small conferences rule
I always love the Telecoop conference, but this year’s conference seemed even better than usual. I think I appreciated the collegial atmosphere more than usual because of the lack of collegiality I found at CCCC (at Telecoop, four-year and two-year faculty, administrators, and support people all rub shoulders and learn from each other). I think I also needed the interdisciplinarity of Telecoop. Highlights of the conference:
- Amy and I did our presentation, and despite some last-minute technology issues (including the projector not working after I—ooops—tripped over the extension cord), it went well.
- I met two very interesting people—Ray Schroeder and Scott Warnock. Ray did a great presentation on using RSS feeds and blogs to keep students hooked long after a class ends, and Scott helped me expand my ideas about using audio commentary on student's papers.
- I got some new ideas for how to use wikis. I’ve been using them in my Comp 2 class this semester, but a presentation by Lisa Cheney-Steen gave me the idea to use a wiki for updating the part-time instructor’s handbook.
After this year’s CCCC let’s-not-acknowledge-two-year-college-faculty experience and the Telecoop everyone-has-something-valuable-to-contribute experience, I think I need to take a hiatus from big conferences. With the exception of the November League conference, which I promised Amy I would go to, I’m doing only smaller conferences until the bad taste in my mouth left by CCCC fades.
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