at the College of William & Mary
Video conferencing was said to be the way of the future during its conception in the late 1800s. In fact it was originally conceived of just two years after the telephone was patented in 1876, in a science fiction cartoon in the 1879 issue of Punch’s Almanack. But it wasn’t until recently that video calling and conferencing have become more feasible.
This is a guest post by Michael Kelley, W&M Professor of Applied Science. Michael has been teaching courses at W&M using lecture-capture and distance learning technologies for over ten years. He writes about his experiences with e-learning, and about some of the changes in technology that have altered the accessibility of e-learning for instructors.
This summer in Cadiz, Spain, I had the opportunity to teach photography to a group of 21 William & Mary student researchers, and, while it was challenging for everyone, I think we all learned a lot from the experience. Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly of our adventures. Francie Cate-Arries, W&M professor of […]
We’ve got some changes going on here at the blog that I’ve been excited to tell you all about: changes in our contributor staff, and changes in our posting schedule.
While MOOCs have been making their debut, more traditional forms of distance learning have persisted (though not nearly with as much fanfare). The latest figures from the National Center for Education Statistics show that about 20% of post-secondary students take at least one class online. Instead of (or in addition to) debating whether To MOOC or Not to MOOC, I’d like to propose three ways that e-learning can potentially enhance learning and increase accessibility at William & Mary: increased learning opportunities, course redesigns, and regional online collaborative courses. These three ideas can all help to keep learning front and center.
Teaching and learning with computers has been going on since at least the 1960s, and Stanford professors Pat Suppes and Dick Atkinson used computers in a California elementary school classroom to help students learn at their own pace. Their experiment, as outlined in a 1967 Life magazine article, shows that much of how we think about technology in education has stayed the same.
The MOOC will soon die. Long live the MOOR: (Via MOOCtalk) Since the beginning, I’ve felt that one of the biggest contributions of MOOC mania is a richer view into the ways that top teachers design and deliver their courses. Opening a course to feedback from students and suggestions from outside experts can help push […]
One of the aggravations of traveling abroad for research or study abroad is dealing with getting a cell phone working outside the US. Most of our faculty members and students just end up buying a cheap cellphone to use while traveling, but if you’re like me and you have an iPhone or other smartphone in the US, you’ve grown really dependent on your smartphone, and ditching it for a junky standard cellphone while abroad (just when you need your smartphone the most) is a real disappointment. My advice: bring it with you!