Tech Conferences and Attitudes Towards Higher Education

This week, UPTechTalk co-hosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb rehash the takeaways from the Northwest eLearn Conference in Eugene, OR.  Lots of good ideas here about engaging more faculty around the use of technology and keys to successful Digital Fluency initiatives.

We also spotlight a new report from Public Agenda on attitudes towards higher education in this country which has definite implications for our universities.  Key points: while people feel funding cuts to public universities are a big problem, they also feel that public universities spend money wastefully.  Participants in the study also feel that high schools are not doing an adequate job of preparing students for college.  Just 42% of participants say that a college education is necessary for success in the workforce.   Sobering statistics for sure.

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Full Episode Transcript PDF

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Ben’s pick is Motion Stills to create gifs out of iOS Live photos.

Maria plugs the Oregon Public Broadcasting news app.

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Show Notes:

Public Agenda report on attitudes towards higher education.

The UnWorkshop discussing active learning in professional development.

UP TechTalk is a bi-monthly podcast with cohosts Ben Kahn and Maria Erb of Academic Technology Services that explores the use of technology in the classroom one conversation at a time.  Check out our special series The Future of Learning the first Friday of every month during the fall semester.

Maria Erb

Maria Erb is an Instructional Designer at the University of Portland. She holds an M.Ed. in Instructional Design from the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is the WordPress administrator for UP and also the manager of its Open Learning platform Boost.