Next week in Digital Learning… absolutely nothing is happening. That’s right, I’m done with workshops for the semester (aside from a mini-blitz of sessions that the CTE will be presenting at the end of May – more on that later). I would like to take a quick look back at this semester, however, and talk about what worked well and what we may be able to improve next year.

First of all, I think that the Technonauts discussions, although not heavily attended, were a solid success. Each of them turned into a good conversation about digital learning, and people seem to appreciate the opportunity to come together to see and discuss what their colleagues are doing in the classroom (and get some ideas for new things to try / tools to use in their own courses). I plan to have more of these sessions next year – probably two per month, on alternating days / times in order to allow as many people to attend as possible.

Attendance was down overall for all of the digital learning workshops this semester; since this is the first full year of workshops that I have done at GGC, I don’t know if that’s abnormal or simply what Spring semesters are like here. Regardless, I am planning some improvements to the Digital Learning track in order to make the workshops more accessible to more people, to provide more value in the face-to-face sessions, and to make the assessments more meaningful. If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms, or suggestions on the workshops this past year, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

The same goes for this group – the Commons is meant to be a platform for dialogue, collaboration, and information sharing, and I want this group to be a vibrant, valuable resource for you, so I would appreciate any suggestions you may have for making it more useful to you. I have already set up discussion forums on various topics related to digital learning (most of which I have touched on in my workshops), and I plan to add more resources and tools to the appropriate pages here. This space (both the group and the Commons in general) will only be useful to you (individually) when you (collectively) use it to have conversations, collaborate, and share information, however. This is YOUR community, so don’t hesitate to jump in and contribute; how you use the Commons will define what it becomes. I look forward to seeing how this little portion of the metaverse develops and evolves over time.