2013 ASHS Annual Conference

Objective(s):
The goal of this workshop is to learn how other educators have incorporated tablets and apps into their teaching and how that decision affects the type of assignments and activities that are presented to students.

Three significant changes affecting society are challenging our traditional approaches to classroom and outreach education programs throughout all subject matter areas of ASHS.  First, increasing numbers of students show up on campus each year with their own mobile technologies.  These “digital natives” are practiced in using smart phones and tablets for checking e-mail, texting friends, or browsing web sites.  Second, the wave of technology change continues to challenge our teaching and outreach programs with an almost unlimited list of new opportunities, especially with regard to accessing information and communicating globally.  Third, mobile devices, including smart phones and tablets are capable of running apps that replicate and even surpass desktop software, thus providing students and clients anytime, anywhere access to online and app-based programming.  Each of these forces alone provide sufficient justification for examining how we design and deliver education programs.  Taken together, the new digital reality created by ever improving smart/mobile devices in the hands of skilled users demands that we alter our thinking on how and what we offer in horticulture education.  As a result, this workshop is very important for what it addresses and how the presenters will utilize mobile devices and a mobile wireless system for presenting their stories.  The goal of this workshop is to learn how other educators have incorporated tablets and apps into their teaching and how that decision affects the type of assignments and activities that are presented to students. Topics being discussed include: setting up your classrom and tablet for presenting to an audience; selecting basic apps for creating useful assignments; extending the scope and variety of your apps; spontaneous information needs demand mobile solutions; designing lecture capture sytems for use in online education; and using apps to monitor irrigation sytems. If you would like to learn more about these new technologies, using a tablet and one or more apps to assist students in your classroom, you must attend the first wireless, tablet-based workshop to be organized for Annual Conference.