Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Happy Holidays from my family!

Using a tool that I promote for educational purposes, I decided to create my family holiday greeting. Glogster.com is a really neat website that allows you to create an online, media-rich collage. Check it out...at the bottom-right corner, there is a video embeded!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

It's that time of year....

The semester is over, I have one more day and a few hours to work before 2010. I am sitting in my quiet office reflecting on what I have done for the semester/year and pondering how I take my performance from good---to GREAT. I love my job, I love teaching, and I love the people I work with. Sometimes that's the perfect storm which motivates you to do MORE and BETTER. So, as I sit in my office, winding back up for the next semester, I wonder what my next "thing" will be. With faculty professional development, we have to stay current and relevant because we already know that faculty have very little time to devote to us and it's our job to make our learning opportunities hard to resist. In fact, we need to make them a necessity...without mandating them! What I really want is for faculty to have "conversations"...conversations get our blood pumping, give us fresh ideas, build camaraderie, and inspire us. As an example, I think of the conversations I have with my fellow techy faculty and instructional designers/technologists. We meet several times a semester to plan workshops and share ideas. I always leave those meetings feeling inspired and motivated. I would like to replicate those emotions with all my professional development opportunities. With that said, a few bland and boring ideas bubble up -- create a college technology users' group, schedule open conversations in the CTL....*yawn* HELP! Ideas please! Maybe I need a weeks vacation and the ideas will begin to flow....happy holidays

Monday, December 14, 2009

Season's Greetings from the GateWay Center for Teaching & Learning


For more information about GateWay Center for Teaching & Learning events, go here: http://gatewaycc.edu/ctl

Friday, December 11, 2009

Does learning have deadlines? Philosophy vs. Policy

I am reminded today, and for the past couple weeks, why teaching classes is so important to my full time gig as an instructional designer/technologist. Being "in the trenches," so-to-speak has taught me a lot about what theories apply to the real world. For example, I have always been a very liberal-minded teacher. I believe that learning does not have a timeframe, nor deadlines. I often question why we have late work policies and guidelines in our classes. Why would I NOT accept a late paper, if in fact it did prove that the student learned....perhaps a few days or weeks later than all the rest :). If my philosophy is that all students can learn and it's my job to facilitate that, then doesn't my policy of "no late work" counter that philosophy???? I'm really struggling with the insanity that accepting late work brings, because, in fact, I have a deadline to submit grades to the institution. Ugh! So what do I do? Keep my sanity; adjust my philosophy; create a policy that's a bit flexible. However, as for every semester, I have a student that wants to argue my policy about late work. Even when I've allowed them to submit it "due to special circumstances" (my "out" in my syllabus late work policy). They want to push my "late deadlines" to the extreme. "Mrs. Ballard, can I submit all 4 paper assignments two days prior to grades being due?" No! This is where I draw the line. Philosophically, I believe these students can learn, and will learn, but perhaps they need to fail (receive an F on their transcript) for this semester in order to continue on learning the next semester.