Mobile Learning

Just attended 2 days of a 3 day "Tech Academy" at Waukesha County Technical College focusing on the theme Mobile Learning. (I would have attended all 3 days but I needed a paycheck from my other job.) Because I am a part-time instructor, I am able to take advantage of these wonderful classes that the school offers each year for free.They are held for the instructors to keep them informed of what's going on with  technology both on and off the campus. Because I am a non-credit arts instructor, I do not routinely use emails to correspond with students and staff, nor record and report grades, use on-line learning, webcasts or group link ups. I do (personally) want to do my best to stay current with what's happening in my world which involves technology.

We always get a great bag with some good snacks !

 The opening session was on how, even beginning in high school, lectures and homework have flipped. Teachers are putting their lectures online so the students can view them at their leisure, learning at their own pace. Assignments and homework are now done in the classroom, allowing the teacher to be available for questions and help with projects. Students are learning and retaining more because they are setting their own speed at which they receive the information whether it's sitting at a desktop computer, or viewing it from a laptop, tablet or smartphone.

We also saw how mini tablets can be put on a special stand and will actually follow you as you record. A live chat was also shown where two people were sharing the same information of their computers to work at the same time on the same project. Very cool. This is not for my floral design students (now anyway) but students are doing this everyday!

My first class was on the latest version of Power Point. I have done the introduction to all my classes on Power Point but sometimes it's difficult for my classroom to have a "smart cart" with computer so I usually don't use them and stick to the "show and tell" intro. I do like this class as a refresher since there are so many thing to do with the program that I might use on another level. We covered inserting video's, recording narration, and other up grades rather than how to make things images fly in and out. Very helpful.

Next was Outlook. Done this one before, too. This is working with Email - responses, out of office, signatures and inserting logos. Always useful.

Wednesday was the fun day, "Geeze Louise, my phone is smarter than me"  was very fun and educational. Rhen Rodee did 3 hours (and we needed more) on Android phones. He always makes learning fun. I didn't know I could do a Power Point from my phone...... He not only covered the basics like Apps and Widgets, but security and where to find settings, how to download music and there is a difference between a power cord and a cord to transfer information.

Rhen showing another instructor how to play music from her phone.
That's his phone on the screen.

My final class was on OneNote. This is a really creative way of organizing information of any type- typed, drawn, clipped, recorded, video, photos, anything. You can also put it in the cloud to share and collaborate with others.

OneNote is like multi-sectioned binder(s) used to put "stuff" in. The great part is you can search for it later in a search bar. There were thirty of us working on one "page" at once and you could see who was doing what, we could all change what others had added and it "saved" all by itself always reopening to where you had left  off at. Some possibilities would be to store information from meetings, in-progress works, recipes, wedding - home building- remodeling project lists, and I found lots of stuff for attorneys already created available for download on the MS Office site. I am hoping to have lots of fun with this in the future. Can't wait to see what the team will offer next year.=!