Learning Tech Wizards

One of the great things about working with new learning technologies is that they are constantly evolving and changing. That’s also one of the horrible things about working with new learning technologies. Knowing that today’s hot new web applications, like Twitter, may well be tomorrow’s Betamax, makes me skittish about offering predictions and recommendations to faculty. How can we know which applications and tools in the Web 2.0 universe are likely to be useful to a college instructor and have any kind of longevity?

If you’re like most Pima Community College instructors, you’re teaching overload level credit hours and taking care of a family or maybe you’re an adjunct with a PCC teaching load, “day job”, and family. When do you have the time to investigate new technologies and evaluate them for use in the classroom or online?

That’s the purpose of this blog: to share the ongoing research done by the instructional design and web design teams of PCC’s Center for Learning Technology (CLT). Moreover, we want to solicit feedback from faculty, staff, and students regarding information, demonstrations, and training presented at our Learning Technology Showcases and Hands-on Labs.

Part of the CLT’s job is to discover and investigate new technologies for use in PCC’s educational endeavors. To do this, we participate in workshops, take graduate courses, attend conferences, and network world-wide with other designers during the process of course design, searching for the tools and technology that can help deliver content and knowledge to our students. We are “out there” in cyberspace using social networking technologies like Second Life and Facebook. We tweet on Twitter, we communicate on listserv lists, instant messaging services, on mobile devices by text messaging, and, yes, even by way of plain old email. We do this to help develop technologies for instruction that students have come to – or will come to – expect from a 21st century institution of learning.

To be successful meeting the needs of our college faculty, staff, and students, we need to hear from you. What instructional technologies do you want to learn about? What do you want to see demonstrated or want to try out? What type of training do you need now? Tell us by posting your comments to our blog, and we’ll do our best to bring what you want to our Learning Technology Showcases and Hands-on Labs.

To send us your thoughts and ideas, click on the word "comments" below.

Len Thurman - Instructional Designer/Adjunct Faculty