Then we got started with the planned sessions for the rest of the day.  The intro sessions were all held in computer labs, so participants there were actively working with Moodle and practicing skills.  These sessions were very popular as a large percentage of the conference participants are just starting with Moodle.

I was pleased to go to a Mahara workshop, because I have been experimenting with Mahara for some time but was interested in seeing how other people were using it.  Two other people from my institution also attended this session, and we are going to try to set up a pilot instance for one of my classes in the fall.

I also went to a presentation on outcomes, which is another thing I really want to work on this fall.  Right now, the outcomes can be set up site wide so that teachers in multiple courses can use the same outcome.  However, I don’t think there are really any good reporting tools to pull out information and aggregate it across courses.  So maybe we will work on that.  I think that all the information should be stored in the gradebook tables, so if we can figure out how to write the queries, we should be able to aggregate the information.  For general education assessment, this could be a great tool.

At the end of the day, we had a debrief and then dismissal.  We hit the road home about 4:30.  I enjoyed the conference very much, and I met some really nice people.  I appreciate Metrotech for sponsoring this even.  Maybe we will do it again next year!

I am pleased to be teaching the Advanced Technology in Schools course again.  This one doesn’t come around very often, and it is one of my favorite courses to teach.  That is probably because I learn as much as anyone!

We are working in an intense, 3 week format.  About half the work will be done on-line and half in a computer lab on campus.  We focus on web 2.0 technologies and consider how those things can be used to engage students in communication, collaboration, and reflection.

This class uses two parallel moodle courses.  One with assignments and grades, where students have the student role and the instructor has editingteacher rights.  The other is a true, shared course and everyone in the class has editingteacher rights.  We keep the resources in the shared course and part of the fun is for everyone in the class to post resources and links so they will become part of the course the next time.

We will be experiencing the usual topics–blogs, wikis, social networking applications–as well as a variety of collaborative and multimedia tools to enhance learning.  I hope that each student will, at the least, contribute new artifacts to a digital portfolio and, at most, embark upon the creation of a personal learning environment woven together with a variety of tools.

We use a shared blog on eduspaces.net, mostly because there are some social networking tools there and I have been a member of that community for some time.  Hopefully, some other eduspaces members will drop in and comment on the student’s posts from time to time.

So if you are interested in technology and education and have a mind to do so,  please join the csc3315 community at eduspaces and participate with us!  We will be active for the remainder of the month of May (2008).