Reflections
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Long time, no blog. The question is: how easy will it be to add photos? If it proves to be intuitive, then I can begin exploring the development of my creativity.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Web 2.0 and Comp I: do they fit?
Teaching the argumentative essay: will a wiki help?
The eLearning Guild’s (http://elearningguild.com/) great newsletter, Learning Solutions: Practical Applications of Technology for Learning, has offered me some rich ideas to ponder in advance of teaching The Argumentative Essay this fall for a local community college. I was also fortunate enough to participate in their Online Forum “Designing and Developing E-learning Interactions.”
So let me do some thinking out loud about how blogs or wikis or podcasts might fit into my teaching, always keeping a careful eye on my students and what will work for them, what will engage them.
Blogs
I love the idea of introducing writing students to blogging. However, I very much need the most transparent tool I can find. When I compose a blog entry for my own blog, I am always annoyed at how much mini-coding I have to do in order to make it appear professional on the web. And I insist that it look professional and read well. All the links must work.
So, to explore that a bit more, I have downloaded the Blogger for Word plug-in and am giving that a spin today while I think out loud. I already have one link that will need to be coded. Hmmm.
Assuming the technical expertise of my students is sufficient for this to be possible, here’s what I can do: I will create a group blog, invite each student to participate, so it’s a group blog, very like the one I created for my NLII experiment. How might that assist my students? It needs to be directly relevant to their writing assignments. Maybe a one-week trial – use the space for brainstorming for one of the coming essays.
Podcasting
The only way I could insert this technology into my teaching would be to read a few opening paragraphs into my iPod (or directly into Audacity on the PC or Garage Band on the Mac) and post that blog on the course website for them to listen to their own words. Extra work on my part but it emphasizes a point about writing: read it aloud – how does it sound? How does it read? Does it flow? What about sentence length and pace?
Wikis
These intrigue me. Because there is no technical barrier, everyone just goes to one page and does what: posts what and why and can it be used as a group editing tool? With community college undergrads, I don’t want to be doing technical experiments that might turn some of them off. Not everyone likes to play as much as I do.
I explored setting up a free wiki yesterday but it would need to offer, like Blogger, free hosting since I have no intention of installing wiki software on my own website.
Constructivist Learning
My next post will explore each of these five characteristics and see how I can infuse English Comp I with these constructivist principles.
The eLearning Guild’s (http://elearningguild.com/) great newsletter, Learning Solutions: Practical Applications of Technology for Learning, has offered me some rich ideas to ponder in advance of teaching The Argumentative Essay this fall for a local community college. I was also fortunate enough to participate in their Online Forum “Designing and Developing E-learning Interactions.”
So let me do some thinking out loud about how blogs or wikis or podcasts might fit into my teaching, always keeping a careful eye on my students and what will work for them, what will engage them.
Blogs
I love the idea of introducing writing students to blogging. However, I very much need the most transparent tool I can find. When I compose a blog entry for my own blog, I am always annoyed at how much mini-coding I have to do in order to make it appear professional on the web. And I insist that it look professional and read well. All the links must work.
So, to explore that a bit more, I have downloaded the Blogger for Word plug-in and am giving that a spin today while I think out loud. I already have one link that will need to be coded. Hmmm.
Assuming the technical expertise of my students is sufficient for this to be possible, here’s what I can do: I will create a group blog, invite each student to participate, so it’s a group blog, very like the one I created for my NLII experiment. How might that assist my students? It needs to be directly relevant to their writing assignments. Maybe a one-week trial – use the space for brainstorming for one of the coming essays.
Podcasting
The only way I could insert this technology into my teaching would be to read a few opening paragraphs into my iPod (or directly into Audacity on the PC or Garage Band on the Mac) and post that blog on the course website for them to listen to their own words. Extra work on my part but it emphasizes a point about writing: read it aloud – how does it sound? How does it read? Does it flow? What about sentence length and pace?
Wikis
These intrigue me. Because there is no technical barrier, everyone just goes to one page and does what: posts what and why and can it be used as a group editing tool? With community college undergrads, I don’t want to be doing technical experiments that might turn some of them off. Not everyone likes to play as much as I do.
I explored setting up a free wiki yesterday but it would need to offer, like Blogger, free hosting since I have no intention of installing wiki software on my own website.
Constructivist Learning
- Active and manipulative
- Constructive and reflective
- Instention – geared to self-reflection
- Authentic, challenging, and real world
- Cooperative, collaborative and conversational
My next post will explore each of these five characteristics and see how I can infuse English Comp I with these constructivist principles.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Podcasting and the University
The University of California at Berkeley has joined iTunes’ iUniversity and posted the lectures of many classes on the Internet. RSS feed enables users to subscribe to the podcasts of their course.
To explore what this venture into iUniversity meant, I browsed the Berkeley selections and grabbed the first lecture about a topic not familiar to me but of some interest. I listened to about the first ten minutes of the lecture. Many of the hesitations, the jumping from topic to topic are hallmarks of a face-to-face lecture environment. I wasn’t engaged enough to keep listening. The whole setup for access seemed very convenient. If I were a student, I’d subscribe to this course, hook up my iPod on a weekly basis and download Brashere’s lectures. If I were taking the course for credit, I’d listen away, no matter how tedious and uncompressed his ideas and comments were.
However, as a discerning listener, someone with very little time to waste listening to blathering, I quit and began to ponder what makes a podcast to which I will listen.
Today I came across an article from TechLearning called “Professional Development as Podcast.” Certainly the concepts of just-in-time learning, focused on precisely what the instructor needs at that moment, and of honoring the busy lives of teachers and creating professional development that they can enter into their own schedule are noble concepts.
The authors get to the real point very quickly. “Attention must be paid to content. This critical element seems to be missing in many informal podcases, and perhaps this is why many universities experimenting with podcasting simply record lectures, missing the bulk of the technology’s potential.”
Here, here!! Three cheers!!
What, then, do I need to keep me engaged and learning on my own?
• Content that meets my interests: currently music and art
• An engaging lecturer who packs the lecture with synthesized knowledge and entertaining delivery. When learning about great music, I need to hear it, sometimes over and over again so I can “understand” the concepts. When watching a DVD about great art, I want to see a high resolution close-up of the work of art, then match it to another so that I can begin to discriminate between styles. Benchmark for me.
• Short enough or chaptered in such a way that I can grab five minutes here or there and not lose the flow
If I were teaching an advanced class in poetic analysis, for example, I’d read key poems and then add thought questions to the end. Students would listen ahead of class and come ready to engage in high level discourse with me. Part way through the course, I would ask them to identify a poem, analyze it, read it as a podcast and explicate the poem after its reading. The class would critique these podcasts and the best would become part of the developing knowledge base of the course.
The University of California at Berkeley has joined iTunes’ iUniversity and posted the lectures of many classes on the Internet. RSS feed enables users to subscribe to the podcasts of their course.
To explore what this venture into iUniversity meant, I browsed the Berkeley selections and grabbed the first lecture about a topic not familiar to me but of some interest. I listened to about the first ten minutes of the lecture. Many of the hesitations, the jumping from topic to topic are hallmarks of a face-to-face lecture environment. I wasn’t engaged enough to keep listening. The whole setup for access seemed very convenient. If I were a student, I’d subscribe to this course, hook up my iPod on a weekly basis and download Brashere’s lectures. If I were taking the course for credit, I’d listen away, no matter how tedious and uncompressed his ideas and comments were.
However, as a discerning listener, someone with very little time to waste listening to blathering, I quit and began to ponder what makes a podcast to which I will listen.
Today I came across an article from TechLearning called “Professional Development as Podcast.” Certainly the concepts of just-in-time learning, focused on precisely what the instructor needs at that moment, and of honoring the busy lives of teachers and creating professional development that they can enter into their own schedule are noble concepts.
The authors get to the real point very quickly. “Attention must be paid to content. This critical element seems to be missing in many informal podcases, and perhaps this is why many universities experimenting with podcasting simply record lectures, missing the bulk of the technology’s potential.”
Here, here!! Three cheers!!
What, then, do I need to keep me engaged and learning on my own?
• Content that meets my interests: currently music and art
• An engaging lecturer who packs the lecture with synthesized knowledge and entertaining delivery. When learning about great music, I need to hear it, sometimes over and over again so I can “understand” the concepts. When watching a DVD about great art, I want to see a high resolution close-up of the work of art, then match it to another so that I can begin to discriminate between styles. Benchmark for me.
• Short enough or chaptered in such a way that I can grab five minutes here or there and not lose the flow
If I were teaching an advanced class in poetic analysis, for example, I’d read key poems and then add thought questions to the end. Students would listen ahead of class and come ready to engage in high level discourse with me. Part way through the course, I would ask them to identify a poem, analyze it, read it as a podcast and explicate the poem after its reading. The class would critique these podcasts and the best would become part of the developing knowledge base of the course.
Opening the Peer Review Conversation
Peer review was simply not done when I was a secondary school English teacher. When that classroom door closed, we were each the sole ruler of the domain within. Many of us were friends outside the classroom. Department chairs came in, with plenty of advance warning, observed us for a 55 minute period, checked off items on their “objective” checklist and so crafted an evaluation which had little impact on our teaching.
I know good teaching when I see it. I know effective instruction when I experience it. With the educational profession under deepening scrutiny, it is imperative that we enhance the process of instructor evaluation. How, then, can we do that?
How can we move a department at a college or university toward a collaborative effort to improve teaching with peer review as one primary component? At a research university, the instructors in many cases hold doctorate degrees and win grants. They research and publish so they will not perish. But they may be remarkably ineffective in the undergraduate classroom and that is a shame.
Let’s consider an ideal scenario. A small department has taken on the task of crafting a peer review process that honors the integrity of the profession and moves the quality of teaching forward in a significant way.
I’d begin by opening a conversation with the group. I’d start by asking, “What happens in a dynamic, effective classroom?” We’d describe that interaction, that climate, and those relationships. And from this detailed description, we might be able to create consensus on what characteristics of teaching a peer review should examine.
Here’s the characteristics I’d contribute to the discussion:
• Enthusiasm
• Eye contact with students
• Attempts to reduce the impersonality of higher education
• Clarity of voice
• Pacing of instruction
• Use of available technology
Those details could then be transformed into criteria. Evaluation criteria must be measurable. Many of the details would, nevertheless, be subjective. But teaching that changes a student’s world vision and self-perception always contains some additional magic. With the right leadership and expert facilitation, a group can move toward an understanding of peer review that can begin a transformation.
Peer review was simply not done when I was a secondary school English teacher. When that classroom door closed, we were each the sole ruler of the domain within. Many of us were friends outside the classroom. Department chairs came in, with plenty of advance warning, observed us for a 55 minute period, checked off items on their “objective” checklist and so crafted an evaluation which had little impact on our teaching.
I know good teaching when I see it. I know effective instruction when I experience it. With the educational profession under deepening scrutiny, it is imperative that we enhance the process of instructor evaluation. How, then, can we do that?
How can we move a department at a college or university toward a collaborative effort to improve teaching with peer review as one primary component? At a research university, the instructors in many cases hold doctorate degrees and win grants. They research and publish so they will not perish. But they may be remarkably ineffective in the undergraduate classroom and that is a shame.
Let’s consider an ideal scenario. A small department has taken on the task of crafting a peer review process that honors the integrity of the profession and moves the quality of teaching forward in a significant way.
I’d begin by opening a conversation with the group. I’d start by asking, “What happens in a dynamic, effective classroom?” We’d describe that interaction, that climate, and those relationships. And from this detailed description, we might be able to create consensus on what characteristics of teaching a peer review should examine.
Here’s the characteristics I’d contribute to the discussion:
• Enthusiasm
• Eye contact with students
• Attempts to reduce the impersonality of higher education
• Clarity of voice
• Pacing of instruction
• Use of available technology
Those details could then be transformed into criteria. Evaluation criteria must be measurable. Many of the details would, nevertheless, be subjective. But teaching that changes a student’s world vision and self-perception always contains some additional magic. With the right leadership and expert facilitation, a group can move toward an understanding of peer review that can begin a transformation.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Systemic Barriers to Change: an example
The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit
The report notes a number of barriers to change, two of which can be either enablers or firm barriers. Those two are:
* Intellectual property & Business practices
* Tools, standards, Licensing & pricing
But let’s look at some systemic barriers and I will speak to the world I know best: a faculty support unit in a major research institution:
The faculty won’t come to the workshops. Why? No incentive. Pressure of publish or perish. No time. No departmental support. They are a hard market to reach.
So we switched to offering just a few basic workshops and moved into a service model, where we offer our expert assistance in four areas. Take a look:
http://itc.utk.edu/apply/
1. Online syllabus design and development
2. Instructional design and content organization
3. Education elements (formerly known as “learning objects”)
4. Communication and collaboration
So now, instead of reaching 15 faculty with powerful two-hour workshops on issues critical to 21st century literacy, we upload documents for faculty, sneaking in pedagogy when we can. My unit hosts some of the finest and most creative staff on campus but we have trouble reaching the faculty with our gifts.
The leaders and power brokers in higher education administration need to become better informed on these issues and this report provides a great starting point. One issue that can be addressed, at the enterprise level, might be an evaluation of the faculty development model currently operating on the campus. How can that faculty development model be shifted to incorporate the absolutely essential task of “empowering teachers with 21st century literacy skills” (see page 15 of the report).
If we don’t reach the instructors, we are simply talking well but not bringing about change.
It’s imperative.
The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit
The report notes a number of barriers to change, two of which can be either enablers or firm barriers. Those two are:
* Intellectual property & Business practices
* Tools, standards, Licensing & pricing
But let’s look at some systemic barriers and I will speak to the world I know best: a faculty support unit in a major research institution:
- 21st century literacy is not well understood
- most institutions have no incentive to change
- tenure process does not acknowledge or reward innovative change in the learning environment initiated by passionate instructors
- current research on these issues hasn’t reached a mainstream audience, where many traditional faculty fall
The faculty won’t come to the workshops. Why? No incentive. Pressure of publish or perish. No time. No departmental support. They are a hard market to reach.
So we switched to offering just a few basic workshops and moved into a service model, where we offer our expert assistance in four areas. Take a look:
http://itc.utk.edu/apply/
1. Online syllabus design and development
2. Instructional design and content organization
3. Education elements (formerly known as “learning objects”)
4. Communication and collaboration
So now, instead of reaching 15 faculty with powerful two-hour workshops on issues critical to 21st century literacy, we upload documents for faculty, sneaking in pedagogy when we can. My unit hosts some of the finest and most creative staff on campus but we have trouble reaching the faculty with our gifts.
The leaders and power brokers in higher education administration need to become better informed on these issues and this report provides a great starting point. One issue that can be addressed, at the enterprise level, might be an evaluation of the faculty development model currently operating on the campus. How can that faculty development model be shifted to incorporate the absolutely essential task of “empowering teachers with 21st century literacy skills” (see page 15 of the report).
If we don’t reach the instructors, we are simply talking well but not bringing about change.
It’s imperative.
What is 21st century literacy?
The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit
According to Adobe Systems, George Lucas Foundation, and New Media Consortium, it's a global imperative. These three organizations brought together high-end global leaders and thinkers who systematically brainstormed what this new 21st century literacy is, and what our global response should be.
A new language is being born: Ârich in ways that extend traditional forms of communication with visual imagery and sound and it is a global imperative that we understand this far-reaching phenomenon.
We lack a common language with which to discuss this emerging phenomenon, but, as with the learning object dialogue of the past five years, we can begin from a working definition to see where it leads our thinking:
LetÂs look at just those verbs again:
To understand a new power
To use that new power
To transform media
To distribute and disseminate
To create anew
A brave new world.
Here are six characteristics of 21st century literacy to pique your own thinking skills:
Multimodal
Includes creative fluency and interpretive facility
New grammar with its own syntax
Interactive communication
Ability to use media to evoke emotional responses
Potential to transform the way we learn
In Part II we will explore the question:
What does a world that values 21st century literacy look like? Stay tuned!
The Report of the 21st Century Literacy Summit
According to Adobe Systems, George Lucas Foundation, and New Media Consortium, it's a global imperative. These three organizations brought together high-end global leaders and thinkers who systematically brainstormed what this new 21st century literacy is, and what our global response should be.
A new language is being born: Ârich in ways that extend traditional forms of communication with visual imagery and sound and it is a global imperative that we understand this far-reaching phenomenon.
We lack a common language with which to discuss this emerging phenomenon, but, as with the learning object dialogue of the past five years, we can begin from a working definition to see where it leads our thinking:
21st century literacy is the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms.
LetÂs look at just those verbs again:
To understand a new power
To use that new power
To transform media
To distribute and disseminate
To create anew
A brave new world.
Here are six characteristics of 21st century literacy to pique your own thinking skills:
Multimodal
Includes creative fluency and interpretive facility
New grammar with its own syntax
Interactive communication
Ability to use media to evoke emotional responses
Potential to transform the way we learn
In Part II we will explore the question:
What does a world that values 21st century literacy look like? Stay tuned!
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Role of video game technology in educational settings
Innovate, an interesting journal of online education, recently devoted an entire online issue to gaming in education. I have begun reading through the
articles and find them marvelous. Let's look at the first one: “What
would a state of the art instructional video game look like?” by J.P.
Gee.
Before you run fleeing for your life from that very title,
let me suggest a few parts of the article that sound a very different
note, one which those of us in faculty support units need to heed.
Education, K-12 and higher ed, is suffering from a “continued
allegiance to bad theories of learning.” Ouch. That's rather harsh. How
about if we say that the theories of learning are out-dated, rather than
simply “bad.” He does make a telling reference to what he has called
“content fetish,” and, being an ex-high school English teacher, I know
what that means. I felt compelled to cover British literature in one
year. Tough job.
He then moves up a level of abstraction and begins to explore what defines a “domain of knowledge.” In my work with Educause's NLII in their virtual community of practice pilot project, I became very familiar with looking at an area of learning as a domain of knowledge, defining that domain, and trying to create a virtual learning environment that would embody that domain. Heady stuff.
“Any domain of knowledge, academic or not, is first and foremost
a set of activities and experiences.”
That's a good premise. Because it moves us seamlessly from the traditional domains of knowledge that originated in Greek times and were formalized in medieval times as the university system developed to the 21st century. Now. Let's look past that spell-binding term “academic,” and consider a university of a different kind.
An article on the Fast Company blog (a very rich feed), Welcome to Video Game University, describes a Video Game University. This institution was created because of one company's perception of “the talent shortage that now grips the whole industry.” Some statistics will reveal a little bit about the economics
and perceived value of this university:
- 20,000 prospective
students requested applications - 800 applied
- 60 were
accepted
Since games are never produced by one person, the entire learning structure is based on teams. One student notes, “We're trying to grab the school by the throat and take everything we can from it.”
When was the last time you heard a traditional university student respond like that to the experience of freshman year?
Reading the two articles side by side triggered some new areas of
thought about teaching and learning. Thoughts?
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Studying the Learning Experience
The writings of Christopher Dede from the Harvard Graduate School of Education always offer provocative and deeper perspectives on emerging technology and learning environments.
In “Designing and Studying Learning Experiences That Use Multiple Interactive MediaTo Bridge Distance and Time” Dede and co-authors Tara Brown L’Bahy and Pam Whitehouse, describe a study of “distributed learning” examined through the lens of a graduate course called “Learning Media that Bridge Distance and Time.”
In brief, the authors examine eight media:
• Face-to-face
• Websites for informal learning
• Groove (groupware tool)
• Tapped In (multi-user virtual environment)
• Wireless handhelds
• Videoconferencing
• Asynchronous threaded discussion
• iCommons (Harvard’s homegrown course shell)
The metacognitive question directing students’ thinking about these learning experiences was:
Ho does each medium shape the quality of information and interaction you receive and contribute?
That’s a question that all staff who support faculty in integrating technology and its associated Literacies into a curriculum should be asking, and answering!
Many definitions of “distributed learning” exist, but I think Dede’s definition (2000) broadens the horizons of our thinking in an effective way:
He describes the facilitation of distributed learning as “orchestrating educational activities among classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.” I like the idea of an instructor as a conductor of a learning experience that can be designed to reach into students' larger world and enrich that world as well as academia itself.
Worth pondering. Thoughts?
The writings of Christopher Dede from the Harvard Graduate School of Education always offer provocative and deeper perspectives on emerging technology and learning environments.
In “Designing and Studying Learning Experiences That Use Multiple Interactive MediaTo Bridge Distance and Time” Dede and co-authors Tara Brown L’Bahy and Pam Whitehouse, describe a study of “distributed learning” examined through the lens of a graduate course called “Learning Media that Bridge Distance and Time.”
In brief, the authors examine eight media:
• Face-to-face
• Websites for informal learning
• Groove (groupware tool)
• Tapped In (multi-user virtual environment)
• Wireless handhelds
• Videoconferencing
• Asynchronous threaded discussion
• iCommons (Harvard’s homegrown course shell)
The metacognitive question directing students’ thinking about these learning experiences was:
Ho does each medium shape the quality of information and interaction you receive and contribute?
That’s a question that all staff who support faculty in integrating technology and its associated Literacies into a curriculum should be asking, and answering!
Many definitions of “distributed learning” exist, but I think Dede’s definition (2000) broadens the horizons of our thinking in an effective way:
He describes the facilitation of distributed learning as “orchestrating educational activities among classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.” I like the idea of an instructor as a conductor of a learning experience that can be designed to reach into students' larger world and enrich that world as well as academia itself.
Worth pondering. Thoughts?
