Axio Learning Conference

This video workshop for beginners will cover the basics for creating video to be used in your classroom. We will demonstrate the steps needed to make a quality video, for example, audio, lighting, and background. You will also learn about the different hardware, software and other tools needed to complete your project. All necessary equipment will be provided.

Representatives from the IT Help Desk will be available for walk-up support.

New media create new types of conversation, exchange, and collaboration. But the promise of such developments are not without disruption and peril. Familiar long-standing institutions, organizations, and traditions disappear or transform beyond recognition. And while new media bring with them new possibilities for openness, transparency, engagement, and participation, they also bring new possibilities for surveillance, manipulation, distraction, and control. The negative side of this ledger seems especially eminent in the face of widespread ignorance about the uses, misuses, power, and (sometimes unintended) consequences of new media. If we do not quickly raise our digital literacy rates we stand to lose much more than we gain from the promises of new media. This presentation will explore what is at stake, what is possible, and how we need to create new learning environments that allow our students to move beyond simply being knowledgeable to being knowledge-able (able to find, sort, analyze, criticize, create, and collaborate) in new media environments.

Buffet-style lunch available free to all conference attendees.

What are students and faculty saying about the use of technology in the classroom? Our study compared student and faculty perceptions on this very topic. We investigated whether factors (faculty or student rank, gender, number of years using technology) at either the course level or the student level predicted the difference scores on the use of technology. Differences between student and faculty responses were found in the degree of web integration, degree of student engagement using technology, whether putting course materials on the web freed class time for discussion and demonstration, whether technology allowed the instructor to change his or her style, and whether Web 2.0 technologies were integrated in the course.

Students were more positive than faculty that technology was integrated into the course and improved the learning experience. Higher student rank predicted showed slight differences for statements that technology allowed a more effective teaching approach, more convenience, whether technology had allowed the professor to change their style to one of mentor, and whether the professor was integrating web 2.0 technologies.

The presentation includes examples of technology used in these classes, comments from students and faculty and a discussion about the “So what?” and implications for future research.

There are many technologies to choose from as we expand and develop our courses. However, we first have to understand how to incorporate technologies in a way that leads to facilitating learning, not just technology for technology sake. This session is for anyone who has never tried using a wiki with their courses or someone who tried it and became frustrated. What is a wiki? A wiki is a collaborative website space which allows for easy editing and linking to other pages. It brings depth to group presentations. By everyone in the course having access to the wiki, all students can be prepared to discuss a topic in class. Why would I want to use a wiki in my courses? Many reasons, but one is that many employers are using wikis for group projects. Will students engage with a wiki? You will be surprised. Wikis are standard in my courses now. Discussions will include my experiences with students' comments collected over the past two years. If you are looking for away to incorporate a collaborative environment in a face-to-face or online course, a wiki might be the collaborative tool that works for your courses as well.

Representatives from the IT Help Desk will be available for walk-up support.

It's been said, "everyone has a story to tell." Stories have been used for centuries to entertain, enlighten and educate individuals and groups. The social element of stories allows students to step out of their own lives and see things from new perspectives. This technique has been long recognized as a powerful learning tool.

Digital storytelling is a vehicle we use to increase information literacy, writing and computer technology skills so our students are actively engaged in the learning process through face-to-face and online collaboration. Multimodal literacy creates knowledge and enhances learning with students being active participants in the digital universe.

Digital storytelling offer students another way to reflect on and articulate their understanding of course concepts, increase retention, promote meaning as well as bring clarity and understanding to complex topics, while building community in the classroom and beyond.

In this session we will discuss pedagogies and ways to incorporate digital storytelling into the instructional design of college courses. Student digital stories will be showcased.

Regardless of the tools that you may use in your discipline, yesterday’s cutting-edge technologies generally represent today’s “old news,” accepted as common items of daily use. Musical examples include metronomes and audio recording devices. Currently, we are in a period of growing acceptance of the videoconference as a viable, practical medium for musical collaboration - the new cutting edge. According to dictionary.reference.com, the term “videoconference” originated between 1970 and 1975. Since those formative years, videoconference technology has become far more affordable and technically accessible.

At KSU, student ensembles have used consumer-grade videoconference technology to perform to audiences in Sweden and Canada. Also, students have used this technology to interact with guest artists from around the country, and to expand both their knowledge base and their professional networks. The purpose of this session is to provide the information and motivation necessary to launch your first videoconference. Keep in mind that this is not a discussion of high-end, broadcast-quality technology, but technology that can be implemented in the home, studio, or classroom. Ultimately, you might share the view of the KSU Percussion Studio: “Invention is the Mother of Necessity.”

There is a prevailing assumption among higher education practitioners that the inclusion of video and other forms of multimedia improves the overall quality of instruction and helps today's students connect with the content. However, the research does not support that presupposition. Multimedia does indeed have the potential to enhance learning, but used ineffectively it can also hinder it; the difference depends largely on an instructor's pedagogical approach and on how, when, & where that multimedia is presented. This presentation will survey the most useful research findings of Richard E. Mayer and his colleagues, educational psychologists who have aggregated and analyzed over a hundred research experiments exploring the effectiveness of various uses of multimedia in order to derive principles of multimedia learning...when it works, and when it doesn't. Participants will be shown examples of both effective and counterproductive uses of multimedia, along with research data regarding the corresponding levels of retention and transfer of knowledge. If your courses and presentations include multimedia - or if you've considered adding media to them - this presentation will help you determine whether doing that is helping or hurting your students' learning.