MPICT -Mid Pacific Information & Communication Technologies
Winter conference
6, 7 January 2011
City College of San Francisco
This annual conference is meant to support professional development of community college faculty in technical fields. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it also helps us make connections with local industry.
I gave a talk on "Self Managing Student Teams." Here are some of the new things I learned from other people's talks:
1) There is an organization called the fun theory:
http://www.thefuntheory.com/
and they have shown that if they make something fun for people then people will do it. The message is that if we can make learning fun then students will be more successful. For example, the more that we can incorporate games into our courses, the better.
2) The latest news in artificial intelligence is that IBM has created a computer that plays jeopardy. It has already had a match with the world's top human jeopardy player but the results won't be known until the game airs on TV.
3) A company called "square"
https://squareup.com
has created a very small cheap credit card reader that attaches to any iphone through the headphone jack. If you make an account with square, they will give you the gadget for free and you can use it to collect money from people's credit cards. Square collects a 3% service charge.
4) simplyhired.com
Combines all of the other jobs boards into one. It tells what jobs are most in demand. I would like to use this to help me decide which new skills I should study during my upcoming sabbatical.
5) polycom for teleconferences
This is an inexpensive speaker and microphone that would be useful for meetings that have participants participating from afar.
6) Qwiki.com
This is a new website that puts information together from many different sources to make a graphical, well rounded treatment of whatever subject you want. This is an improvement on wikipedia, because it gets some info from wikipedia but then joins it with info from other places.
7) Motivation: mastery, autonomy, purpose
I had heard about this before, but it is useful to review. People studying human motivation have found that people are not motivated by money, even in their work, but instead they are motivated by mastery, autonomy and purpose. That is, they are motivated to become good at something, they are motivated to work on their own without being micromanaged, and they are motivated if they feel they are doing something important (with purpose.) We can use this in our classrooms to motivate our students.
8) Hitachi Starboard WT-1
This is a tool used by my colleagues at Truckee Meadows. It allows the user to draw on electronic documents using a stylus. I could buy one for $100 on ebay, and use it to hopefully speed up my grading process. It is also preferred by students because they feel they are gettingmore personal feedback since it is in the instructor's handwriting instead of typing.
1) There is an organization called the fun theory:
http://www.thefuntheory.com/
and they have shown that if they make something fun for people then people will do it. The message is that if we can make learning fun then students will be more successful. For example, the more that we can incorporate games into our courses, the better.
2) The latest news in artificial intelligence is that IBM has created a computer that plays jeopardy. It has already had a match with the world's top human jeopardy player but the results won't be known until the game airs on TV.
3) A company called "square"
https://squareup.com
has created a very small cheap credit card reader that attaches to any iphone through the headphone jack. If you make an account with square, they will give you the gadget for free and you can use it to collect money from people's credit cards. Square collects a 3% service charge.
4) simplyhired.com
Combines all of the other jobs boards into one. It tells what jobs are most in demand. I would like to use this to help me decide which new skills I should study during my upcoming sabbatical.
5) polycom for teleconferences
This is an inexpensive speaker and microphone that would be useful for meetings that have participants participating from afar.
6) Qwiki.com
This is a new website that puts information together from many different sources to make a graphical, well rounded treatment of whatever subject you want. This is an improvement on wikipedia, because it gets some info from wikipedia but then joins it with info from other places.
7) Motivation: mastery, autonomy, purpose
I had heard about this before, but it is useful to review. People studying human motivation have found that people are not motivated by money, even in their work, but instead they are motivated by mastery, autonomy and purpose. That is, they are motivated to become good at something, they are motivated to work on their own without being micromanaged, and they are motivated if they feel they are doing something important (with purpose.) We can use this in our classrooms to motivate our students.
8) Hitachi Starboard WT-1
This is a tool used by my colleagues at Truckee Meadows. It allows the user to draw on electronic documents using a stylus. I could buy one for $100 on ebay, and use it to hopefully speed up my grading process. It is also preferred by students because they feel they are gettingmore personal feedback since it is in the instructor's handwriting instead of typing.
posted by Elaine @ 5:48 PM
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