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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Chancellor
Western Governors University
University Texas Austin, TX
Michael Baker
Strategic Vertical Market Development
Vaddio
PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS
Workshop 1:
Mobile Learning: From the Margins to Mainstream
Presenters: Bill Zobrist, Director, Mobile and Online Learning Product Planning, Pearson and Neil Allison, Director, Market Development and Strategy, Pearson
Education is on the cusp of the next technology revolution and it is mobile! This workshop will explore how educators and product developers see mobile learning moving from the margins of academia into the mainstream. We will look at the fast changing mobile learning market – real examples and lot’s of them – from a view on the ground. These examples will be of educators using the products and their stories as exemplars for others to consider. The workshop leaders will pose crucial questions designed for attendees to engage in substantive discussion on challenges facing mobile learning implementation with the goal of helping them consider their implementations.
Workshop 2:
State Chapter Leadership Workshop
Presenter: Ken Conn, Senior Vice President for State Chapters, USDLA
Join us at the first gathering of the state chapter leadership attending the National conference to network, share, plan, and learn with one another. We will focus on various aspects involved with state chapters that will provide knowledge, resources, momentum, and energy to take back to your local teams. This pre-conference workshop will have value in bringing the state chapter leadership together in a face to face format to network, share, plan, and learn with one another. Following this session it is expected that the attendee will (1) have knowledge of the active and forming state chapter leadership, (2) have resources and strategies that other state chapters are using to maintain and grow their associations, and (3) have a stronger network of individuals that they can collaborate with.
Workshop 3:
Learning from YouTube: How Pseudo-Synchronous Interactions Can Enhance Video Instruction Presenter: Dr. Ari Bader-Natal, Chief Learning Architect, Grockit
Video is playing an increasingly important role in online learning, and exciting new web technologies are now emerging that enable a new level of peer interactions and learner collaborations around video instruction. For self-paced distance learners engaging with long-form presentations of complex concepts, content-centered peer dialogue can be incredibly valuable. Most video-hosting websites today support some limited peer interactions through a shared comment thread, but this format inherently treats the video as a two-dimensional object, ignoring its most meaningful dimension: time. What could peer interactions around web video look like when temporal context is treated as critically-relevant? In this session, we explore a number of freely-available tools that provide answers to this question, and share a set of concrete examples of how distance learning educators and administrators can benefit from using these tools in their courses and programs. Join us to learn how to spark lively student discussions around (and within) video instruction. Help us discuss and explore ways that this coming wave of web technologies can transform the distance learning experience.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
About United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA)
The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) is a non-profit association formed in 1987 and is located in Boston, Massachusetts. The association reaches 20,000 people globally with sponsors and members operating in and influencing 46% of the $913 billion dollar U.S. education and training market. USDLA promotes the development and application of distance learning for education and training and serves the needs of the distance learning community by providing advocacy, information, networking and opportunity. Distance learning and training constituencies served include pre-k-12 education, higher and continuing education, home schooling as well as business, corporate, military, government and telehealth markets. The USDLA trademarked logo is the recognized worldwide symbol of dedicated professionals committed to the distance learning industry. http://www.usdla.org
