reposted from ECU News Service
by By Jeannine Manning Hutson
UNC Board of Governors member and ECU alumnus Bob Rippy presented the Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching award given by the board, to Dr. Abbie Brown.
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Abbie Brown sported the wearable technology Google Glass while accepting the UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Brown, a professor of instructional technology in the College of Education, accepted the award wearing Google glass, a wearable computer with an optical display. He explained that Google glass users are called “glass explorers” and he sees himself in that term.
An online-only instructor, Brown teaches graduate-level courses to current or aspiring educators aiming to improve their ability to teach and create instructional materials. “This means I have to model the best teaching practices for a sophisticated and critical group,” he said.
“And since my courses are delivered entirely online I have to find ways to effectively deliver content,” he said. At the same time, he must “create a social environment that encourages community development and professional networking” and in a setting that is “new and different for most of them.”
Translation? He’s an explorer.
“I spend my work day learning about things and figuring the best ways to share what I’ve learned. I study the discoveries made by explorers past and present, and I share my own discoveries with fellow explorers present and future,” Brown said.
Read more about Brown’s approach to teaching at http://www.ecu.edu/news/abbiebrown.cfm.