Last week I was invited to attend the OLC Accelerate Conference in Orlando, and talk about how we are using Shindig at ASU. Our presentation was called "Making Connections with Shindig", and we focused on the vital need for faculty and students to make connections through engagement during a clas s, whether it is online or face-to-face. Shindig is a web conference tool that allows students and faculty to "flow" through the virtual room easily, and have side conversations, just like a regular classroom.  We have used it for our online courses to create debate teams and online presentations. We've also used it for allowing off-campus participants to participate in an on-campus event that includes asking questions, and working in small discussion groups. We've set up a "mobile unit" that allows us to roll a cart into a classroom, and immediately start the streaming, without burdening the professor with extra technology to control. Our next testi...

Field Trips are a great way to motivate students, get them excited about content and create memories. But often the locations are too expensive, or would be geographically impossible to get to during class times. One option is to create a virtual field trip! Our TeachT@lk Webinar on August 4, focused on how instructors can create virtual "experiences" for students that include location videos, images, interactions with experts in the field and guided discussions between students and their peers about their Dr. Jim Elser's Drone Video experiences. We shared 3 experiences by ASU Faculty: Jim Elser's Drone Tours (sample clip) Mike Angilletta's Expert Interviews with Robbie Wilson using Vidyo "Live" synchronous field trip at the ASU Natural History Collection with Liz Makings using Adobe Connect Finally, we talked about using existing resources like the wildlife webcams, and having students create their own virtual fieldtrips as a final clas...