TeachOIT: a Blog for People Who Teach with Technology

Blogging certainly takes time, one of the most valuable commodities to those of us in Academia. More than one instructor I’ve chatted with this semester has told me they played with setting up a blog, but “who has the time to keep it going?” That’s a hard statement to argue with, but Henry Jenkins, professor of Comparative Media Studies at MIT discusses the value of blogs, particularly for those of us in Higher Education, in his blog post Why Academics Should Blog… Jenkins sees tools like blogs as having a transformative power in how we conduct scholarly work, and makes some points that might be worth consideration for folks who haven’t set up a blog or are wondering if they should stick with the blogs they have recently built.

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At the end of October I had the great experience of attending the annual EDUCAUSE conference in Orlando, Florida. EDUCAUSE is one of largest information technology conferences in Higher Education, billed as “the premiere IT event in higher ed.” I was fortunate to find my way to some great sessions run by people I’ve been reading about for years, build some professional contacts, and even follow the conference back-channel discussion on an amazingly active Twitter feed.

For your convenience, I’ll distill my 26 pages of notes down to some of the key topics and themes that stood out to me:

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“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always work with technology, and wikis are no exception. How do you get students to go to the resources you establish as part of a class, and how do you get them to engage with the material or the tool once you’ve gotten them there? If you are setting up a wiki for your students, or just thinking about using one, consider these tips:
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Kansas State Univeristy’s Michael Wesch present a fascinating overview of some of the history, trends, and themes observed as part of his ethnography of YouTube.

At 55 minutes this is  somewhat of a commitment to watch, you might want to wet your appetite  by checking out two short videos Wesch has made with his student that received a great deal of attention last year:

A Vision of Students Today

The Machine is Us/ing Us 

Read more about their project at:
http://mediatedcultures.net/youtube.htm 

Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD) is a great web comic about life in academia and one of my favorite comics. Usually written from a grad student perspective, I thought the most recent comic on what undergrads really mean with their questions would appeal to many of you:

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

This past weekend Tony and I immersed ourselves in the incredibly transformative process of digital storytelling. We rode the Amtrak down to Philadelphia, PA and stepped into a group of 8 other folks with diverse backgrounds and intentions for developing a particular style of communication. The 3-day hands-on tutorial, presented by the Center for Digital Storytelling, led us through the methodology for building digital stories from beginning to end—from nuggets of ideas to finished and polished pieces.

Digital storytelling utilizes computer-based tools to combine writing, narration, photography, sound and video to create reflective stories in the form of digital movies. The stories focus on a specific topic and typically encompass a particular point of view. Though they may vary in length, most of the stories that are being integrated into higher education curriculum tend to be 3-10 minutes long. Stories range from personal accounts, historical reflection, cultural explorations, to humorous metaphor and life experience. They have the potential to be used as poignant pedagogical tools within teaching, research and community building.

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Clive Thompson has an interesting piece in the last New York Times Magazine that explores the concept of “ambient awareness” as manifested in social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter. I find this concept of ambient awareness fascinating, and the article presents an interesting perspective on the potential effects, and even possible value, of using these tools.

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Assessment seems to always be a point of contention among educators. While debate continues about the effectiveness of high-stakes testing, several studies highlight the benefits of regular, formative assessment practices in the classroom. The purposes of such assessment is to offer students timely feedback, which is helpful for adjusting conceptual understanding when necessary and for identifying those students who may need a little extra help managing their studies.

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Can technology really make learning easier? While there may never be a catch-all technology solution that will make learning easier for everyone in the classroom, there are some general principles to follow when designing instructional presentations that can at least help. The following suggestions are meant to cut across both technology-meager and technology-rich environments, and with proper implementation and consideration, technology can certainly supplant the creation of more effective presentation materials.

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[Found via the Chronicle of Higher Education's technology blog]

A survey report by a Harvard student looks at student perceptions of usefulness of a range of instructional technologies. The report is interesting in that it looks at differing perceptions between undergraduates and graduates as well as students in different fields of study. Posting course materials and syllabi were indicated as the most useful tools by the student surveyed. An interesting significant difference in perceptions was between graduate student and undergraduate student as to the usefulness of of video recordings of lectures; which undergraduates considered more useful than graduate students.

Check out the full report here:
Instructional Technology Survey (PDF)
Berkman Center Blog Post With Commentary on Survey Results

This week we hosted our third and final SPARK Community of Practice gathering of the semester. As was the case with previous events this one filled our conference room to capacity. We hope to continue these events in the spring semester, and would like your input on how we can improve upon them.

To review, we had three gatherings: the first was a begining of the semester status check, the second looked at communication tools, and the third at techniques for using SPARK in large classes. We had three fantastic guest speakers, Cathryn Brubaker from Sociology, Julie Caswell from Resource Economics, and Wilmore Webley from Microbiology. We also used these events to share with you new tools and features in SPARK, such as linking directly to Library EReserves, collaborating on resource lists in Blackboard Scholar, and building study guides using StudyMate.

Please leave us a comment to let us know your thoughts on these events. What would you like to change as far as format? What should we be sure to keep the same? Are there topics or themes you would like to see offered next semester? Have you found an interesting way to use SPARK in your teaching that you would like to share with other instructors?

Thanks for attending. We look forward to your feedback for how we can shape these events in the future.

Imagine if you had to teach your class in 6 minutes and 40 seconds, using 20 PowerPoint slides, each displayed for 20 seconds. Well, these are the rules for Pecha Kucha, “chatter” in Japanese, competitions being held worldwide.

Even if you aren’t going to use this method in your class, going through the process of crafting a Pecha Kucha presentation might be a worthwhile exercise (for you and your students). The rules force you to be concise and focus on only your most important points.

To learn more about Pecha Kucha:
Pecha Kucha: Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down
pecha-kucha.org

Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch and 200 students at Kansas State University created a video about students in today’s college classrooms. It is an example of “digital storytelling” with an interesting mix of low tech (words on paper, chalkboard and walls) and high tech (time-lapse footage of a Google Doc being edited by the 200 students). It doesn’t offer any concrete solutions, but rather poses some though-provoking questions for anyone trying to reach 21st century students in a 19th century setting.

If you are interested in learning more about teaching the “Web” generation:
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The Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium is a great place to go if you want to see what is coming up that may impact learning and teaching. The consortium looks at the technologies that are being used and talked about and selects a few for further analysis. The final short list is sorted into the technologies that will be ready for regular use within the year and those that are still being explored and need a few years before they are ready for prime time.

This year’s short list includes user-created content, digital audio, virtual worlds, educational games, the potential of mobile phones, and much more. To get the full story, check out the full report:

The Horizon Report
http://www.nmc.org/horizon/

The Horizon Project Wiki
The wiki they used to create the report itself (less polished, but full of interesting links):
http://horizon.nmc.org/wiki/Main_Page