ICT Winter Conference

I am in San Fransisco at the annual ICT Center/MPICT Winter Conference

Slide introducing 3rd Annual Combined Winter Conference.

The conference is focused on community college educators who are working to train a technical workforce in Information and Communication Technologies. It is a great group of people with wonderful ideas and a great dedication preparing students for careers.

The conference was kicked off by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director of IBM University Programs World Wide. Dr. Spohrer talked about current trends in ICT training and urged the audience to create graduates who have “T” skills. He described T skills as a person who has broad knowledge in things like team work, leadership, communication skills and a little knowledge about a lot of related topics (marketing, finance, etc) and then in depth knowledge in terms of a special focus on one discipline and one systems area (transportation, information and communications, etc.)
Dr. Spohrer challenged educators to teach both technical skills and communication, leadership and team skills. He said you could not sacrifice one for the other, both must be covered in technical classes.

Tom Kuhlmann author of the Rapid eLearning Blog and VP of Community for Articulate gave a great presentation titled “Don’t Let the Experts tell You PowerPoint Sucks.” He reviewed many ways in which educators and others can create powerful presentations and he provided a ton of great resources.

Bloggers Tom Kuhlmann and Karl Kapp pose for a picture at Winter Conference.

Other presentations included a Gabby Synder a college sophomore who presented an excellent presentation titled “The iPhone SDK and Apple Student Cocoa Camp.” She showed how easy and simple it was to begin programming with the SDK. Other presentations covered topics like security, ebooks, scenario-based learning where two educators, Judith Frederickson and Cathy House from Truckee Meadows Community College have eliminated all most all lecturing and teach solely with scenario-based exercises.

It was a wonderful presentation, the two faculty transitioned their traditional computer science lecture/lab classes into a semester long Scenario-Based Learning classes. They were working on the “T” skill set mentioned in the keynote. They indicated that instructors can combine technical skills with communication, leadership and project management skills by challenging the students with exercises and letting them work through and find answers on their own.