Community Events

Faulkner County Museum Will Host Open House With Help From UCA

UCA director of public history internships Dr. Kim Little and UCA resident master for STEM Residential College Dr. Faith Yarberry, along with their students, will be participating in the Faulkner County Museum’s 12th Annual Holiday Open House on Saturday, November 1, 2014 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

UCA’s STEM Residential College students will be demonstrating some traditional skills, including woodworking, Dutch-oven cooking, needle arts, corn-husk doll making, rope making, spinning and weaving, and blacksmithing as a service-learning project.

UCA’s EDGE program funded this project through a grant to pay for the demonstration supplies and food.

This event is free to the general public, but donations will be accepted. For more information, contact the museum at fcm@conwaycorp.net or call (501) 329-5918. The museum is located at 801 Locust Street, Conway, AR 72034. IMG_1255 copy

Dr. Travis Langley, Author Of “Batman And Psychology: The Dark And Stormy Knight” To Present At UCA

Slide1 copy Psi Chi International Honor Society and the Psychological Society present Dr. Travis Langley, author of the book “Batman and Psychology: The Dark and Stormy Knight”, which has been described as “a journey behind the mask and into the mind of Gotham City’s Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight who inspires fear in evildoers everywhere.”

Why does this superhero without superpowers fascinate us? What does that fascination say about us? The book gives fresh insights into the complex inner world of Batman and Bruce Wayne, and the life and characters of Gotham City.

This event will be held Mashburn 202 on Thursday, October 30, 2014 at 6:00 p.m. and is free to the general public.

Attendees are encouraged to wear their Halloween costumes. Dr. Langley’s book will be available for purchase at this event.

UCA Spanish Professors Present Findings From Study Concerning “Truth”

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014, at the inaugural installment of the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures’ Faculty Symposium, Associate Professor of Spanish Dr. John Parrack raised some provocative questions: “How can (and should) language teachers respond when students make astute observations about the language and ask “why”? Do they tell the truth?”

He argued that despite objections that giving a “truthful” answer takes away valuable class time better spent on activities in the target language, responding truthfully can, in fact, positively impact learner motivation, intuition, confidence, and interest. He presented some of the preliminary findings from a quantitative study he is conducting alongside UCA Assistant Professor of Spanish, Dr. Travis Sorenson, to an audience of 20 students and 11 faculty members. His study offers an intriguing suggestion: non-communicative historical linguistic activities, when incorporated in a structured and deliberate manner, can have communicative outcomes.

Ultimately, Dr. Parrack’s presentation, “Telling the Truth: Historical Linguistics, Learner Motivation and Outcomes in Beginning Spanish,” sparked larger, fruitful discussions between students and faculty regarding both students’ and instructors’ considerations in the language classroom—discussions that will, no doubt, continue to shape how UCA faculty approach language teaching.

For more information concerning the events in the World Languages Department, contact Phillip Bailey at phillipb@uca.edu or at (501) 450-5645.

UCA To Host 2014 Fall Career Fair

Fall career Fair Flyer 2014 copy

The 2014 Fall Career Fair will take place in the Student Center Ballroom on Wednesday, November 5, 2014 from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. There will be recruiters available to network with candidates, so bring your resumes and dress for success.

This event is free and is open to the general public. For more information, call 501-450-3134.

College Of Education Hosts Second Annual EdCamp

The second annual Edcamp Arkansas was held on Saturday, September 27, 2014 on the University of Central Arkansas campus.

This year, over fifty participants attended the all day event and included teachers and administrators from across the state as well as college and university personnel and pre-service and in-service teachers.

The event began at 8:30am with registration and session creation. Participants then work to build the sessions for the day based on interest in the room. Once again the annual “rock-paper-scissors” activity led to the session presentations. At the end of the day, participants engaged in an App Attack activity and closing remarks accompanied. Door prizes were contributed by the following very generous donors: AETN, BoomWriter, LiveBinders, Book Creator App, BrainPop, Flocabulary, Vocabulary Spelling City, Edutopia, the UCA Department of Teaching and Learning, and the UCA College of Education.

The 2014 Edcamp Arkansas event saw the grassroots creation of 16 separate sessions including sessions in technology curriculum and assessment, and teacher leadership. A full list of sessions included: (1) Joyful Teaching, (2) Differentiated Instruction, (3) Assessment Strategies, (4) Teacher Efficacy and Leadership, (5) Classroom Management, (6) Cultural Competence, (7) Parental Involvement, (8) Dyslexia/Dysgraphia, (9) Teaching Writing and Blogging, (10) Common Core and PARCC Strategies, (11) Bloomboard/TESS, (12) Virtual Arkansas and K-12 LMS Options, (13) Technology and Math Instruction, (14) Evernote, (15) Google Apps, and (16) E-Texts/Multitouch Texts.

The Edcamp model provides one recent and increasingly popular approach to providing relevant and responsive professional development. An Edcamp is often referred to as an “unconference” in that no pre-set agenda exists. Instead the content and sessions of the Edcamp day relies solely on the participants with common foci being technology, pedagogy, and current issues and trends.

Participants of an Edcamp engage in an ad-hoc community structure as they are called upon to lead or take part in conversations they define. If a participant feels their needs are not being met, they are welcome to join another session on their own initiative. The underpinning philosophy of Edcamp is that the agenda that emerges the day of the camp is the only agenda that could have happened and is therefore the right agenda for those who attended (Boule, 2011).

Edcamps possess certain shared attributes. They are free to all participants. There is no vendor or commercial presence, although Edcamps can seek sponsorship. Edcamps can be hosted by anyone interested in the Edcamp vision and mission. The sessions are determined the day of the event and do not have to take the form of formal presentations. Edcamps are reliant on the “law of two feet” where participants are able to change sessions as they wish. Social media (i.e., blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook) can be used to continue the work started the day of the camp (Edcamp Foundation, 2012). Additionally, technology is a presence at the camp in the form of interactive connectivity and presentations (i.e., backchannels, twitter, polling sites, video rooms).

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