5 Session Recaps from Tuesday and Wednesday

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Introduction:

Below I've linked 5 blog posts for the sessions I've attended so far.

Details:

On Tuesday, I attended the EdCamp (InstCon's Unconference).  At the beginning of the Unconference, attendees used post-it notes to record topics they wanted to discuss. These were then clustered into 4-6 breakout topics per session (2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon). In the first session I participated in a discussion of LTI and HTML Hacks in Canvas. My favorite part of this was hearing about a Canvas Course called 'Do Not Fear the Code!' set up to share HTML Hacks. In the second morning session I participated in a discussion of Canvas Commons and OER. My writeup on both of these morning sessions can be found here: HTML Hacks and OER at InstCon's Unconference.

In the afternoon, I only attended the first session. There I participated in a really useful discussion of how to develop professional development to familiarize instructors with Canvas. My notes are here: PD in Canvas EdCamp #InstCon.

Wednesday morning, I started out at Robin Bartoletti's talk on Design Thinking. She gave a general overview of what Design Thinking. Here are my notes: Design Thinking in HE #InstCon. I then went to Jake Standish's excellent talk on API integration of Canvas and Google Apps. As one of the head techs for Charlotte-Mecklenburg's K-12 schools, he works with over 100k students and 10k instructors. To smooth out issues between their SiS and Canvas, he has developed a number of Google Scripts that do everything from setting up classes, to importing students, and building Canvas content, all from Google sheets and other Google Docs. Here are my notes: Canvas API and Google Apps Scripts #InstCon. In the first session this afternoon, I attended Christy Steffen's talk on LTIs in Canvas. She demo'd several common LTIs and talked about evaluation and use of LTIs more broadly. Again, here are my notes: LTIs in Canvas 

Conclusion:

I've thoroughly enjoyed the conference so far. The talks that I've been to have been informative (even if sometimes targeted at a novice-level audience).