How Emotion Impacts the Brain & Influences Learning

As August comes to a close, I am invited to attend our campus in-service arranged by our Instructional Chair and  my supervisor Barbara K. V. Johnson. Good stuff about how the brain learns by famous neurologist, Dr. Judy Willis!

Flipping the Classroom in Leadville

Still in August! I was given the opportunity to do a full day workshop on the flipped classroom. Interestingly, everyone who attended already knew what  it meant to flip the classroom and had even used the method in their classes but they were excited to hear about what others think and their experiences and ideas for improving the experience for students such as Kim Gimbar, who I called our "guest speaker" but who I was able to bring into the classroom through the magic of YouTube.

Also in the second half of the workshop, they appreciated time spent searching through a variety of open educational resources they could use in their classroom. such as those found at MERLOT.

Contextualizing Math for Energy Students

Colorado is in the middle of redesigning courses in developmental math and writing so one of my summer projects was to work with our fine adjunct math instructor Laura Van Deusen on creating a contextualized version of math lessons for our integrated energy students. We discussed a variety of ways she could do it and various tools she might use until she finally settled on using the Livescribe pen to created narrated lessons that students could work through at their own pace. I will let her tell you about her experiences in her Innovations for Teaching & Learning blog post.

These tutorials combined with Khan Academy video and mastery quizzes should help provide students with basic math that they may have forgotten or just provide refreshers when needed. Oh did I mention that the tutorial modules are available to you open source? Here is a link to the content that our energy instructors have available for students in their integrated energy and process technology courses.

Smartboards in the Classroom

For my first ever session on using a Smartboard in the classroom, I collaborated with a co-worker from CMC's Office of Innovations in Teaching & Learning, Michelle LeFebvre. Michelle moonlights as a CMC instructor when she is not pursuing her calling as a Professional & Personal Empowerment Energy Coach.

We have found that instructors do not use the fabulous equipment such as the Smartboard, in their teaching because they don't really know how it works, they don't have time to learn, and they are afraid to look silly in front of students. I explained to them that the Smartboard is very much like their Smartphone or their touch screen tablet and you could see the lightbulb go on! So we showed them a few tricks and explained few tips, and then we let them come up to try out the tools themselves. Here is a good video if you want to see a few of the activities you can create with the Smartboard Notebook software - very powerful stuff! The session went pretty well for a first time event. Faculty really enjoyed coming up to try it out and we sent them away with handouts in the hopes that they would try out some of the other tools themselves. Baby steps!