What I Learned at NCCE, 2016

At the end of February, 2016, I was fortunate enough to go to the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE) conference in Seattle. I’ve become a bit soured on conferences lately, but I wanted to work on my presentation skills, so I applied to present, was accepted, and decided to attend this one.

To my surprise, it ended up being one of the most useful conferences I’ve ever attended. My presentation went well, and I now have some things I know I can work on. The networking was good, as always at these things. And, I attended many very good sessions that gave me information that is usable immediately and in the future.

I have pages of notes that I took. However, in this post, I will highlight a few of the things I learned that I thought were especially useful.

Aerial Photography / Videography

Presenter: Joe Dockery

1. All of the information from this session can be found here. There’s a lot in here, so if you are interested in quadcopters being used for education, this is a great page to get you started.
2. If you want to gain acceptance for the use of quadcopters in your school, call them “quadcopters”, not “drones”. The connotations associated with the word “drone” may turn people off.
3. Before letting the students use quadcopters, make the students go through a training program with videos, a manual, hands-on practice, and an exam. At the end, give them a “license” from the school to fly quadcopters. Make them reapply each year.

From Textbooks to Playlists: The Rise of Multimodal Learning

Presenter: Laurie Burruss

1. The presentation slides can be found here.
2. We’ve had hundreds of years to perfect the essay. We haven’t had long at all to perfect the video essay. Work needs to be done.
3. At Dartmouth, half of the English 101 courses are now requiring a video essay / multi-modal essay because the regular essay were getting to be too formulaic. The video essays have a five minute time limit. Then, the students write an essay about the same topic as their video essay. What the university has found is that the written essays are then of a higher quality because the students have to really understand and digest the content in the multi-modal form first.
4. Good videos are not selfie videos. They are about the topic of the video and focus the filming on that, not the student.

Presentations by Leslie Fisher

Presenter: Leslie Fisher

1. Snapmap for Instagram will map out the last 20 geotagged photos for a public account. My own thought is that students could use this to see if their photos show up. If the photos do show up, students could be asked if someone could follow the account for a time and find out where they live, where they like to go, if their family is out of the house for an extended time, and if the student is home alone.
2. I learned a new way of using Kahoot: selfie Kahoots. A selfie Kahoot can be used as an icebreaker or as a way to learn more about people. One question could be about a student or teacher and be set up like three truths and a lie. Others would have to correctly guess the lie. Or, a statement could be made, and the answers each have a different person’s name. Then, others have to guess which person matches the statement.

You’re So Distracted You Probably (Don’t) Think This Presentation is About You

Presenter: Jason Neiffer

1. The presentation slides can be found here. 
2. Simplify online learning environments as much as possible. If there is too much clutter on the screen, it gets confusing and distracting for students.
3. Some tips and solutions for everyone:
   1. Use technology’s granular controls to battle distraction. For example, turn off notifications on not only your mobile devices but also your laptops and desktops.
   2. Be mindful of the physical location of your technology. Don’t sleep with it next to you, and stack your phones when having dinner or in other face-to-face environments when you should be focussing on those around you.
   3. Invite students to help create (re-create) and reinforce community norms.
   4. Experiment with what works for you. Analyze the results. Change what you are doing. Repeat this process until you find what works.
4. Avoid banning phones. Students need to develop these skills and cannot do that if the phones are not with them.