Monthly Archives: November 2016

Research Group Meeting – Tech Smackdown

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The Meme Research Group met, and since no one needed formative feedback or had findings to share, instead we shared what technologies we’ve been playing with. Everyone was invited to take the floor for 5-10 minutes and share. We didn’t get to everyone, but that’s OK — we’ve got some presentations on deck for next time!

Technologies:

Quizlet – Fabrizio took us on a tour of the tool that he uses with his language learning students and in particular shared the “quizlet live” feature. You need a minimum of 6 participants. We played a game in teams — nice way to have a collaborative review of learning content.

Twine – Lukas shared Twine, a tool for creating interactive, non-linear stories. It’s open source.

Lifesaver – Lukas shared this interactive film / learning adventure. Can you help save a life?

Playposit – Fabrizio shared this tool for interactive video lessons and showed how he has his language students watch target language cartoons and answer questions about them.

Research:

Taehyeong shared two articles about Math and Music. They’re both posted in our Blackboard site. The basic gist is kids using musical activities to learn fractions in math and engage students who might not otherwise be heavily interested in math (but who like music). The best part? Taehyeong did beat box for us! He is good! Here is one of his songs.

Open Science Framework – Vanessa shared the OSF site and briefly discussed how you can register a study idea and then use the site to document your project throughout its lifecycle — initial concept through publication.

News at Home:

Amit shared with us FSU’s projected timeline for getting up and running on Canvas.

AECT 2016 Presentations

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Some links to slides from my AECT presentations this year …

AECT reflections

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This is a post about AECT, and yet also not a post about AECT.

Recently (is 2 weeks ago recent?) I attended the AECT annual convention in Las Vegas. AECT was the second academic conference I attended, and over the last 20 years I’ve attended more often than not. When I was a graduate student, I was excited to meet faculty at other institutions and see presentations by the people whose work I was reading. I also developed my confidence as a presenter, and made several friends. And then, over the years, my participation and attendance faded. I was still there, and still presenting, but during the last 5-7 years I’ve done what I call “drive-by” attendance. I show up briefly, give a few presentations and support my students, attend a session or two if time allows, and then head out. I’ve stayed for one or two nights, and missed most of the events.

This year was no exception. I arrived in Vegas Wednesday morning, and flew back out Thursday morning. While there, I (c0)presented 3 papers, met up with a collaborator who lives abroad, and had dinner with a dear friend and a few others. Along the way, I checked in with my grad students and exchanged greetings with old friends.

It’s not that I don’t like AECT. I do! But as a mid-career academic with a lot of stuff going on and a mom of a young child, I’ve found it difficult to travel much and I’m often just plain exhausted. And that’s where I’ve been for the last few years.

But this year as I flew home from AECT, I found myself wishing I was staying another few days. For all sorts of practical reasons I couldn’t, but I really wanted to just attend, just hang out, just socialize with people in my field. I’d like to find a way to get more involved again, although I’m not sure what path to take with that at the moment (and admittedly my plate is on the full-to-overflowing side).

I’m going to keep this in mind as I plan my calendar for 2017. AECT will be held close to home (Jacksonville). It would be easy to just jump in and out — but this time I’m going to plan to attend. Really attend.

I’m also thinking about what keeps me so busy and overwhelmed all of the time, and how I can adjust my commitments so I’m not rushing around from activity to obligation all the time and instead can find some time to actually take in the moments.