The LFS Learning Centre Brown Bag Lunch series
If you are wondering how to keep up with technologies related to teaching, learning and research you might want to check out the LFS Brown Bag Lunch series. The series is a collection of topics that we feel are important. The series has had presentations on broad issues including Creative Commons, The Net Generation and Learning Spaces. Presenters have also led discussions on Microsoft Excel and Digital Storytelling.
Check out the past list of topics here:
Duncan McHugh has done a great job lining up the current sesaon. Coming topics include Refworks, the value of backups 
, blogging in LFS and virtual worlds!
If you are in the area, please drop by!
Poster Presentation at the NACTA conference.
The North American Teachers of Agriculture conference is all about The Art and Science of Agriculture teaching. This year the theme was The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL).
The Learning Centre contribution was this poster entitled “Creating an Environment for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: Why Your School Needs a Learning Centre”. The poster outlines what our Learning Centre does (we avoided our first instinct to say ‘we do everything‘).
After picking four things to showcase, we tied them together in a framework that recognized our Core Competencies, our Pilot Programs and the ideas that are currently in Research and Development phase. The framework was useful to demonstrate that there are things that we currently do very well. Additionally, we are constantly trying to build on these and enhance our value to Land and Food Systems.
The exemplar projects we chose to highlight were:
- WebCT Vista
- Brown Bag Lunches
- our Podcasting (PEPI) project
- Green Genes
The final conclusion was that it was our willingness to take measured risks with a handful of projects while leveraging the things that we excelled at that helped to create an environment conducive to exploration within our faculty. And of course, the exploration is the fun stuff around here.
[thanks to Duncan for putting together the poster]
We have moved to our new space!
We are now getting settled in our new space and loving it.
Post script: We had our official opening on March 15th, 2007.
PathFinder and Avatar
John Lester (aka Pathfinder Linden) is doing the lunchtime keynote at the NMC Regional conference at Trinity University.
John is holding up his Second Life likeness cast in epoxy through the miracle of a 3-D Printer (see the 2004 Horizon Report).
Technorati Tags: nmc2006reg, pathfinderlinden
The Land and Food Systems Brown Bag Lunch Series
The LFS Learning Centre Brown Bag Lunch series is starting to take shape. We are scheduling sessions for every second week exploring current topics in teaching & learning and technology. These are small, friendly discussions in an informal setting. Duncan McHugh is the series organizer and has been providing light, healthy snacks from the UBC Farm.
If you have a suggestion for a Brown Bag session or would like to attend, please get in contact with us.
The fall lineup is posted on our wiki or at this handy URL: http://brownbag.notlong.com
Educause Live Session on “Podcasting Possibilities”
A link to the March 4, 2005 Educause Live presentation on Podcasting Possibilities. Jen Reeves (U Missouri School of Journalism) and I did an overview of what our schools are doing (and not yet doing) with podcasting. Working with Jen was great! All of her years in broadcasting gave her a discipline that I had not seen before in a co-presenter. We scripted this session down to the second :).
Canheit Presentation: Fitting Emerging Practices & New Technologies into Existing Institutional Strategies
Vivian Forssman, Ulrich Rauch and I presented “Fitting Emerging Practices & New Technologies into Existing Institutional Strategies” at the CanHeit meeting in Halifax on June 13th. Our goal was to generate discussion topics for how to create a sustainable innovative community on your campus. Some good brainstorming including input from faculty members (who were clearly in the minority at this conference).
BCEdOnline Presentation posted
I presented Learning as Play at BCEdOnline to an unruly crowd who insisted on talking about podcasting. Great contributions from the audience (including Gerry and Frank) made this session very interactive. I never got to the topics of tagging, but I think I was able to pass along the mantra of assessing your work.