My Talk at CAST 2013 and "Things I Wished I'd Said"

First, I want to say thank you to everyone who participated, both in person, online, or after the fact, in listening to and commenting on my talk at CAST 2013.  With the beauty of the internet, and the fact that it was filmed, that talk can be embedded... like this :) :




After you watch the video, there's sure to be some questions, blips, and other things I missed, so I wanted to clarify some of those here:

- the topic is indeed "Teaching the Next Generation", but as I was putting the slides together, I titled it "Training the Next Generation" because I was actively talking with someone about the SummerQAmp program and how we were offering Training materials, and I genuinely didn't realize that I did that until I was doing the presentation... so if you see me say "Training the Next Generation" and see my eyebrows rise... that's not humor, that's a genuine "whoops". However, since I said it, and since it's recorded, there it will stay, as a reminder that even the tester can totally miss something obvious in the heat of battle.

- when asked could I see this being a model to be used in other areas and countries/ regions, I went on about how I would like to see exactly that happen. What I should have said, and it would have provided a lot more clarity, is as follows:

"Yes, this model could be duplicated anywhere. The material is open source, and the content can be used as is anywhere in the world. The biggest problem might be translation into local languages, but we'd have no issues with people doing that.

- I won't say I was happy to hear that completion rates are low, but I was comforted somewhat by the fact that it is a very common phenomenon and that other organizations have found it a very difficult nut to crack as well. I still stand by my original statement in that I want to have this be experiential and not "quiz based", but I may have to consider making the modules have an exit criteria, and to do that, I may have to put some quiz questions in... but I may not have to. A wonderful suggestions that was made would be to have a project embedded, and that there would be a "testability" action that would be the trigger. Not an actual "answer this multiple choice question" but instead find this issue and describe it in such a way that enough key words are present that you are let through. I will admit, I have no idea at the moment how I would make that happen, but I love the idea!

- I really do want to continue this discussion, so please, if after watching the video you have any thoughts, concerns, burning questions, or ideas that might help revolutionize this whole process, I am so dying to hear what you have to say :).