Reflections
Friday, March 18, 2005
Developing a Dynamic Conference Workshop
What happens when a gifted visual designer and a writer dedicated to words get together to create a workshop? For the past four years I have had the pleasure of working with Joan Thomas, manager of the Visual Design and Development unit at the Innovative Technology Center at UT Knoxville.
She arrived at ITC from the arena of graphic design in print and on the web. I came from the world of words, and was an English teacher in an earlier career. The questions we began to ask as we created workshops together were:
• How do you use images to enhance content?
• What if your student want to turn in a multimedia project instead of a traditional term paper or book report?
• How do you assess a multimedia project?
• How will you assign that project a grade?
• How do you engage the so-called “next generation learner”?
• Do you have to know Dream Weaver in order to grade student projects?
• Can you maintain rigorous academic and intellectual standards when they are having fun with camcorders, digital cameras, and ipods?
Joan and I decided to search for answers to some of these questions and then share them with audiences ready for this great dialogue. We submitted our proposal, “Facilitating Student Knowledge Building through Multimedia,” to MTSU to present a pre-conference workshop and were accepted!!
Stay tuned….. these entries will focus on the process and the challenges of preparing a three-hour workshop.
What happens when a gifted visual designer and a writer dedicated to words get together to create a workshop? For the past four years I have had the pleasure of working with Joan Thomas, manager of the Visual Design and Development unit at the Innovative Technology Center at UT Knoxville.
She arrived at ITC from the arena of graphic design in print and on the web. I came from the world of words, and was an English teacher in an earlier career. The questions we began to ask as we created workshops together were:
• How do you use images to enhance content?
• What if your student want to turn in a multimedia project instead of a traditional term paper or book report?
• How do you assess a multimedia project?
• How will you assign that project a grade?
• How do you engage the so-called “next generation learner”?
• Do you have to know Dream Weaver in order to grade student projects?
• Can you maintain rigorous academic and intellectual standards when they are having fun with camcorders, digital cameras, and ipods?
Joan and I decided to search for answers to some of these questions and then share them with audiences ready for this great dialogue. We submitted our proposal, “Facilitating Student Knowledge Building through Multimedia,” to MTSU to present a pre-conference workshop and were accepted!!
Stay tuned….. these entries will focus on the process and the challenges of preparing a three-hour workshop.
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