Hopefully it’s ok that I’m going to throw out a few different ideas:

1. Similar to the “Play: Free Digital Tools for Research” that Laura Bowles proposed, I’d be interested to talk about the best assignments or tools people use in their teaching. I can imagine this fitting in any/all of the talk, make, teach, and play categories. I primarily teach writing classes, so the assignments I could discuss are primarily from those classes, such as

• digital/multimodal literacy narratives
• web-based writing portfolios
• digital genre analysis and production project
• digital identity analyses
• student technology demonstrations

Some examples of tools I’ve used for these assignments include

• WordPress
• Photoshop
• iMovie
• Prezi
• Voicethread
• Dreamweaver
• Twitter
• Pinterest

2. And to build on Laura Bowles’ suggestions in “Play: Free Digital Tools for Research,” I think we might even be able to break the types of work she suggested out into separate sessions (i.e., research, collaborate, present). I can imagine very lively sessions based on each of these 3 activities.

3. A few ideas probably for Talk sessions (but also ripe for Play/Make):

• Are others flipping their classrooms? If so, how have you done this? What has worked well and what has not?
• I’m interested to hear about the LMS/CMS different people/schools use. I’ve had experience with Blackboard, WebCT, and Moodle, but I tend to find myself wanting to wander away from the university-sanctioned option and use WordPress to create my own course shell. This conversation would likely touch on larger questions like, What is the purpose of a LMS/CMS? How do we weigh the benefits and drawbacks of hiding our class materials behind a required username and password? How do/should these spaces mimic or integrate with other digital spaces students use? In what ways might these spaces be burdensome or difficult for students and faculty?
• How are we using mobile technology, perhaps specifically apps, in our research and teaching (which apps, how are we using them, what are some best practices? etc.)?
• What have we most recently learned from our students about technology (about what tools they use, about how they understand technology, etc.)?

4. A question I have (so not something I would be comfortable leading/explaining): What are good tools to use for archiving web conversations (e.g., best way to archive Twitter conversations or best ways to create an archive for a conversation that spans multiple sites such as Twitter, blogs, and Tumblr)?

5. I’d also be interested to hear a bit from those of you who were part of THATCamp KY last year who are here again, both because I’m nosy and because it would be good not to repeat too much if there are several people who attended last year, too.

Let’s look at the most useful free digital tools for research, collaboration and presentation. My current favorites are:

• Mendeley Citation Manager
• Evernote Web Clipper
• Google Drive (This is so much more than a word processor!)
• Diigo Social Bookmarking

What are your favorite tools? Bring them! Let’s have show and tell. What tools do you use and how do you use them?

As part of the session, we will collaborate to create an annotated list of tools on Google Drive.