Heartland eLearning Conference 2010

This years Heartland eLearning Conference began Monday, March 8th, 2010.

Preconference Kickoff

It was the day of the preconference workshops and all our hard work and planning paid off.

Preconference speakers:

Curtis Bonk

Curtis, also our keynote speaker, delivered a pair of impressive three-hour workshop sessions. The first was entitled “Jazzercise the Online Experience with the Read, Reflect, Display, and Do (R2D2) and TEC-VARIETY Models. During his presentation, Curt delivered an avalanche of online resources and methods that support these models.

The Bonkinator also presented “The Rise of Shared Online Video, The Fall of Traditional Learning” purporting the importance of “shared online video.”

Wesley Fryer

Wesley presented “Powerful Ingredients for Blended Learning.” Wes likens teaching to cooking, suggesting “ingredients” and promoting “gourmet learning.” To extend the cooking metaphor, Wes “Fry’d” up an excellent workshop!

Jym Brittain

Jym emphasized the tools most students already have in their pockets and purses with his preconference session, “Doing More Than Just Keeping Time with Mobile Devices.” This awesome workshop provided tools and techniques for mobile teaching and learning.

Conference Reception

Our conference reception at the River Oaks Golf Club was an exceptional event! Featuring live music and magnificent food, this eLearning mixer provided a convenient location for networking and conversation.

Conference Start

The conference kicked off officially on Tuesday morning. Everyone was at battle stations and all, pretty much, went to plan.

 

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Keynote

Curtis’ keynote, “Nothing Flat about this Jazz: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education”, presents a model to make sense of the role of various open education technologies. Curt’s crazy personality, with several costume changes, kept our audience riveted while his lecture enlightened their online learning expertise.

Sessions

Our sessions were a confluence of eLearning offerings guaranteed to supply even the most modern web professors a healthy dose of online educational tech-goodness.

For a great description of each of our thirty sessions, download our conference program pdf.

Sponsors

A special thank you to all of our sponsors!!!

Jana McDaniel and Trish Zylstra from Vertical Learning Curve

Greg Maniss from SKC / Polycom

David Green from Desire2Learn

James Tysz from Softchalk

Mike Robichaux from DocSoft

 

Becky Stinson from Dallas Telelearning

 

Scott Blackman from Avalon

Mike Shaughnessy from CPDE

Rachel Algya from eSciencelabs

Shelley Constant from Wimba

John Floyd from Blackboard

Bob Greve from Liveclasstech (with Mike Shaughnessy)

Special thanks and regrets for not capturing Coast Learning Systems booth (for it was most impressive), and their representative, Elaine Hill (though we do have a lovely picture of Elaine along with Becky Stinson at the conference reception above).

Staff and Support

We would like to especially thank the people that helped make the Heartland eLearning Conference a success!

Bill Radke (shown here with Curtis Bonk). Bill is our Provost and our biggest fan. Without his support none of this would be possible!

Kevin Freeman is the Interim Executive Director of CPDE. His support and guidance has been critical to all aspects of our conference.

Sandra Franklin is the Director of Distance Education. Her leadership, knowledge, and insistence on excellence provides a clear path for our team to excel. The Heartland Conference team reports to Sandra. She deserves some kind of medal.

The Heartland eLearning Conference team: Sandra Franklin, Andrea Stone, Tracy Fairless, Liz Monsma, Bucky Dodd, and John Gillmore.

A special thank you to Dona Baker for managing much of the conference paperwork, red tape, and malarkey.

See you next year!