This Friday: FLIP (Future of Learning in Practice) Workshop

Future of Learning in Practice Workshop: Adobe Connect Date: Friday, January 10 Time: 12pm-1:30pm Location: http://uc-d.adobeconnect.com/djcomins Workshop Leader: Dan Comins

The first FLIP (Future of Learning in Practice) Workshop of the year will take place this Friday (Jan 10) from 12:00-1:30. Because the topic of this week's FLIP is Adobe Connect (a popular webinar/synchronous online meeting tool), the meeting will take place virtually. All you need to do is go to http://uc-d.adobeconnect.com/djcomins and sign in to the webinar as a guest. 

Adobe Connect is essentially a virtual meeting room that staff and faculty have access to through UC Davis Academic Technology Services for a small fee (for undergrad faculty, it works out to be roughly $3/month).  While it is primarily being used for fully online courses at UC Davis, it can easily be incorporated into hybrid and fully face-to-face courses.  Some faculty use it to deliver their lectures, others to hold “online office hours,” and some create rooms for their TAs to hold virtual discussion sections.

Adobe Connect also allows for more than simple video/audio communication – you can share PowerPoint presentations, videos, and even your computer desktop to show students a website or how to do something on their computers; you can also facilitate impromptu polls, text-based chats, and small-group breakout sessions.

In the FLIP Workshop, Dan will introduce you to some of the features of Adobe Connect and allow time for some hands-on practice in using the tools in the application. You will also have the opportunity to talk about different to use this webinar tool in a class setting, and discuss some tips for running efficient and smooth Adobe Connect meetings.

We hope that we can all “connect” this Friday at noon! To attend the meeting, simply go to this URL: http://uc-d.adobeconnect.com/djcomins. When you arrive at the login screen, log in as a “Guest.”

You'll want to make sure you are using headphones of some sort (not just open speakers), and, if possible, a microphone (which many laptops now have built-in), so we aren’t limited to text chatting.  Also, please make sure that you have both Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your system, and, if possible, use a hard-wired broadband connection to the internet as opposed to simply using WiFi (though WiFi will work okay in most instances here on campus).  To check your computer for Adobe Connect compatibility, please check out this system readiness test.