BbWorld 2017
Last year I attended my first BbWorld conference. It was my first time attending any conference and I had just started my role here at Chapman as the Blackboard Support Specialist. Blackboard Learn LMS was new to me, and I was still learning the basics. I wanted to get the most out of the conference, so
How to Upgrade Yourself
Last week’s soapbox blog asked everyone to upgrade their use of technology. Now let’s get to the more practical advice–how to upgrade. There are several ways to improve educational technology skills. Take a look at the following list for ideas. YouTube Of course YouTube tops the list as the go-to place for how-to videos. Sometimes
Signing up for EduBlogs just got easier!
I’ve written before about the benefits of using blogs in the classroom. We provide a free-for-Chapman-users platform for course blogging and for faculty websites on EduBlogs. In the past, users had to submit a form to request an EduBlogs site. However now users can simply go to sites.chapman.edu and Sign In (in the upper left
Finding the one...(technology)
As a learning technologist, I often get asked, “What is the best tool for ____ [fill in the blank]?” Many don’t like my answer, which is usually, “It depends.” Case in point: If you were to ask me, what is the best tool for polling? My answer would be, “It depends.” Then, I would have
What will Scholarship look like in the year 2025?
[This post is part of my ongoing series about Digital Scholarship…] Over the past decade there have been numerous attempts to reimagine the typical scholarly publication practices of authoring journal articles and monographs. An early experiment in this vein was the Vectors journal produced at USC, which used a variety of web technologies to create
Voices from the Archive
In a previous post I’ve written about the powerful experience of bringing students into the Center for American War Letters Archive (CAWLA), which is located in the lower level of the Leatherby Libraries. In order to extend the reach of the archive experience further than the walls of my classroom, I’m collaborating with librarian Doug
Measuring Learning
This YouTube video created by EDUCAUSE has me thinking that after hundreds and even thousands of years, we still don’t have a grasp on our assessments. Even some of our education thought leaders have a hard time defining what learning is. This video acknowledges the struggle of trying to assess learning and it suggests that
Are you ready to be Googled?
No matter what your current career stage–on the job market, or are applying to present at a conference, or publishing a new monograph–you will be Googled. And the real question is then, what will be found when that happens? Curating an online scholarly identity doesn’t happen overnight, but you can get the ball rolling with
Calming the Anxious Student
This semester has been a tough one for my students. We had illness, car accidents, senior capstone stress, and the typical spring fever–all of which brought a great deal of anxiety into my already-difficult class. As their teacher, I know I’m supposed to maintain a certain amount of rigor in the content and assessment of
That time I failed
Yesterday I was talking about final grades with my students. It’s that time in the semester that I tend to lose the interest of my seniors and others who are feeling more enthusiastic about their summer plans than about finishing out their coursework, so I was giving them some advice about seeing it through to