Tech Day 2010
August 24, 2010
Tech Day 2010 went amazingly well. Jill & I had 28 intermediate-level freshmen–and we put them through their paces! Everyone signed up for the ePortfolio system, and joined our group Tech Day ePortfolio. They split off into ten groups, 2-3 students per group, and generated some content for our ePortfolio on a particular piece of software, web app, or idea.
Our students really took to this. They didn’t need the very basic “how does this Mac work?” refresher–though there is a handy checklist on the ePortfolio for anyone still seeking help getting started. So it didn’t take very long before they were hard at work on one of ten topics:
- System Preferences
- Flickr and social photo sharing
- Photo Booth
- Video conferencing
- Jing
- iMovie
- YouTube
- GarageBand
- Maps and timelines
- Copyright
After generating some content and writing a post, each group presented their material to the group as a whole. It was a rousing success! Not only did they educate their peers–nearly every group taught Jill or I something we didn’t know! We did have some embedding issues–I hope we can resolve that, and in any case, it generated some discussion about the difference between “upload” and “embed.” Also, this was a pretty flexible exercise–the YouTube and iMovie groups merged, making a video, then using YouTube’s annotation features to add material to their creation. It was great to see an energized, dynamic crew of students learn something new, and then turn around and share it. A promising start to a new school year.
Next year, I think I might refine the tasks somewhat–but I think that after 4 years, I’ve hit on a really good model for Tech Day. Jill’s collaboration on the pedagogy made a big difference–it was great to have someone to think through things with beforehand. I also think this is a transportable exercise across levels–instead of asking beginners to master, say, GarageBand, you could ask them to learn and demonstrate simpler things about the Mac.
To prepare for this exercise, we created an ePortfolio, added some basic how-to content, came up with ten topics and short project explanations (they’re all available here as a PDF, for anyone interested; I printed each one out and put it on a card), got some prizes from the dollar store (everyone got a prize), and decided on an order of events. When students were settled in their groups (we had them count off, so they’d meet new people from other campuses), they got a card at random. And then they got down to SRS BZNS!
Jill and I were both very impressed by the quality of content generated in such a relatively short period of time. The time frame helped the students prevent the perfect from becoming the enemy of the good, as it were. Their perfectionism can get the better of them, sometimes–and forcing them to work on a very straightforward small scale was a good move. Hey… maybe I can apply that to my dissertation…?
Entry Filed under: Macaulay,Pedagogy. Posted in Macaulay ,Pedagogy .
