Capacity and Community

Capacity and Community

Northeast is always looking forward in an effort to examine our current practices and collectively improve student learning by raising the bar and closing the gap for all students.  By creating a learning community to meet goals, we are committed to helping educators across the world develop the capacity to address challenges and effectively implement technology in the context of teaching and learning.

Capacity

Employee Development Center and Makerspace

Educators need support to continue to grow in their craft and turn good ideas into sustainable practices. Northeast takes coaching employees and students to the next level in various ways. One of the newest ways that the college is accomplishing that is by hiring a Director of Employee Development and founding an Employee Development Center in the Eula Dees Memorial Library. The Employee Development Center is scheduled to provide professional development, coaching cycles, best practices and continuous support to meet the challenges of an ever-changing educational world.

The library is set to undergo extensive student-friendly changes. It will be renovated to embrace the challenges of today. The llibrary staff banded together to update study rooms into technologically-advanced rooms featuring AppleTVs and chromakey green screen walls so that students could work on video productions together in a space equipped for their devices. The Eula Dees Memorial Library staff has considered how technology can transform education, and the librarians are at the forefront of clearing the way for a Maker Space in the library where employees and students will have the opportunities to collaborate on specific projects.

Apple CORES (Creating Opportunities to Reach and Empower Students)

Northeast's Apple CORES program helps students get to the core of utilizing technology while not taking time away from valuable classroom instruction. As a student-led coalition, all leaders in the Apple CORES program must certify as an Apple Teacher to prepare them to support peers with assignments that require multi-faceted technology tools. Not only do Apple CORES help students with their technology questions, but they also provide support for the training workshops held in the Northeast Student Success Center. Apple CORES provides instructors with the ability to promote creative assignments without having to answer basic technology questions. By using the Apple CORES program, Northeast embraces a student-centered campus by having students support one another. Located in the Eula Dees Memorial Library and at the Help Desk in the Frank and Audrey Haney Union, this vanguard group provides instruction from single sign-on issues to helping students understand the making of videos, converting a Word document to PDF and many other fundamental iPad processes. Future plans include to have Apple CORES members in a variety of locations across campus to help students. Not only are they open during regular school hours but Apple CORES are available in the evenings in the Eula Dees Memorial Library until 9 p.m. 

AR/VR Classrooms

Northeast's Information Systems Technology degree-seeking students have access to one of the most advanced Augmented and Virtual Reality labs in northeast Mississippi, where they can experience lessons in new dimensions that were not available just a few years ago. In IST 2823, XR 3-D Modeling, students are introduced to 3-D content creation using digital visualization software with an emphasis on the creative thought process. During their time in XR 3-D Modeling, students are given insight into the workflow surrounding animation, modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering of their projects. In IST 2853, XR Digital Artistry, students are able to take their creations to the next level with advanced instructions to create and edit graphic images. 

Music Innovations

Technology and the arts will soon collide at Northeast with the Steinway Spirio. Northeast's Division of Fine Arts is expanding its commitment to students by partnering with the Northeast Development Foundation and Alumni Association to help bring this technologically-advanced Steinway piano to campus. The piano will give students a chance to link their iPads to the musical instrument and follow along as the software shows the correct key placement and the top-of-the-line piano can play any song on the iPad as well.

Community

Mobile Learning

While Northeast has focused on its employees and students on the Booneville campus and surrounding satellite campuses, the campus has not forgotten the community that supports the college. 

Northeast's Mobile Learning Conference enters its fourteenth (14th) version in June 2022. After being founded by the late Jeffrey Powell in the mid-2000s, the Mobile Learning Conference has grown into one of the southeastern United States' top technology conferences for K-12 education and higher education support. In 2020, during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Mobile Learning Conference welcomed over 2,000 attendees virtually from over 30 different countries for a three-day affair that covered topics from engaging students to maintaining a wireless information system to breakout sessions where attendees were encouraged to find their own voices. In 2022, the Mobile Learning Conference stayed virtual but broke down walls and barriers between education and the learning process with nearly 40 different sessions in a two-day time. Attendees continue to join the Mobile Learning Conference worldwide as two presenters for the 2022 version were from Malaysia. 

B.R.I.D.G.E.S

Under the Building Relationships in Districts: Growing Every School (BRIDGES) campaign, Northeast faculty and staff lend their expertise and support to help local K-12 educators and those around the world through an educational development program designed to provide continuous improvement in education. Northeast is committed to continuing the success of its students using technology, but the college is committed to making connections throughout the realm of education, and offering opportunities to all the seek them worldwide. 

Fiber Optic Technician Course

Northeast became the first community college in Mississippi to offer a Fiber Optic Technician Course at its Northeast at Corinth center in fall 2021. With Mississippi embracing Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley's vision of providing high-speed internet to all of the Magnolia State, Northeast was one of the first to embrace the challenge of keeping that infrastructure up and running. Through an act by the Mississippi legislature, power companies associations have the opportunity to offer high-speed gigabit internet to their customers by using the infrastructure already in place for providing power to the state's residents. Northeast's Fiber Optic Technician Course includes support and training for those looking to work in the field to ensure that the internet infrastructure is fully functioning.