Brad Hokanson, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota College of Design, Housing, & Apparel

COTF IX keynote speaker

Dreamweaver for Educators Workshop

The morning workshop will provide an introduction to Macromedia Dreamweaver including organization of sites, basic pages, templates, design using frames, tables, images, and text. Participants are assumed to have a good understanding of computers, the internet, using the mouse.

The afternoon workshop will include the use of Coursebuilder, an extension of Dreamweaver that helps create online quizzes and evaluations.

Participants may attend either or both workshop sessions, depending on their knowledge of Dreamweaver.

Prior to the workshops, participants should also have made arrangements with their ISP for posting of their sites and/or storage capability for the work they will develop. Handouts and workshop CD's will be provided to participants by the instructor. A 30 day trial version of Dreamweaver will be available for both Macintosh and Windows computers.

Kurt Squire, assistant professor in educational communications and technology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a Visiting Research Fellow at MIT

COTF X afternoon keynote speaker

Digital Games and Education:
Beyond Play to Pedagogy

Your students play them. The students they will be teaching play them. What do you know about digital games?

If you think digital games are only violent diversions for teenage boys, you need to come to this seminar. If you are already exploring digital games as pedagogical aids or as a research area, you need to come to this seminar.

This special event is detailed here.

Enhance Learner Interaction with Web-Based Games and Synchronous Communication

Have you ever wondered what you can do to enhance student's learning interest and classroom interaction? Are you interested in bringing some fun to your classroom and keeping the students focused on the content? This workshop will introduce you to a few web-based authoring tools and communication systems that will hook your students on learning.

In the first half of the workshop participants will get a chance to try out some quick and easy tools to create interactive learning games. The games are best suited for learning or reviewing terms, vocabulary, key facts or concepts but might be used as simple assessment measures as well. Most are free or very inexpensive. Those to be examined include a Jeopardy Powerpoint template, Quia and QuizCenter.

The second half of the workshop examines a number of synchronous communication systems and the pedagogical applications of synchronous chat. The appropriate use of synchronous communication can foster a sense of community and promote both cognitive and affective learning. The synchronous systems to be introduced in the session include VirtualWorld, Palace, and TappedIn. The systems are freely available to educators. This session will focus on current research and instructional activities appropriate for synchronous interaction. The participants will take virtual field trips into various educational communities to meet with guest speakers and experience first hand the fun of synchronous communication.

Workshop cancelled due to low enrollment.

Registrants have been contacted.

Tom Reinartz, English/Language arts teacher at Rosemount High School and instructor of technology courses in the K-12 technology certificate program at the University of Minnesota

"Free" Educational Software

While many colleges and schools provide computing resources, a wide range of resources is also available online at little or no cost to the individual instructor. This session will present and demonstrate the use of freely available software and its use in education. Participants in the workshop will come away with a list of technology resources for teaching and learning along with powerful ways to use them.

Tom Reinartz teaches English/Language arts at Rosemount High School and technology courses in the K-12 technology certificate program at the University of Minnesota. As a teacher and teacher educator, Tom invests time finding powerful software to best address the technology needs of budget conscious schools. Tom is currently finishing his PhD in Instructional Systems and Technology at the University of Minnesota.

Workshop cancelled due to low enrollment.

Registrants have been contacted.

Revisioning Your Course for the Online Environment

Teaching a class online or augmenting a traditional course with online tools requires more than just facility with a course management system. In the online environment you communicate with students in a different medium. Your pedagogical style and insight are still the roots from which the learning experience grows, but the online course holds different potentials and pitfalls that must be negotiated.

In this hands-on workshop we will engage both the pedagogical and technological challenges of developing a creatively revisioned course. Participants are encouraged to bring syllabi and materials from a course they would like to bring online. We will begin with a brief presentation that reviews the capabilities of online courses and outlines a process for reviewing your course. Then we will break into smaller groups to discuss our courses and trade ideas for converting them. When the group reconvenes we will share our insights and look for common insights and concerns.

Introduction to Blackboard

Blackboard is a Learning Management System used as a conduit to provide web-based content, media and communication. This reliable and easy to use software allows faculty to connect with students in new and exciting ways. This hands-on workshop will provide attendees the opportunity to explore the basic course-building tools in Blackboard. Among the topics we will cover are the Blackboard portal, the continuum of design and application in Blackboard, and basic course construction tools. Practice courses, accounts, and materials will be provided.

Lief participated in the project team that helped develop and deliver the University's in-house classroom training for Blackboard, and became a certified Blackboard trainer in December of 2002.

Maximum: 12

Minimum: 6

Reserved: 0

Confirmed: 5

Game Design

The goal of the workshop is to develop a game design proposal. Participants should come with 3 proposals of 50 words on 3 different white index cards with no identification on the cards. Game proposals can range from pure fun to pure education and anything in-between.

Goals for this workshop are two:
1. how to design a game
2. how to teach game design.

Computer Literacy for Academic Professionals (Defensive computing in 2004)

Safe Computing these days unfortunately means a lot more than installing antivirus software and keeping it updated. Antivirus software doesn't begin to address the problems spyware and hijackers pose.
Spyware doesn't just track what web site you go to anymore. It logs your
actual keystrokes, tracks what programs you run, activates countless
pop-up windows, changes your home page, redirects your web site requests to fake, malicious copies of legitimate web sites, and more. It's one of those things that's clearly wrong but too new to be considered a crime worthy of punishment.

This workshop will show you how to be wary of spyware and other problems, and how to intelligently treat the Internet as the hostile Wild West it has become. Detailed handouts will be provided, along with a CDROM of some of the most effective tools available.

• Spyware and hijackers
  • What are they?
  • Am I susceptible to them?
  • How do I know if I have it/them?
  • How do I get rid of it/them?
• Smart web browsing
  • How do I know I am really on a legitimate web site?
  • What is running on my computer?
  • The Task Manager glosses over a lot!

Workshop cancelled due to low enrollment.

Registrants have been contacted..