Paradigm Perfecting, day 1

Well, I survived the first day of "Perfecting the Paradigm, II" -- don't get me started on the inherent contradiction in that title. To my surprise, some of it was okay. The plenary (a great conference word) session this morning was a total waste of time. All I can figure is that this Sloan Consortium gave a lot of money for the conference because the morning session was essentially an hour-long ad for their services. The rebel in me always objects to that.

Once we started the breakout sessions, though, things picked up a little bit. The first session I attended was on course mapping techniques. Now I know that sounds horrid, but it turned out okay. Basically a couple of grad students/support staff from Auburn described how distance learning courses SHOULD be developed -- having a distance learning specialist that observes the faculty member in the classroom, has much interaction with said instructor, and then arranges all the technical support he/she needs. Sounds great. In my current situation, though, I've been told, "We need to make stats available online. Do it."

Next I went to The Tandem Class. This was a discussion on how to offer face-to-face and online versions of the same class simultaneously. I didn't get a lot of good information from it, but I was relieved when the speaker admitted that he hated "distance learning" and did not think it was as effective as face-to-face, but he acknowledged that it is where we're all headed. Gosh, I'm not the only one? Given this admission, I really wanted to like the guy, but he had just about the worst public speaking skills I've ever encountered (excepting the first time I ever had to teach a class). He wandered off on tangents (okay I do that), he switched topics mid-sentence, and he had this really annoying habit of not finishing a sentence. Yes, he would just stop talking and then pick up a new sentence about 5 seconds later. Oh, and he also told lots of nerdy computer science jokes that just flew over my head. Finally, to maintain my sanity, I decided to try my hand at a Sudoku puzzle. They're all the rage now, but I'd not tried one. I managed to figure it out and it was pretty fun. I still don't think I'll give up my crosswords though.

There was actually one more afternoon session, but I skipped it. My choices were a session on designing courses with the community (beyond your student body) in mind and a session on podcasting. I've been hearing a lot about podcasting and I had planned to go to that one. During lunch, though, I ended up at a table full of folks who were REALLY looking forward to the podcasting session and I didn't understand a single word they uttered. Actually I did hear the word "ipod" several times, but otherwise I was clueless. I got my revenge, though; about halfway through lunch, I announced to the table that I do not even own a cell phone. You should have seen the stunned looks. It was priceless. Regardless, I figured I should not go to that session.

Oh, speaking of lunch, ... One of the things that I've not yet gotten used to at my "new" school is the inability to have any sort of gathering of more than 10 folks without giving away door prizes. This was new to me, but evidently it's rather common. After most everyone finished eating, it was announced that they'd be drawing names and giving out goodies. As I said, we do this all the time, but I've never managed to win one. As they were calling names today, I saw some pretty snazzy loot being handed out -- caps, t-shirts, a couple of soft briefcases, etc. Of course I didn't win any of that stuff, but they did call my name once they got to the restaurant gift certificates. "Okay, not a briefcase," I thought, "but I can use a Pizza Hut (the restaurant they announced when they called my name) certificate." Imagine my surprise when I ripped open the envelope and found that I did not, in fact, win a gift certificate from Pizza Hut. No, I won a V.I.B. (very important business) card. What does a V.I.B. card entitle one to? I get 15% off my Pizza Hut order (not good with other offers)! I was bummed! Oh well, the guy next to me won some sort of mesh bag that we couldn't even figure out what all the straps were for. It was either some funky kind of light backpack or a mesh t-shirt without arm holes.

Needless to say, I'm eagerly anticipating tomorrow's excitement.