from the vapid self horn tooting department… (cause thats what blogs are for)
I just got wind of the edited videos from last month’s Scottsdale Community College’s TechTalks ’13. I love the format they came up with, an idea from Charles Pflanz, brilliantly organized and emceed by Lisa Young. Kudos to the SCC Film department that does professional production and everyone else that was there as volunteers to support the event. It could not have been any more smooth.
It would have been enough just to wear one of those cool mic headsets.
That was one of the most fun things I’ve gotten to do in front of a captive audience 😉 The lights were insanely bright, I could not see anyone in the seats, only hearing them. I used my pechaflickr tool to run my presentation, so in a way, it was an improv talk about improv. I have a new idea, that would turn it into a sort of mad libs on the front end. Scheming…
The format of 18 minute talks was energetic, and I liked how they led and ended with ones by SCC Students. The format was described as:
SCC Tech Talks 2013 is an event where Maricopa faculty, staff, and students gather on Scottsdale Community College campus to enjoy be a series of live, 18-minute presentations about technology and the learning/teaching process with the end result being a morning of inspiring, entertaining, and touching stories with the power to change student success outcomes. The format will be like the highly acclaimed TED talks.
The idea is simple: We want to gather Maricopa’s leading innovators, its risk takers, its most interesting idea makers and offer them an opportunity to share their stories, ideas, and insights about technology and the teaching/learning process.
I can recommend checking out Donna Gaudet on Don’t Know Mooch about MOOCs
Donna took the cow metaphors where they have not been before, but also framed what MOOCs are better than most newspaper web sites seem to be able to do. Plus she shares fascinating details/data about her own MOOC on Basic Arithmetic
My good friend “Coop” Alisa Cooper shares her lessons learned from being an online teacher since 1998 – “What I Wish I Knew Before I Started Teaching Online: How to be an Effective Online Teacher”
with some fun references to what was state of the world 15 years ago.
I need to go back and watch Dave Zemora’s talk on 3D printing
I was back stage then getting revved up for my own session, but he had the table full of cool 3D printed stuff. I’m excited to see this happening at Maricopa.
And do not miss the closing talk by student Pete Mello on Amalgamated Audio technologies
where he talked about guitar synthesizers and digital music capabilities at SCC. I only wish he had done some live demos! Where else would a community college have a professional musician as a student? He has a professional studio in his house!
