The Very Exciting Dawson College Educational Technology Week 2012

The very exciting Dawson College Educational Technology Week 2012 begins today Monday, February 20. The idea of the Ed tech week is to share with teachers the advances that have been made in IT and to discuss new developments such as the flipped classroom model, the use of social networks in the classroom, active learning classes as well as the general concept of the evolution of how students use technology in the classroom. This collection of events is designed to help Dawson’s teachers and members of the Quebec College Network stay informed, stay interested and make wise choices in their use of technology in their classrooms.

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What’s Happening!

This year’s lineup of events contains two exciting innovations. Instead of an exhibit to end the week, there will be a keynote speaker, Prof. Bruno Poellhuber, Ph.D Université de Montréal speaking on the topic of Cégep and Ed Tech: How our Students use Technology and Social Media. Prof. Poellhuber has been invited to present the results of two surveys of nearly 30,000 post-secondary students’ access to technology, attitudes, habits and competencies with technology. He will discuss students’ impressions of teachers’ uses of technology and the implications of classroom practices.   Another innovation this year is the four noon roundtables which are being moderated by IT partners.

To encourage participation, there will be a door prize for Dawson teachers, the new Kindle Touch plus a voucher for a free e-book from Amazon with the title Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope selected from Dawson’s book club. For the second year in a row APOP is going to broadcast all the round tables and the keynote address as a video conference allowing teachers from all around Quebec to participate live and to ask questions. There will be a lunch following the keynote address, and there will be refreshments for the round tables where you can bring your own lunch.

The Fruits of Our Labours

This year’s Educational Technology Week is the fruit of a long line of IT Events hosted by Dawson’s Office of Instructional Development (OID). For two years beginning in 2008, the Educational Technology Fair at Dawson was a one day event to showcase IT in education. Companies from Montreal that featured IT related services and the IT Partners had a chance to display their products and services to Dawson teachers. At the end of the event, there was a round table where we discussed an issue of Interest to the IT community such as the role of IT for students, how students use IT and the pros and cons of Moodle and Lea.

In 2010 we realized the growing interest in the range of subjects in educational technology could not be covered in a single day’s discussion.  We decided to extend our exploration of topics over an entire week.  Jessica Mills and Rafael Scapin of the OID hosted a round table forum from Monday to Thursday where we invited teachers to come and express their views, and on Friday there was an exhibition. We contacted IT related companies such as Smartboard and Google as well as the IT Partners to again showcase their products and services and to talk to teachers.  This year we decided to build on our experiences and replace the exhibition with an exciting keynote address pertinent to our teachers and the Cegep context.  We are very positive about this approach and if the feedback that we are getting is reflected in the popularity of this event, we’re going to continue to use this formula in the future.

Please accept our enthusiastic invitation to attend the Dawson College Educational Technology Week 2012.

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