Resources

Meeting Notes - Oct 12, 2018

Legend:

  • Assignment: bold indicates assignment
  • Recommendations: italics

Attendance:

  • Scott Powell, Marlo Steed, Beth Cormier, Robert LeBlanc, Jeffery MacCormack, Jeff Meadows (Teaching Centre)
  • Regrets: Josh Markle, Craig Loewen, Len Sproule,

Reports

Chair (Marlo):

  • reviewed terms of reference and showed how to access the committee web site

Technology Support Report (Scott):

  • fewer and smaller laptops have been purchased due to budget issues,
  • latest OS is being tested (Mojave) - so far no incompatibilities
  • Oculus rift that was purchased with the Innovation Fund requires an upgrade to the graphics cards (the minimum specs have changed)
  • Mindstorm kits (8 kits) were purchased and are being used by Ed 3508 students and will be used in elective courses
  • there is an issue with upgrading technology in Curr Lab classrooms, only 1170b is under Faculty control so upgrading the tech in the other rooms is a concern (see the note from Jeff on this below)

Teaching Centre (Jeff):

  • there is a new group for the University called "Classroom Governance" which will be in charge of providing a more unified systematic approach to classroom upgrades (Beth will contact this group about upgrading tech in the rooms in the Curr Lab)
  • there will be a shared maker space with the new building, Agility,
  • there is also a shared tool space (tech services) - lathes, glass blowing, etc.

Items for Action

Tweak to the wording of the Innovation Fund

We revisited terms of reference for the Innovation fund based on Darcy McKenna's concern with the sentence: “Any Faculty of Education member may apply”. The concern is that academic staff may not technically be Faculty members. As a committee, we discussed this concern and felt the wording is fine but needed clarification.
We decided to make a minor tweak to the description of the fund in terms of reference and replace that sentence with the following: “Any Faculty of Education member may apply (this includes all academic staff).” Marlo will make that change.

Technology Infusion in the Program

We briefly reviewed the infusion of technology integration across our program. We discussed moving part of what is done in Ed 3508 from PS I into PS II as integration workshops. Most of the technology instructors indicate that there are core components that need be retained in PS I. However, one thought was to divide the current Ed 3508 module and give half to FNMI and half would be retained by the Edtech module. Integration into PS II would be tricky because PS II is already full of content. It would have to be infused into what is already happening. When we listed off the components of PS II, we could visualize how most of those topics could have a significant technology integration component. Perhaps there are ways we could even extend this into PS III.

Any decisions about changes would probably involve discussing this as an Educational Technology Committee and then taking our ideas to UPDC where that group might suggest a possible COW on this topic. However, this is all just brainstorming at this point but something everyone around the table agreed should be raised at the next meeting. ….so percolate on this and bring ideas to the next meeting.