are trying to accomplish. This was my first opportunity to hear from Dr. Jones; so, I was impressed with how friendly and genuine he seemed. After his talk, I waited around to talk to him (I can’t resist talking to a Kiwi!) and even had the opportunity to promote our workshops to him.

At this point, my classmates were all prepared to go in different directions. There was an abundance of talks to choose from which was exciting and frustrating at the same time. The talks at most symposia I attend only last fifteen minutes so we can move between topics with ease. Narrowing down my interests to only four talks was challenging. Even though I thought I had chosen my talks Friday night, I often changed my mind last minute. Regardless, all of the talks were homeruns.

Without giving a play-by-play account of my day, I will summarize my main takeaway from each workshop.
1. Sparking Student Interest Using Yammer and VoiceThread – Use these types of technologies to mix up the format in which the assignment is accomplished.

2. Penn State 2021: How Will Technology Shape the Educational Experience? – The future with technology is bright, but the goal to engage students will remain the same.

3. Assessing Learning Outcomes: SALG to the Rescue! – I’m not the only one that needs to work on assess my learning outcomes…the university as a whole does too!

4. Active Learning across Disciplines: Faculty/Student Perspectives on Blended Design – My class in Dubois could greatly benefit from being a blended class. How do I make it happen?

Lastly, the Open Innovation Challenge and the closing keynote speaker blew me away. I enjoyed tweeting about the Open Innovation Challenge and was sure to tweet excitedly about each speaker.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t elaborate on Dr. Mimi Ito’s stellar keynote. The first messages I heard  clearly from Dr. Ito was about learning heroes. Summarized briefly, a learning hero is someone who has positively influenced our educational development. This person can be a momentary interaction or a lifelong mentor. Thank you Samantha Peddar, Milton Newberry, and David Kleindienst for being some of my learning heroes. The second takeaway from Dr. Ito was about connected learning, the intersection of interests, opportunities, and peer culture.  The web created by the overlap of these realms is how learning should be. I think student centered learning would go a long way in making this happen.  However, formal and traditional education will not fulfill these needs either. It will likely by technology that bridges the gap to aid in the connected learning process.

Overall, the TLT 2016 symposium was a great experience and I cannot wait until next year!