An ‘after ELI2010′ reflection…

Okay, hear that?  That’s me dusting off the cobwebs in here. What with immersion in teaching AND TAKING a course last fall, my own blog became an orphan – well almost.  (and my oh my, does reading student work and providing the feedback in the fashion I prefer take a whole lot of my time!)

But, here I am fresh back from #ELI2010 with renewed commitment to writing and posting with greater regularity …and I’ll begin that with a bit of a debrief of the meeting in Austin. 

 As expected, sessions were excellent and I learned many new things to bring back and share.  (In fact, I’ll be providing a de-brief for my campus in our departmental newsletter complete with links to the archives…very soon!).  :-) 

 In here I’ll take the more reflective tack about being with and in this professional community.  This was my second ELI annual meeting.  I was first fortunate to attend 2 years ago as a total newcomer, fresh from my brand new appointment as director of instructional technology on my campus. My quite visionary vice chancellor knew what connecting me with this group would do to help me appreciate HER aims for my newly formed department (that’s another post for another time). And this year was very similar in that I experienced in this meeting of like-minded instructional technologists a colleagueship like no other I have ever encountered.  It was wonderful to renew old acquaintance and meet new folks. And a highlight for me was meeting f2f some folks I have been following ‘virtually’ on Twitter (like @brlamb and @sleslie, to name a couple) and elsewhere for a while.  MUCH fun!!  I am an unashamed fan-girl!

 But…all that said, this year, I experienced something else much unexpected. This was NOT in keeping with the spirit of sharing and collaboration typical and in fact the hallmark of this conference and this professional community.  What I experienced…up close and personal…was snark.  Yep…there it is (or was). Not pretty & most unsettling to me. The Urban Dictionary provides a variety of definitions of snark.  I am rather partial to #4 as it applies to the particular situation in question.  There is even a book on the subject by David Denby. Who knew…that there is enough snark around to make such writings possible?

 Well, snark in this particular professional community is in fact quite unexpected and biting.  There were a couple of borderline instances during the week where I had to back up and say…’Did that person intend for that to come across in that way’?  Did they realize how that comment would be received?” And a couple of instances I could excuse.  But…the particular instance in question here occurred in a conversation predicated on the assumption that all participants and thus all opinions were welcome; in fact were being solicited and would be considered equally.  I am not going to describe the incident in more detail or identify the perpetrator.  Just suffice it to say that the one-line-zinger-dismissive was delivered by someone who surely had more to contribute to the conversation than the snarky comment thrown into the circle.  The comment added absolutely nothing to the dialogue and as far as I could tell accomplished nothing except perhaps attempting to establish the deliverer as a superior intellect…or something. And no, I did not misinterpret him. Frankly, I am still not quite sure WHAT the motivation was….as this person was and still is a stranger to me and the comment wholly unwarranted.  I was left speechless in the remainder of the conversation, trying to mull over what exactly that person intended the effect of the comment to be.  But, you can bet I know who this person is now, and he will have work to do to gain my trust and respect. 

Yes I should have called him on it immediately.  I was just so taken aback by the incivility I could not think….So, why mention this at all?  About now you are thinking… ‘Oh come on now. I am sure he was just kidding. Why don’t you just grow up?’ In the overall scheme of things, this is really not such a big deal deserving of a blog post and so much rumination, now is it?  

Well, it is precisely because we increasingly accept such behavior as par for the course – acceptable – that I write.  We see this sort of stuff (and much more disturbing and vicious) online all the time in troubling comment streams where folks deliver up their meanness with impunity hidden behind avatar alter-egos. So, why not have such bleed over into our ‘real’ world and conversations? Even in just minor little ways? That just means we’re just hangin’ with the cool kids, right?  And sure, people joke with each other using feigned snark when they already HAVE relationships and know each other well enough to deliver snark in jest. I can assure you that in this particular instance, the commenter was NOT kidding with me.  And I told you already, we had never met before.

 Really, I am just consciousness-raising here folks and asking you to check yourself when you are participating in conversations both online and in person. If you want to be a part of a community you need to behave in a collegial fashion…even when you disagree with someone.  Instances of incivility abound and such behavior is certainly not new. 

 Okay, so aside from the rant, all of the above drills down to this:  after this experience, I am reminded of the work of P. M. Forni.  I read his book, Choosing Civility a while ago and here is Dr. Forni’s Civility website at John’s Hopkins.  There is a recent podcast with Dr. Forni available from his site here.  I would also invite consideration of David Bohm’s  On Dialogue – a work I have not visited in quite some time.  I pulled my weathered copy off the shelf today and am determined to re-read it.  Scott London’s post on ‘The Power of Dialogue’ is also useful to help frame and inform about collegial exchanges. I’d like to think that this is the type of discourse we are after.

 Whew, I am tired now after all that venting and I have books literally strewn all over my desk. And, at this point I am probably getting off onto another post and in fact am re-visiting Bohm’s ideas of ‘collective participation’ (On Dialogue, p. 26) as I join in the NMC New Media Faculty Development Seminar. So…there will probably be another post – sooner this time.  Enough for now.

 

A hard lesson learned, and why I still like pen and paper

I’m writing about a difficult lesson learned this week. I’m not writing to convert anyone or to try to share a method.  I’m just sharing my rather painful and frustrating experience.  

I am in all facets of my life a maker of lists.  Probably has something to do with my need to visualize things to be able to encode them.   I like using all sorts of writing implements/markers/colors/annotations to make them visual memory-joggers.  My desk is littered with my list-making tools.  It is part of the teacher’s accoutrements I can’t do without.

 I have lists for things I am working on here at work; sorted into various columns of importance (ongoing, urgent, today, long-term, ideas, etc…)
I have lists at home to track my family’s activities. 
I have grocery lists,
lists for the discount food store,
lists for the home-improvement store,
the list goes on.

 I keep a journal on my desk for the sole purpose of taking daily notes about things I learn from Twitter and other web interactions…things that stand out and stimulate my thinking.  (It really is fun to look at this over weeks and months).  

I started a year and a half ago making a sincere attempt to do away with/replace the paper lists with OneNote – to be set a good example for colleagues of using my available technology to be more organized and efficient.  I like OneNote for creating various notes folders for everything from conferences I attend complete with urls to info/resources presented in sessions, to meeting notes of all kinds.  It’s a great tool to prep for meetings, where you can keep continual agendas going anytime.  And it (is supposed to) auto-save(s).  I liked feeling like I was using my technology and cutting down on what I needed to print by saving to the OneNote notebooks.  It really is a great tool since it is integrated with all other MS Office apps I use regularly.  Well, during the process of migrating to a new computer I lost all of my OneNote notes…all year-and-a-half’s-worth.  I’ll spare you the gory details. Just suffice it to say that I did not do a good enough job of following up to make sure I had all of my belongings from the old machine before I gave the green light for its repurpose/reimage.  By the time I realized that the notebooks had not survived, it was too late. 

 So, I start over.  Okay, before you start pointing out that I could have/should have been using some cloud app, consider that I might have lost the e-notes just as easily stored somewhere else.  So, what’s my ‘take home’? 

 I don’t know that I’ll give up my pen and paper any time soon….for something cloud-y or otherwise.  I have though, been exploring uses of digital ink/visual note-taking in teaching and learning and am very intrigued with some of the possibilities.  It might just make me a better note-taker/list maker all around both on paper and otherwise.  A striking thing I have learned already is that to be a good visual note-taker requires that you be a good listener.  Take a look at suggestions from Sunni Brown.  I like this, especially the ‘truisms’ for good listening!  I think it’s a pretty good place to re-start construction of new notebooks.

 

Living in the middle layer, or ‘why can’t we all just be open’?

I step into these waters with fear and trembling…but finally composing these thoughts (rumbling for some months) given a couple of things I have read in the last couple of days (more below on what specifically, read on).

My work involves trying to find ways to encourage/cajole/persuade/entice/motivate faculty colleagues (and some staff who teach) in the use of technology to enhance/enrich/inform their teaching (and thereby student learning – we hope).  Some things I have tried have met with some success.  Others have fallen flat or have been in fact epic failures.  I can tell you after a year and a half in my position there is no magic bullet/easy answer.  The reasons faculty do or do not embrace and use technology in their teaching are complex/multimodal/not easily dissected.  I have learned a few things as I have listened/read carefully to others in the field and offer up my humble take on the matter.

First, faculty are busy people. They work under the traditional burden of academic role expectations crafting their teaching (with or without technology enhancements), service, and scholarship.  It is hard to keep up with that. For many (especially those in my age-bracket/generation) working with technology does not come easy…is not intuitive, is always an add-on that takes time, energy, and commitment to learn even at a basically proficient level.  Mastering something to the point that you feel comfortable exposing yourself and your ability in the public arena of your class takes even more time.  That time might take away from some other facet of work…like service, or scholarship.  Okay, I know about now you are saying….”Learning to use technology can help you be more proficient, productive, and efficient in your role-enactments.  How can you NOT learn to use it?”  Good point.  The fact remains that the time challenge is there.  Now I also know that even my mother used to say that ‘you make time to do just about anything you really want to do.”  So, do faculty just not want to learn?  I don’t think that’s the problem.  The time issue is very real and difficult to overcome.  I have taken to offering up just brief snippets of introductions to tech tools. For example, we hold an annual Emerging Media and Technology Fair we describe as a ‘microconference of minisessions so people can come and go at their convenience and catch short sessions of interest to them.

That brings me to the ‘middle layer’ theme of this post.  I am caught somewhere here between the desire for living totally in the open (ala Alec Couros, Alan Levine, David Wiley, D’Arcy Norman, Jim Groom to name a few) and entirely behind the protective walls of the LMS.  Don’t get me wrong here…I do understand and value life in the open.  I have been following the conversation about everything from Edupunk & DIY, to last fall’s massive open Connectivism and Connected Knowledge course from George Siemens & Stephen Downes (to be offered again this fall – check the site for details).  Boy do I ever appreciate the collegial spirit that under girds it.  At the same time, I appreciate and understand the reticence of most faculty to embrace it.  You see, there is that nagging time thing.  Time is needed to explore and understand safe (for lack of a better word) ways to be ‘open’.  Time to master a rather disparate (I know some will disagree) set of tools most standing alone and needing to be coalesced in a thoughtful way by the user (ie: the teacher).  Enjoying the kind of insight needed to make that happen takes…time…and exposure…and experimentation…and willingness to fail….all luxuries most faculty can’t afford.  So, you can’t blame folks for resorting to their institutionally provided LMS.  Tools are there…they have been used before (granted they can be snarky and are not perfect)….but they are comfortable…easier…take less time to master. 

So…why write about this now?  Well, in addition to my regular following of the open-promoting practices and writings and sharing of the folks I listed above, a couple of things have me focused on this area anew:

1.  One is a post via George Siemen’s blog elearnspace: Addressing the Problem of Faculty Resistence.  To quote George: 

              “Obviously, you don’t need technology to be a provide a great        learning experience. Creative, engaging, and participatory learning is an educational mindset, not something that requires blogs, wikis, Second Life, and podcasts. What technology does, however, is expand the range of options for interaction. Classroom walls give way to global connections. Single educator models are replaced with distributed networks. A bit utopian? Perhaps. But, once control shifts to a network of learners, the prospect arises for the creativity that exists in open source software and with application developers (i.e. iPhone, Facebook) can be applied to education.”  Amen, so how can we NOT embrace technology? Huh?

George links in that post to James Morrison’s writings via the Innovate-Ideagora: Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies.  As I understand it, James started this topic last year, but recently updated it (see comments section) with a list created in his session at the recent EDMedia2009 conference in Hawaii.  Here is the list composed by participants in his session:

“1. Fear of using technology, which may not work
2. Faculty members are busy as is; they see no need to expend time and energy on learning technology or new pedagogies
3. Perception of a lack of institutional support/rewards (little technological or pedagogical resources; no incentives or recognition for using technology)
4. Perception of lack of cultural support from peers
5. Perception that developing online courses threatens jobs
6. Perception that using technology takes too much time (to learn, to set up, to use)
7. Fear that incorporating technology will detract/ distract from their lecture/teaching (technology will become an end in itself rather than being a means to educational ends)
8, Faculty members don’t think that technology is relevant/helpful to teaching in their particular subject area
9. Faculty members are unaware of the degree to which students might enjoy/gain from technology-enhanced active learning strategies
10. Faculty members view their role as experts/information providers, not teachers designing experiential education
11. Perception that face-to-face classroom instruction is the most instruction”

(I recommend visiting the site and following to the close of the post to the group’s suggestions for how institutions can help/support faculty in their efforts to use technology)

You will note that 2 of the items in the list have to do with time.

2.   Today, there was this post and comments exchange (via tweet by @jclary) from D’Arcy’s blog: on openness, walled gardens, community and ownership.  Interesting exchange and viewpoints.

3.  Yesterday’s piece in the Chronicle’s Wired Campus news letter by David Wiley: Open Teaching Multiplies the Benefit but not the Effort. His narrative of his thoughtful beginnings and evolution to offering an entirely open course is very engaging and persuasive.  Granted, it takes starting with just one tool…then building. I’m with him. 

 But there is still that nagging time thing.  One of the things I think I often forget is that I live my professional life (including framing my life as teacher) completely immersed in technology.  So do all of the folks I refer to here.  This is an immersion most of our faculty colleagues do not experience/relate to/know about.  We have a built-in tendency to experiment with/curiosity about technology.  They do not live in the same world as we.  We would do well to remember that.

4. A number of folks in the ed tech/instructional tech world have been tweeting for a while now about the upcoming OpenEd conference (wish I could go, but alas no travel $$ here and personal travel $$ being channeled into my eldest’s semester of study abroad this fall).  In preparation for that, Alan Levine issued an invitation to submit “amazing stories of openness” via his cogdogblog: I’m Talking to YOU! Where is your Amazing Story?.  Alan shares some very interesting examples (and his process is just plain fun).  I hope he streams his session.

5. I am just generally awed and humbled by the things Alec Couros does/writes/shares on a regular basis. His work always keeps me thinking about was to be open-with-grace. Check out his open work at his blog open thinking.  Alec taught an open grad course last fall and will do so again this fall (I am sure he will be sharing more details with us on the blog as the fall semester approaches.

These are just a few things that have me thinking about the middle layer – in which I live…, along with my faculty colleagues.  While I might tend to agree more than disagree with the ideas of openness, I do empathize with colleagues who fear and don’t have time to learn how to live in the open – who are content to stay in the middle.  There are some very palpable privacy concerns (a whole ‘nother post) some folks are just not comfortable confronting…. (more time needed to learn how to be safe and open).  And I know there are many more complexities at play here – I already said so.  But I pledge to be patient and try to meet folks where they are and to try to help them find some time to overcome their fears and be just a little more open than maybe they have been before.  By feeding them little snippets in small frequent feedings.

Whew, that was a lot more than I probably should have written in one post.  Kudos if you stuck with it to the end!!

 

Powerful serendipity.

After today, I am on a mission to do a better job of keeping record of the amazing learning I have enjoyed these early weeks of summer because I have been paying attention to my network on Twitter.  I  have written about/mentioned Twitter before and shared what I learned from Kathy Sierra last week because of a random streaming url tweet, and the point of this post is not to convince anyone to use it/create an account. Well, maybe just a little. I am just struck today (as I am listening to David Weinberger’s keynote “Learning from the Net’ streaming from EdAccess 2009. His slides are here) by the number and variety of online conferences and presentations I have been able to join over the course of the last very few weeks – and I am amazed when I look at them as a collective.  Sure, the experience is not quite the same as traveling to and being present at a conference, but I can assure you that the learning is no less powerful.  All of the experiences have included a live stream (plus timely availability of an archive) + a backchannel chat – either through Twitter or some other tool.  I knew about only a couple of these in advance; most were shared as urls in tweets inviting folks to tune in.  To give you a sense of the magnitude of what has been available and what I have been able to participate in, here is my reconstructed list since just mid-May:

1.      Course to Dis/Course – ‘This short online conference – May 14 & 15, 2009 – is being organized by Martin Weller, George Siemens, and Grainne Conole.’  Session recordings can be found here.  ( I knew about this one in advance and had registered to participate.  The conference was free).

2.      On May 18^th, I tuned in to an EDUCAUSE Solutions in Action Webcast – ‘…a lightning round of speakers about the ways that they are introducing new technologies to faculty and celebrating innovative approaches to teaching and learning.’  The session archive is available from here.  The session was free.

3.      On June 5^th, I caught Alec Couros at the University of Delaware’s 2009 Summer Faculty Institute for his keynote, ‘Harnessing the Power of Social Networks in Teaching & Learning’.  A video of the session is available from Alec’s blog, open thinking (along with some other really good stuff from Alec. His blog itself is worth following on a regular basis).  I tuned in to this session because someone there tweeted the url to the live stream. I was amongst the twitter followers Alec mentions in the beginning of his talk.

4.  That same day  someone tweeted a link to a live stream of Jon Mott’s ‘Loosely Coupled Gradebook’ session:  from the Teaching with Technology Idea Exchange (TTIX).  Visit Jon’s blog, The End in Mind, for a link to his presentation slides and Ustream capture – or visit the TTIX space (link above) for an archive of Jon’s presentation and more. I didn’t catch all of Jon’s presentation – I had been listening to Alec and there was time overlap. But, not to worry, Jon sent me the url to the saved presentation on his blog so I could access the whole thing at my convenience.  I have colleagues here who are interested on his topic, so now I can share this opportunity with them – even though they didn’t catch the live session.

5.      On June 11^th, I listened to a live stream of Kathy Sierra from the New Media Consortium’s Summer Conference.  (See previous post with notes from this session.)  The video archive from the conference is available here.  Again, I tuned in because someone sent out the call to join in at the live stream url.  I am so glad I did.  I did not know about this in advance. 

6.      On June 12^th, I caught Alec again along with Dean Shareski streaming form a conference in Texas.  See Dean’s Ideas and Thoughts blog for more about their keynote and a link to the conference video archive.  Once again, the contact was a result of a tweet…I did not know about this ahead of time.

7.      Then just yesterday, June 22, once again I caught Alec streaming via a tweet (he is a really busy guy living the ‘open’ life!).

8.      Today, as I mentioned, I listened to David Weinberger streamed from EdAccess (See links above to access more information).  The ‘archive’ for this one includes a conference wiki.  Take a look here.

 Are you catching the pattern??  Hints: “tweets of urls to live streams” and “archives” are available.  I believe this pattern is quickly becoming a standard expectation – especially in times of budget exigencies making travel too costly for many.  Again, listening to a streamed session is not the same as being there, but it is no less powerful if one joins in the backchannel and follows up with the archive. Not to mention the connections that result from meeting new folks online and having the opportunity to add them to your network in a more ‘permanent’ way than the traditional exchange of business cards at the standing-room-only cocktail reception.  By linking up in Twitter, etc…folks can re-join around common interests at any time, not whenever they get around to digging through that conference binder and hoping cards and notes weren’t lost….and then there’s the archive.  The archive might just be THE most important affordance, in fact.  Here is built-in ability to share with others – exactly what was seen/heard complete (often) with slides and/or the presenter’s materials. (And some really cool folks like Alec Couros share their materials and invite you to use them yourself if you so choose!).

 Okay, I know…about now you are thinking that I spend my entire work life trolling for streaming links.  Not quite.  Sometimes I turn on conference streams and run them in the background while I multi-task on other stuff.  I do admit that most days I keep TweetDeck running all the time – in the background.  Some days I hardly look at it. Others, I tune in just in time to catch good stuff like streaming urls.  Then on the most special of days I join the conversation for a while. Those are the best experiences where I can gather AND share – in real time.

Take a look at Jim Vanides’ latest blog post ‘Twitter Experiment-The First 18 Days’ and particpate in his survey about how much time educators should spend on Twitter.  Personally, (and based on my experiences like the ones I have written here) participation in Twitter should be a REQUIREMENT of EVERY educator.  This type of network connectedness is not to be missed.  Put it in there with ‘keeping current in the field’ if you prefer the more traditional terms to describe what academics should do. But there really is no substitute for what happens in twitter if the network  is constructed with even minimal care and only intermittent tending.  A more committed participation yields even higher return. 

I can assure you that my own learning has been expanded far beyond what I might have ever imagined just a couple of years ago.  Often that learning is messy, and unexpected but always exciting and giving me new ideas to try out.  And…I have connected with a MUCH broader professional community as well. (Sometime I’ll get around to a post on my own PLN.  For now the focus is what I have recently learned from Twitter). If you are still not convinced (and I don’t know how anyone is not at least curious about Twitter given its role in the unfolding of events in Iran) I invite you to check it out and see what you might learn.  Find someone you know and see who they are following.  Tune in.  Pay attention. See what happens.  And lest you think that the opportunities I have listed are in some way inferior because I did not witness them in person, I invite you to visit the archives links and see for yourself.

 

Notes on Kathy Sierra @NMC(inMonterey)viaUSTREAMonTwitter+thebackchannel

Wow, has it really been that long since I posted?  I won’t even try to write an excuse. ….

Yesterday I enjoyed another of those amazing serendipitous ‘learning from my Twitter network’ moments when someone (I don’t recall exactly who) posted a link to the live stream of Kathy Sierra’s keynote at the New Media Consortium’s Summer 2009 conference in Monterey.  (MANY thanks to the thoughtful people who make such streams happen). 

 Let me explain this.  I am in South Carolina and place bound at the moment because of deep budget restrictions the result of the current and ongoing economic downturn.  I am NOT able to travel to conferences.  I relish the opportunity to join conferences via live connections whenever possible (I have done so on at least 4 different occasions in the last 10 days alone).  Those who care enough to push out a stream from a conference make participation possible for people like me.  And the added perk of such streams has been that along with the actual keynote presentation there is usually a Twitter backchannel going that includes face-to-face conference participants along with virtual attendees (like me) mixing it up together… about the ideas in the presentations – and (BIG PERK- sharing resources with one another).  Sharing live from literally around the globe (one conference I tuned in to last week included participants from at least 3 different continents).  Yet another benefit is the opportunity to add like-minded folks to my network via the contact in the backchannel.  Do I love my twitter network?  You bet I do.  (See an earlier post).

 But, I digress.  The main point of this post is to share my thinking/notes from Kathy Sierra’s presentation.  I am one of over 13,000 folks following @KathySierra on Twitter.  I know a little about her background.  You can look her up to learn more about her (in fact, I challenge you to do so).  Admittedly her presentation was not specifically tailored for an audience of academics/educators.  However, even though I did not hear the entire presentation (I ran across the streaming link in Twitter after the session started) I found much of what she had to say very meaningful to me and helpful in (re)considering my student/classroom/teaching relations as I approach my fall course planning.

 So here goes (Know that I am paraphrasing here and remixing into how I make meaning of what she said.  I am not claiming to render a verbatim transcription.  If you want to hear her directly, follow links from the NMC Summer 2009 Conference Page to a couple of her past presentations.  Also, I’d suggest you visit @GardnerCampbell’s blog GardnerWrites for his take Kathy Sierra Lives.)

1.  Focus on what users do not what you do.  Okay, so for me in teaching this is the whole idea of focusing on what students are learning more than (or at least as much as) what I am teaching.  And…this moves us on to the corollary that if I don’t do this there is the unavoidable ‘I taught it, why didn’t they learn it’ quandary.
2. Give users superpowers quickly.  Hmmm.  How to give students ‘superpowers’?  What does this mean?  Well, I am still chewing on this one, but I think it can mean that it is important to help students feel successful in their learning as early on as possible.  That could take many forms.  It might be early success with grading.  It might be the simple positive comments in response to effort at learning/engaging.
3. Don’t focus on X, ask what X is a subset of.  Here I am interpreting X to be content.  So, don’t focus on content, but what the course content a part is of.  I teaching nursing courses, so how does nursing fit into the larger healthcare picture?  More specifically, how does the use of technology by nurses fit into the broader arena of health care information technology? Of course that is not all there is to learn about information/technology literacy for nurses, but context-building should certainly be a frame for the details.
4. Always be practicing/create a culture of practice.  It is important to build in opportunity for mastery experiences (I am a Bandura fan, but that’s another post).  This takes thoughtful consideration and won’t happen if the emphasis is on content coverage.  It means that the teacher is also a learner – alongside students – practicing learning in a shared spirit of inquiry. 
5. Remember (and I like this one best) that how you make them feel = how they feel about you.  Sierra talked about ‘militantly enforcing’ niceness.  Are people comfortable asking questions? Oh, how I wish I had thought of that when I was a young teacher in the classroom trying to make my mark/prove how much I knew.  I was not a nice person. I was difficult, hard-nosed, haughty, arrogant.  My students had to endure my classes.  I can’t imagine how miserable I made them feel.  I hope I am all better now.  These days I am working on how to make students in my online classes feel closeness with me in their learning endeavors – without face-to-face interactions. 
6. There are no dumb answers. (We’ve all heard there are no dumb questions).  This shifts the perspective a bit…and points out that it is okay to be wrong sometimes.  That comes along with learning alongside rather than ‘instructing’ from the front of the room.
7. Make the right thing easy the hard thing difficult.  I think that could be making learning/engaging easier and not learning/engaging more difficult.  That is more of a challenge, especially when dealing with students who lack motivation and who might be satisfied with mediocrity.

 There was more, but remember I am not after giving you a transcription…but my thoughts about some of the points presented.  I appreciate the opportunity afforded through my PLN to reflect upon my own teaching practice once again using a bit different frame….and the opportunity that came along with to join in the conversation about same with colleagues from afar. Thanks Twitter!!  So, back to the start of this post.  If you aren’t tuned in to your community of professionals on Twitter you are missing a golden opportunity to connect.  Give it a try.  See what you’ll learn.

 

A Facebook reflection…buyer beware.

Okay, so I have been hesitant to use Facebook for quite a while. 

(Before I get to Facebook, you have to understand that I come from the generation where if we kept a personal diary, we bought one of those cutsie ones with a lock and key, then worked to keep it hidden from older siblings….Me?  I didn’t have one.  I was not about to share my innermost thoughts on paper-with anyone). 

 

Now, I blog and have begun to create an ever-enlarging digital footprint (some would call it a personal learning network/environment, but that’s another post). 

 

And to the point of this post:  Facebook. 

Something about Facebook has just never “felt right” to me.  It has the same “feel” as when I first used Twitter…that sense of voyeurism (I mean “a prying – and uninvited – observer….” Not the other type of voyeurism!)  ….that I was looking at and seeing things there that really were not meant for me to see.  But wait, these things are on the INTERNET.  That’s a pretty public place, isn’t it?

 

I kept (and still keep) wondering WHY???  And I admit I still don’t really “get” it.  Call it generational, or whatever.  My self-disclosure frame was constructed long ago.  Central to it was this seemingly small piece of background info. My mother used to warn me when I was a teenager and about to go out: “Never do or say anything you don’t want to testify about in court.”  Pretty darn good advice-it stuck with me.  See, I still remember and quote it all these years later.  The same could apply to what you post/say/share/divulge/disclose into VERY public digital spaces where you participate.  Hence my reticence to join a community where self-disclosure in microscopic detail is the order of the day.  Not to mention all of the privacy issues raised by the aggregation and sharing of the same information to third parties…who is benefiting here? (Also another post…)

 

I still marvel at how something first created by college students – way back in 2004- to make it possible for fellow students at Harvard to get to know each other online could wind up being the mega-online-conglomerate that is Facebook today.  Just a couple of years back I kept hearing fits and snatches about Facebook in relation to our own connectivity and connection with incoming Freshmen and invited our then Dean of Students to come to my freshman seminar course to teach them about the dangers of too much self-declaration in Facebook.  She showed us this video:  Does What’s in Facebook stay in Facebook? This video has been online for a while now, but I still find it quite unnerving. 

 

And even though I hear students and my own children talking about Facebook often, I still didn’t join in-until very recently.  I have listened as some of my colleagues here share their own uses of Facebook in their teaching…creating “private” groups to connect with their students and push out course updates.  I have seen interesting examples of institutions using Facebook to remind students about important information like academic advising deadlines, etc. This came along side reading about the “creepy treehouse”effect, nicely discussed at Jared Stein’s blog, Flexknowlogy.  And I marvel at the fact that some are quite willing to use and encourage this application – knowing all of the behind-the-scenes data aggregation that is going on – who balk at the notion of using tools/products from other large here-to-remain-unnamed corporate entities.   

 

In spite of the fact that “this is where our students are” am I sold?  Not quite yet.  I continue to be quite concerned over the privacy and data mining issues.  And I think that we the Facebook-using-public have only minimal understanding about what is actually going on when we cheerfully upload and tag our photo-of-the-day, join/fan causes, buy stuff, share our music preferences, find long lost friends, etc….Some of us became alarmed anew when yesterday things like this this circulated around the Twitterverse:  “Anger Greets Facebook Terms of Service Change”.  Still want to play??

 

I will admit that over the very few weeks that I have been using Facebook– sparingly – I have been able to connect long-distance with family and friends I might not otherwise be interacting with (especially not on a daily basis!).  I even used Facebook chat this morning for the first time.  There is indeed value in staying in touch.  But I have to say that the porous boundaries and blending of life compartments – family with work with friends all together in one location – leaves me feeling a bit exposed on all counts.  I’m not quite sure what to make of it. 

 

If you are a “seasoned” Facebook fan/user I apologize for pointing out what is probably old news to you.  But I suspect there are others like me who are still deciding – cautiously – whether to embrace this social net experience or not.  If you decide to join in, be careful and inform yourself about what you are getting into: 

1.      Ummm…you might actually read the Terms of Use  before you Accept.

2.      Take a look here at a Fortune article, How Facebook is Taking Over Our Lives

3.      Another:  10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know, by Nick O’Neill

 

This probably won’t be the last time I write about Facebook.  I am surprised by and about it every day.  For now, today…this is my take on it. 

Can it be useful for some purposes?  Yes, absolutely. 

Are there worrisome issues one needs to be aware of?  Yes, too. 

Will I keep my account?  For now. 

But I don’t intend to expand my “Profile” much beyond what it is right now.  So, if you want to know if I am “in a relationship”, what music I like, what my favorite movie is, what my favorite color is, what book I am reading….I might tell you.  Just not on Facebook.

 

Twitter addendum…

I keep running in to conversations about Twitter – both online and in person….not sure why it is suddenly the “trendy” thing to talk about. I have even been asked about it at home over the dinner table by the less geeky/uninitiated members of my family.  Hmmmm, how to explain Twitter in 25 words or less and without looking at it or trying it out? 

Take a look at Twitter for yourself!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, just since my last post a few nice pieces have been shared to Twitter…about Twitter…and I think they are worth taking a look at – especially if you are still forming an opinion and have not yet decided to participate:

1.  Steven Levy on the Burden of Twitter, Wired Magazine
2.  State of the Art: Twitter is What you Make It, NYT
3.  Teaching Carnival 3.1 , New on The Salt Box, blog of Jason B.  Jones at Central Connecticut State University – scroll down to see links to Twitter uses in teaching and learning

Cheers!

 

What I learned on Twitter today…

What I learned on Twitter today…

I’ve had this post “cooking” for a while now…and it comes up again and again every time I try to explain to non-twittering colleagues why I bother?  I am finally writing it and collecting pieces into this post – containing what is admittedly old news to many seasoned Twitter users. Anyway, here goes for the new and the seasoned:  my take on Twitter.

 

Okay, when I was first exposed to Twitter last year at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Annual Meeting, I thought it was amusing, but could not see that it would be of any use to me.  (Here’s a little Twitter in Plain English intro if totally new to you.) Just another trendy app to learn and toss…Alan Levine (aka CogDog) put it better last year with his Twitter Life Cycle graph.  Thoughts like “…this is the most ridiculous waste of time I can imagine – blogging in 140 characters or less??”…kept crossing my mind.  But, not to be outdone by my professional community of fine colleagues who were, in fact, twittering faithfully at ELI (like @Brian Alexander-Note: when you reply to something said on Twitter, the reply is preceded with @whomever…so your Twitter identity becomes @your userID/name).  So I am @cljennings) – even updating in real time DURING sessions…I created an account.  

 

But…

nothing happened.

I tried, I really tried to like it.

But having no recent photo to upload (that brown square with 2 blue “eyes” kept staring back at me – the mark of a newbie), not knowing how to find anyone to “follow”, and generally missing the point – I didn’t tweet for many, many months.  I read some jokes about the “fail whale” and smirked…. “See…useless”!

 

Then, early last fall I got an email from Twitter saying that my colleague on campus was “following” me!  Following me?????

What?  

Why?

How did he find me? 

There was absolutely NOTHING there for him to follow!

 

Well, I do try to stay as informed about new tools and apps as I possibly can – in service to my colleagues here and in constant and perpetual hope that I’ll find something to share with someone who will then find it useful to inform/enhance their teaching…

 

I felt pressured to tweet.  “I have to go back there now…I have to learn this.  And I have to understand “why?”

I have to SAY something! 

 

I started trying to find people I had met at ELI, like @Bryan Alexander, @George Siemens and @Gardner Campbell.  I looked to see who they were following. I started following more people. (I didn’t find that many around here).  I have gradually over time increased the number of people I “follow” to 144.  Not many by some Twitter standards, but I can assure you that the people I am following often/usually have 140 characters worth of important things to say.  I have tried to emulate them…very tentatively at first…and I am still not sure that I contribute as much as I glean from Twitter. 

 

Pretty soon, I found myself on a list (in the UK no less!  How’d that happen??!!):  Directory of Learning Professionals (& Others) on Twitter (Twitter DOES share your information…but I digress, more on that later).  I logged in and joined the conversation going on during the fall campaign debates (the “back channel”!)  I watched as colleagues wrote micro-bursts of thought from conferences they were attending, and I sent out a few from the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference last October.  I followed the hadron collider (@CERN) last fall (I wanted to be one of the first to know if the world would end!  I have signed up for newstweets from Google, PBS, local new feeds, etc…I’m not going to link to them all – I want you to look for yourself!)     There are indeed connectivities made possible by Twitter that could never have occurred before.  Real time sharing…  Real time conversation…and not via usual channels.

 

I…WAS…HOOKED… There is truly not a day that I don’t learn something new and immediately useful.  Like today, for instance, I got this link to a wonderful piece on Twitter itself-from Twitter.  Most mornings its:   start up the computer, get the coffee, and see what’s new on Twitter to start the day.  Some people do literally answer the Twitter prompt:  “What are you doing?”  Others are constantly pouring in news stories, new ideas, information, links, photos, and writings…all things I learn from.  Sometimes people ask the “Twitterverse” questions…in a “Twitterpoll”…always interesting to watch.  No, I don’t follow every link to every resource.  I have learned which people post things worth exploring.  And yes, sometimes people do carry on what are seemingly private conversations that leave me wondering why they don’t just move over to an instant messaging service and get off Twitter….the social phenomenon is a little difficult to always understand.  Another downside is that Twitter can be a huge time waster, as noted here by Kathy Sierra.  Satisfying the need to “refresh” the page (what you have to do to see new posts) constantly throughout the day is quite the temptation….And try as I might to “fit in” I am rarely responded to when I Tweet (even though I have 118 “followers”), so I feel like a wall flower most times.  That definitely does not stop me from watching and learning though.

 

Another IT blogger I “follow”(Jennifer Jones) – on Twitter and at her blog injenuity, has been creating something on her blog she calls the “OnRamp.”  She has recently added links to 2 new pieces on Twitter:  Getting Twitter (The Lighter Side) followed by Getting Twitter (The Darker Side).  If you still don’t “get it” I recommend starting with Jennifer’s 2 excellent pieces. 

 

I do have to say that I am still not sure what I think about Twitter uses in teaching and learning.  Possibilities are being explored by many.  I don’t know enough about those possibilities yet to share anything of substance.  Still looking and reading.  Stay tuned for more on this in future posts…

 

So, the bottom line is that I have found Twitter to be an incredibly (and unexpectedly) useful tool for keeping current and connecting with a much larger community of IT professionals.  I have no doubt that others in any discipline could have similar experiences given the time and inclination.   How about you?  What are you doing….?

 

Thinking deeply to preserve the core

Okay…so I am admittedly NOT a very good blogtender (as I have mentioned before).  See? It has taken me more than a month to get back here! I just don’t see how some of the more prolific of my colleagues churn out substantive contributions with dependable regularity (daily in some cases!).  Me, I think, and chew, and cogitate, and ruminate, over every idea I have for a post.  Then the idea gets cold and I can’t call it back sufficiently enough to capture in words or a new idea displaces the old one. 

I am working on finding a better system.  Maybe voice recognition is the answer.  Maybe the small notebook I have taken to carrying in my purse for paper and pencil idea capture is going to work.  Maybe more discipline with using OneNote will be the key.  All I know is that if this blog is to function in the way I have envisioned, I really must find a way to share here more often.  Maybe an approach from my nursing past is in order: “smaller, more frequent feedings”; often ordered for patients recovering from illness of all sorts when they cannot tolerate their “regular” diet (whatever that is).  So, for the time being I am going to focus on making smaller more frequent posts here rather than waiting for the fulminant expression of some profundity I can’t articulate effectively anyway.

My intent is to offer up to my campus colleagues (primarily) and any others interested who might find their way here a ready, dependable, and reliable repository of ideas and resources related to teaching and learning with technology.  This blog is all about consciousness-raising and provoking thought about apprehending the affordances of technology – whatever they may be. 

And, I’ll be delighted if in the process of considering possible use of a technology tool (however small or large an application might be) someone thinks more deeply about their teaching in general and how students might learn as a result. I don’t believe in technology for the sake of technology, but I do firmly believe that planning to use technology means you have to plan how it makes sense to you and a student/learner user; thereby thinking about the essence of teaching and learning.  And I mean thinking deeply – about that which is our purpose: education (teaching well and learning well) – our core, if you will.

I am acutely sensitive to the need to think deeply now in difficult financial times when we are all being asked to make efficiency and savings a priority. Here is my concern: that in the process of considering (necessarily) what needs to be done to deal with very real economic issues we grow more willing to make concessions that compromise the core.  I believe that if we regularly engage in deep thinking about what we do (like how to effectively use technology to enhance teaching and learning) we will know our core more intimately and will protect it when challenges come.  Here is an example of the sort of deep thinking that I have in mind from my colleague Gardner Campbell in his most recent blog post “Cognition Prints”.  Here is a glimpse at the core.  Gardner’s ideas of attention, addressivity, and intimacy are at the very heart of what we do; with or without enhancements of technology (and don’t you agree that he says it so much better than I do. He is truly gifted with words!). 

I invite you to reflect upon the meaning of the core to and for you and reply here with your comments if you are so moved.

 

 

 

Writing to learn…

I’ve been mulling over this post for a little over a week now since attending a wonderful session put together by LLC colleague Jane Addison, Director of the USC Upstate Writing Center. The session, “Creating Effective Writing Assignments”, included a very interesting interdisciplinary panel discussion that has really made me think more intentionally about the role of writing in courses I typically teach.

Jane provided very useful information she has gathered on ingredients for effective writing assignments – no matter what the discipline or subject matter. I appreciated a sample she provided of a format and content of a writing assignment from SEGL 102. Jane also shared some of her own experience in the Writing Center with helping students make sense of and complete various writing assignments in all sorts of courses. (The idea that the encouragement and teaching of writing is not just the responsibility of the faculty in one department really resonates with me!)

M. B. Ulmer from Math and Computer Science shared his own insights and excellent examples of how he incorporates writing into math instruction (Yes! MATH instruction!); frankly, in ways one might not typically expect in a math course. The idea is to help students engage the material through a reflective process of thinking critically then writing – specifically as a process, not necessarily an outcome (although the writing as an output reflecting the thinking process IS important).

Then, our new colleague Rick Hartsell from the School of Education shared some of his perspective on teaching writing and writing to learn. He introduced us to the work of Peter Elbow, particularly the notion that in higher education we most often engage our students in writing to respond, but not so often in writing to initiate. I especially love this idea….particularly in the context of what I understand about Web 2.0 and its underpinning of “user generated content”, where the writing is pretty much ALL writing to initiate conversations and connections. Still thinking about this part…more in another post.

The idea of writing to learn makes so much sense to me. (I like this explanation from the WAC Clearinghouse). I have been telling students (for years really) that an important way to apprehend material and meaning when they study is to write. I never thought that much about my role as a guide to that process through the thoughtful suggestion of prompts and context. Freshly armed last week with my new resolve to ask more of my students by way of writing – to learn – I asked one class to reflect upon and write a paragraph about the single most important “big idea” they have learned so far this semester. The results were stunning to me. Sure, some responses were not very “deep”, but others reflected a degree of thoughtful internalizing of concepts and ideas I had not anticipated. I could see where some students “got it” and others had more work to do. This individual writing prompt contrasted (rather sharply) with the “public” reflection spaces I have tried to create in the course in the form of a wiki for discussion of our readings and yielded an entirely different product; one much more reflective of the learning that is occurring.

I know that I am only beginning to grasp the full meaning (and potential) of asking students to write to learn. Thus I am inviting reflection, comments, questions, and criticisms on this post to frame a dialogue here amongst colleagues (and beyond). Share your thoughts, ideas, resources, and examples. Looking forward to the conversation.