Hi again,
Sam stopped by and wants to know when we are going to have a meeting. (It is mid term already!) He said if we can't meet (surely we can find common time for at least a couple of meetings!), then he likes the idea of using this blog or a wiki. He also suggested using a Blackboard site, which I would be happy to set up if everyone likes that idea. Then we would have easy email, discussion board, and even chat if we wanted to meet "virtually" in real time.

Here's an idea: post a comment or a new posting to say what days/times you are NOT available, and I'll try to find a common time. Otherwise--especially if no one responds to this blog--I'll work on the Blackboard site. Is anyone NOT on Bb?

I'm having a Halloween party in my class, but we did all our planning outside of class, using email and our Bb disc board. Students are also working on group projects on their own time. What's going on in your classes?

Janice

Hi Everybody,
Are we going to get started again? If not face to face, how about using this blog, or perhaps a wiki? I can set one up for us.

For f2f meeting, the times I'm NOT available are any time Wednesdays and T/TH mornings.

Please let us know your schedule by adding a comment to this posting or going into Blogger to post your own message. I think everybody did sign up.

Until we can me again, what have you been thinking about lately? Any ideas from PDD or summer conferences? Any interesting articles or web sites you can link us to? Trying anything new in your classes this quarter?

Our last meeting for the quarter is next week. Is there anything we should be doing before then? Will we resume starting in fall (I hope)? Let's talk a bit about our outcomes: those we've achieved and those we'd still like to achieve.

I'd love to continue working toward Christie's idea of developing a model for mini-coordinated studies: cross-disciplinary projects. Should we do a poster session on the idea?

Blogs and Discussion Boards

Friday, May 5th's, brown bag was led by Craig McKenney and Matt Schwisow. The topic was using blogs and discussion boards for students to post their work and to interact with each other. Both Craig and Matt teach writing, but it was easy to extrapolate beyond their assignments to other things instructors could do.

Craig has provided a lot of information on his web site about how he uses blogs and his rationale for doing so: http://flightline.highline.edu/cmckenney/studentwork.htm. The site shows Craig's point system for grading and links to a couple of student blogs as samples. It is well worth reading. (By the way, one of Craig's "lessons learned" is to have students use Blogger.com.) *

Matt gave a thorough demonstration of his discussion boards on Blackboard. It was noted in the discussion that there are good and bad sides to teacher postings. On the postive side, the teacher can model how to give feedback (and, models proper language structure, for language learners). On the negative, teacher postings can attract students to read and focus only on the teacher's comments.

Blackboard's discussion board offers a couple of other handy grading tricks: the teacher can sort by author to count contributions for tracking points and can see how many times each message has been read.

Both Craig and Matt responded to the question: what's the difference between using a blog and a discussion board? Craig said a big advantage of blogs is that students can personalize their blog sites, which gives them a sense of ownership of what they post there. They can put up photos, their favorite links, choose their own color and design schemes, etc. Angi Caster, a participant in the discussion, said, "it's where they live."

The idea is that these personalized blog sites are more comfortable than a formal "academic box" that they've had no input into designing. So their writing to their blogs is authentic: it is posted with an awareness that it has an audience that is potentially wider than just their teacher or even just their teacher and classmates. Unless they restrict who can view their blog, anyone on the internet can read it. Their writing then tends to be a truer reflection of who they are.

On the question of blogs v. discussion boards, Matt was asked if those spaces lend themselves differently to essay and dialogue. The ensuing discussion in the group reflected a feeling that the discussion boards are "faster," more flexible for prolific dialogue, and that language used in them would tend to be both less formal and more succinct. But a disadvantage to discussion board postings is that you have to click on the subject lines to open the messages, whereas the blog is already open, and so are any comments (again, unless the blog owner sets them to be hidden).

Both Craig and Matt felt that which medium is better depends on the assignment, how the teacher sets up the assignment, and its learning goals. The discussion teased out a lot of detail about how each can be used for instruction and how they work as learning environments.

*Another point from Craig's demo was that he has students create a new posting for each assignment revision, rather than having students make the revisions in their original posting. In this way, students can see their progress by comparing their later versions with their early ones.

How do you currently engage your students outside the classroom? (i.e. what do you give as homework?) What kinds of things would you like to try?

Our focus for our next meeting (April 27th at 2:30) is "new technologies." What could you do with the following "new" technologies:

• Blogging - generally "one to many" but has some interactivity potential (blogger)
• Podcasting - "one to many" technology (iTunes)
• Wiki - collaborative content generating site (wikipedia, pbwiki)
• Student web pages, photo sites, movies - (geocities, flickr, jumpcut)
• Service learning - (http://takingitglobal.org/)
• Other? (of course, we could discuss Blackboard also)
  

Let's discuss how we could use these technologies outside the classroom either to deliver content or to have students create their own content.

Web 2.0 and Gadgets

I read the article Rav gave us the link to, "The Impact of Emerging Technologies." It talks about Web 2.0 and lists several popular social networking sites (such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, and Jumpcut--this latter one I hadn't heard of and will definitely check out). I think this new everything-on-the-web world is one we will have to explore, from the standpoint of it being our students' world, but also as potential space we can use for instruction. There is an online word processing site called Writely (http://www.writely.com) that has recently been purchased by Google, so probably won't be free for much longer, but is an option for people who don't own MS Word. It has a document sharing feature for collaboration, as well. So people are "residing" on the web more than ever before, and there's lots to do there: downloading stuff (movies, music, games, software), uploading stuff (like your own movies or pictures to share); publishing (blogging, vlogging); interacting (instant messaging, internet telephone--e.g. Skype, chat, friend sharing--e.g. Myspace); shopping--e.g. Ebay; playing games; etc. Who needs TV anymore? (Not to mention books, or even face-to-face conversation.)

But in addition to all that on Web 2.0, there are gadgets: most notably, the iPod (or other mp3 player). IPods hook people up with music, but also with podcasts that are now available from every conceivable kind of web site. Podcasting has great potential for education, as many teachers are already finding out. But, ideally, podcasting can be exploited as a medium for more than just lectures. IPods can also be used as recording devices, which potentially lends itself towards interactivity in education.

Another gadget that has taken over the world and will only continue to do so is the cell phone. Phones do everything now and will only get better and more versatile as technology progresses. Is there any potential there for connecting with our students and facilitating their collaboration with each other? Our students take photos and videos that they can send to each other and can post to the web. (As a side issue: what are the implications for privacy? but the net generation's tendency to blur the private and the public is a trend we can see.) Phones can also play mp3s (podcasts). In addition to their traditional function as a device for voice conversation, text messaging, or "texting," is becoming popular. This has possibilities for collaboration, but, of course, we don't always want students to collaborate, such as in some testing situations.

What am I forgetting/leaving out? What's coming down the pike?

Group Work

Does anyone have any great (not just good--great!) handouts for students on HOW to work in groups? I'm going to do a quick search on the internet now. Otherwise, I'll just cobble something together. Maybe that's something we could talk about at our next meeting: what are our expectations for students working in their groups. What do you do to prepare your students for group work?

OK--I'm back. Here's a couple of links I found. (Yes, you could have Googled this yourself):

• http://www.canberra.edu.au/studyskills/learning/groups.html (good on rules and structure but doesn't mention roles)
• Here's a handout that talks about roles. Others at this site talk about the affective factor in group work (nice and "touchy/feely"): http://bokcenter.harvard.edu/docs/wigstudents5.html (Here's the link to the site index: http://bokcenter.harvard.edu/docs/wigintro.html)
  
• http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/collaborative.html (instructions for teachers, not a student handout--but some good stuff)

But surely we have something ready made at Highline. This is one of the goals for the FLC that we talked about at the first meeting--to act as a clearinghouse for these kinds of materials.