Alabama Educational Technology Conference in June!

Mark your calendars and get your registrations in now! The Alabama Educational Technology Conference is less than a month away! The conference will be held June 11-13 at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex in Birmingham. With over 1,000 expected to attend (and very reasonable registration fees, I might add), this conference looks like the place to be in mid-June!

UPDATE: I am presenting at this conference! Look for me midday on June 12 to present on course certification as a model of formative assessment! Please come!

How Laughing Leads to Learning

Did you know that a little levity in the classroom actually improves learning outcomes? It's TRUE! The American Psychological Association reports that a certain amount of appropriate levity in the teaching and learning process actually improves scores as well as the learner's qualitative perceptions of their learning experiences.

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

(Dr. Maya Angelou, poet and educator)

Moment in Meme

BamaBUG 2013 Academic Technology Conference

On May 31st, the BamaBUG (Blackboard Users Group) will host a one-day academic technology conference on the campus of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Registration is free and you can find everything you need to know HERE.

Special thanks to Linda Skeete for the heads up!

PBS hosts TED

Don't miss it! Tomorrow night at 10e/9c, TED will debut on broadcast television for a one-hour special dedicated to education. Check it out here and be sure to TUNE IN! John Legend will be hosting and there will be some amazing and inspirational talks given by some of the greatest minds working on the crises plaguing education today!

TED talks are always available at TED.com and there are some great theme-based playlists like TED Talks for Teachers on YouTube.

If you haven't yet met TED ... your time has come!

UPDATE: IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, click HERE for the FULL episode!

I loved the whole episode, but especially this talk!

Watch Rita Pierson: Build Relationships With Your Students on PBS. See more from TED Talks Education.

Salman Khan: Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education

New Training Program Page

If you check out my new training program page, you'll get a couple of added surprises!

One, the page is a freebie hosted by Weebly.com. You can make free Weebly Web pages too! This is the first free site I've used that hosts multiple pages, and it's a great feature, indeed. Weebly Web pages (I just love saying it, I admit it) would make a great tool for organizing course content as well! The production area is feature-rich and the publishing is as easy as blogging updates (I don't miss the days of FTP!), so even the newbiest of newbs can figure this out. We may just hold a Weebly workshop, though, so that we can play together and see what sort of inspiration is sparked!

Another wonderful surprise is the upcoming POWER THROUGH SERIES of seven workshops designed to guide and motivate the e-course developer through the e-course development and certification process. The series is a pilot inspired by the needs of an academic department to get a majority of a degree program online for fall enrollment. We decided to open the opportunity up to other faculty course developers facing similar deadlines (or perhaps a few who might need help catching up to theirs) and anyone else interested in developing an online course!

Welcome, summer!