Empowering Learning: Beyond the Whiteboard and Using Tech

Discover how IT is reshaping education in our latest episode of Let's Talk Ed! Join us, Zahi Atallah and Chris Forde, in our conversation with John Mercer, CIO at a community college in northwestern North Dakota. We will dive into the transformation brought about by new IT technologies and their impact on revolutionizing classrooms.

In our first episode of this series, entitled “Empowering Learning: Exploring IT Innovations for Classroom Enhancement”, we talk about bringing in audio and video capture technologies to enable effective and engaging polysynchronous and multimodal instructional opportunities. The students demand a flexible education that is supportive of their learning preferences, their schedules, and their availability. Is the single wide-angle camera with a single microphone still the way to go? Let’s see what John proposes.

In “Empowering Learning: Beyond the Whiteboard and Using Tech”, we explore how we could move beyond talking to a whiteboard/chalkboard and start engaging the students. Teaching is not just about the written, it is as much about participating in the students’ learning and conversing with them. John describes the various technologies available to educators. Finally, he proposes some solutions to enhance the simulation opportunities in the classroom, especially as they pertain to hands-on experiential learning modules.

Finally, in the third segment, entitled “Next-Gen Education: VR/AR/XR/MR and AI Tools for Engaging Learning Experiences”, John Mercer speaks to the equal importance of high-quality content and the technology used. Additionally, John starts us thinking about the use of AI in the classroom setting. Beyond ChatGPT and MidJourney, John speaks to the opportunity of customizing the teaching to the learning needs and speed of individual students. And finally, he warns us about how critical it is maintain and protect the confidence of student information from third-party intrusion.

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