August 2010Thursday, August 19th, 2010 No Comments »

Welcome Back – Fall Opportunities

  

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Greetings from the Department of Instructional Technology! Welcome back to campus. The DIT offers a variety of training and development opportunities and resources to assist faculty. Mark your calendars for these exciting opportunities this semester: 

Digital Storytelling Academy

The very first USC Upstate Digital Storytelling Academy is a unique collaboration between members of the College of Arts and Sciences; the Department of Languages, Literature & Composition; The School of Education; the Academic Support Center; and the Department of Instructional Technology, and promises to be beneficial to individual participants as well as the entire USC Upstate community. 

 The DSA is designed to be a hands-on learning experience involving the use of digital media for storytelling and for improving classroom instruction. The project will consist of six sessions beginning in September, concluding with a “screening” in early December.  Participants will learn to use the technological tools involved with digital storytelling and discuss various instructional/pedagogical implications of this exciting tool. 

Application information was shared previously via email. Visit the Digital Storytelling Academy web home, call (5470) or email Cindy for more details. 

The deadline to apply is this Friday, August 20. Participants will be notified by August 27. 

Joint Faculty Seminar with the New Media Consortium, Baylor University and others

Plans are still being finalized, but please take note of this excellent development opportunity.  The seminar will be lead by Gardner Campbell (Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University) and Alan Levine (Vice President of Community and Chief Technology Officer for the New Media Consortium) and will be based upon selections from The New Media Reader.  The reader is available in the USC Upstate Campus Bookstore (thanks to Jerry Carroll!) and excerpts are available online.  The Baylor group will commence their discussions on September 8 and we will assemble a parallel cohort here. Please be in touch if you are interested in the seminar. Final details will be shared as soon as they are available. 

T2x4

The tech lunch series from spring semester continues, expanding to every second and fourth Tuesday.  All sessions are set for 12:15 p.m. in the IT Conference Room, Admin. 102, and will include: 

• September 14 –   DMCA, Fair Use and Copyright Update – Karen Swetland, Library Reference Coordinator.
• September 28 –   Introduction to VoiceThread – Shannon Polchow, Assistant Professor of Spanish
• October 12 -       Nurturing online conversations and engagement: blogs or threaded discussions? – Cindy Jennings, Director of Instructional Technology
• October 26 -       PowerPoint Makeover – Creating and Delivering more effective presentations – Cindy Jennings, Director of Instructional Technology
• November 9 -     Visual thinking in the classroom – new tools for engaging students – Cindy Jennings, Director of Instructional Technology
• November 23 -    Networked learning – not just a fad anymore – Cindy Jennings, Director of Instructional Technology

Custom programs and individual assistance

Programs on a variety of teaching and learning with technology topics; as well as digital and new media tools and resoureces are available – designed for faculty or student groups. And…individual consultation and assistance is just a phone call or email away! 
Cindy Jennings – 5470
Tom Davis – 5502 

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Important New EDUCAUSE Initiatives

ELI Seeking Evidence of Impact (sei) - “As the pace of technology change continues unabated, institutions are faced with numerous decisions and choices with respect to support for teaching and learning. With many options and constrained budgets, faculty and administrators must make careful decisions about what practices to adopt and about where to invest their time, effort, and fiscal resources. As critical as these decisions are, the information available about the impact of these innovations is often scarce, uneven, or both. What evidence do we have that these changes and innovation are having the impact we hope for?…The ELI announces a program intended to bring the teaching and learning community into a discussion about ways of gathering evidence of the impact of our innovations and current practices.” 
Visit the site to learn more and consider the opportunities for engagement in the conversation.
 

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Ed Tech Predictions for a New Decade - 8 Months In

We are all pretty accustomed to reading new year prognostications in January. This year was a bit more ‘special’ as we entered the second decade in a new(ish) century.  Of course, there was no shortage of predictions and musings in the ed tech world about trends and emerging technologies to watch. I have followed and collected a number of lists and pieces over the past months with themes worth paying attention to in my opinion.  As we reflect on plans and promise of a new academic year and the learning opportunities before us and our students, I thought some of these might be worth considering. 

Let’s begin with a little context building before we get to a few items from the lists. The Beloit College Mindset list for the class of 2014 was shared earlier this week.  Notice the technologies mentioned in there – some are long gone and some are new and ubiquitous in the lives of our students.  The ideas included in this 21st Century Students video provide another view from the perspective and in the voice of the young people themselves. Know that this video focuses on a younger age group than our students (hat tip to Mark Fijor from Arlington Heights Il. School District 25 for sharing this work), but the information is a wake-up call for rethinking traditions we hold on to in our classroom structures and relationships. A whole lot of our students live their lives in this digital context. 

Now, on to some of the technology tools and trends to watch.  Let’s begin with the short term (within the next 12 months)  technologies to watch described in the latest NMC Horizon Report (visit the full 2010 web version of the HR here).  From the Horizon Report, 

“It should be noted that the Horizon Report is not a predictive tool. It is meant, rather, to highlight emerging technologies with considerable potential for our focus areas of teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. Each of them is already the focus of work at a number of innovative institutions around the world, and the work we showcase here reveals the promise of a wider impact” 

So, the two near-term technologies to watch are mobile computing and open content. 

CC licensed flickr photo shared by umpcportal.com / Steve Paine 

Did you ever consider how to make use of those mobile devices (including smart phones, laptops and netbooks) most of our students come with in teaching/learning …rather than an outright ban?  And what about open content?  Do you know there is a growing culture of open sharing of educational content and resources? Just visit the MIT OpenCourseWare site and consider the possibilities.  Consider the collaboration potential and opportunities for learning when we (individuals and institutions) all share and share alike. 

For a bit of a different take on trends (including open content) I saved this piece from Inside Higher Ed from March by Ana Kamenetz, Adapt or Decline. While I may not necessarily agree with everything Kamenetz proposes as eventualities if we fail to embrace technology affordances, the exemplars she notes in the piece are important to follow. 

Looking over some of the other lists and articles I see things like tools for simultaneous live document editing, tools for creating and sharing, curating and collaborating. 

As I follow these conversations, I wonder what critical new (and emerging) literacies our students will need. And I wonder how well we are preparing them to be astute digital citizens. 

Just food for thought. 

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Resources Highlights

50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom - While the focus here is for younger students, there are some pretty good ideas for using wikis in teaching. The wiki spaces in Blackboard can be easily adapted for some of these purposes. 

 MERLOT Grapevine newsletter – a great resource collection including events, resources and features from MERLOT - ‘Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching’…this one is well worth a visit if you are not familiar with MERLOT., 

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In the News

No more free Ning accounts

Last week, the customizable social network platform announced they would no longer offer free accounts and that existing free sites would need to change to premium paid status or relocate.  If you or your organization has used this site for creating a collaboration community, read more here at TechCrunch about the announcement and its ramifications.  NingCreators posted this update on May 4. 

More changes at Facebook raise concern over privacy…again

If you and/or your students are a regular Facebook user, you’ll want to read up on more stirrings as a result of what Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg describes as “the most transformative thing we have done for the web”.  Read more here at CNNMoney.com by David Goldman . 

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March 2010Monday, March 8th, 2010 No Comments »

March Feature

Freshman Students’ Stories-One Photo at a Time

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 Last fall semester, students in some University 101 sections taught by Susannah Waldrop and Hannah Still were introduced to a new assignment designed to help engage students with the university and their first semester experiences using digital storytelling as a tool for capturing their narratives.  Students used digital cameras or camera phones to capture a daily image each of their first 100 days on campus. They then used Microsoft Photo Story 3 to create and edit their digital stories.  Their completed projects were presented as a closing assignment in their U101 course. 

 

The assignment idea was to combine the popular photo-a-day meme with easy to learn and adapt software to utilize the technology affordance for connecting students with their first semester experiences; and then  supporting them through making meaning of a typically difficult first semester through the powerful medium of digital storytelling. 

According to Susannah Waldrop (Director, Academic Success Center)
“…The end result was worth all the work the students put forth on their projects.  Not only did the students reflect on their highs and lows of the semester, they took with them a tangible keepsake to remember their first semester.” And further on her thoughts on the major benefits of the assignment, “Reflection. As I watch students going through their first semester, I try to alert them to the pitfalls in transitioning to college life.  I think the students benefited the most from reflecting on their own experiences.  They realize their mistakes and can make some changes for the future.” Two students who completed the project agreed that the reflection the stories required proved a major benefit.  
According to Samantha Weber  “… It was really nice to see how I had grown and what I had learned over the semester. Also, the reflection on the semester overall was nice.”  Christina McFadden agreed: “… the finished story helped me see/remember how much I grew and changed over the semester; how much my ideas changed.  And I am still taking pictures and shooting video.”

 

 All agreed that learning and using the technology to build the stories was quick and easy.  The projects were not without challenges though.  Both students agreed that remembering to take a daily photograph proved to be more difficult than it might at first appear. And Susannah pointed out that the time commitment in general was an issue.  ”This was a big commitment of time for both the students and myself… I had to check up on their pictures and discussion board every week.  The students would get discouraged if they were behind in pictures.  They also started running out of ideas to take new and different pictures.   We would take time out of class to brainstorm some new ideas.   I had to do a lot of cheerleading to keep some of them motivated.”

When asked whether the story telling assignment should be repeated,  all three agreed the completed narratives were well worth the effort and that the assignment produced very positive results.

Curious about using digital storytelling as a pedagogical tool? According to Hamilton and Weiss (2005),  “Storying, the process of constructing stories in the mind, is one of the most fundamental ways of making meaning and thus pervades all aspects of learning, regardless of age.”  (Martha Hamilton & Mitch Weiss (2005). Children Tell Stories: Teaching and Using Storytelling in the Classroom, Katonah, N.Y., Richard C. Owen Publishers available online here.   At the same time, as students tell their own stories, additional critical skills for academic success can be developed. Peggy Benton (2006) has noted that “… In the process of storytelling, we become more creative, gain speaking skills, and improve our verbal organizing skills and our ability to empathize. Now, with digital stories, pictures enhance storytelling’s visual communication and appeal. The process includes planning, writing, editing, illustrating, and producing the components so that we communicate the heartfelt essence, not just the events.” (Available online here at Edutopia, The George Lucas Educational Foundation:  “The Power of Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: Telling Stories With Technology”.

To learn more, visit these additional resources:
1.  The Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling, University of Houston
2.  50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story, via Alan Levine’s CogDogRoo wiki

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Help us serve you better…Take our 5-Minute Survey!

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We welcome your input as we plan for instructional technology events for next academic year.  Click to take our 5-Minute Survey
Or, if you have an idea for an event or offering,  just email Cindy .

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Upcoming Events

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Tech Lunch
March 23 at noon in the IT Conference Room (Admin. 102)
Margaret Camp (Director of Disability Services & ADA Coordinator) will be leading a session on
“Universal Design & Digital Media in the Classroom”
Bring your lunch.  Dessert provided.

Teaching with Technology Spring Conference  
Friday, April 9, 1:00 –5:00 (CLC 309). 
Sessions include:

•  Teaching with Tablets Panel – Rich Chow, David Marlow, Dale Saylor, Suzanne Sutton, Reid Toth
• Using VoiceThread in Language Instruction – David Coberly & Shannon Polchow
• Teaching Online with Adobe Connect – Brian Smith
• An Introduction to ProfHacker – George Williams, ProfHacker Editor
• Digital Storytelling – Lori Tanner
• A Student’s Eyeview of Blogging (and writing to learn!) in Blackboard-Paige Church, Clint Fleming, Deanna Hiott & Cindy Jennings
• A lightening round of useful apps  

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 March Resources Highlights

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Presentations
Looking for ways to spruce up your usual presentation slides and styles? Just tired of the same old thing?
Take a look at this month’s Spotlight Video with Garr Reynolds and visit these resources:
visit Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen site; and  Garr Reynold’s Official Site for more presentation tips

Copyright
If you couldn’t make it to our February Tech Lunch on Copyright, some of our resources from that session are here:
1.  Our own Karen Swetland’s Library Guide on Copyright. Thanks to Karen for this great set of resources!
2.  Fair Use Resources from Critical Commons
3.  Center for Social Media at American University 

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In the News

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ED.gov Open Innovation Portal

The US Department of Education is offering a new and different opportunity for  ”…individuals from all walks of life –teachers, parents, students, community leaders, education advocates…” to join and collaborate in this online community to suggest solutions for improving student achievement. 
Visit the portal’s Frequently Asked Questions to learn more. 

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What We’re Reading

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 Wardrip-Fruin, N.  &  Montfort, N. (2003). The New Media Reader. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.
Visit the book web site here & read online excerpts.
I have been reading this text along with the New Media Consortium’s New Media Faculty Seminar.   The volume contains marvelous writings and papers from early technology visionaries foretelling the future of ubiquitous tools and media we now take for granted. It is well worth the time to visit and contemplate.

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational Thinking. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 49, No. 3.
“It represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.”  Available online here.
Listen to Professor Wing share her vision for computational thinking at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Annual Meeting in January here, from the meeting Proceedings.

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Filed under: Uncategorized

January 2010 Issue – Happy New Year and Welcome Back!Friday, January 15th, 2010 No Comments »

Faculty Feature: Teaching with Tablets

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 Last spring the Department of Instructional Technology launched a new Teaching with Tablets project with a call for proposals aimed at inviting faculty to experiment with creative classroom approaches, innovations, and teaching modifications enabled by the tablet (specifically digital inking) technology.  Five faculty members received computers based upon the proposals they submitted: 

                Rick Chow, MCS
                Dave Marlow, LLC
                Dale Saylor, MCS
                Suzanne Sutton, Nursing
                Reid Toth, SCJWS

While each project intended a different use of the tablet & inking capabilities, the group set to work over summer getting acquainted with the machines and preparing to realize their proposal visions for use of the technology in their teaching.  All worked diligently to prepare and rose to the unanticipated challenges their various projects presented. 

 

 Dave Marlow reflected on the fall semester experience,

“My primary pedagogical goal with the tablet PC is to de-center the classroom by getting myself out of the front and into a circle of desks with my students with the intention of encouraging them to prepare more for class and to take greater ownership of class discussion. With such a major paradigm [shift], progress is slow. This semester has  proven challenging as I have encountered issues with technology, pedagogy, students preconceptions, and time constraints but look forward continuing to work on these issues in the coming semesters.”

 Dale Saylor using digital ink in class

 Dale Saylor shared that:

“Having the Tablet PC is nothing like what I expected when I responded to the request for proposal.  Technical problems have taught me patience and humility…Preparing for using the Tablet PC in the classroom has kept me on the lookout for different ways to teach… This semester has not just meant playing with a fun technological toy, but growing as a teacher.  While it could be frightening, I am looking forward to the spring semester and what the Tablet PC will teach me and my students.”          

 In addition to the faculty group, Ken Ellis a student Supplemental Instruction leader has been using a tablet PC and digital inking in support of his SI instruction.  After using the tablet in SI sessions fall semester, Ken shared that:

 “The tablet PC has made it possible for me to create worksheets and other material, then provide to students in Supplemental Instruction that very same day. Students … have enjoyed using the tablet pc, because it has made [their course] much more interactive for them…”

 The group met regularly during fall semester to share ideas and experiences and collaborated on a project wiki to capture resources and reflections as the project proceeds.  Explorations will continue spring semester with continued sharing and practice.

A new request for proposals is planned for later spring.

To learn more about teaching with tablets and digital ink visit:

Berque, D., Bonebright, T. L., Gough, M., & Smith, C. L. (2009). Leveraging the Interplay Between a Grassroots Pen-Based Computing Pilot and an Institutional Laptop Initiative. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Vol. 32, #4.

WIPTE – The Workshop on the Impact of Pen-Based Technology on Education workshop site at Virginia Tech.

Pen-based Computing in Higher Education from the HP InformEd Video Library

 

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Check out Upcoming Spring Opportunities

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In addition to the semester start-up Blackboard and other technology sessions offered by Tom Davis, mark your calendars for these additional opportunities from the Department of Instructional Technology:

 Tech Lunch
A new lunch-time series of sessions of practical tips on a variety of topics.  The series begins Tuesday, January 26 at noon in the IT Conference Room (102 Admin.). 
Prof. Richard Mack (Graphic Design) will share tips on digital photo/image management.
Bring your lunch. Dessert provided.
The series continues on the 4^th Tuesday of each month through April.

Virtual Meeting of the Teaching Online Community of Practice
Monday, February 1 at 4:00 p.m. via Adobe Connect. The conversation for this session will center on assessing student work in online courses; including testing and online participation. To join the meeting, just click the meeting link here.  Additional virtual meetings will be scheduled based on participation at this first ‘experimental’ session.

Speedgeeking
Returns on Friday, February 5 at 1:00 (location TBA) for a new set of brief introductions to a variety of easy to learn apps including VoiceThread, Jiffle, Spezify, Creately and others.

Teaching with Technology Spring Conference  
Friday, April 9, 1:00 – 4:30 (location TBA). Sessions will include a panel made up of the faculty tablet recipients, and other.

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Meet the Teaching and Learning with Technology Advisory Group (TLTAG)

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The TLTAG meets periodically (once or twice a semester) to discuss teaching and learning with technology ideas of mutual interest. The group is made up of faculty volunteers who work in an advisory capacity alongside the Department of Instructional Technology.

Our current membership for 2009-2010 includes:

• Tom Davis, Instructional Technology
• Andrew Kearns, Library
• George Labanick, NSE
• David Marlow, LLC
• Ben Myers, FACS
• Suzanne Sutton, Nursing
• Lori Tanner, Education
• Reid Toth, SCJWS
• Sebastian van Delden, MCS
• Pam Wash, Education
• George Williams, LLC

 We welcome new members! If you are interested in joining this conversation, please be in touch with Cindy at cjennings@uscupstate.edu or ext. 5470.

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January Resources Highlights

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Teaching Online

 Faculty teaching or planning online courses can access a variety of resources from the following:

1. Visit the Shared (S) Drive – Faculty and Staff ITS Info Folder – for handouts on a variety of IT topics and applications.
2. Email Tom Davis (tdavis@uscupstate.edu) to request enrollment in the USC Upstate Blackboard Training Course.
3. Email Cindy Jennings (cennings@uscupstate.edu) to request an invitation to the Upstate Teaching Online wiki in WetPaint.

 USC Resources

1.  Center for Teaching Excellence – visit their site for teaching resources, including their Video Archive.
2.  UTS Media Services – visit their site for video and media resources, including the Distance Education page.  Visit their Copyright Guidelines for an excellent collection of materials including a link to the Office of General Counsel for advice on any copyright questions you might have.

 Teaching During a Flu Outbreak

Academic Contingency Planning resources are available from the university’s flu alert page here.

 

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 In the News

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Marc Parry of the Wired Campus Newsletter at the Chronicle previewed the Horizon Report today (“’Horizon Report’ Highlights 6 Technologies to Watch in Education”).  The report is prepared yearly as a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative.  Open content is identified as a trend to watch.  Visit the sites to read the complete materials.

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What We’re Reading

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Online:

EDUCAUSE Quarterly Special Issue on Student Engagement

EDUCAUSE 7 Things You Should Know About series, most recent issue on Next-Generation Presentation Tools

Grading 2.0 – Evaluation in the Digital Age – forum conversation from HASTAC Scholars (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory

Books:

Pink, D. H. (2005). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Books.  Visit Daniel Pink’s blog here.

Heath, C. & Heath, D. (2007). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York: Random House, Inc. Visit the Heath Brother’s blog here.

Postman, N. & Weingartner, C. ( 1969). Teaching as a Subversive Activity. New York: Dell Publishing, reprinted through an arrangement with Delacorte Press.

 

 

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Welcome to the inaugural issue of USC Upstate TLT News!Friday, October 2nd, 2009 No Comments »

USC Upstate TLT News is a new monthly multi-media  newsletter prepared and published by the Department of Instructional Technology in the Division of Information Technology and Services.  (Check the About page to learn more).

This newsletter is an outreach project of our area and focuses on teaching and learning with technology. USC Upstate TLT News contains information about pedagogical considerations, technical trends, and practical tips including regular features, tutorials, demos, and other resources.

In each issue we will include a faculty feature highlighting the work and/or pedagogy of one of our own campus colleagues; original articles or links to news from the broader world of educational technology in higher education;  and a ‘tools and apps’ feature introducing  promising applications or ideas for a new use.

Some navigation hints:

• Always scroll down the page to check out the feature articles.
• Note email and RSS subscribe opportunities
• Check out other parts of the right side bar where we will share a monthly video development opportunity – Click on the YouTube icon on the lower right of the video to pop out to YouTube for viewing ,
• Click on any photo in the gallery to visit our flickr photostream from around campus,
• Click on the link provided to follow us on Twitter,
• And be sure to visit our listing  of useful blogs, suggested sites, 
• Check out our Google event calendar to keep up with upcoming opportunities.

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November Faculty Feature:

by Prof George Williams

What happens when you have students show their work…to each other?

Overview

I’d like to follow up on a recent post at ProfHacker by Brian Croxall praising Mark Sample for explaining how and why one might share a Zotero library with anyone and everyone. Brian argues,

“The more academics show their work—while they’re still working on it—the more we can learn, borrow, and remix from one another.”

I’ve long been an advocate of opening up the work we do as teachers and scholars to a public audience, provided we’re the ones who decide when and what to share and under what conditions (I’m a big fan of Creative Commons licenses, for example). However, when it comes to what my students do in the classroom, I’ve been a little slow to embrace this philosophy. Only recently have I taken seriously the value of encouraging—and sometimes requiring—students to show their work to each other “while they’re still working on it.”

Granted, as an English professor, I’ve almost always provided time for draft workshops in which students review each others’ essays, but I adopted a new strategy last year that works extremely well:

Sticky notes!

So far—knock on wood—I’ve had nothing but success with this method.

Let’s say you want your students to answer a particular question and to be able to support their answer by, yes, showing their work. Here’s one way of doing that collaboratively, openly, and for the most part with affordable, low-tech tools.

The required materials:

• A whiteboard or chalkboard
• Markers or chalk
• A few pads of sticky notes
• Students
• Optional: Digital camera & online venue through which to share photos

The process:

1. At the very top of the board, in big letters, write the question under consideration.
2. Draw a grid with open spaces into which the different possible answers will be placed.
3. Make sure each student has a few sticky notes.
4. On each sticky note, the student must write the following:
   • Name,
   • Answer,
   • Supporting reasons for answer.
5. Each student then places their sticky notes on the board in the right locations.
6. The class discusses the results.
7. Optional: The instructor and/or students take digital pictures of the board and uploads them to a photo sharing site online.
8. Optional: The instructor and/or students annotate the online digital pictures.
9. Optional: The instructor and/or students return to the pictures to prepare for tests, for required essays, for subsequent discussions, or for any number of purposes.

Some examples:

• “Is Gulliver’s Travels a novel?” (Flickr set from a 2nd-year literature course).
• “Which of these two OpEd pieces is more persuasive for the intended audience?” (Flickr set from a 1st-year writing course).

As these examples suggest, this exercise works very well with “yes” or “no” questions where the two answers correspond to two different colors of sticky note. However, you could also use this method for more open-ended questions and for general group brainstorming. Note that this is not a method to use—I think—where there is a right answer to be distinguished from wrong answers.

What I like about this method

1. Students get it. Period. I always see light bulbs going off where before there had been none.
2. It requires using the correct method for making an argument. You provide your opinion, but you also have to provide evidence that supports your opinion. If a student only has one of the 2 required elements, the sticky doesn’t get to stay on the board. Period. Everyone understands this by the end of the exercise, and so there’s no excuse for subsequently writing an essay that fails to use this method.
3. It reveals understanding or lack thereof. The degree to which a student has–or hasn’t–processed what they should be learning is easy to assess with this method. You can’t hide that you’re not following what’s going on or that you’re not contributing to the discussion. If your sticky note is not up on the board, you’re intellectually absent. Maybe you need further explanation (perhaps during office hours), or maybe you just need to start taking the class more seriously.
4. It requires concision. The sticky note is not big enough for beating around the bush or for flowery language intended to hide a lack of substantive comment.
5. Even shy students who don’t like to speak up in class can participate.
6. And finally, it enables peer modeling. When student A sees what students B, C, & D are capable of doing, the intellectual tasks required by the class suddenly seem a lot more manageable. And herein lies the value of sharing student work in the classroom.

What I need to improve:

1. Sticky notes aren’t good for the environment, are they? I’d like a greener way to accomplish this. Perhaps notecards and a corkboard. I do love the whiteboard, though.
2. Understandably, some students have difficulty fitting the required information into the space provided by the sticky note, which makes the resulting pix tough to read sometimes. I could always start using bigger notes.
3. The lighting in my classrooms is not great for taking pix of the whiteboard. Maybe I could d.i.y. some better lighting to illuminate the board.
4. I need to require more often a followup assignment from this in-class exercise: for example, students wrote an essay based on our discussion of the two OpEd pieces (see link above). More of that sort of thing would be good.

The punchline

To remix—sorry, couldn’t resist—what Brian originally wrote:

“The more students show their work—while they’re still working on it—the more they can learn, borrow, and remix from one another.”

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Thanks to Prof George Williams in LLC for sharing his work in our first ‘Faculty Feature’ article. We invite your submissions of suggestions for future Faculty Feature articles and examples of your own creative pedagogies for future columns.

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In the News:

A few weeks ago, edutopia (available at:  www.edutopia.org) – the George Lucas Educational Foundation, released it’s ‘Top 10 Tips for Teaching with New Media”. According to their October 2 blog post inviting a final opportuinty to download the guide:

“Edutopia exists to provide educators with the information and inspiration needed to create schools for the 21st century, and our new Ten Top Tips guide provides succinct tips on how you can use the latest technologies to prepare your students for success.”

Visit the site to get the guide and for a large collection of resources and information pertaining to  the foundation’s Core Concepts (available at: www.edutopia.org/topic-overview) including

• Comprehensive Assessment,
• Teacher Development,
• Technology Integration,
• Social and Emotional Learning,
• Project Learning, and
• Integrated Studies.

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November’s Tool Feature

This month’s tool feature will be a little different from future columns as we remind you of the opportuinty to learn about tools and apps through our Programs on Demand workshops.  These portable customizable workshops are available at flexible times that you decide and can be scheduled for a few people or a large group, for faculty, staff and/or students.  To schedule a session, just email us.
Programs on Demand Tools and Apps topics include:

• Twitter
• iGoogle
• Google docs
• Google chat
• Google calendar (pretty much anything Google!)
• Zotero
• Diigo
• Jing
• Etherpad
• Creately
• Wallwisher
• Spezify
• xtranormal
• OneNote
• VoiceThread
• PhotoStory
• flickr
• Others you choose!

Filed under: Pedagogy Tags: Creative Commons, flickr, Pedagogy, teaching & learning, Zotero