Key Tips for Teaching Online

Key Tips for Teaching an Online Courses

I developed these online teaching tips based on my 15 years experience teaching art and photography on both Blackboard and Moodle Course Management Systems.

 1. If possible…kick the first session (class) off with a synchronous BB Collaborate, Google Hangouts or Skype orientation that addresses exactly how you are going to teach the class and be specific in your expectations for the course participants. Sharing your screen and guiding them through your Moodle/Blackboard courses is an effective way to do this. You will also have to demonstrate how the Moodle (BB / LMS) tools (assignment upload and discussion forum) they will use for submitting work for you to evaluate / critique. If your course is totally asynchronous then create a video orientationto the class. I do one for every online course I teach.

2. Eliminate all gray area from your weekly assignment directions (course expectations) and make it very clear as to exactly what you want your students to do each week and how the students will submit work and engage you and each other in discussions and/or critiques.

3. KISS RULE!!! Keep it Simple as to class assignments and the instructional design plan you implement in your online courses. The more complex your online course the harder it is for you and the students to manage.  You want visual continuity in your course design scheme as well as content continuity as far as how you lay out your assignments, lectures, videos, discussions, etc.

4. Less is More! Remember don’t overload your students with too many assignments / activities. I rather do one or two task each week and do them well than 3 or more activities that may be difficult to manage for you and the students.

5. Be Present and Proactive! This is probably the best advice I can give you. Respond back to student questions and discussion posts in a timely fashion. Essentially follow through on your part as to when you are going to give students feedback on their work. I use the discussion forum as a place for students to submit works in progress and as they post images I go in daily and give them feedback. You set the parameters as to when you will respond back to students and just follow through with the course guidelines that you set.

6. Be Flexible! Students are going to run into technical or personal issues so to keep the stress level down It’s important to be flexible with due dates if a student is running into a problem due to unforeseen circumstances.

7. Synchronous vs. Asynchronous instruction. Use the synchronous approach (if possible) to kick off each weeks lesson and to explain exactly what you want your students to do and how you are going to engage them about their work. This can be in the form of a Power Point presentation or taking them through your Moodle or Blackboard Module step by step. Approximately 80% – 90% of you instruction will most likely be asynchronous in most cases.

8. Be aware of Online Learning Limitations. Its important to design learning activities that are conducive for the online environment. You may find that critiques are best for your class in synchronous mode (BB Collaborate, Google hangouts, or Skype with Join Me Screen Sharing for example). Do what works best for you and your teaching style.

9. Practice makes perfect. There is no doubt the more you teach online the easier it gets and the more proficient (and comfortable) you get engaging students in the online environment. Be prepared to change course if certain learning activities are not working effectively for you.

10. Above all else…Have Fun! Share in the learning journey with your online students! If they see you are passionate and engaged about your course material and giving them constructive feedback on their work in a timely fashion the course will be a success.

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Strategies for Expanding your e-learning Skills

Harnessing the Tools and Technologies for Online Teaching.

 

E-Learning is growing at such a rapid pace because it is…..

• Market Driven
• Student Driven
• Technology Driven
• Budget Driven

Education at all levels is changing very rapidly (understatement)

Question we must all ask ourselves…

Do we want to be behind the technological curve or ahead of it?

If we want to stay ahead of this technological wave then we must harness and effectively implement the technology we have at our disposal for delivering and assessing our course content.

1. Master the LMS (Learning Management System)

Moodle / Blackboard / Angel etc.

2. Look at your CMS as your teaching / learning hub.

From your CMS platform you can add a variety of “open source” tools that can enhance / enrich the online learning experience.

3. What other online tools/applications do you want to incorporate into your CMS

Skype, YouTube, ITunes U, Join.me, Twitter, Blogging, Jing, Photobucket, Flickr, Voicethread, to name a few.

4. Develop an online teaching methodology that is a reflection of your personal teaching style and draws from some e-learning best practices. An approach that enables your personality to come through. An approach that lets students know there is a compassionate, engaged, enthusiastic teacher on the other end that sincerely cares about their learning and success. This is the biggest challenge or online educators in my opinion and will take the most time so don’t get frustrated as you are climbing this learning curve.

Lets take a look at a cross section of these online tools and see what each one does best as to instructional delivery.

Each tool/application in the CMS plays a specific role in delivering (and/or assessing) your course content (instruction) and then you add additional tools to broaden and enhance the functionality of your course.

Within the CMS

• Discussion Forums
• Assignment Manager BB / Advanced Uploading of Files Moodle
• Lessons / Create Web Pages/Glossaries
• Test Manager (BB) – Quiz Function Moodle
• Blog / Wiki / external links
• Announcements

Open Source (Outside CMS)

YouTube and Vimeo

Great for embedding tutorials that either you create or find on Youtube into your course. YouTube for lectures under 10-15 minutes and Vimeo for over 15 minutes. Anything you ever wanted to know about Photoshop for example is in a tutorial on YouTube. You just have to sift through and find and embed the best most viable tutorials for your lesson.

Slideshare.net

Great for embedding powerpoint slide shows / lessons directly into CMS instead of linking to them for download.

Jing / Screenflow / Camtasia

I use these tools for screencast tutorials. You can record your screen and your voice as you demonstrate a technique in Photoshop or In-Design for example. Jing for quick and dirty and Screenflow for longer presentations. These can be linked or embedded directly into Moodle or Blackboard.

Audacity for Audio Editing Podcasts

Excellent (FREE) audio editing software. Very shallow learning curve to let you create audio podcasts (MP3′s)

Enhanced Podcasts (Illustrated with images / video)

Great for demonstrating “hands’on”  activities like a dissection in Biology or Chemistry Experiments.

IMovie, Movie Maker or Camtasia will allow you to create visually sophisticated enhanced podcasts for your lectures and demonstrations.

Once I create these I will upload to ITunes U, YouTube and/or Vimeo and embed them into my courses. These do not have to be fancy or highly sophisticated productions. I usually have a student keep an eye on my video camera as I demonstrate a basic lighting technique on the sweep for example. After class I put a title on it – edit out any bad spots and then embed it into the Blackboard or Moodle class.

Join.me – Yuuguu (Screensharing)

Low budget way to share your screen with students for “real-time” synchronous critiques. Just send the students a link and they are viewing your screen. You would use this in conjunction with Skype so you can all have a conversation while discussing a Photoshop technique or critiquing an image.

Skype  (online office hours, conference calls and screensharing)

Google Hangouts! Great for lectures, demonstrations, critique sessions and student meetings or real time lectures.

I find skype and google hangouts bot invaluable for office hours and online meetings. Students seem to be very open to meeting me on skype to discuss a project, look at work or just discuss a school or personal issue.

Twitter for Reminders and Course Updates

We have faculty using Twitter for sending out updates (reminders) to students about various course related projects, due dates, course changes and share short bits of information. All students are asked to create a course twitter account and subscribe to the instructor. I see a lot of possibilities with this tool.

Drop Box

Great for storing images or have students place their work in a central location for you to evaluate and/or critique.

Voice Thread

Another excellent quick and dirty voice with images application that you can embed into a discussion board or anywhere into a CMS.

WordPress Blog for easy web e-portfolios, journeling, travel logs, marketing.

I am a big proponent of blogging for educational purposes and e-portfolio’s.  All my student set-up a portfolio blog the 2nd year of our Photo Program. They set-up pages for each discipline like Portraiture, Sports/ Action, Fine Art, Documentary, Commercial Illustration in addition to posting their artist statements, resume’s etc. Click Here for an example from one of my graduating students. Ira Morris BloG

Rachel Eddins Photo Blog

ITunes U

Excellent and expansive resource for instructional podcasts and video content. You just have to search for topics that relate to your course and download the podcasts and embed them into your course. All ITunes U colleges must sign an agreement that everything they upload to ITunes U is free to anyone who wants to use it in their online courses for edicational purposes. There is a vast array of Photo History Lectures in ITunes U for example. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already created and made available excellent photo/art media content.

ITunes U Carteret Site

This is the student link to my College ITunes U site. I have over 200 audio and enhanced podcasts in my various photo course tabs. Students can download my podcasts (lectures and demonstrations) to their mobile devices or watch them while sitting at their computer. I do all my exam reviews as podcasts and students download them and listen before taking the exam.

Photobucket and Flickr

Online repositories for storing, sharing and commenting on images. You can have students post a link to their photobucket album or flickr stream to the discussion board and then you can review – post comments and help with editing and sequencing their pictures. Flickr seems to have more functionality for editing and sequencing than photobucket.

IMovie / MovieMaker

IMove for Mac users for making quick enhanced podcasts and instructional videos – Movie Maker is the alternative for PC users as far as being easy to use and enables you to create videos that can be uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo or Itunes U.

Keynote

Take a PowerPoint and add narrative then save as a mov. or MP4 file

Dragon Naturally Speaking

I would imagine this software is going to be invaluable to effective online instruction and a big time saver for those of us who are burned out with typing.

Yammer – Educational Social Network

Check this cool “free” educational social networking tool out. Essentially like a facebook interface for communicating and engaging students and colleagues on a variety of topics. You can embed video and audio into it as well. I use that as a communications tool for all my Distance Learning Faculty at my college for sharing ideas, accomplishments and anything related to distance learning.

YouTube – Thousands of Instructional Videos and Tutorials on just about every subject.
Adobe.com
Lynda.com

Each one of these online tools and applications can help you deliver and assess your course content and some will enable you to engage your students effectively in the online environment.

The trick is to know WHEN and WHERE and HOW to use them most effectively to accomplish whatever learning objective you are addressing.

You must be aware that these online tools and applications are constantly evolving and changing and you have to retool your courses accordingly.

Online faculty must accept the reality that there is no standing still in the world of e-learning. We are life long learners and essentially students as well – the online environment has forced us to be facilitators / moderators and guides to the learning journey instead of the sage on the stage.

Those educators who are aware of this reality and ready and willing to navigate the digital / technological terrain will be the most successful, in-demand and marketable.

So You Want to Teach Online………

Anatomy of an Online Course

Being a  educator in the year 2013 is NOT anything like it was in 1987. Not only do we have to know our course content area and be able to teach it effectively. Now we have to be able to teach effectively in a whole new (cyber) environment and be able to weave seamlessly between physically seeing (teaching) our students and communicating (instructing) them totally online.

This takes new sets of skills and a heightened awareness of the challenges the online environment presents us. Harnessing (mastering) this instructional technology and methodology is going to make you more marketable as an educator.

There is no doubt teaching online is a challenge. You must go into it with your eyes WIDE OPEN. The first few years moving your traditional courses over to the online environment takes time and effort climbing the learning curve. There’s no getting away from this reality. The good news is…the more you teach online, the easier it gets. Once you’ve built your online courses and develop a solid grasp on how to manage and teach via the web things get progressively easier.

There really are no shortcuts at the very beginning of this process. You have to build your courses and transition yourself and your teaching methodology over to being comfortable, proficient and effective in the online environment.

Essentially you have to totally RE-THINK how you are going to teach because what works in the traditional classroom doesn’t usually work for the online environment.

Step #1 – Gather all the course content (assignments, lectures, videos, web resources, Powerpoints, etc.) you have and begin organizing it by week. If you are teaching a 16 week semester you have to take a good hard look at your syllabus and course outline and then break (pace/distribute) the assignments, projects, assessments and learning outcomes up over a span of 14 weeks. Leave the first week for course familiarization and last week for wrap-up and exam or final projects.

Step #2 – You have to become proficient with the course management system (CMS) your college is using before teaching online. That means taking workshops and taking time practicing adding content and learning the various functions and applications within the CMS (Blackboard, Moodle, WordPress, Angel, Campus Cruiser, etc.) Please note…all CMS’s do the same thing! They are online tools for delivering and assessing course content. If you can learn one CMS you can quickly learn another – it is like driving Buick vs. a Honda.

Step #3 – Once you are proficient with the tools and applications in the CMS and get all your course content loaded, organized and designed within a design scheme then you want to have someone look it over to check if the course expectations are communicated clearly. Sometime we know are material so well we just assume we are being clear when in fact we may assume too much. All course expectations, assignments, discussions and assessments must be crystal clear with no grey area.

Step #4 – Introspection, brainstorming and Soul Searching Time! You have to visualize (analyze) each assignment, assessment, project and course expectation then consider how you teach them in the classroom/studio and then problem solve just how you are going to deliver and assess them in the online environment. There is no one size fits all solution to this and your teaching style plays a role in how you go about it.

Step #5 – Once your class is completely migrated from classroom to online its time to be baptized in fire and teach online. Best approach would be to start with a hybrid/blended course (partial online) and work your way to totally online. You are going to make mistakes and will learn from them.

Every time you teach online you will get better, more efficient and comfortable working in that environment.  Effective and efficient workfow and file management are also very important variables when teaching online. They can make or break your effectiveness and keep you from losing your mind from being inundated by student assignments, discussions, e-mails and giving viable feedback. Migrating your traditional classroom courses over to online delivery takes a great deal of thought,  rethinking and planning and should not be taken lightly.

The goal for all of us is to replicate as best we can our unique, creative and dynamic approach in the classroom into the online environment.

Teaching Strategies and Best Practices on Moodle Webinar

This link below will take you to my latest professional development 90 minute webinar that addressed Best Practices and some teaching strategies for teaching on moodle. I focus more on the actual teaching issues that technical issues in this webinar.

https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-02.1041.M.7DF39A26A4FE14BD0711ED7FF491D0.vcr&sid=voffice

Noel – Levitz Presentation

Five Years of Title III: Successes, Challenges, and Words from the Wise(er)

click on image to download ppt

Presenters: Patrick Keough & Donald Staub – Carteret Community College

Presented at the Noel-Levitz National Conference on Student Recruitment, Marketing, and Retention in Denver on July 26, 2011.

The purpose of our presentation was to give a brief overview of what we have accomplished – qualitatively and quantitatively – through the course of the Title III grant (which ends in September of this year). To achieve the overall goal of increasing retention at the College, the grant has three primary objectives: Advising, Distance Learning, and Outcomes Assessment. This presentation highlighted the retention efforts we have made in each of these three areas, with particular attention to the successes and challenges of implementing each.

I focused on the Distance Learning Component and addressed all the DL initiatives T3 enabled us to pursue over the past 5 years to include Black Board Boot Camp, Distance Learning Pioneer Program, Online Tutoring, and the various Dl workshops and conferences we were able to send the staff and faculty to since the grants inception.

For more details about our presentation click to our Title III Blog.

NC3DLA Eastern Regional Conference 2011

We had 17 colleges represented at this years Eastern Regional Conference @ Carteret Community College with a total of 58 participants at the college and another 40 participating in the 3 webinars that were done live during 3 sessions. The 3 presentations are linked below. More will be linked as I get them. Feel free to post your comments, concerns, issues and observations about the CHALLENGES we as faculty are facing in 2011 and beyond.

You can also address a variety of issues directly related to the new roles, demands and expectations on college faculty members in 2011. Most college faculty no longer teach 100% of the time in the traditional classroom environment. Course management systems like Moodle and Blackboard have empowered teachers and students alike with a variety of new options, applications and communication tools for delivering and receiving viable and dynamic instruction. Most instructors no longer have to be at any given place (office or classroom)) thanks to wireless communications and applications like skype, Blackboard, Moodle and Elluminate when teaching their classes, however many of the traditional 20th Century expectations are still applied to online faculty by college administrators. Faculty are also expected to check-in to their online classes over weekends and on holidays with no additional compensation and spend countless hours developing, retooling and upgrading their online courses. The role of faculty is changing (evolving) rapidly and this webinar will be a conversation about these changes and offer suggestions for adapting (surviving) in the world of e-learning.

JUST CLICK AND DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATIONS BELOW – THE WEBINAR RECORDING WILL BE LINKED IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS

DLWorkflow (Not Work Slow) Presentation

FreshwaterBestPracticesDLFaculty.2011

Challenges to Faculty

Assessing Distance Learning Courses

Moodle vs. Blackboard

Click Here for the webinar session recording

NC3DLA Conference Update

The NC3DLA conference has been exceeding all our expectations. We had approximately 350 participants and 31 vendors. I brought 15 colleagues from Carteret Community College and they all have shared positive feedback about the conference and the presentations they attended. Dr. Abbie Brown gave a great luncheon Keynote yesterday (Monday) and Bob Irvin from FTCC was honored as a Distance Learning Pioneer for the Community College System. I can remember the first time I met Bob about 15 years ago when we first began learning about online teaching. His award was well deserved.

The thing about these conferences I enjoy is not only being able to renew connections with my dl colleagues across the state, but to learn about the very latest technologies and best practices in Distance Learning going throughout the Community College System.

Many of the presentations basically reinforce and validate the things we are already aware f and doing at at our colleges and in our online classes however it’s just good to be reminded about those “key” best practices for e-learning. Like I say in my DL Workflow presentation. Teaching online is not rocket science. Students what to know their teaching is engaged and an active participant in the teaching/ learning process care about their learning.

There are so many things going on at the state level as far as funding issues and the directions they want us to take with our CMS (Course management System) decisions. There is no doubt that Blackboard and Moodle and the main acts in town and will both be major players.

We are now listening to the founder of Moodle and lead developer Martin Douglamas who is presenting about the history of Moodle from Australia via Skype.

One of our Adjunct Faculty members Lisa Taylor Galizia stated about the conference…”I just returned from my brief, but information-filled, first-time NC3DL conference. Enjoyed “The Good, Bad & Ugly” of Distance Learning by Kelly Kirk from Randolph… Great tips and great discussion among session attendees about Quality & Credibility in distance education. I appreciated the reminder that students expect online instructors to be engaged, visible and active participants (checking and responding frequently, not just at grading time) not “ghost” instructors, as one participant said.”

Entering Final Year of Title III Grant – Strides Made in DL

As we enter the fifth and final year of Carteret Community College’s Title III grant I’d like highlight some of the strides we’ve made in distance learning thanks to the Title III Grant coordinated by Project Director Don Staub. The Title III grant has been a primary catalyst for a variety of successful and productive distance learning initiatives over the past 4 years at CCC, helping both faculty and student support services improve and expand upon college wide online services and e-learning teaching skills.

I’m specifically proud of our Title III Distance Learning Pioneer Program which is entering its fifth phase this fall. So far 40 staff and faculty members have participated in this program with 10 more coming on board in August. Our DL Pioneers set goals and objectives for retooling, upgrading and expanding upon their proficiency working and teaching in the online environment.

Black Board Boot Camp Certification Training

We give them the tools, training and technology they need to accomplish their specified goals in addition to fund their course specific professional development needs. This program has led to a variety of exciting online innovations and initiatives over the past 4 years.

Faculty members have been producing online course orientations and video lectures, in addition to creating podcasts and incorporating dynamic rich media into their classes. Staff members like Brenda Long, Mark Johnson and our CAPS Advising Center have set-up blogs for reaching out to students in both financial aid and counceling and both produced videos that explain to students the services they offer in their respective departments. The Distance Learning Department has created it’s own You Tube Channel that acts as a repository for all it’s training and faculty videos. We also have our own CCC Itunes U web presence for distributing all podcasts (dl training and instructional) to students and faculty. This can be accessed on the main page of the college Blackboard site.

Title III funded our Instructional Technologist position and enabled us to hire Pre-Ah Hill who has been instrumental in coordinating and developing so many of our professional development initiatives. She has also worked “one on one” with over 50 faculty and staff over the past 4 years.

In addition to the Dl Pioneer Program Title III enabled our department to pilot an Online Tutoring service for students and after 2 years of supporting this important service to students it has been handed over to our Academic Support department. Kimberly Johnson now oversees online tutoring and learned some new skills for working with students online as a DL Pioneer this past year.

Soon after being awarded the Title III grant the distance learning department initiated its Blackboard Boot Camp which has become a model for training faculty on Blackboard statewide.

Every faculty member at CCC including all adjuncts have been through this 7 hour certification training program. Title III enabled us to pay adjuncts to attend this training and purchase digital recorders and headsets for faculty to use to record their lectures for instructional podcasts.

We’ve also been able to fund a cross section of our faculty and staff to attend regional and national distance learning conferences and workshops. The training our faculty have received in the DL Pioneer program has given some of them the confidence and expertise to be presenters at the conferences. Mary Walton, Laurie Freshwater, James Minor, Johnny Underwood and Carla Williams are some of our DL Pioneers who have presented at either national or regional Distance Learning conferences. The Title III team (Don Staub, Pre-Ah Hill and myself) have also presented at a variety of professional development conferences.

Title III played an integral part in our online course QAP Peer Review process. Over the past 2 years over 100 online courses have been peer reviewed and upgraded to meet the standard established by the QAP. I’m proud to say that Distance Learning at CCC received 0 recommendations from our recent SACS visit and even were given some positive feedback from the visiting SACS team.

The DL Department with the approval of the CCC Board of Directors wanted to establish a back-up plan for online courses and blackboard specifically so we initiated a Moodle training program (train the trainer) and over the past year we set-up a Moodle instance with Remote Learner funded by the system office of the Community College system however Title III funded our Moodle training program and the migration of 10 courses from Blackboard to Moodle. Carteret Community College now has 10 faculty members that have experience with moodle and could train the rest of our faculty if the need to move to another CMS ever arises.

Once we got the faculty trained we realized it was just as important to provide training to our students to become better online learners so we developed our Successful Online Learning workshop that we offer to students at the beginning of each semester. Over 200 students have attended this the past 2 semesters and we also put all the resources and tips online so students can access it if they can’t attend the actual workshop.

This past year we established a policy that all CCC courses have a course blackboard (web presence) and utilize the electronic grade book in Blackboard. This took training all our traditional classroom instructors including adjuncts and Title III played a role in seeing that this initiative was successful. We were able to pay our adjuncts to attend this training with Title III funds. At the end of the Spring semester all CCC courses submitted their Blackboard grade books electronically and we now have an electronic repository of all Spring 2010 grades. This will be SOP from now on at CCC.

Yes…the Distance Learning Department with the help of Title III has certainly contributed to taking CCC to a higher level of proficiency with online learning. My goal for the coming year is to challenge every faculty member at CCC to expand upon what they have learned and begin developing their individual teaching methodologies that seamlessly and fluidly help them weave between classroom environment to the online environment.

After all….its all about teaching and learning. We as educators have such incredibly powerful and sophisticated tools to impart our course material to our students and assess that they are comprehending the course content.

This brings me to the core of my thoughts on teaching and learning in 2010. Essentially I believe the attributes required to be an effective teacher are still the same as we enter the next decade of this new millennium.  Great teachers are creative, innovative, passionate, enthusiastic and show sincere interest and comprehension of their respective subject area.  Students on the other hand have changed over the past 10-15 years and this evolution has come about in part because of rapid advances in technology and cyber culture.

Now here’s the rub.  I believe teachers (at all grade levels) have to do a better job mastering the new and powerful tools (technology) at their disposal for CONNECTING with (and engaging) their students.  The attributes for great teachers is the same BUT the tools we use for teaching have changed and become much more technologically sophisticated. This is our challenge heading into the next decade. We can’t let the technology get in the way of our teaching!

The bottom line here (in my opinion) is that teaching tools (technology) have changed dramatically, but the skills and attributes needed for being excellent teachers and effective learners remain relatively the same.  Both students and teachers must harness (embrace) technology for both teaching and learning to the point where it becomes intuitive. The days of the chalk board and overhead projector are over and have been replaced with sophisticated course management systems.

I’m excited about the coming year and the challenges facing me as an online teacher and Distant Learning Director. In reality this is not all that complicated.  The Industrial Revolution is over and that instructional model is just about dead and buried.  As I state at the beginning of all my distance learning workshops;  The easy part is becoming proficient and confident with technology – the real challenge for both teachers and students is using it to its fullest potential for both teaching and learning. 

In the coming year I plan on initiating a series of webinars that are given by our veteran DL Pioneers on a whole range of online teaching Best Practices and offer these to the college at large. We have accomplished a great deal in 4 years thanks to Title III however we still have more to do on the distance learning front at CCC.

Something for all DL Faculty to think about……

Why Attend Professional Conferences?

People ask my why I attend so many professional conferences. I’ve been blessed the past 4 years with a Federal Title III grant that funds my various distance learning training initiatives here at Carteret Community College. The grant also has line items for my travel and travel funds of our distance learning faculty. As long as there are viable professional development activities at these various educator conferences we can use the funds to attend them.

As my previous post mentions I just returned from the Society for Photographic Education Conference in Philadelphia. What a great city! I must say the Philadelphia Museum of Art is absolutely excellent and would give the MET a run for its money as far as the quality of its collection and great exhibits it puts on. I was lucky enough to catch the Picasso show during a break from attending my Photo Educator conference workshops.

One of the main things I enjoy about attending distance learning and photography conferences is the inspiration (and current information) I get from being around my colleagues in the field.

Technology is changing so incredibly fast and getting to hear speakers talk about the latest innovations in teaching and photographic practices enables me to bring this information back and share it with my students and faculty where I work. I also enjoy sharing what we are doing here at Carteret Community College with my professional peers. Its a two way street as far as exchanging information in order to make us all better at what we do in our respective fields.

This years conference had a great print sharing where my students could see what the work other students and teachers from around the country are making in addition to having the opportunity to build relationships with educators and professionals in my field.

I must admit I was excited about having my daughter Andei who happens to be a budding photographer with me this year. She got the opportunity to share some of the work she is doing with other students and some teachers from colleges around the country.

Its very easy to get caught up in our little routines and worlds with all the demands we have on us as educators – getting away for a few days to attend a professional conference is rejuvenating, inspirational and very beneficial because I always bring back something that I have learned and share the new knowledge with my students and fellow distance learning teachers.

A good example of this would be all the great information I got about digital workflow at last year’s conference. I came back and did more research on this important photographic practice and then incorporated it into all my photography classes.

That is why I make the extra effort to attend good conferences that relate to what I am doing professionally. I attend not only to get information but to share what I have learned with my professional colleagues. Title III has enabled me and many of the staff and faculty of Carteret Community College to expand our knowledge by supplying the funds to travel to these excellent workshops and conferences.

It was also rewarding for me to see one of my photo graduates (Rochelle photo left) moving forward with her photography education and working towards a 4 year degree. Here she is at the print sharing showing off some of her beautiful black and white landscapes.