Saturday, January 28, 2012

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)

  • These “recipe cards” for Project/Problem Based Learning are intended for teachers to use with K12 students in groups, as well as individual students.Each card creates student learning categorized as TimeTravelers, Artists & Inventors, Historian Challenges, StoryTellers, ProblemSolvers, Scientist Challenges, Career & Tech Ed.The cards are meant to help teachers integrate core content and deeply embed creativity, problem-solving, and collaborative learning in each student, with or without the use of technology tools.The core content pieces are the basic ingredients with which teachers can cook delicious content for their hungry learners.Teachers are able to customize the driving questions in each of the content areas to fit the unique needs of their learners. The cards guide teachers through the basic steps of the project, with ideas and suggestions for best practice.The tips & tricks help establish a safe and respectful learning environment every single day of the year.

    Tags: ProjectBasedLearning, project based learning, LifePractice, pbl


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Friday, January 27, 2012

Friday Links of Note

Friday Links of Note

Friday inks pic

 

 

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Sunday, January 08, 2012

Newspeak Reminders from "A Word a Day"

From: Henry Willis (hmw ssdslaw.com)
Subject: Newspeak and Papier Deutsch

Before the Bush Administration gave us the phrase "enhanced interrogation" another administration used "collateral damage" to refer to the killing of civilians -- who had, by some process of word magic, lost their identity as humans to become merely "damage", like a broken window or a fallen tree. The Nazis did the same thing on a far more barbaric scale with terms such as die Endlösung, which turned mass murder into a bloodless impersonal noun.

This is not just another example of the bureaucratic degradation of language, although that is certainly part of it. As Orwell said in his great essay on politics and the English language:
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.... Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness.... Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Or if you want to go back further, then we can quote the words that Tacitus put in the mouth of the Celtic chieftain Galgacus:

"To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace."

Henry Willis, Los Angeles, California

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Saturday, December 03, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Saturday, October 01, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Monday, September 05, 2011

Textbooks Are Killing Me!

    I’ve been thinking of how we might shape a new model of for texts that might lower the materials cost of higher education and thereby make it more accessible who find it cost prohibitive. Certainly, I realize tuition far out-paces course materials as an item on students’ higher ed budgets. Still, every bit helps.

    Some steps I took:

     
    • I downloaded Amazon’s student app and used it in the COOP to scan course texts for their Amazon.com partners. Where the Amazon texts were less expensive, I added them to my cart. (This was the case in all but two instances.)
    • When I got home, I compared the items in my Amazon cart with used versions available through amazon. Whenever possible, I chose the used version.
    • I took advantage of amazon’s offer of 6 months of free Amazon Prime membership for students. This secures free 2-day shipping and other as of yet unknown “deals.” (When selecting used texts, I only purchased those qualifying for Amazon Prime.)
    • When it was possible, I purchased the Kindle version of texts. I’ll be reading them on my iPad, but I’d take advantage of the new Kindle Cloud feature if I didn’t have a Kindle or iPad.
    • I opted against texts that were recommended but not required (with the exception of the APA style guide).
     

    As a result, my possible costs of $600 ended up at around $450. That’s a chunk of rent or more than a month’s worth of groceries.

Give it a try next semester and then lobby your friendly, neighborhood academic departments to work with students to help in every way they can. 


What's the Fuss with Google "Suggested Users"

There has been quite a bit of discussion about Google+'s "suggested users" list.  Seems to me as just another pretty much accepted way to populate an otherwise empty social network until you get the chance to fill in the blanks, but others have pointed out that many of the suggested users have empty streams.  Why suggest empty streams, Google?  Seems a bit half-assed or beta-assed if you will. Maybe somebody at Google realizes if you can't do something useful then do something that appears useful.

Audrey Watters remarks, "I’m not on it [the suggested lists], and I bet you aren’t either, particularly if you’re an educator — because, well, there aren’t any educators on the list."  But she also points out that Twitter's suggested user list has few if any educators.

She also points out that

Google’s Bradley Horowitz — de-facto spokesperson for the new list — does recognize that there isn’t an “extreme knitters” group. In a post yesterday, he says he wants to assure extreme knitters — along with everyone else who isn’t a tech or pop culture celebrity — that the fact that Google doesn’t recognize your interest group is “a bug.”

Don't get mad just make your own list.  Isn't that what the Circles are?  I have a circle for my CoopCatalyst folks.  I curate my own list of folks for #edchat and for a freshman comp class I am teaching this fall.  Do like Audrey Watters "suggests"-- curate your own circles. 

In Facebook you might be using 'Pages' (although I think that whole edifice rides on the shaky ground of having been first out of the gate).  In Twitter you can create your own lists although they haven't been all that handy for me to use regularly.  So what's the dealio about raking Google+ over the coals?  Keeps 'em honest, I guess.  




Saturday, September 03, 2011

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Sunday, August 21, 2011

Tech Tidbits: Kim Cofino's Disruptive PD Technology

Tech Tidbits: Increasing Teachers’ Digital Efficiency | always learning

Just finished a pedagogically provocative post on crowdsourcing "tech tidbits".  Kim Cofino gets a handle on what is needed in training now--something short, something cheap, something that builds tech capacity--to help us get the most out of the limited time we have to learn. And, neatest of all, she flies in under the radar with a truly subversive learning framework.

 
Who can argue that simple tools like using 'CMD+F' or 'CTL+F' to find something on a webpage or in a pdf is not important?  No one. In fact, in the short time horizon we will be generating a zettabyte of data in one year.  Any filtering tool that might help us dig through that midden mound is a very happy one. 
 
Cofino runs these PD sessions like "a fair". 
 
1.Fifteen teacher/trainers are seated waiting to teach one 'tidbit' listed below:
 
  • Creating labels in Gmail
  • Creating e-mail lists in Contacts
  • Install Google Notifier to set up web Gmail as your default email client (this has saved me hours of work)
  • Creating collections in Google Docs and organizing your files
  • Making a copy of a document & saving for yourself (to edit)
  • Sharing a collection with a group (made in your Contacts list) or a colleague
  • Make a Google Doc public, for linking on your class blog
  • Check the revision history in a Google Doc
  • Creating events in Google Calendar and setting automatic reminders via e-mail
  • Creating repeating events in Google Calendar
  • Importing the school’s calendar into your own Google Calendar
  • Creating a Google Reader account and subscribing to feeds
  • Create a bundle of feeds in Reader for each class you teach
  • Adding feeds to folders in Reader
  • Recording screencasts in QuickTime
2. Everyone (trainers and learners alike) has access to a shared Google Doc with the day's training agenda (topics and trainer contact info).
 
3. Teacher pair up with teachers in a cafeteria style.  Cofino compares this to speed dating only she calls it "speed geeking".

4. The teachers then become the trainers and new learner/teachers rotate in from the other "dates'. Reminds me of a tactic I used in middle school called "the wheel" where you have an inner core of teachers and an outer core of learners.  It really is a clever modification of jigsawing.  

5.  If one of the trainees felt they could teach one of the tidbits then they would put their name down on the Google Doc.  I am reminded of Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society and Sugata Mitra's 'child-driven learning'
I hope Cofino realizes how utterly subversive this pedagogy is.  What's good for the teachers is good for the students, n'est ce pas?  And doesn't this model fit the world we live in better than the dead institution walking that passes for schools today?
 
6.  When you are done you have two very important results:  learners got to control what they wanted to learn (to a limited degree), learners got to share what they learned, and learners got a list of those with expertise to call upon.  The shared Google Doc would also serve as a place to add future learning needs and perhaps to share with parents and administrators and staff who might want to be a part of that learning community. 
 
Kim Cofino should get a big shout and a happy one, too.  This is a great PD framework as well as a model for what should be happening in our schools every day.  Perhaps this is just the trojan mouse we need to leverage the tipping point needed to turn our schools from bridges to nowhere (the 20th Century) to bridges to somewhere (the emerging future).  Or as Illich puts it, "Our present educational institutions are at the service of the teacher's goals. The relational structures we need are those which will enable each man to define himself by learning and by contributing to the learning of others." 

(Illich, Ivan. Deschooling society. Calder and Boyars, 1971. Print.)

 

 

Friday, August 19, 2011

Video/Multimedia/Streaming/Photos/Slideshow Curation: Yokto

I think this is a new idea under the sun.  Grab some videos online, some videos of your own creation, grab a picture, grab whatever and put it all in an embedded presenter.  Done.  Below is the first go at this on the topic of learning.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Saturday, July 30, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Authentic Learning Group Diigo (weekly)


Posted from Diigo. The rest of Authentic Learning group favorite links are here.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Friday, March 11, 2011

Ten Undergrad Gen/ed Classes

Dana C has asked us to list ten gen/ed classes that I took as an undergrad. Here goes (and Dana I can't peak because that transcript is nearly 30 years old and I don't have a copy)

1. Lit/Phil 101
2. Lit/Phil 102
3. Western Civ 101
4. Western Civ 102
5. Pol/Sci 101
6. Pol/Sci 102
7. Intro to Bio
8. Intro to Psych
9. Math 101
10. Religion 101

I went to Centre College from 1973-1977. I still remember some of these classes very fondly. Sweet memory.


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TREND: Changing Roles in Higher Education

Derek Bruff, Dwayne Harapnuik, and Jim Julius in their Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Change in Higher Education" discuss the adviseability of and likelihood of transformational change in the adoption of new technologies by faculty.

Key Points:

1. New technologies provide new learning 'affordances' but is a social technology revolution possible in an environment that values incremental change at best and no change at worst?
2. The authors narrate the story of a recent interactive session during the annual conference of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Saint Louis.
3. POD's are located in faculty development offices on most campuses and are active in attempting to improve faculty teaching through change initiatives.
4. Ideas from POD
a. The model for information flow has changed from an industrial one to a filtering one.
b. We have shifted from an Instructional Paradigm to a Learning Paradigm. This is reflected in Monica Raskin's "Twitter Experiment" at University of Texas at Dallas. Bruff, et al ask whether this is the change we need to be drawn toward?



c. Some have argued for this radical shift:

d. POD Prezi Presentation




5. POD group's examples of "roadblocks, obstacles, and speed bumps" toward this shift.
a. Faculty as proto-Luddites
b. Faculty need for models
c. Faculty loss of control when shifting
d. Faculty don't see it as a personal, professional, or university priority
e. Faculty don't have the 'geek' openness to new tech ideas
f. Faculty remain unconvinced of advantages over status quo
6. Here is an online document outlining their discussion and another interactive one using Google Forms to focus the previous one.
7. The biggest challenges?
a. The move from sage to the side, from prof-centered to student-centered.
b. Sharing effective models with other faculty
8. The authors do not explicitly answer whether it should be evolutionary or revolutionary; instead, they invite the readers to join.

Comments to Article:

9. You have to address faculty fears either way. Fierce autonomy, fear of being made redundant by technology, lack of clear cost/benefit analysis--these are all examples of the fear that fills reluctant colleagues.
10. Access to the tools of change along with a way to 'unstrand' colleagues will lead to change of both kinds.
11. "Most profs are amateurs when it comes to teaching"--improving learning no matter the tech (3X5 cards, face-to-face sims, Twitter). Focus on making the amateurs into pros.
12. References to book Nineshift
13. "Revolutions require ubiquity."
14. Administrative motive is suspect--use tech to save money is first priority.

Significance/consequences:

Failure to address this question simply kicks the can down the road for someone else to address and it may well be that a ginned up crisis or a real crisis will reduce the options we once had much like the climate change deniers may have damned our options in addressing carbon buildup in the atmosphere.

Being out of step with out students might be considered quaint by some. It might be thought that faculty are the last bulwark against the barbarian-students at the gate. Whatever rationale is given for sticking to the status quo ante-technology, it is clear that these 'good deeds' will not go unpunished. For-profit companies are gaming both student desires and federal money in an ugly takeover attempt. If you want to look at a school 'too big to fail' just consider University of Phoenix. This purity of the academe will be it death.

Lastly, the comment above that most professors are amateurs not pros is the dirtiest little secret of the ivory tower. Faculty development does yeoman work on our own campus considering how underpowered and de-valued it is. But the greatest sin is that it can be safely ignored by tenured faculty. And, honestly, it is ignored and without moral or professiona or personal hazard. One of the most morally bankrupt results of this is that those who have the power often and regularly do not exercise it for students but rather for their professional and personal selves. Yes, that is the foul cruft of corruption in the air and it is the most dangerous threat to the thousand year tenure of the University.



Hacker, P. (11:00 am). Revolution or Evolution? Social Technologies and Change in Higher Education. ProfHacker. The Chronicle of Higher Education, . Retrieved March 11, 2011, from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/revolution-or-evolution-social-technologies-and-change-in-higher-education/29304


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Trend: Affordability--Etextbooks at University

John Levi Hilton and David Wiley discuss in their First Monday article "A Sustainable Future for Open Textbooks?" the viability and sustainability of one model of etext delivery--Flat World Knowledge.

Key Points:

1. In 2008 the average price of textbooks was US$702 and 5.5 billion nation wide.
2. Textbook companies and professors have come in for a raft of criticism over the last ten years over the cost and waste in texts for classrooms.
3. E-books have proved a cheaper alternative but their cost, readability, and resale ability have proven to be stumbling blocks to adoption.
4. Free e-textbooks have been proposed as an answer by non-commercial groups like CourseSmart, Connexions, and Wikipedia as well as commercial efforts like Flat World Knowledge (FWK) and Textbook Media.
5. Flat World Knowledge's business model is the subject of this essay.
6. Benefits of FWK:
a. Older texts will not be discontinued even if revisions are available.
b. Texts are allowed to be freely customized.
c. Full text online version of etext is free.
d. Audio, pdf, and print version available for sale.
e. Higher royalty rate paid to authors (15%)
7. Alpha testing indicated that the business model was looked up favorably by both faculty and students compared to traditional texts.
8. Beta testing indicated that the majority of students were likely to buy the text instead of reading it only online.

Consequences/Significance:

Making college more affordable may depend on efforts like these to reduce costs. The authors suggest that this model might become the rule for K-12 which also is in desperate economic straits. One-to-one laptop initiatives would be well-advised to look at this freemium model and load up textbooks onto this hardware. The model might provide a counterbalance to the out-of-control costs in traditional textbook publishing.

Implications for the library's role in etextbooks has not been thought through. Amazon already sells more ebooks than paper books and access to these etexts through smartphones, tablets, and e-readers is becoming nearly universal; therefore, barriers to access are lower than ever before. In other words the textbook market is suffering severe dislocations as it tries to adjust to the 'textonic' forces shifting beneath them. Or maybe not. There does not appear to be a rush by faculty and students to adopt. Some have suggested that a new model (already used by the University of Phoenix) be used where stukdents woiuld pay a materials fee which would be lumped together to get e-books for all.

Plus/Minus:

We really could see the end of the 'paper and binding' textbook in five years. Western needs to have a pilot program running now to make this happen because the present system is effectively broken. But I am concerned that universities will not effectively contain costs considering how poorly they have fared keeping a lid on digital subscriptions at libraries. And...what exactly would the consequences be for existing campus bookstores? Lost revenue and lost jobs? No, this is disruptive stuff here and not all tea and skittles.  That the law of unintended consequences will have powerful sway here, there is little doubt.


Hilton III, J. L., & Wiley, D. A. (2010). A sustainable future for open textbooks? The Flat World Knowledge story. First Monday, 15(8). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2800/2578



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