Presenter: Joi Ito (@Joi), Director of the MIT Media Lab
Date/Time: Tue, July 15, 2014, 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM
Location: Venetian Ballroom

Description: Using his exceptional practical experience and unmatched bird’s eye view of technology, Joi will provide his perspective on what new technologies are just over the horizon and how that they will affect the way education is delivered and received.

Welcoming comments from Jay Bhatt

This is the biggest physical and virtual attendance at any BbWorld (over 2,500 people in person, over 2,000+ teachers and administrators streaming during K-12 live experience)

Over 200 sessions offered during the conference

Notes from Joi Ito

“Learning is what you do to yourself, education is what others do to you”

“You can learn without a formal system of education”

When you can communicate at nearly no cost, it opens the door for incredibly communication and collaboration

It costs almost 0 to try something new

Creative Learning is About…

1. Projects
2. Peers
3. Passions
4. Play

The Principles Shared by Ito:

• Resilience over strength
• Systems over objects
• Disobedience over compliance
• Pull over push
• Compasses over maps
• Emergence over authority
• Risk over safety
• Practice over theory
• Learning over education

Presenter: Paul Beaudoin, Online Learning Specialist, Fitchburg State University
Date/Time: Tue, July 15, 2014, 1:45 PM – 2:30 PM
Location: Murano 3304

Description: It doesn’t take long to discover that teaching in the blended or online learning environment is not a direct transfer of the traditional face-to-face class. The challenges of online learning often require a different set of skills and there is no single sure-shot way of solving those challenges. In this presentation, Exemplary Course award winner Dr. Paul Beaudoin shares five key class room tested strategies. Whether you are looking to flip your classroom or are ready to launch your MOOC, these five tips will improve your teaching efficacy and enhance the classroom experience for your learners.

5 Key Classroom Tested Strategies

1. Maximize Your Digital Savy

• Know your LMS – find out what is in your Blackboard platform. Your institution may have other products like Respondus LockDown Browser or TurnItIn
• Know what your text editor can do – Inserting links, images, tables, etc. into your content you add
• Going outside the LMS – examples: Timetoast, Voki, Jing, Go2Web20.net

2. Be an Active and Engaged Participant

• Use learner’s name in your text responses to students
• Use discussions and group wiki activities to
• Check learners’ activity in content areas in Blackboard

3. Reinvent Your Wheel

• Try using Wordle for students to help focus vocabulary building in your class
• Try role-playing online
• Try using Toondoo to creating visual story on concepts
• Try using Twitter

4. Include Your Learners in the Process

• Have learners make a commitments to themselves and the course. Paul recommends having students post their commitment publicly to a discussion board.
• Have learners create study material to share with each other. Example: study blue.com
• Survey students during the course to gain information on how you can improve the course, during the course

5. Reassess Assessment

• Low stakes activities are great for building learner confidence (example: jigsaw puzzle)
• Add images and audio to assessment questions
• Consider mind mapping tools like mind-mup
• Have learners create info graphics using tools like Glogster
• Allow learners to create a digital story as an alternative to traditional paper

Remember – it’s ok to fail! Failure is an integral part of success. More resources from Paul available here.