A Look Back at ITLS17

The third annual Innovative Teaching and Learning Symposium was held last Friday, April 21st at the University of Houston Student Center. The conference was bigger than ever and featured a number of presentations from faculty across the UH System Universities.

The day began with a keynote from JoAnna Hunt, formerly the accessibility manager at Blackboard, now with the Amazon Kindle team. Hunt spoke about creating inclusive learning experiences by making three central areas of our teaching accessible: pedagogy, content, and technology.

JoAnna Hunt: Building Inclusive Learning Experience

The rest of the conference was fast-paced and interactive, with 23 sessions from over 30 presenters on topics ranging from universal design for learning and creating digital books to the moral and legal aspects of accessibility and using Google Docs and PDF Annotator as interactive tools in the classroom.

The day ended with the Wrap Party with another PowerPoint Karaoke competition among the UHS faculty and staff.  Assoc. Professor David Shattuck, from UH Engineering, took the winning prize, a Logitech Spotlight Presenter Remote. Last year’s prize also went to a UH Engineering instructor…we call that a streak!

Thanks to all who came and worked to put on the conference! Below are some highlights from ITLS17.  Hope to see you next year!

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