Gardner Campbell delivered tonight’s keynote at the CIRTL Network Forum. All day, we’ve been discussing the competencies and critical skills that STEM grad students and postdocs need to develop for future teaching roles. It’s good work and important work, but difficult work. Gardner’s talk, “Symphony Academy: Awakening the Digital Imagination” provided, for me at least, [...]
The other day, I shared a few of my favorite teaching blogs. Today, some blogs about technology, mostly in the service of teaching: Cyberpop! – After following her on her blog and on Twitter for months, I finally met Sidneyeve Matrix at a conference this summer. She was just the bundle of energy and ideas [...]
Earlier tonight on Twitter… I replied: I didn’t really think I would get a reply from Garr (Presentation Zen) Reynolds, but… Wow! He replied! The phrase “much better” stood out to me in that first reply. When it comes to engaging students, I don’t see a clear winner in the digital vs. analog fight. I’ll [...]
I’ve been wanting to write a long blog post on the idea of the “digital native” for a while now. This short post will have to do for now… A new study from the Open University that “explodes” the “myth of the ‘digital native’” has two big problems. One is that all the participants are [...]
A couple of weeks ago I traveled to Ireland for the NAIRTL 5th Annual Conference & Galway Symposium on Higher Education, hosted at the National University of Ireland at Galway. This was a joint conference between the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUIG and NAIRTL, the National Academy for the Integration of [...]
Number five on my list of five types of mobile learning is the use of mobile devices while “in the field.” One low-threshold yet very successful example of this idea is University of Connecticut biology professor Margaret Rubega’s use of Twitter in her ornithology course. Professor Rubega (@ProfRubega on Twitter) requires the 100-or-so students in [...]
Number four on my list of five types of mobile learning is the use of mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, and such) as platforms for delivery course content. Frankly, I find that educational technology people often focus too much on this type of mobile learning, and I’ve argued that mobile learning involves much more than [...]
Number three on my list of five types of mobile learning is the use of student mobile devices (smart phones, tablets, laptops, and such) as “portals to the world outside of the class.”As Ray Kurzweil once said, “Mobile phones are misnamed. They should be called ‘gateways to all human knowledge.’” (Hat tip to Judy Brown.) [...]
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a fan of Prezi, a highly nonlinear alternative to PowerPoint and other slide-based presentation tools. Back in September, Prezi rolled out a feature called Prezi Meeting that I’ve been eager to try out in a classroom environment. Today’s lesson lent itself very well to Prezi Meeting, so [...]
During the final session of last week’s 2010 POD Network Conference in St. Louis, POD’s Professional Development Committee (PCD) identified several “emerging trends” in higher education. These were all programs and initiatives related to the assessment of student learning, and they included the AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) project, the National Survey of [...]
Welcome to my home page. I’m Derek Bruff, author of Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments (Jossey-Bass, 2009). I’m also acting director at the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching and a senior lecturer in the Vanderbilt University Department of Mathematics. The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of Vanderbilt University.
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