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March 11, 2012

Giving Back to Future Teachers

FEA BadgeLast week I was asked to present at the Future Educators Association (FEA) State Conference at Grand Canyon University (March 1-2, 2012). I’ve been asked in the past to do workshops for students, adjunct faculty and residential faculty, and I always take the opportunity to teach technology skills. So this opportunity was no different. The focus of the 45 minutes session which I presented with my colleague Sue Glascoe, MCC math faculty, was our three favorite tools. I use many software tools just to help me organize and manage my online teaching life. So this workshop focused on my 3 most valuable tools that help me do just that. I demonstrated how to use Google Apps, including Gmail, to create forms, contact groups and filters for classes to create a well managed teaching environment. A second tool that I shared was Google Voice, a tool that allows for me to give students a phone number where they can both call and send text messages and allow for me to manage who, what, when, where, and how I receive those messages. The last tool I covered was audio podcasting tools for reminders and brief updates for classes using AudioBoo and iPadio. My workshop demo page is located on my wiki: http://drcoop.pbworks.com/w/page/27251733/3tools

I was surprised that there were only two technology sessions during the conference, but I guess that’s better than none. We did our session three times, so we touched a good number of future teachers. I had a great time presenting with Sue, and we both know that being examples and modeling how we teach with technology will fuel future teachers to be creative and step outside the box and try new things in the classroom.

Although this is outside my 6 hours of accountability for my Friday, I think my time was well spent and more valuable than anything I could have done while on campus sitting in my office.

 

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