Yes, AdobeConnect isn't perfect. Yes, my wireless can go on the fritz. Yes, a student or two may have a hard time getting into Googledocs.
But I love it all the same. I wouldn't have predicted this two years ago, when I started teaching blended courses, but I really can do things in my synchronous online days that I cannot do face-to-face.
I always give my students ten minutes to get settled on synchronous online days. Most students come in by 9:30, but I don't start the live class until 9:40. This gives students time to run to the library, if they have class just before mine, or time to ask pre-class questions in the chat box. Meanwhile, everyone completes an opening activity:
At 9:40, I start my webcam and come on line. I'm not showing the full screen because doing so will reveal my students' names, which I will not do. But here's me, in my home office, smiling as students type in their warrants to these enthymemes.
All three classes nailed this, so we quickly moved on to the next piece: finding "Viable" sources. This part was new. The day before, one of my TAs, K, and I were were trying to figure out how to come back to stasis theory in a way that would be most useful to students.
"Maybe..." I suddenly thought, "maybe I should make some sort of presentation that walks students through the research process, like Narrowing Topic --> Finding better sources --> evaluating sources --> choosing the most useful sources, as in the ones with actual arguments--> adding those sources to your stasis grid. Maybe?"
"YES!" K responded. "Students will definitely find that useful, 'cause most of them are like "what is this stasis thing and why am I doing it. This will totally be helpful."
"Okay. I'm on it."
I made a rough map, popped it into Google Presentations, and asked my TAs to help by finding images and making the presentation pretty. K added a lot, and I worked on it until 1 am (of course). It worked out. After walking through the presentation and taking a sudden detour into Academic Search Premier, I explained exactly what to do with their "top" sources: enter them on the grid, like this:
After students identified the two categories with the most claims and questions, they went into their group Googledocs from a couple of weeks ago to find a two-source stasis grid for them to fill out with two of their sources:
2/19 - Stasis Grid
author/publication/date
|
categorical
|
definitional
|
causal
|
value
|
action
|
jurisdiction
| |
Source 1
| |||||||
Source 2
|
They had about twelve minutes to do this (my second two classes did, anyway; we were short on time in the first class), and my TAs and I watched them in their Googledocs while I kept an eye on the AdobeConnect chat box in case students had questions. I put myself on mute for this activity, unmuting myself halfway through for "You guys are all doing great! About five more minutes" and then "okay, we're about two minutes away..."
And then, when everyone came back into AdobeConnect, I explained that they would copy this activity into their own stasis grids that was part of their homework this weekend. Six sources in the stasis grid by Monday.
And voila. Toulmin + Finding and Evaluating Viable Sources + Stasis Grid Lesson Accomplished.
Why do I love days like this? Because it was a research-focused day. Student had to be on their laptops to search in Google and Academic Search Premier and then work on their stasis grids. Why would I do that in a face-to-face class? I want students to be talking with each other when we're face to face, not staring at their laptops. This is a perfect synchronous online day lesson plan. They need me, a live instructor with a face and a voice, to walk them through Google and especially Academic Search Premier, to show them Diigo and Storify and Pocket, to reinforce why stasis theory is useful. If this had been an asynchronous day, many students would have either been confused, completely lost, or wouldn't have done it at all.
This is what blended learning and teaching looks like with Team Lyra. I love it.
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