It's Valentine's Day (and a colleagues birthday :-) and that means it is time for the Ohio Educational Technology Conference (OETC)! I always thought this was a funny time to hold a conference, but it some ways it makes a lot of sense. It is before all the big tech conferences for educators and before the start of spring breaks at schools in Ohio. This conference focuses on instruction, information technology, and leadership. I often feel it is heavy on the K-12 side of things, but I am always able to find relevance for higher education in the sessions that may not seem as pertinent. Required Photo of Arnold
As in past years, there are three keynotes for each day of the conference. I enjoyed the keynotes last year and am looking forward to the ones this year. Today kicked off with George Couros who is the author of three books The Innovator’s Mindset; Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, Lead a Culture of Creativity, Innovate Inside the Box, Because of a Teacher, and Because of a Teacher 2. He believes that meaningful change happens when you can connect to people. Valentine's Day is when Dr. Chinma Uche, a Mathematics and Computer Science teacher at CREC will be speaking on how educators can embrace Generative AI. The final keynote will be four educators from Chagrin Falls who will share their journey into making AI part of their education system. Eclipse Swag!
I started the morning with a session by George Couros, the keynote speaker for today, Laying the foundation for Innovation in Education. He had a prepared presentation, but he said he decided that as he was talking to people coming in that he would change it up and try and make it more of a conversation. I felt he made several good points during the session. For education, he defines innovation as new and better ways of teaching which makes a lot of sense and he used Scantron tests as an example. In some ways you can look at Scantron as an innovation, but is it something that deepens learning for the student? He addressed our need as educators to be able to adapt and learn, which I think is really important which helps us be innovative. Changing the way you do things is difficult and can be tiring but I think it makes us stronger and able to relate to students better. For example, my university is going through an LMS change right now and while it takes a lot of effort, I believe it will benefit the students in the long run and help the university as a whole. George Couros
Connect with Apple was more of an open session where they asked the participants for questions or issues that they wanted addressed. My position doesn't deal too directly with Apple products but I use them and we have academic departments that use them, so it's important to keep up with going on with the company. They did have a Vision Pro there, which was great because I haven't had a chance to see one. While the are instances out there of it being used in sort of ridiculous ways, the speaker gave some examples of why this might work well in educational settings. One interesting use developed is to use it to simulate a room where moon rocks are kept. Students only have 20 minutes at a time to study the rocks in a special room. The Vision Pro or other such devices can be used to simulate the room so that students can be very familiar with the room and not wast time adjusting to the environment while actually in the room. You can book a demo of one at an Apple Store. I also learned some tips and tricks related to quickly finding network information on a Mac and getting a free developer account for educators that will actually allow you to develop apps without paying. I did ask them about Apple's push into AI and while they did not give any new information on what Apple might be planning, they did emphasize that newer products, such as the iPhone 12 and beyond already use AI and will continue to be platforms moving forward for doing AI related tasks.
George Couros' keynote, Embracing Innovation to Help Every Learner Find Success in Their Own Way was a rapid fire full of stories of making connections and building relationships. Some of the main points I got out of it was the importance of relationship building and storytelling. Relationships take the fear and uncertainty out of approaching someone for questions and help. He talked about a teacher who wanted to be on Twitter and as he was talking to her, he asked her why. Her reply was that other people were on it and since he didn't think that was a good reason so he started to dig a little and ask her about her class. One of the projects the students were working on was recording the growth of plants, so they set up an Instagram account instead where they could post the progress of the plants. It ended up being very successful with students and parents involved in the project and turned the teacher into an advocate for innovating in her classroom.
AI-Powered Education: Innovations in Instruction + Professional Learning, featured Melissa Solema and Jeremy Hunter from the Ohio Learning Community where they provide free technology courses to educators. This session focused specifically on a course they have for AI and gave a good overview of practical uses of AI in education, such as lesson planning and content creation. They also provided some links to sites for discovering new AI tools and a specific AI for lesson creation.
In Game Design as a Lens for Learning, Drew Farrell gave a great overview of how elements of gaming can be used for education. While I didn't get much new information, the session did give me an opportunity to review the elements of gaming that make it a good educational choice. Things such as goal setting, flow, balanced difficulty, feedback, narrative, socialization, and fun can allow students to learn in a positive way.
For Wednesday, some of the sessions I am considering attending are: A New Library System for Ohio's Academic Libraries & New Opportunities for Student Learning, The Power of Questioning in the Age of Generative AI, Using Trendy Technology to be and Instructional Designer, Using Drones in Video Production, and Artificial Intelligence for Educators. I am looking forward to what I will discover in these sessions!
No comments:
Post a Comment