 I think all of the issues around educational technologies are very important now because when I talk about coming up with new and creative ways of teaching online or even very large lecture halls, invariably that takes you down the road of technology. So I think it's very worthwhile to think about what do we look for and I kind of think about, I guess, three or four things depending on how you want to break it down. But the first one, just to get in the door, I think any technology has to be what we call evidence-based. But that can be kind of broken down into two things. So the first is it should have been built, purpose built based on things we know that work. We have a lot of things in the literature that work but often they're logistically clumsy. Technology is great with logistics. So find something that works and turn it into a technology. But then I think further on the evidence baseline, you should directly do research on the technology to show that it is doing what you think it's doing. So those two things provide a really strong evidence base that says, okay, this technology is based on good principles and the instantiation works. I think beyond that there's another two levels that the technology can reach that will make it especially enticing. The first one is that it should connect clearly with these learning objectives we've been talking about. They are more and more the measuring stick, the way we are going to guide not only what we do but also assess how well we're doing. So a good technology has to directly tie to these learning objectives and the best technology will actually provide some assessment of the objectives as it's being employed. If you get a technology that does all those evidence based tied to learning objectives and assesses learning objectives then I think we're really on to something. So I think if you're considering technology for your courses as a faculty member the biggest thing is recognizing that it's going to be a challenge and making use of the support that's there. You have to be motivated, you have to be passionate about it but the support is available to us. So using the support that you have not being afraid to try new things also recognizing that it doesn't always work. So being able to be a little bit creative flying with whatever possibilities are thrown in your face at the last minute. So if it's bugging me on the correcting end or the instructor end I don't want it to be bugging the student on the learning end because then it can really frustrate them and then they say hell with this. And I also teach a number of students who are online students only. So they only take their courses online. They might be students who are mature students or they're in situations where they're working or they have children if you know they have those kinds of lives that are a little more hectic let's say than a typical students life. And they get very frustrated when the technology isn't working for them. It's not that the technology isn't working for them, it's that they have a hard time understanding the logic or how to make use of it. And if it takes them a long time to get used to that, that really affects their learning. They get frustrated and then that puts up a barrier to their satisfaction in the course and if you're unsatisfying in the course you'll learn less. You become less happy with it even if it's a good course. Some of the factors that faculty need to consider when selecting educational technologies I think many of us who have first started or have started this only recently probably the single biggest factor is just ease of use. You need to be able to master this thing quickly so that it doesn't fail while you are online live or synchronous. It happened a couple of times to me and it's quite upsetting for both you and for the students. So for instance if the internet goes out or if you lose your connection or something like that so that's one thing. When you are teaching online the last thing you want to be doing is fiddling with stuff. You don't want things to be interrupted. So that provides not a good experience for students. At the beginning it's simply ease of use. Couple that with really the thought and the consideration that you don't want to just use technology sake. You want to use it because it provides something pedagogically. It benefits students or benefits the teaching and learning process. Otherwise it's really superfluous and you don't need it. So those are important considerations. When trying to select educational technology for a course there's a couple of things that you really have to keep in mind. One of them for sure is it doesn't have pedagogical value. Is there something that the students are really going to get out of it. You have to get away from this idea of just because it's there I have to use it. You have to see that there's a valid reason from a pedagogical point of view to adopt a technology. If you feel comfortable with that the second part of that of course is are you able to spend the time and the effort that's required to work through a learning curve for that particular tool. I think that every single technological tool that you work with will have that learning curve associated with it. Some of them are worse than others. Some of them are not that bad at all. But you have to be practical about the time that you have available and the relationship between that time that's required to the pedagogical value of it. Secondly, it's really important to solicit feedback from students. So you might have a great idea about a new pedagogical tool or technology or whatever it happens to be that you think is going to work really well. But it's crucial that you ask students during the course as well as afterwards did it actually work the way I thought it was going to work. And I found that I do have a term survey, I just call it a checking in survey with students that's completely separate from course evaluations where I just ask them a few questions about how are they consuming the material, do they have a preference in terms of one medium versus another. It could be something as simple as the length of a lecture video segment. And to get that feedback from them which has been incredibly useful for me in terms of shaping the course design and the tools that I'm using from one version or one iteration to the next.