TLTSym: What an incredible event! Though it was Saturday but worth it!

Before the event, I had one question running in my mind “What should I learn from this event that helps me to become an effective teacher”. So, I looked into the schedule of the event to mark some interesting sessions that can answer this big question. The good thing about the schedule, it fairly covered the details of each session and so it was not hard for me to decide what sessions could be more relevant to my big question. After spending some time, I signed up for a few sessions. After that, all I could do was just wait for March 16^th.

Finally, on the pleasant morning of March 16^th I reached The Penn Stater, completed my registration and made it to The Presidential Hall, and I was super excited to spend my day at the event where I could learn a lot of things. The keynote presentation by Dan Heath was great and the way presented his thoughts on ‘Sticky” ideas and the way he addressed the urban legends — you use only 10% of your brain, only great wall of China can be seen from space, and minhoca/earthworm burgers was something new that I never thought of. The non-typical presentation by him kept me involved in his talk. The essential question of his presentation was how do you make the idea to stick? What you want your learner to remember after 5 years? If just 5% of what you structure in a course is what you want students to remember. How do you get to that 5%?. His entire talk was focused on how to make the ideas that stick to the learners.  He made an acronym “SUCCES” about the features of a great sticky idea and that acronym itself is sticky. The basic concept I got from his presentation was “Curiosity sustains attention” to make it stick, the idea should be more than just saying ‘hey’ and have some unexpected or surprise element to encourage the learner to think and get excited about it. I really enjoyed his whole presentation and, I have never attended a presentation like this before. The idea was very well explained, and his style kept me involved and excited throughout the presentation. 

From the first concurrent session, I signed up for “Technology hacks for cementing learning”. The reason for choosing this session is to learn how to use technology smartly for a long-term knowledge transfer to help learners. If the learner doesn’t remember what you want them to remember for a longer period, then you probably have chosen the least effective method to cement the learning. The session covers how cognitive science research can be quickly and easily applied in a variety of classroom contexts to truly help learners to retain what they learn. Though it was a short session, it was comprehensive. It covered all the technology tools we could use like Zoom/Katura, HSP, Kahoot, Poll everywhere and Canvas etc. It was very informative, and all the resources discussed seem practical to implement in the classroom. But again, I would say it was a short session and it could be made longer as I wanted to learn more about tech hacks because in my opinion, cementing your ideas is a key to the learning process and one should be able to use technology effectively for this process. 

For the next concurrent session, I attended “Open Educational Resources (OER) innovation: Moving beyond the basics”. That session was fascinating. There were five different groups from different field of studies, who have prepared there OER to help learners. They explained the work and discussed how their work is benefiting the students. From different OER presented there, I liked the one called BBookX where the team developed e-book using Wikipedia sources with three layers of knowledge. The good thing was the student should have access to the course material from the very first day and that too available free of cost. I really liked the idea of using hyperlinked text in the book to go in detail level 2 and 3 of topics if a student really wants to dig into it. The Open Innovation Challenge was also good where five educators presented their innovative ideas to improve learning process using technology. I believe that’s the perfect platform for educators to share their ideas with other educator and researcher to get feedback. Overall, that event covers a wide spectrum of teaching and learning, and I really enjoyed being there among the inspiring educators. 

I would like to add some thoughts about concurrent sessions at the event. It was hard to decide only one session to attend because there is so much to learn from each of it. But overall the event was very organized and covered diverse topics. Finally, this blog post is incomplete if I don’t mention about the food and refreshment, which was awesome. In the end, I wish to say thanks to Dr. Foster because I feel so lucky to have an opportunity to attend this great event.