The next several posts I write will be devoted to a course I am taking at UMUC for my Certificate in Technology in Distance Education and e-Learning. Incidentally, this particular course, OMDE 603, shares that title.
So far, we have reviewed the history of technology in Distance Education (DE) and discussed definitions and terminology for DE. We spent a week on asynchronous and synchronous technology and are midway through a module on Web 2.0 technologies.
There's a way in which much of this has been review for me. I took two courses for this certificate last semester: OMDE 601, which is the foundations course for DE, and a tech-heavy course, DETC 630, which focused on emerging technologies in DE and e-learning. Both of those courses prepared me well for this one. The historical context and terminology was covered in OMDE 601, and asynchronous and synchronous technologies, as well as Web 2.0 technologies, was covered in DETC 630. To that end, I'm a little stuck on what to focus on in this post that demonstrates "critical thinking attributes regarding the course readings and ideas related to class topics." I'll do my best.
First, what's interesting about Technology in DE and e-learning is that the two--technology and DE--are inseparably intertwined. Distance Education is only possible through technology and always has been (Peters). For its first hundred years, students and teachers relied on the postal service--trains and planes. Mostly trains. The middle section, sometimes referred to as the "second wave," saw improvements in speed and communication with telephones, radio, and television. The 1970s saw the first generation of computer-mediated communication (CMC) with discussion boards, and then the whole world changed in the 90s with the Internet.
Of particular note is that the pedagogy changed during these waves, too. We had a discussion about this a couple of weeks ago; it wasn't until two-way communication between student and teacher and student and student was reliable and widely available that notions of constructivism and student-centered learning came into play. The pedagogy of constructivism really took hold, or became dominant, in the 1990s and has remained so ever since, to the best of my current understanding. Note that I was steeped in constructivism and student-based learning when I was trained to teach; I'm also a compositionist. So, my field and my training give me a strong bias for not just constructivism, but social constructivism.b
The liveliest conversation thus far has been about asynchronous v synchronous technologies. I of course have a lot to say on this because of the way I structure my courses. There is a lot of bias against synchronous technologies (at a distance) in general, and especially here at UMUC, for good reason. First, synchronous technologies deserve their bad rap. Until quite recently, issues of access, reliability, and strong Internet connections have made it virtually impossible for quality synchronous sessions to happen at all (note that I'm specifically talking about web conferencing, as that's what I know best). While vast improvements have been made in these areas, at least in the United States, the technologies themselves are rudimentary, which leads to live sessions in technologies like the painfully ugly AdobeConnect that often aren't much more engaging than a face-to-face lecture. I do my best in here, but I know that I'm not taking advantage of the potential of web conferencing like I could and am eager to do. It requires a paradigm shift that I haven't completely made. For an excellent post on this, see Hybrid Pedagogy's "An Affinity for Asynchronous Learning."
Second, for the purposes of "true" DE (i.e., 100% at a distance), synchronous sessions are impractical. Students take DE courses for convenience and flexibility. Students are in different time zones. Students have crazy schedules that preclude being able to log on at a fixed time every week. So, there's bias.
That said, even web conferencing affords an immediacy that is simply not possible on discussion boards or even pre-recorded instructor videos or podcasts (both of which are great, by the way). Discussion boards are rich, critical, reflective--this is where integrated learning happens (Garrison and Vaughan). Live sessions are also valuable, though: they bring everyone together. Students can chat with each other in real time. Instructors can answer questions in real time. Students can see and hear their instructor and, depending on the way the class is set up, each other. Social presence and instructor presence is inherently higher in synchronous sessions. It just is. I don't know that it's completely practical for an institution like UMUC...but I think that this program (Master's of DE) could benefit from incorporating more live sessions than what I'm seeing now. I attended one live session last semester in DETC 630 which was, I'm afraid, fairly useless. It was simply the instructor going over a couple of websites, which had already been done in a short video I had just watched prior to attending the live session. Not well handled, but it's a learning curve--it takes awhile to get the hang of running live sessions, to which my students, and especially my TAs, can attest.
This post is already a mile long, so I'm going to hold off on Web 2.0 technologies until my next post. Above, I've mentioned Otto Peters, one of the giants of DE scholarship, and Randy Garrison and Norman Vaughan, two DE scholars who have cornered the market on blended learning in higher ed (the title of their 2008 book). Garrison is also one of the original authors (with Anderson and Archer, 2000), of the Community of Inquiry model, in which the social presence and instructor presence concepts are rooted (or, rather, my introduction to them is).
Showing posts with label edtech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label edtech. Show all posts
Friday, June 13, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Blended and Digital Innovations in the Academic Writing Program
Yesterday, I met with a few of my fellow blended instructors to see what everyone's been up to this semester, report on the OWI Committee and other highlights from the 4Cs, and look forward to the upcoming academic year. Even with just four of us, our discussion was so lively that we didn't get to the last item at all. Here are some highlights:
New this Semester:
DB started us off by explaining how he's incorporated the digital project into the syllabus. He's having his students create websites on Weebly and "got their feet wet" with the Rhetorical Analysis. This is a good move: his students have at least two months to play with their websites instead of having to build them in just a few weeks, as mine will this semester. DB is using the digital project as the Revision assignment; students will revise their EoE and Position Paper and add them to their websites. His students will also add their annotated bibliographies and have a separate section for "other voices." His students have responded enthusiastically to this addition, which gives me confidence about introducing this in a couple of weeks.
JE was impressed but wondered if building websites was a little advanced for English 101. DB replied that it was easy for students--they know how to do this. Even if they hadn't built a website before, they know what one looks like and what makes a good one. He's going to collaborate with his students on how these should be assessed, which is a recommended strategy that many have written about, including our new hire, Chanon Adsanatham. A link to his 2012 Computers and Composition article, “Integrating Assessment and Instruction: Using Student-Generated Grading Criteria to Evaluate Multimodal Digital Projects,” is on his website.
On this note, I offered that students possess an internal grammar for visual rhetoric. They may not have the terminology, but they have the grammar, a point that DK picked up on. He's been doing a lot of work recently on students' right to their own language and opened this semester with Vershawn A. Young's 2010 Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies article, "Should Writers Use They Own English," which immediately gets students talking about writing from Day One. I think DK needs to give a workshop or a presentation on this for the AWP, as I don't think that this principle, as old as it is (1974), is familiar to most people in the program. Here's a link to the CCCC Position on Students' Right to Their Own Language, with a link to an annotated bibliography.
JE talked about her experience working with a TA this semester and couldn't be happier! Her TA is phenomenal, and her only regret is that she only has a TA for one of her sections instead of two. DK and I were both thrilled, of course, and we all looked at DB: when is he going to start working with TAs? DB replied that he already had one in mind, and we pointed him to the application for 388V on the AWP website: 388V Internship Application
I then talked about how I've redesigned my course to focus on students' digital literacy, much of which can be found elsewhere on this blog. The two texts I highly recommend are the ones I discussed at length with several people I met at the 4Cs: Eli Pariser's 2011 Ted Talk on Internet Filter Bubbles and Fogleman, Niedbala, and Bedell's 2013 Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian article, "Writing and Publishing in a Blended Learning Environment to Develop Students' Scholarly Digital Ethos." That link is to ERIC, which can be accessed for free through our library.
I also touched briefly on my class Twitter @LyraBL101 and how my students are using Twitter to enter the "public" conversation. My students have made a new Twitter for class (some of them have kept their own, which is fine), tweeted their research question with #Lyra101, and followed at least ten people or organizations who are tweeting about their topic. I emphasized that they need to be following at least three people who they disagree with, which I hope will help at least a few of them with the upcoming Rogerian Letter. I held conferences this week, and several students mentioned that they had found useful articles and links for their projects on Twitter, which is exactly what I'd been hoping for.
Neither JE, DK, or DB are on Twitter, so it was a little hard to explain all of this in the short amount of time that we had. I showed them my hootsuite and my TweetDeck to show them all of the conversations I follow: #fycchat, #4C14, #ncte, #engchat, #digcit, #digped, #blendchat, #blendedlearning, #highered, etc. Many key people and organizations can be found through our BL Twitter account, @BLWritingUMD, currently being managed by the impeccable @Courtney_Guth.
Sharing our Work
With only ten minutes left in our meeting, I quickly showed everyone the CCCC page for the Committee on Effective Practices for OWI and explained the new Open Resource (OR) site that the Committee has just launched. I want all of us to contribute our work--the BL and OWI community will benefit from a robust set of resources to draw from. This works both ways: these will be peer-reviewed publications, which will help individuals. On a broader note, I'd like to see a strong UMD presence on this site, which will help all of us here. So please, submit your work! The Call for Submissions can be found on this page.
I also mentioned that I'll be presenting on Voicethread at the ITL Conference at the end of April. This is a great, one-day conference; some of my recent work has come directly from presentations at this conference. Registration is quick and free: Innovations in Teaching and Learning 2014
As always, I'm inspired by everyone's work in and out of the classroom, and look forward to catching up again towards the end of the semester!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
New this Semester:
DB started us off by explaining how he's incorporated the digital project into the syllabus. He's having his students create websites on Weebly and "got their feet wet" with the Rhetorical Analysis. This is a good move: his students have at least two months to play with their websites instead of having to build them in just a few weeks, as mine will this semester. DB is using the digital project as the Revision assignment; students will revise their EoE and Position Paper and add them to their websites. His students will also add their annotated bibliographies and have a separate section for "other voices." His students have responded enthusiastically to this addition, which gives me confidence about introducing this in a couple of weeks.
JE was impressed but wondered if building websites was a little advanced for English 101. DB replied that it was easy for students--they know how to do this. Even if they hadn't built a website before, they know what one looks like and what makes a good one. He's going to collaborate with his students on how these should be assessed, which is a recommended strategy that many have written about, including our new hire, Chanon Adsanatham. A link to his 2012 Computers and Composition article, “Integrating Assessment and Instruction: Using Student-Generated Grading Criteria to Evaluate Multimodal Digital Projects,” is on his website.
On this note, I offered that students possess an internal grammar for visual rhetoric. They may not have the terminology, but they have the grammar, a point that DK picked up on. He's been doing a lot of work recently on students' right to their own language and opened this semester with Vershawn A. Young's 2010 Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies article, "Should Writers Use They Own English," which immediately gets students talking about writing from Day One. I think DK needs to give a workshop or a presentation on this for the AWP, as I don't think that this principle, as old as it is (1974), is familiar to most people in the program. Here's a link to the CCCC Position on Students' Right to Their Own Language, with a link to an annotated bibliography.
JE talked about her experience working with a TA this semester and couldn't be happier! Her TA is phenomenal, and her only regret is that she only has a TA for one of her sections instead of two. DK and I were both thrilled, of course, and we all looked at DB: when is he going to start working with TAs? DB replied that he already had one in mind, and we pointed him to the application for 388V on the AWP website: 388V Internship Application
I then talked about how I've redesigned my course to focus on students' digital literacy, much of which can be found elsewhere on this blog. The two texts I highly recommend are the ones I discussed at length with several people I met at the 4Cs: Eli Pariser's 2011 Ted Talk on Internet Filter Bubbles and Fogleman, Niedbala, and Bedell's 2013 Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian article, "Writing and Publishing in a Blended Learning Environment to Develop Students' Scholarly Digital Ethos." That link is to ERIC, which can be accessed for free through our library.
I also touched briefly on my class Twitter @LyraBL101 and how my students are using Twitter to enter the "public" conversation. My students have made a new Twitter for class (some of them have kept their own, which is fine), tweeted their research question with #Lyra101, and followed at least ten people or organizations who are tweeting about their topic. I emphasized that they need to be following at least three people who they disagree with, which I hope will help at least a few of them with the upcoming Rogerian Letter. I held conferences this week, and several students mentioned that they had found useful articles and links for their projects on Twitter, which is exactly what I'd been hoping for.
Neither JE, DK, or DB are on Twitter, so it was a little hard to explain all of this in the short amount of time that we had. I showed them my hootsuite and my TweetDeck to show them all of the conversations I follow: #fycchat, #4C14, #ncte, #engchat, #digcit, #digped, #blendchat, #blendedlearning, #highered, etc. Many key people and organizations can be found through our BL Twitter account, @BLWritingUMD, currently being managed by the impeccable @Courtney_Guth.
Sharing our Work
With only ten minutes left in our meeting, I quickly showed everyone the CCCC page for the Committee on Effective Practices for OWI and explained the new Open Resource (OR) site that the Committee has just launched. I want all of us to contribute our work--the BL and OWI community will benefit from a robust set of resources to draw from. This works both ways: these will be peer-reviewed publications, which will help individuals. On a broader note, I'd like to see a strong UMD presence on this site, which will help all of us here. So please, submit your work! The Call for Submissions can be found on this page.
I also mentioned that I'll be presenting on Voicethread at the ITL Conference at the end of April. This is a great, one-day conference; some of my recent work has come directly from presentations at this conference. Registration is quick and free: Innovations in Teaching and Learning 2014
As always, I'm inspired by everyone's work in and out of the classroom, and look forward to catching up again towards the end of the semester!
Thanks for reading, everyone!
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Going Public
As we're in the final stretch of Argument as Inquiry, I'm looking ahead to the rest of the semester. It's all new.
This semester, my students are going public. I've moved the "final paper," the academic position paper, from the last week to week 11. I'm now calling it the "academic argument" to distinguish it from the new project: "the public argument."
My students are conducting quality academic research that doesn't go anywhere. Their "academic audience" is a false construct (they're not *really* going to publish in the Journal of Social Psychology as freshman college students), and most of what they write in my class is "just for English."
I hate that, as do many in my field. So, I'm handling this by having them publish their research findings online. Their last "paper" will be targeted to the public, to the blogosphere and twitterverse. I've made a class twitter (@LyraBL101) and asked all of my students to make new Twitter accounts for themselves and follow us at #Lyra101. They're to follow any author or source that they use in their research and later, will tweet at those authors, telling them that they're using their work in their papers. When they publish their work online--on Blogger, Weebly, or Wix--they're going to tweet about it, tell people on Facebook and Tumblr (neither of which I go near--that's their world, not mine), and, I hope, get people to comment on their work.
Students will repurpose their papers and small assignments from earlier in the semester for a public audience. They might turn some of their earlier work into a series of blog posts, or keep the larger papers as stand-alone arguments but cut them in half, from 1500 to 750 words.
I theme my class around media, technology, and education, so students research something that nominally is related to one of those fields. I try to group students together by topic for peer review groups. Those groups will stick together for this last project. I want them to build these websites in groups, and then each of them will have a portal or something to their individual research.
I don't think it's reasonable to have each student build his or her own website. A simple blogger, fine. But I want more than that. I want them to have a website that can house a Twitter feed, a blog, a full paper, an annotated bibliography with hyperlinks, etc. I think that this needs to be a group effort. Some students will do it easily; others will be completely intimidated. So, building this website as a group seems like the way to go.
The sticky area is privacy. I've asked students to make new Twitter accounts specifically for this class so that they keep their private and professional worlds separate. I know that several other professors require students to use Twitter, so this won't be the last time they're asked to make a "professional student" account. I've asked students to use a name that I will recognize, but it doesn't need to be their full name--they can just use "Stan ENGL" as their full name for this assignment. While part of my objectives are to teach them digital literacy skills and how to conduct oneself online in a professional manner, I still want to protect them. They may not want their employer in five years (or five months) to read their college papers.
I'm walking an interesting line between encouraging my students to publish their work online so that their research actually matters to someone other than me and wanting to protect them from their "future" selves. I'm asking them to follow people on Twitter and tweet about their research. My students need to be "real people," but they don't need to be identifiable to the point where their Twitter and Weebly for this class is easily linked to their personal Twitter or Facebook. It's a Brave New World in higher ed and literacy studies...
Monday, March 3, 2014
7 Highly Effective Habits of Teachers Who Hold Classes on Snow Days
I just held synchronous classes in AdobeConnect on a snow day.
To explain this, I'm going to use this nice infographic I found from dailyedventures.com:
1. They Always Start with the Why
Why did I do this? Simple: it was peer review day. It's the only day they had to go over their drafts with each other before submitting the final in a week. Peer review is far too important to skip, and making margin comments on drafts--even thorough comments--is only part of the process. Being able to actually talk to each other is critical. So I did it.
2. They are malleable and can easily adapt
I had seen this coming by about 48 hours. I knew I wanted to go online--I had to. There's no room in the syllabus to lose a day. I scoured university policies and legal notices, making sure I wasn't doing anything illegal. I wasn't--there isn't a policy that explicitly addresses online classes at all, let alone one about holding one when the campus is closed.
Even so, holding peer review online is tricky. AdobeConnect is okay, but TAs can't move themselves in and out of breakout rooms. That's a big problem. In the past, I've plucked a TA out of a group--mid-sentence--and dropped her into a new group. It's a mess.
So how did I adapt this time? By somehow convincing six former TAs to come in and help. I have no idea how I did this--I didn't beg or sound desperate; I just asked--but somehow they all popped in for one of the classes. I had enough TAs for one to be in each group for all three sections. It was brilliant.
3. They embrace change
Thanks to our class Twitter that I launched this week (@LyraBL101), I was able to tweet about this possibility, and then decision, all weekend. With the right tools and attitude, anything is possible!
4. They share, share, and then share some more
See #3. And this blog. Follow me @lyrahilliard. Add comments on this post. Ask me anything!
5. They think win-win-win
I wanted today to be fun--as fun as it could be, anyway. Had we been in class, I would have brought cookies in; I always do that for the first review. I obviously couldn't do that today, but I brought in special guests! Courtney gave a great Writing Center overview by sharing her screen with us and showing us the website. And then students had 40 minutes with a TA (or me) and their peers. I think students appreciated it. I hope so. I know that some had connectivity problems, and my own connection cut out in my first class. In my last class, I accidentally rearranged all of the groups, which was an epic disaster. But we survived (see #2).
6. They are extremely thorough and think two steps ahead
I had already called this on Saturday. I knew campus would be closed. If I hadn't had yesterday to plan, I wouldn't have thought to ask former TAs to help, and then none of this could have happened. We held a brief Google Hangout last night, TAs sent out an announcement, I got into AdobeConnect early this morning to test settings...it all worked. It all totally worked.
7. They actively care
Believe me, I wouldn't have minded a day off! But there was no way. This wasn't a "theory" class; it was a "practice" class: hands on, working with the writing class. Students can't lose this class--that's not fair. Or right. I asked my TAs what they thought--and what they thought students would think. "You should mention that it's optional," one said. "No--you shouldn't mention that it's optional--then no one will come." "I don't think anyone will come, anyway." "Yeah but it's peer review. They should understand that it's important." "Yeah but will they?"
Apparently, they did. About 75% of each class showed up. Not bad for a snow day.
After the last class, I asked D if he thought it worked. "You made the right call," he said.
What would you have done? Would you hold class online on a snow day?
To explain this, I'm going to use this nice infographic I found from dailyedventures.com:
1. They Always Start with the Why
Why did I do this? Simple: it was peer review day. It's the only day they had to go over their drafts with each other before submitting the final in a week. Peer review is far too important to skip, and making margin comments on drafts--even thorough comments--is only part of the process. Being able to actually talk to each other is critical. So I did it.
2. They are malleable and can easily adapt
I had seen this coming by about 48 hours. I knew I wanted to go online--I had to. There's no room in the syllabus to lose a day. I scoured university policies and legal notices, making sure I wasn't doing anything illegal. I wasn't--there isn't a policy that explicitly addresses online classes at all, let alone one about holding one when the campus is closed.
Even so, holding peer review online is tricky. AdobeConnect is okay, but TAs can't move themselves in and out of breakout rooms. That's a big problem. In the past, I've plucked a TA out of a group--mid-sentence--and dropped her into a new group. It's a mess.
So how did I adapt this time? By somehow convincing six former TAs to come in and help. I have no idea how I did this--I didn't beg or sound desperate; I just asked--but somehow they all popped in for one of the classes. I had enough TAs for one to be in each group for all three sections. It was brilliant.
3. They embrace change
Thanks to our class Twitter that I launched this week (@LyraBL101), I was able to tweet about this possibility, and then decision, all weekend. With the right tools and attitude, anything is possible!
4. They share, share, and then share some more
See #3. And this blog. Follow me @lyrahilliard. Add comments on this post. Ask me anything!
5. They think win-win-win
I wanted today to be fun--as fun as it could be, anyway. Had we been in class, I would have brought cookies in; I always do that for the first review. I obviously couldn't do that today, but I brought in special guests! Courtney gave a great Writing Center overview by sharing her screen with us and showing us the website. And then students had 40 minutes with a TA (or me) and their peers. I think students appreciated it. I hope so. I know that some had connectivity problems, and my own connection cut out in my first class. In my last class, I accidentally rearranged all of the groups, which was an epic disaster. But we survived (see #2).
6. They are extremely thorough and think two steps ahead
I had already called this on Saturday. I knew campus would be closed. If I hadn't had yesterday to plan, I wouldn't have thought to ask former TAs to help, and then none of this could have happened. We held a brief Google Hangout last night, TAs sent out an announcement, I got into AdobeConnect early this morning to test settings...it all worked. It all totally worked.
7. They actively care
Believe me, I wouldn't have minded a day off! But there was no way. This wasn't a "theory" class; it was a "practice" class: hands on, working with the writing class. Students can't lose this class--that's not fair. Or right. I asked my TAs what they thought--and what they thought students would think. "You should mention that it's optional," one said. "No--you shouldn't mention that it's optional--then no one will come." "I don't think anyone will come, anyway." "Yeah but it's peer review. They should understand that it's important." "Yeah but will they?"
Apparently, they did. About 75% of each class showed up. Not bad for a snow day.
After the last class, I asked D if he thought it worked. "You made the right call," he said.
What would you have done? Would you hold class online on a snow day?
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Redemption: Voicethread to the Rescue
Opening up Voicethread the morning after an asynchronous day and finding scores of new comments is like running downstairs on Christmas morning and finding a pile of presents.
Here's my view of all of my Voicethreads:
The yellow comment boxes alert me that there are new comments on those three Voicethreads. Yesterday's classwork. Unlike the Voicethread from three weeks ago, yesterday's was simple and straightforward: comment on the quote sandwich in two of the following paragraphs.
Reason #4 that Voicethread rocks: I know immediately if they've understood the lesson. This lesson focuses on the "quote sandwich": how to integrate sources properly in a text. Full rhetorical context, including the main aim of the overall text, the quote (or paraphrase), restate the quote in your own words, analyze the quote, and "forward" it, to use Joseph Harris's term. This lesson was presented in a video lecture I made with Camtasia. I don't use the bells and whistles in Camtasia--the quizzes or polls--so until I started using Voicethread, there was no way for me to know if they truly "got it" (let alone watched it) until I looked over their drafts.
Okay, this could happen through a discussion board, but that wouldn't be nearly as good. They just watched me, in the video, go over several paragraphs, pointing out what is or is not working in the samples. Then, they do the same exact thing in this Voicethread. They didn't read the lesson--they watched me. Practicing in a Voicethread is the most logical way to reinforce what they just learned.
Reason #5 that Voicethread rocks: Students can see the text, listen to each other, and add their audio comments all in the same place. You can't do this with a discussion board.
Here is a Voicethread from last semester. I've gone back to this one because it doesn't include student work (visually)--they are commenting on political cartoons from October, 2013.
The thumbnails on the left and right of the slide represent seven different students. I'm playing this slide now; you can see that I'm listening to the first student's comment.
How cool is this? I mean, seriously? I'm about to write a proposal for this semester's ITL Conference. I want the entire campus to know about this and to adopt this--I think this is an extraordinarily powerful tool for writing teachers like me, for art/ art history teachers, for architecture, media studies, math--the applications are endless.
Thank you, Voicethread, and thank you, students, for bringing me back to my properly enthusiastic state!
Here's my view of all of my Voicethreads:
The yellow comment boxes alert me that there are new comments on those three Voicethreads. Yesterday's classwork. Unlike the Voicethread from three weeks ago, yesterday's was simple and straightforward: comment on the quote sandwich in two of the following paragraphs.
Reason #1 that Voicethread rocks: students can see me as I'm going over the prompt. I've listened to myself on Voicethreads in which I've only given audio prompts; those are fine, but I believe that being able to see me, as dorky as I may look, helps to humanize this activity. It boosts instructor presence, obviously, but it also makes it so that adding an audio comment is less intimidating. If I can add a video comment, students can an audio comment.
Reason #2 that Voicethread rocks: We can hear each other! We're only in a brick and mortar classroom once a week. While many of my online days are synchronous, students can only hear me and my TA, not each other. They type in the chat box or in Googledocs, but it's not the same. Hearing each other's voices helps build "social presence." I ask them to introduce themselves when they start to speak so that subsequent students can reference them by name.
Reason #3 that Voicethread rocks: when recording, we can draw on the slide.
I'm asking students to point out specific things in paragraphs, so being able to point to the area they're talking about is super helpful. The drawings fade after seven seconds, so the slide doesn't get too cluttered.
Reason #4 that Voicethread rocks: I know immediately if they've understood the lesson. This lesson focuses on the "quote sandwich": how to integrate sources properly in a text. Full rhetorical context, including the main aim of the overall text, the quote (or paraphrase), restate the quote in your own words, analyze the quote, and "forward" it, to use Joseph Harris's term. This lesson was presented in a video lecture I made with Camtasia. I don't use the bells and whistles in Camtasia--the quizzes or polls--so until I started using Voicethread, there was no way for me to know if they truly "got it" (let alone watched it) until I looked over their drafts.
Okay, this could happen through a discussion board, but that wouldn't be nearly as good. They just watched me, in the video, go over several paragraphs, pointing out what is or is not working in the samples. Then, they do the same exact thing in this Voicethread. They didn't read the lesson--they watched me. Practicing in a Voicethread is the most logical way to reinforce what they just learned.
Reason #5 that Voicethread rocks: Students can see the text, listen to each other, and add their audio comments all in the same place. You can't do this with a discussion board.
How cool is this? I mean, seriously? I'm about to write a proposal for this semester's ITL Conference. I want the entire campus to know about this and to adopt this--I think this is an extraordinarily powerful tool for writing teachers like me, for art/ art history teachers, for architecture, media studies, math--the applications are endless.
Thank you, Voicethread, and thank you, students, for bringing me back to my properly enthusiastic state!
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Incredible Voicethread!
Okay, I've only listened to two slides so far in just one of my sections, but what I've heard is incredible! These are the moments that make all of the hours it takes to prepare an asynchronous day--a *good* asynchronous day--worth it. Voicethreads don't necessarily take too terribly long to prepare, but because this was our first one of the semester, I had to add a couple of slides just about what Voicethread is and how to use it.
The longest preparation time was designing and explaining the prompt. This is definitely a "Lyra Classic": A hyper-organized, hyper-specific prompt with assigned summaries to comment on and elaborate points to cover. Each student had to respond to two summaries--one on the article they did their own summary on and one on an article they did not read. The prompts for each response were different. I had to write that all out, make sure I assigned groups to the right summaries, and record myself on my webcam walking them through all of the prompts. On a couple of them, the amount of times I say "um" is horrible--absolutely horrible--but because it took me about six hours to put all of this together, I did not rerecord those slides. I did have a script for some of the slides, but not all of them. Yes, scripts help to cut down on the "ums." More later--I just wanted to quickly shout out how impressed I am with my students on only their fourth day of class!
The longest preparation time was designing and explaining the prompt. This is definitely a "Lyra Classic": A hyper-organized, hyper-specific prompt with assigned summaries to comment on and elaborate points to cover. Each student had to respond to two summaries--one on the article they did their own summary on and one on an article they did not read. The prompts for each response were different. I had to write that all out, make sure I assigned groups to the right summaries, and record myself on my webcam walking them through all of the prompts. On a couple of them, the amount of times I say "um" is horrible--absolutely horrible--but because it took me about six hours to put all of this together, I did not rerecord those slides. I did have a script for some of the slides, but not all of them. Yes, scripts help to cut down on the "ums." More later--I just wanted to quickly shout out how impressed I am with my students on only their fourth day of class!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Timing Lesson Plans
I never leave enough time in my lesson plans. Like ever.
It's not for lack of planning: I write them all out--to the time. I rewrite all of my lesson plans, even lessons that I know are successful. So how did I run out of time yesterday?
Okay, this is what happened: I didn't have time to go over the one-sentence summaries from last Wednesday, so I tried to put them into yesterday's lesson plan, which really didn't work. Observe:
:00 Quiz
:05 One-Sentence Summaries from last week
:15 Aims/ Methods/ Materials
:20 Group Summaries: Module 2 → “How to Write a Summary”
:45-50: One-sentence summaries w/ diff sent. struct.
:00-05: PCA Wed (asynch/ Voicethread)
Stop laughing.
Okay, the quiz actually was just five minutes. Super easy, most true/ false or multiple choice, like what's the TA's name, where is my office (one of the options was Florida), and then some fairly simple concept questions (like rhetorical context, which actually most students did not get, despite the fact that I went over it last Wednesday and it was in the WA homework. I honestly don't know why so many students missed that one--anyone? Insight/ tips?)
The one-sentence summaries: I did go over them in my first class, which of course took ten minutes, not five. Reinforced the precise verbs, putting the author as the grammatical subject, and that the information in the one-sentence version needs to include rhetorical context and authorial intent/ message. This is *your* thesis statement about the text. This is also...
...The "Aims" in Joseph Harris's Aims/ Methods/ Materials. Methods and Materials are basically the construction and the tools (Methods --> how the author builds the text; Materials --> with what (tools, or evidence). Methods and materials are what gets included in a paragraph summary.
That went well in my first class...except that it of course took twenty-five minutes, not fifteen. That said, packing sentence structure, precise verbs, does/ says, and aims/ methods/ materials in twenty-five minutes isn't half bad. I just don't know why I thought I could do it in fifteen.
So, writing a group summary takes forty minutes, not thirty. And I actually knew this--I remember this from last semester (and the one before, for that matter). So, in my second and third classes, I cut the one-sentence summaries from last week, a choice I don't like because I wasn't able to integrate this class as tightly with the last one--and because that opening fifteen minutes really was helpful in my first class. So, the net result is that my first class was stressed that they didn't have enough time to finish their summaries (they finished them by midnight) and my second two classes didn't get to see me discuss their sentences and how that relates to aims/ methods/ materials.
Moreover--and this is arguably the biggest fallout--cutting into those last fifteen minutes means that I run out of time for "context" notes, like explaining why we're doing what we're doing, how this relates to what we did last week/ what we will do next week. I also lose really key "housekeeping" notes, like explaining that my TAs and I work as a team, my TA "office lounge," and things like class notes, which I haven't yet talked about at all!
So: I'm writing Monday's lesson plan already and need to save myself 20 minutes to go over all the auxiliary details that I haven't had time to yet. Maybe 25. That will work--it's the first day after the add/ drop period ends, so Monday's students will officially have committed themselves to the class.
I might post Monday's lesson plan here first for C and R to comment on, as they've both TAd twice and know all too well the gap between my ambition and what is realistic in the classroom.
So, tomorrow is our first asynchronous day. Student's are watching K's Summary Video and then doing a Voicethread in which they're responding to each other's group summaries from yesterday. The Voicethread doesn't explicitly incorporate the Summary video, unfortunately (that's always the ideal with video lectures--students need to do something with them to make them relevant), but it's set up pretty well. My TAs are doing a "demo" slide so that after the first slides where I explain how Voicethread works, students can see a slide in action. I'm excited for this one--I think it will be cool for students to hear each other comment on each other's summaries instead of just writing about them in a discussion board, as they have in the past. This makes it more real.
I still want to do something with those sentences...I don't know what. Put them all somewhere and have students revise them? Possibly. Where--a Discussion Board (meh). A Googledoc? Maybe. I could do that sentence structure thing, i.e., revise this twice, one by opening with these two words ("In the...") and the other with ("Writing for..."). These are LAST week's one-sentence summaries (all of Gabriel), so in theory, they know more now about good one-sentence summaries.
Yeah....but then they'll all be exactly the same. They should really do them with the new articles. Maybe it can be in two parts: revise someone else's sentences in two ways, and then revise your group's Gabriel sentence from last week in two ways.
Hm. I might like this. This saves me from having to beat this into the ground next Monday, and gets rid of that holdover item from last Wednesday.
Okay. That's what I'll do then. Video + Voicethread + Sentence-level edits in a Googledoc. Good.
It's not for lack of planning: I write them all out--to the time. I rewrite all of my lesson plans, even lessons that I know are successful. So how did I run out of time yesterday?
Okay, this is what happened: I didn't have time to go over the one-sentence summaries from last Wednesday, so I tried to put them into yesterday's lesson plan, which really didn't work. Observe:
:00 Quiz
:05 One-Sentence Summaries from last week
:15 Aims/ Methods/ Materials
:20 Group Summaries: Module 2 → “How to Write a Summary”
:45-50: One-sentence summaries w/ diff sent. struct.
:00-05: PCA Wed (asynch/ Voicethread)
Stop laughing.
Okay, the quiz actually was just five minutes. Super easy, most true/ false or multiple choice, like what's the TA's name, where is my office (one of the options was Florida), and then some fairly simple concept questions (like rhetorical context, which actually most students did not get, despite the fact that I went over it last Wednesday and it was in the WA homework. I honestly don't know why so many students missed that one--anyone? Insight/ tips?)
The one-sentence summaries: I did go over them in my first class, which of course took ten minutes, not five. Reinforced the precise verbs, putting the author as the grammatical subject, and that the information in the one-sentence version needs to include rhetorical context and authorial intent/ message. This is *your* thesis statement about the text. This is also...
...The "Aims" in Joseph Harris's Aims/ Methods/ Materials. Methods and Materials are basically the construction and the tools (Methods --> how the author builds the text; Materials --> with what (tools, or evidence). Methods and materials are what gets included in a paragraph summary.
That went well in my first class...except that it of course took twenty-five minutes, not fifteen. That said, packing sentence structure, precise verbs, does/ says, and aims/ methods/ materials in twenty-five minutes isn't half bad. I just don't know why I thought I could do it in fifteen.
So, writing a group summary takes forty minutes, not thirty. And I actually knew this--I remember this from last semester (and the one before, for that matter). So, in my second and third classes, I cut the one-sentence summaries from last week, a choice I don't like because I wasn't able to integrate this class as tightly with the last one--and because that opening fifteen minutes really was helpful in my first class. So, the net result is that my first class was stressed that they didn't have enough time to finish their summaries (they finished them by midnight) and my second two classes didn't get to see me discuss their sentences and how that relates to aims/ methods/ materials.
Moreover--and this is arguably the biggest fallout--cutting into those last fifteen minutes means that I run out of time for "context" notes, like explaining why we're doing what we're doing, how this relates to what we did last week/ what we will do next week. I also lose really key "housekeeping" notes, like explaining that my TAs and I work as a team, my TA "office lounge," and things like class notes, which I haven't yet talked about at all!
So: I'm writing Monday's lesson plan already and need to save myself 20 minutes to go over all the auxiliary details that I haven't had time to yet. Maybe 25. That will work--it's the first day after the add/ drop period ends, so Monday's students will officially have committed themselves to the class.
I might post Monday's lesson plan here first for C and R to comment on, as they've both TAd twice and know all too well the gap between my ambition and what is realistic in the classroom.
So, tomorrow is our first asynchronous day. Student's are watching K's Summary Video and then doing a Voicethread in which they're responding to each other's group summaries from yesterday. The Voicethread doesn't explicitly incorporate the Summary video, unfortunately (that's always the ideal with video lectures--students need to do something with them to make them relevant), but it's set up pretty well. My TAs are doing a "demo" slide so that after the first slides where I explain how Voicethread works, students can see a slide in action. I'm excited for this one--I think it will be cool for students to hear each other comment on each other's summaries instead of just writing about them in a discussion board, as they have in the past. This makes it more real.
I still want to do something with those sentences...I don't know what. Put them all somewhere and have students revise them? Possibly. Where--a Discussion Board (meh). A Googledoc? Maybe. I could do that sentence structure thing, i.e., revise this twice, one by opening with these two words ("In the...") and the other with ("Writing for..."). These are LAST week's one-sentence summaries (all of Gabriel), so in theory, they know more now about good one-sentence summaries.
Yeah....but then they'll all be exactly the same. They should really do them with the new articles. Maybe it can be in two parts: revise someone else's sentences in two ways, and then revise your group's Gabriel sentence from last week in two ways.
Hm. I might like this. This saves me from having to beat this into the ground next Monday, and gets rid of that holdover item from last Wednesday.
Okay. That's what I'll do then. Video + Voicethread + Sentence-level edits in a Googledoc. Good.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Teaching to the Tech
Or teaching in spite of it, really.
Yesterday was our first online class of the semester. I always start with a synchronous online day so that students acclimate to the online environment as quickly as possible. I've been using Adobe Connect for almost a year now. It's not perfect (the layouts aren't malleable; students don't have as many "status indicators" as they do in Wimba and Big Blue Button), but it works. That's what I care about the most: it works.
What didn't work yesterday? Our power. The power went out about an hour and a half before classes started. I had set the opening slide up in Adobe Connect and written out the lesson plan in excruciating detail for my TAs, but I hadn't set up the group Googledocs for the first class, which I had wanted to do because my TA for the first class, S, is new. No power = no internet.
Crap.
O looked outside and reported that the whole block was down. We've only lost power here once--also about an hour before a synchronous online day--and it had come back fairly quickly. But still. Did I want to go into work with O? Set up in his office? No...I had too much prep work to do still. I'd lose half an hour just getting to his office and setting up--that wouldn't work. I'd be incredibly flustered.
"If only I'd replaced my phone by now...I'd have 4G," I said ruefully. I can get a new iPhone for free--I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
"How charged is your phone? You could try hotspot, though I don't know if you'll have enough battery power for five hours. Well, wait, hold on..."
Bingo. Within fifteen minutes, I was back online through Bluetooth and was charging both my phone and my laptop on a car battery that O just so happens to have around. Partners with skills = win.
The power came back on at 9:28, but by then I was already in the classroom and didn't want to risk getting disconnected while switching over to the wireless. I ended up teaching all three classes on the Bluetooth connection. Students reported that my voice would break up a little bit, but not so much that they couldn't understand me. They spent half the class working in groups in Googledocs anyway, so my voice wasn't necessary the whole time.
About those Googledocs? S set them all up successfully without me prompting her. She rocks! Reason #87 to work with former students--S knew exactly what it looked like to work in Gdocs on an online day--she was my student just two semesters ago. She knew what needed to be done and just did it. Plus, my ridiculously detailed lesson plan helped all of us. It was like four pages long, complete with color-coded, italicized cues: TA pastes prompt into demo Googledoc... TA and Lyra model working in Gdocs, making margin comments, using the chat feature...
It totally worked. The detailed LP helped all of us (my TAs and me), and demoing Gdocs live was super easy and, I think, helpful. In the past, I've made a short video on how to use Gdocs, but really--who watches my video tutorials? From what I can tell, no one. Yesterday was much better because within 90 seconds, students watched me create and work in a Gdoc with my TA. That's all they needed. Plus, of course, at least half of my students are experienced Gdoc users, so they could lead the others if necessary.
As for the group activity: I kept it super simple. First, I used the Reading Guide to ask a couple of questions to the class while we were all still in Adobe Connect. "Okay, if your first name begins with a letter between A and M, please answer the following in the chat box: did Summary #1 give you a solid sense of who Gabriel is? Why he wrote this? Where it was published? What his purpose is? .... Everyone else: you're on deck with the same question for Summary #2."
Once we'd done that warm up in AdobeConnect, students hopped over to their Googledocs, where we had pasted in one of the two summaries and a prompt. The prompt asked them to evaluate how well the summary articulated the rhetorical context and main message of the original article. Then, students had to summarize Gabriel in just one sentence. Finally, students had to explain in a couple of sentences why their one-sentence summary was more effective than the sample paragraph summary.
I had allotted ten minutes for this; it was really more like 15-20. That was fine; I still had enough time to paste a couple of the one-sentence versions into the whiteboard in AdobeConnect and touch on strong active verbs. I then said that we'd finish this up on Monday. I need to show all six sentences from all six groups so that students see their work being discussed (I haven't always been good about this--in fact, I'm usually awful about group work follow up, which is bad).
In my last class, right after wrapping up the one-sentence summary analysis and right before showing them the homework and ending class, I asked all students to type one main "takeaway" from today's class: "Type one thing that you learned today--one thing that I emphasized as clearly important." That was awesome, and I plan on doing that in every AdobeConnect class from here on out. And it makes so much sense! It's a chance for every student to do something visibly before leaving class. And it's an example of an effective reinforcement tactic I can do online and can't do face-to-face. I can hardly ask all 19 students to shout out something simultaneously in person--but they can certainly all write and post in the chat box at the same time. Win.
Monday, we'll pick up with those sentences, then I'll talk about Aims/ Methods/ Materials, and then students will write a group summary of their assigned article in about thirty minutes, which will theoretically be possible because I've given them an obscenely through preparation activity to bring into class (a does/ says analysis). Finally--and this is what I'm wicked excited about--once students have completed their paragraph summaries, each student in the group will write a one-sentence version of their own summary with a specified sentence structure: Each member of the group (3 or 4) has to choose a different opening for their one-sentence summary:
Did I mention how excited I am about this? So excited! Fly-by grammar that is tethered to an actual activity that only takes 3-4 minutes to complete and has an obvious practical application.
Stay tuned for Tuesday's report on how this worked!
Yesterday was our first online class of the semester. I always start with a synchronous online day so that students acclimate to the online environment as quickly as possible. I've been using Adobe Connect for almost a year now. It's not perfect (the layouts aren't malleable; students don't have as many "status indicators" as they do in Wimba and Big Blue Button), but it works. That's what I care about the most: it works.
What didn't work yesterday? Our power. The power went out about an hour and a half before classes started. I had set the opening slide up in Adobe Connect and written out the lesson plan in excruciating detail for my TAs, but I hadn't set up the group Googledocs for the first class, which I had wanted to do because my TA for the first class, S, is new. No power = no internet.
Crap.
O looked outside and reported that the whole block was down. We've only lost power here once--also about an hour before a synchronous online day--and it had come back fairly quickly. But still. Did I want to go into work with O? Set up in his office? No...I had too much prep work to do still. I'd lose half an hour just getting to his office and setting up--that wouldn't work. I'd be incredibly flustered.
"If only I'd replaced my phone by now...I'd have 4G," I said ruefully. I can get a new iPhone for free--I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
"How charged is your phone? You could try hotspot, though I don't know if you'll have enough battery power for five hours. Well, wait, hold on..."
Bingo. Within fifteen minutes, I was back online through Bluetooth and was charging both my phone and my laptop on a car battery that O just so happens to have around. Partners with skills = win.
The power came back on at 9:28, but by then I was already in the classroom and didn't want to risk getting disconnected while switching over to the wireless. I ended up teaching all three classes on the Bluetooth connection. Students reported that my voice would break up a little bit, but not so much that they couldn't understand me. They spent half the class working in groups in Googledocs anyway, so my voice wasn't necessary the whole time.
About those Googledocs? S set them all up successfully without me prompting her. She rocks! Reason #87 to work with former students--S knew exactly what it looked like to work in Gdocs on an online day--she was my student just two semesters ago. She knew what needed to be done and just did it. Plus, my ridiculously detailed lesson plan helped all of us. It was like four pages long, complete with color-coded, italicized cues: TA pastes prompt into demo Googledoc... TA and Lyra model working in Gdocs, making margin comments, using the chat feature...
It totally worked. The detailed LP helped all of us (my TAs and me), and demoing Gdocs live was super easy and, I think, helpful. In the past, I've made a short video on how to use Gdocs, but really--who watches my video tutorials? From what I can tell, no one. Yesterday was much better because within 90 seconds, students watched me create and work in a Gdoc with my TA. That's all they needed. Plus, of course, at least half of my students are experienced Gdoc users, so they could lead the others if necessary.
As for the group activity: I kept it super simple. First, I used the Reading Guide to ask a couple of questions to the class while we were all still in Adobe Connect. "Okay, if your first name begins with a letter between A and M, please answer the following in the chat box: did Summary #1 give you a solid sense of who Gabriel is? Why he wrote this? Where it was published? What his purpose is? .... Everyone else: you're on deck with the same question for Summary #2."
Once we'd done that warm up in AdobeConnect, students hopped over to their Googledocs, where we had pasted in one of the two summaries and a prompt. The prompt asked them to evaluate how well the summary articulated the rhetorical context and main message of the original article. Then, students had to summarize Gabriel in just one sentence. Finally, students had to explain in a couple of sentences why their one-sentence summary was more effective than the sample paragraph summary.
I had allotted ten minutes for this; it was really more like 15-20. That was fine; I still had enough time to paste a couple of the one-sentence versions into the whiteboard in AdobeConnect and touch on strong active verbs. I then said that we'd finish this up on Monday. I need to show all six sentences from all six groups so that students see their work being discussed (I haven't always been good about this--in fact, I'm usually awful about group work follow up, which is bad).
In my last class, right after wrapping up the one-sentence summary analysis and right before showing them the homework and ending class, I asked all students to type one main "takeaway" from today's class: "Type one thing that you learned today--one thing that I emphasized as clearly important." That was awesome, and I plan on doing that in every AdobeConnect class from here on out. And it makes so much sense! It's a chance for every student to do something visibly before leaving class. And it's an example of an effective reinforcement tactic I can do online and can't do face-to-face. I can hardly ask all 19 students to shout out something simultaneously in person--but they can certainly all write and post in the chat box at the same time. Win.
Monday, we'll pick up with those sentences, then I'll talk about Aims/ Methods/ Materials, and then students will write a group summary of their assigned article in about thirty minutes, which will theoretically be possible because I've given them an obscenely through preparation activity to bring into class (a does/ says analysis). Finally--and this is what I'm wicked excited about--once students have completed their paragraph summaries, each student in the group will write a one-sentence version of their own summary with a specified sentence structure: Each member of the group (3 or 4) has to choose a different opening for their one-sentence summary:
- "In the..."
- "Writing for..."
- "In his..."
- "Trip Gabriel..."
Did I mention how excited I am about this? So excited! Fly-by grammar that is tethered to an actual activity that only takes 3-4 minutes to complete and has an obvious practical application.
Stay tuned for Tuesday's report on how this worked!
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