I find myself struggling to keep up. I like to try to keep up with research and material in my field, but with the podcasts, blogs, journal articles, social networking groups, and on and on, how do we has professionals keep up?
With all of the budget cuts and taking on more responsibilities, how do we manage to find time to pursue our own professional development? I think it is important to still set aside time to improve yourself and learn new things in your field. One of the ways that I accomplish this is by making sure that I block out the time on my calendar to attend my local ASTD meetings. These include professional development opportunities and give me the opportunity to network with other professionals outside my office. I also submit presentation proposals to local conferences. My work no longer has the money to pay for these, but I set aside my own money to go to local conferences because I think it is important for my own professional growth.
What are you doing in these hard times to ensure you still grow as a professional?
This program was the best experience of my life. I made some wonderful friends and professional contacts as well as learned a lot about the field of human resource development. The all day sessions include a variety of activities working in groups to allow you to learn from the facilitator as well as the other professionals in the program. I took so much away from this program and have implemented many of the things I learned in the program already. I will never forget this experience and would recommend this program to anyone in the field of Human Resource Development or Training.
We have started a new ASTD group in Hattiesburg!! I am very excited about the possibilities of this group. We are affiliated with the main Mississippi ASTD Chapter as well as with the national ASTD organization. If you don’t know what ASTD is, it is the American Society for Training & Development. The focus of this group is to give professionals in the area of training and development, human resource management, human resource development, and organizational development an opportunity to network and learn from other professionals in this field. We plan to have a variety of speakers at our meetings to talk about issues related to our field, do training on various topics, and motivate us (the 1st Wednesday of every other month). We have had a great turn out so far. We will be having our second meeting in August. To learn more about our group visit the Mississippi ASTD Chapter Web site.
The idea of concept mapping has been around for a while. The term that has recently become popular is mind mapping. An example of a hand-written mind map is…
An example of a hand-written mind map
As you can see, the idea is that you keep writing as things pop into your head without thinking about whether it makes sense right then. It is another way of brainstorming that puts it into a visual representation.
To me the difference between mind mapping and concept mapping is perspective. I think mind mapping could be used to clear your mind by writing anything that comes to mind to get it down on paper so you can go back and organize it later. This can often be helpful if you feel your mind is cluttered with too many things to think about. Once you get it down on paper and can see it visually, then you could separate it out and organize it so it makes more sense. It can help you think through any issues to arrive at a solution. Concept mapping on the other hand would revolve around only one concept. You would be creating a visual representation of items related to one specific issue you are trying to illustrate.
Software has been developed to assist in concept mapping and mind mapping…
Inspiration is a software, mostly used in K-12 that allows you to visually respresent your ideas through concept mapping electronically. As I am a visual learner, it helps me to be able to visually represent things I am working on. I think it is also very useful in teaching, especially when teaching PK-12, to show them a visual representation of how what you are teaching goes together. It helps them form those links in their mind. It can also be used to connect the new knowledge to knowledge they already have.
MindMeister allows you to do collaborative online mind mapping. The great thing about this software is that it allows for collaborative brainstorming. As the old saying goes, “2 heads are better than 1.” So, this way if you are working on a project with colleagues or having your students work in groups on a project they would have the ability to collaboratively brainstorm and have it electronically available (this could almost be considered a type of wiki…that’s a subject for another post).
What are your thoughts on concept mapping and mind mapping? How do you use these tools in education?
Recently, at the Creating Futures through Technology Conference in Biloxi, MS, me and my colleagues gave a presentation titled, “Does Second Life Belong in Higher Education?”
As novice users ourselves, we wanted to evaluate what we felt are the pros and cons of using Second Life in education. Our hope was give our audience some things to think about when trying to decide whether to incorporate this as an educational tool.
We presented arguments for and against using Second Life in higher education classrooms. We discussed how current institutions are integrating Second Life into instruction, including the hybrid mashup of Second Life andMoodle called Sloodle. We also showed the audience an example of an educational community within Second Life as well as educational resources that are available for the use of Second Life. The slides from our presentation are below.
Recently, at the 2009 Creating Futures Through Technology Conference me and one of my colleagues gave a presentation entitled, “Lessons Learned: Implementation of a Virtual Classroom.”
In this presentation we discussed the implementation of Wimba Classroom at The University Southern Mississippi.Southern Miss implemented the virtual classroom in phases, choosing to do a pilot before full implementation. We discussed the lessons we learned throughout the implementation process. We also included a discussion on the policy and procedures that were developed to effectively deal with any issues.
As illustrated in the presentation slides we are using Wimba Classroom in different ways out our institution, including academic and non-academic uses. We developed a set of best practices to assist instructors as they are preparing to incorporate a virtual classroom into their course which are also discussed. As a result of what was learned during the pilot and implementation, we also found that the training we offered needed to evolve in different ways to be of the greatest benefit to our institution. To learn more about what we discussed, view the slides from our presentation below…
Recently at the 2009 Wimba Connect conference me and my colleagues gave a presentation on “A Research Study on the Use of Wimba Classroom.”
The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss) chose to implement a virtual classroom due to the increase of fully online courses being offered and the need to accommodate different types of courses through an online medium.Many of the departments that were asked to put courses fully online were concerned about the lack of interaction and student engagement tools available.Southern Miss decided to investigate the feasibility of adding a tool to our current Learning Management System, Blackboard, that would increase opportunities for student-to-instructor and student-to-student interaction.After auditioning applications from several different companies, Southern Miss decided that Wimba Classroom was the best fit for the goals and objectives it had set out to achieve.
Southern Miss began implementation of Wimba Classroom in spring 2007 with a pilot group of 15 faculty across multiple disciplines.The University entered full implementation in summer 2007.
To evaluate the implementation of Wimba Classroom, instructor and student perspectives, and the impact on student engagement and learning outcomes, two survey instruments were developed.A survey instrument was created to administer to instructors and a separate survey instrument was created to administer to students.The survey instruments were sent to the instructors who used Wimba Classroom for their courses.The instructors were asked to distribute the student survey to the students in their course.The surveys were collected and the data was analyzed.
Results to be discussed in the session include items such as: (1) all the instructors and more than half of the students had used collaboration software prior to using Wimba Classroom, (2) students reported that they found learning to use Wimba Classroom easier than did their instructors, and (3) instructors reported using application sharing more than twice as much as their students.
We are currently revising the instruments and preparing to administer the questionnaires to multiple institutions, which use Wimba classroom. Data collected will be compared to see if findings are consistent across multiple institutions and provide further evidence for the generalizability of these findings. The data collected in the evaluation of the pilot are outlined in the following presentation.
Recently, at the 2009 Creating Futures Through Technology Conference, me and two of my colleagues presented on “The Pilot Use of Wimba at USM.” In this session we discussed why The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss) chose to use Wimba classroom, the pilot implementation phase in spring 2007, and the evaluation of that implementation. We discussed the methodology and the instruments used to conduct the research study as well as the results of the data analysis and the conclusions. Results discussed in the session included items such as: (1) all of the instructors and more than half of the students had used collaboration software prior to using Wimba Classroom, (2) students reported that they found learning to use Wimba Classroom easier than did their instructors, and (3) instructors reported using application sharing more than twice as much as their students. We have revised the instruments and are preparing to administer the questionnaires to multiple institutions, which use Wimba classroom. Data collected will be compared to see if findings are consistent across multiple institutions and provide further evidence for the generalizability of these findings. Below are the slides from our presentation…
Recently, at the 2009 Creating Futures Through Technology, me and one of my colleagues presented the following presentation on “The Use and Impact of Podcasting in Higher Education.” We discussed the academic uses of podcasting in higher education. This includes the process of developing training, including the steps taken in deciding what should be included in the training for instructional uses and issues and concerns instructors should keep in mind when considering the use of podcasting for their courses. We also discussed podcasting best practices and the student response to the use of podcasting as an instructional tool. Below are the slides from our presentation…
