Congratulations SPC faculty and students for making it through another semester!  Graduation is only a few days away; what a wonderful way to celebrate and share a life changing moment with our students.  For many of our students, the reality of achieving a degree seemed nothing more than a fantasy, something to hope for.  On May 8^th, that fantasy will become a reality.  It’s a time for them to celebrate all of the challenges they’ve overcome and all of the successes that they’ve achieved. For many students, it will be an emotional day as many of our students have overcome significant challenges during their time at SPC.  For them, graduation is something much more than the end of their education at SPC, it is a new beginning with a world of possibilities opening up for them.

Graduation can also be an emotional time for those of us who taught the graduates.  It is a moment in time where we choose not to focus on what our students may be lacking – we don’t focus on how many times we type the same email, we don’t focus on students not understanding APA, we don’t focus on how they didn’t post and reply to the discussion forum, we don’t focus on the multitudes of excuses we’ve heard – we choose to focus instead on their accomplishments and to the world of possibilities this step in their education will provide.

So, to all our graduates, congratulations!  To those of you who guided them along their path, job well done!  And to both, celebrate the fruits of your labor!

In lieu of a Learning Event for April, Web and Instructional Technology Services (WITS) in conjunction with The Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) hosted guest speaker, Dr. Kelvin Thompson, Assistant Director of University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Center for Distributed Learning on April 13, 2012.  Dr. Thompson shared UCF’s Blended Learning Toolkit, an open educational web-based resource of best practices in blended course development. This interactive session provided an opportunity for participants to discuss their own teaching contexts while considering institutional support and pedagogical decisions.

We hope that this workshop offered great insights and new understandings in regards to blended learning.  Some of the feedback that we received reflected that notion:

“I enjoyed his explanation of the theories behind blended courses — the idea that it’s an online class with a face-to-face component. I also liked the sites he showed as resources and wished we had more time to explore them on our own in groups.”

“I learned that there is no exact definition of what it (blended) really is. Also, the workshop stimulated me to think about a blended form of one of my current courses, trying to get “the best of both worlds”

As the demand for blended courses increases, so will the need for training.  The IDTs will be there every step of the way to help faculty increase their blended skills and develop exceptional blended courses.

A great way to expand your skills is by sharing information with colleagues.  The ANGEL Sharing Sessions are great opportunities for SPC Faculty to get together and share.  On April 17^th   from 5pm-7pm we held an ANGEL Sharing Session at the Seminole campus.  One of the topics that came up at the April ANGEL Sharing Session was How to Create and Use Macros in ANGEL.  Macros are preprogrammed shortcuts that perform a series of actions. The creation of macros allows you to create the item once and use it multiple times in your courses.   For example, if you want to automatically insert a salutation (e.g., Hello class!) at the beginning of each page, you can create a macro that allows you to insert the phrase (instead of having to retype it for every page).  After your macro has been created, you can use it on the page you are creating or share it in other courses, groups, or resource libraries to which you have editing rights (text from ANGEL Reference Manual).

Witnessing the myriad of ways that other instructors use ANGEL can help inspire you to try something new or can give you a new idea that you could blend with your current techniques.  These sharing sessions will increase in value as we prepare for the migration to ANGEL 8.0.  We hope to see more of you at future sharing sessions, and we hope that more of you will feel comfortable to share your own ANGEL tips and tricks.

Near the end of each month we hold our iPod Touch drawing (until iPods are all given away).  We have been holding these drawings as a way to thank people who attend a WITS event during the month.  The winners are chosen using a random number generator.  Congratulations to our March winner – Dan Brady, Human Services, Downtown and our April winner Ourania Stephanides, Mathematics, Tarpon.  We like to reward those who attend our varied offerings.

One of our offerings for May will be the May ANGEL SPA Learning Event.  Many faculty members have expressed how much they like the laid back atmosphere, the one-on-one attention, and the amount of informal learning that happens at these SPA Learning Events.  If you are interested in joining us this Friday May 4^th at the EpiCenter, then please register for either the morning session, which will go from 9am-noon, or the afternoon session, which will go from 1pm-4pm.

If we don’t see you at the ANGEL SPA on Friday, then we’ll see you at graduation.  Instead of focusing on the obligatory aspect of it, let us try to remember that it is a day of celebration and great possibility for our class of graduating students.  There is great value in that.  Happy Graduation!

Images from April 2012 ANGEL Sharing Session and the WITS/CETL Blended Workshop

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On March 20^th we experienced the Spring Equinox.  An equinox occurs twice a year when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the sun.  The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin words aequus (equal) and nox (night), because the equinox represents equal length of day and night.  What’s my point?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  A good teacher is half teacher, half student – aequus magister discipulus – magister (teacher) discipulus (student).  After all, how would you know what it takes to be a good teacher if you never had the experience of being a student in a good teacher’s class?  Many teachers get into teaching because they were inspired by a teacher they had somewhere in their schooling career; however, the farther we get away from being a student, the less able we are to be in tune with the experience of being a student.  We tend to look at teaching through the lens of being a teacher more so than looking through the lens of being a student, this is only natural.  But it seems that in order to truly be able to assess your teaching, you need to be able to switch perspective from teacher to student and easily flow back and forth between the two.

This doesn’t mean that you should allow students to ignore deadlines or to not mark them absent – it is; however, an invitation to view your class and your teaching through the lens of being a student.  When you do this exercise honestly, you will be confronted with challenging questions such as, Would you enjoy your class? Your teaching?  Would you recommend your class to other students?  Would you feel inspired by your own teaching?  In order to answer these questions honestly, we need to put our own preconceived notions aside and project ourselves into the role of a student.  Think back to your own education – what were the qualities of a good teacher for you?  What were the qualities of a good online/blended class?  Do you (or your online/blended class) have the same qualities that you valued as a student?  It’s cliché, but being a good teacher is a journey, not a destination.  Knowing a lot about your subject area does not make you a good teacher by default, there’s something else, something intangible that’s necessary to be a good teacher.

It’s hard to nail down what that intangible element is but one thing is for sure, teaching only becomes stagnant when you no longer challenge yourself or your class to be better.  Ultimately, part of that intangible element is the continuing and self-renewing desire to improve upon your class, your teaching, your Self.  The idea that you have “arrived at your destination” as a teacher is a fallacy that will be sure to keep you in winter’s dark and cold.  The only way to move into the springtime of your teaching is by continually striving to be better.  Great teachers are also great students.  Aequus Magister Discipulus -  half teacher, half student.

Our Learning Event was built around the Learning Topic for the month:  “Finding a Four leaf Clover: Four Tools to Assist Students with Successfully Self-regulating their Learning.”  The purpose of this topic was to focus on four technology tools that can be implemented by instructors to help teach students to self-regulate their learning process.  If you were not able to make the Learning Event then feel free to watch recordings of it at your leisure.  You can find the recordings by following the link above and scrolling to the bottom of the post.

This month we also conducted an iPad/iPod Touch Training as part of a CETL Foundation Grant.  This training was developed to accomplish a number of goals:

• to increase understanding and awareness of the value of iPad/iPod integration into classroom lessons
• to advance knowledge of mobile applications and their usage in the classroom
• to assist in the development and delivery of a lesson that spotlights the use of sound pedagogical methods for utilizing mobile devices as classroom learning tools

There was a lot to fit into three hours for this training!  Many of the participants were excited about the possibility of these new technologies; their enthusiasm was nice to be a part of.  In the coming months the participants will be deploying lessons that they’ve developed for iPad/iPod touch integration into their face-to-face classes and will be communicating their experiences with us.  This training and corresponding feedback will give the IDTs a great deal of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in regards to iPad/iPod touch integration.  During the development of the training and even during the training itself, the IDTs ran into a number of technical challenges – you see, even though we were the teachers, we still learned a lot by running into these issues!  As a result, these learning experiences will help us improve upon what is already a great training – again, Aequus Magister Discipulus - half teacher, half student.

Next month, in conjunction with The Center of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) we will be hosting guest speaker, Dr. Kelvin Thompson, assistant director of University of Central Florida’s Center for Distributed Learning.  Dr. Thompson will be sharing UCF’s Blended Learning Toolkit, an open educational web-based resource of best practices in blended course development.   This workshop will be held at the Seminole Campus on April 13th from 10:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. (with an hour lunch break). Reserve your space today by using this survey.   This opportunity will help you to become a better blended instructor and a better developer of a blended course.  Join us in being a student for the day. Aequus Magister Discipulus.

Take time to nurture both the magister and discipulus within you because half teacher, half student = Magna Magister (Great Teacher).

Images from March 2012 Learning Event and iPad Training Session

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