JCC+Resources

=Resources for Faculty at JCC= A page for the many resources (human, machine, virtual, etc.) available to faculty at JCC for the purpose of improving their practice via use of technology.

Mark and I ran a fun session at "faculty captivity day" (a.k.a. convocation) on using cloud computing in teaching. After meeting several times to hammer out some ideas and ways to constrict out comments to a manageable amount, we came up with a brief handout and a whole bunch of examples to use in discussing "Cloud Computing in Terrestrial Teaching." Several attendees mentioned that they found it useful and informative, though I would expect nothing different from polite colleagues such as we have at JCC. :-) I truly hope that the audience had as much fun and learned as much from attending as we did in preparing and presenting. The biggest revelations for me were about the ways in which pedagogy, content, assessment, and daily professional life (e.g., keeping all one's plates spinning, technologically speaking) are coming together via networked, "cloud" computing; and how teachers and students, just like employees and bosses elsewhere, are increasingly able to take their computing needs into their own hands with more personalized and consistent results. Using the cloud means having consistent, reliable access to what I need when I need it; but it also means I'm responsible for understanding the ways things operate for me in my own context. This is a very refreshing change from a hierarchical vision of IT (which, I took pains to point out in our session, does not stand for "//Instructional// Technology," so we shouldn't expect it to behave as such).
 * On 5/7/11: Steve says...**

I presented a professional development session on "Making Use of Mobile Devices in Teaching" to a small audience of instructors. It was a good chance for me to develop a more thoughtful response to the all-too common situation we're seeing in the classroom these days: students busily texting on their cell phones during class. It is understandable that the knee-jerk reaction most of us have is to assume students are unfocused or not paying attention if they are using a mobile device, especially for those who teach in more didactic settings. However, as more and more useful applications and devices are coming into our students hands, it is becoming less reasonable to start with the "do not use them" approach to mobile devices -- especially as we, ourselves, are nearly lost without our own! The presentation took a bit of a theory-to-practice approach, trying to provide reasons for considering mobile devices less as nuisance and more as useful educational tool. In addition to my handout (see link above), I also made my presentation slides available. This presentation was inspired by working with Alana Tuckey on her presentation last semester on her impressive work with Jing (screen/video capture software) to produce YouTube videos for her students. Check out the presentation slides for that for more information.
 * On 3/22/11: Steve says...**

I just got done talking with Jim Jones (head of IT) about a host of things, including my desire (ultimately, a futile one) to connect my iPad to the college network and the kinds of tools that the college offers to faculty. One of the things he talked about was Microsoft's new "live@edu" service, which is provided for every applicant and student at JCC. It's worth looking into as a kind of "institutionally sanctioned" version of Google Docs/Chat. @http://www.microsoft.com/student/en/us/software/live-at-edu.aspx
 * On 1/18/11: Steve says...**