Maricopa Stories Around the Digital Campfire

While most of the northern hemisphere shivers through winter, here in the desert around Phoenix, we enjoy a beautiful mild climate, and the open desert calls. Quite often evenings are spent outdoors around a campfire, where we share our stories.

For the TCC 2004 Conference, we have asked a few Maricopa people to share their stories of using technology around our "digital camp fire". They have agreed to show up at a specified chat area to meet and share their experiences with others that may wish to pull up a seat.

So browse the topics below, explore some of the link, and bring your questions to the next scheduled session. Follow the link below to cosy up to the fire.

Rounding Up Innovations in the Maricopa Learning eXchange

April 20: 16:00 GMT (9:00 AM PST)

Alan Levine, Instructional Technologist, Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction
"The Maricopa Learning eXchange is an online virtual warehouse of teaching ideas, course materials, learning objects, technology support materials... anything developed or applied at Maricopa to support learning. All MLX items are available for anyone else to use. Visit the warehouse and its unique package metaphor"

go the camp fire chat!

Walking the Digital Tightrope between Design and Execution

April 20: 17:00 GMT (10:00 AM PST)

John Olson, Multimedia Production Manager, Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center
Joseph Mattoon, Instructional Designer, Maricopa Advanced Technology Education Center
"Find out how two of the Work-Ready Electronics team members balanced the tasks of designing a new on-line curriculum, its delivery system, and coordinating the efforts of twelve other members in a few short months."

go the camp fire chat!

How We Developed A Hybrid Learning Program In A Year And Lived To Tell The Tale

April 20: 18:00 GMT (11:00 AM PST)

Dr. Roger Yohe, Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Estrella Mountain Community College
Polly Miller, E-Learning Faculty Coordinator, Estrella Mountain Community College
Randy Anderson, Media Technician, Estrella Mountain Community College
"Learn from our mistakes, laugh at our blunders, and marvel at our successes as we share how our faculty responded to the challenge of creating a hybrid transfer degree program at EMCC. We'll even share our course templates and planning documents, but you gotta be nice."

go the camp fire chat!

Eureka! I think I Have Found It!

April 21: 15:00 GMT (8:00 AM PST)

David Weaver, Physics Faculty, Chandler-Gilbert Community College
"I've dropped lecturing, testing, and grading as we know it. I've embraced project/problem-based learning with lots of technology. We've use digital video for real-life data collection and analysis, for project digital story telling, and for class capture and distillation. I really think this works better..."

go the camp fire chat!

Storytelling As An Effective Strategy for Teaching and Learning

April 21: 16:00 GMT (9:00 AM PST)

Lorraine Calbow, Counseling Faculty, South Mountain Community College
LynnAnn Wojciechowicz, English Faculty, South Mountain Community College
"We did 19 presentations in Australia as a part of their faculty exchange. Then upon return, they created digital stories titled, "Storytelling Gifts" and "Anytime is Tea Timein Australia" as a means of capturing their cultural experiences."

go the camp fire chat!





Note: In this session, two faculty from Mesa Community College are sharing the campfire.

(1) Using Digital Media to Teach Science

April 21: 17:00 GMT (10:00 AM PST)

Dennis Wilson, Biology Faculty, Mesa Community College

"Teaching lower division non-majors science courses presents real challenges, if a traditional* approach is taken. More recent approaches address these challenges by reducing multiple choice exams, traditional lecture and lab style organization in favor of project-based and student centered group activities. Digital media has been a popular tool in these student and project centered alternative approaches. I would like to discuss the relative merits and shortcomings, because there are both, of using digital media to teach science, and address how digital media, particularly digital video, can be used appropriately and how it can be misused to the detriment of learning. I will have URLs to QT clips showing 'the good, the bad, and the ugly' of video projects from my students.

* I use traditional to mean a classical lecture and lab organization where information is presented and tested using mostly multiple choice exams."

go the camp fire chat!

(2) Blogging for Learning - A World For Academics and Not Just Politics

April 21: 17:00 GMT (10:00 AM PST)

Richard Effland, Anthropology Faculty, Mesa Community College
"Blogging is an expanding phenomena and you can blog on presidential candidate web pages or view personal blogs everywhere. Blogging has been used in pilot project this spring in a "Buried Cities and Lost Tribes" Anthropology course with a goal to foster student learning. The vision was for use blogs as a means to reflect on ideas and build this into learning at higher and higher levels within the course. This can be a foundation for preserving ideas and a record of what was learned in individual classes and across classes. The use of these lies in our potential to creative innovative means for students to personalize learning and reflect on what is important. I want to share what has been learned from this and can also share what I have as the vision of how these work in class and for building larger entities such as e-portfolios."

go the camp fire chat!

The Paperless Classroom

April 22: 16:00 GMT (9:00 AM PST)

Alisa Cooper, English Faculty, South Mountain Community College
"A freshman composition course was taught using technology to eliminate the endless stacks of papers that get exchanged between faculty and students. The course utilizes Blackboard for course management, Blogger for writing journals, CourseForum for portfolios, and electronic grading using Microsoft Word."

go the camp fire chat!