Welcome

Welcome to our first Technology Idea Exchange (TIE). This event (or outrage, depending on your perspective) emerged from the School for Graduate Studies—specifically from a group known as “The Spider Team.”

The Team is currently comprised of the School for Graduate Studies Division of Technology and Processes (at least until they convince the Dean to approve their name change) and faculty who have agreed to leadership and peer mentoring responsibilities in the use of emerging technologies in learning. Their basic mission is to learn, to keep learning, and to share their learning—in short, they are individuals who are committed to open learning within Empire State College—SUNY’s Open University.

This mission unfolds and infiltrates many actions which Spider Team members take on above and beyond their established roles. Spiders provide peer mentoring to their colleagues within the School for Graduate Studies—each has a specialty in terms of a specific technology (or technologies) as well as a connection to an academic program. They are risk takers who are willing to experiment with new technologies-being agile to quickly develop and disseminate that which works, and ready to make decisive decisions of what needs to be left behind.

Out of their mission, The Spider Team decided to put this event together both to share the work they have done, as well as to develop a new form of learning environment. As you’ll recall, we determined what topics to offer based upon a survey of pre-registrants because we believe in learner participation in determining their own needs. Second, rather than having this be a series of presentations, everything is hands on and designed to allow you to learn by doing as well as to participate in a discussion.

Welcome and thank you for joining us.