Saturday, October 17, 2020

Virtual international academic conferences and workshops

A lot of major academic conferences in computing are being held online/virtual these days. The conferences and workshops I was able to attend so far include the following:

These conferences waived the registration fees this year. I hope to add more to this list.

If you are interested, here is a list of upcoming conferences from various professional organizations:

Friday, October 2, 2020

On remote learning/teaching

Remote learning poses some new challenges to students and instructors. As an instructor, the question that I always ask is "How can I effectively and efficiently deliver my courses to students?" I've been using technologies in teaching already   so it is a little bit easier for me to transition to remote learning. The challenge I think is in the assessment and enforcing academic honesty. 

Coming up with the course guide was the first step.  It contains the "outline" for the semester with topics, learning outcomes, and laboratory activities specified per week. Materials such as video lectures will be prerecorded or delivered live and uploaded. Exams will be delivered online, multiple choice type. Additional materials such as slides and handouts will be made available for download also. Communications will be done through email and messaging tools.

Thus, this semester the following tools occupy my screen most of the time:

  • Google Classroom - general class housekeeping
  • Github/Github Classroom - lab/programming activities
  • OBS Studio - recording/streaming lectures
  • Youtube - storage and streaming of lectures
  • Zoom - video conferencing
  • Shotcut - video editing
  • Veikk A30 Tablet - for use in whiteboard app
  • Openboard - whiteboard app
  • Kahoot - quiz engine
  • G Suite - documents, presentations, spreadsheets, storage, calendar
  • Slack - messaging/collaboration
  • Gmail - email

 

 

Green screen setup