Category: Higher Education

Responding to Jane Hart’s “10 Tools Challenge”

Recently Jane Hart has extended an interesting professional development challenge.  Make a resolution to find out how to use 10 new tools this year and write a monthly blog post describing one's experiences with the tools.Though I have been a persistent dillettante of her Top 100 Tools for Learning Lists for the past six years, this semester I have a unique opportunity (and a block of dedicated time) to focus on mastery of a subset of these tools. Hence, I accept and welcome the "challenge!" Thanks for the 'incentive", Jane!

Over the next 15 weeks six of my students and I will be working on a project to create a "virtual European immersion cultural experience course." Among the resources we will be drawing upon are

  1. Jane Hart's Social Learning Handbook (and selective updated material I shall master as a function of my joining the Top 100 Tools Club)
  2. Susan Manning and Kevin E. Johnson's The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching
  3. Laurence Peters' Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students
  4. Michelle Pacansky-Brock's Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies and
  5. Deltina Hay's A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization: Strategies, Tactics, and Tools for Succeeding in the Social Web

 The broad categories of tools I hope to master with my students are

Ambitious? Yes. Overly ambitious —time will tell but I am blessed with an unusually talented group of students with whom I have worked for years and who each have received a brand new Ipad to support their creation of this new course.

We welcome feedback and ideas.

 

OMG: Twittering (Reconsidered)

Several years ago I pontificated the value of my using Twitter. At that time I  came to the conclusion that Twitter  was not a useful tool for me. Much of my current thinking
has benefitted from my reading or rereading several books (listed
below), my having participated in Carroll Technology Fellows group discussions,
and my developing with six student research assistants a new course ("Pioneering Virtual European Immersion
Experiences"). I also have found value in revisiting some resources I discovered such as this classic tutorial by the consummate visionary, teacher, and proselytizer, Jane Hart.

 

        Books that have shaped my thinking:

  1. Michelle Pakansky-Brock's Best Pracices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies. She writes well and thoughtfully, recognizes the limits of technology tools and offers a well-reasoned set of criteria for deciding which tools to integrate into the classroom. She is definitely someone I find value in "following"—so I do!

Susan Manning and Kevin E. Johnson's The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching. This book provides a useful decision matrix for choosing among and using the "right" technology teaching tool. As a result of having studies this book, I now have a better understanding of some situations where Twitter can be helpful to me in my teaching and scholarship.

  1. Deltina Hay's A Survival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization. This book, though not written by a a teacher or for teachers,  provides a very pragmatic guide to maximizing the benefits of Web 2.0 tools. I found the CD of links particulary instructive.
  2. Paul McFedries' twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets. Though somewhat outdated, this book successfully provided me with helpful, lucid details on mastering features of Twitter of which I was totally unaware.

Now if I can only divine my message to Pope Benedict XVI to 140 characters or less.

 

Internet Detritus and Wabi-sabi

A few years ago a Carroll trustee remarked to me that he wondered how much Internet detritus has accumulated (unused email accounts, abandoned web pages, forgotten electronic projects). Jim's musing about this lost virtual space recently returned to me while I was attending a Carroll Technology Fellows' meeting. We were being introduced to wikispaces and it dawned on me that I not only had an account there, but I also had abandoned accounts on four other wiki hosts which I had explored intermittently since 2007: pbwiki, wetpaint,
twiki, and jotspot. That embarrassing realization in turn led me to revisit Woods and Thoeny's (2007) Wiki's for Dummies, revisit all my prior accounts, and think about whether an "old" (e.g. 2007) largely abandoned teaching technology tool deserved any place in my technology teaching tool kit today.

Ward Cunningham invented the wiki (essentially a collection of web pages) as the simplest possible online data base that anyone could edit. Simple it is. Myriad wiki tools exist. Here is ONE way to choose among them.

I presently am using wikispaces because it is free to educators and is easy to use.  Presently, I have (re)found it valuable as a project manager of a
colloborative research project I am working on with six undergraduates where we have a
need for an easily accessible, editable shared repository on the web. Abundant well-written
tutorials exist for guiding the novice user.

Woods and Thoeny liken wikis to electronic, linkable index cards and enjoin the reader to embrace the attitude of "Wabi-sabi"—the beauty of unfinished content—as one enters the world of wiki collaboration. I personally find that attitude motivating in the same sense as the Zeigarnik effect or the lines of  Robert Frost "…miles to go before I sleep."  Though I have not seen wikis "conquer" problems as some wiki evangelists predicted, I presently benefit from the tool facilitating collaboration. Perhaps the logo on this t-shirt expresses it best:

SWIKI_375_1

 

 

 

 

What corporates can learn from the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2012 | Learning in the Social Workplace

Few can rival the vision of Jane Hart. As I move in and out of the academic and business worlds I treasure her inspiration and wisdom.

What corporates can learn from the Top 10 Tools for Learning 2012 | Learning in the Social Workplace.

The Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 list is revealed | Learning in the Social Workplace

The Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 list is revealed | Learning in the Social Workplace.

Jane Hart continues her valuable service by sharing this list sorted in a number of interesting ways. Which of these tools have you found most useful? Which would you like to see more used in the classroom or to learn more about?

Help me decide how to vote…

As the time approaches for voting in Jane Hart's 6th annual poll of the Top 100 Tools for Learning, I am reading two excellent books that will "guide" my vote. I have spent considerable time the past seven years using most of the tools Jane identifies (see link above). This year I agreed to become a Carroll "Technology Fellow." Therfore, I feel it imcumbent upon me  to deploy into the classroom (to a greater degree) the tools which in my experience will most benefit my students' learning experiences.

Two books that I am currently reading are 1) Susan Manning and Keven E. Johnson's (2011) The Technology Toolbelt for Teaching and 2) Michelle Pacansk-Brock's (2013) Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies. I especially like Pacanek-Brock's book despite the fact that I'll need a razor blade to separate the pages which were not cut (!) and that I've already found some rush-to-press-caused errors. Still, she writes well, clearly understands the strengths and limitations of the tools. In her own words, "…the tools themselves are not important—it's the experiences they create [for learners] that is critical. I wholeheartedly agree.

In the next few days I'm going to focus on one element from her "Essentials Toolkit" chapter 3—specifically screencasting software (Camtasia vs. Screenflow vs. Screencast-o-matic vs. Jing). It's time for me to stop merely collecting such software and instead mastering all the features of the screencasting tool which best addresses my teaching and learning needs.

Here's an example of a screencast on my MacbookPro using Screenflow and Vimeo (as the online content  hosting service) :

Testing Screencasting Software (Screen Flow) from David Simpson on Vimeo.

What technological tools do you feel add value to your teaching effectiveness and your students' learning experiences? What evidence do you have of their effectiveness?

 

 

 

 

So what do YOU remember from your Introductory Psychology Class?

The semester is now 11 days old and I've made my best efforts to establish my credibility, build a stimulating and supportive learning environment, and learn with and from my students. I'm pleasantly caught in the flow of teaching.

I'm trying to build in some down time every teaching day to reflect, to evaluate, and where warranted to implement new learning tools into the classroom. However, I want to avoid chasing after flashy tools which in fact add no value to the teaching or learning experience. Nor am I particularly interested in being at the cutting edge of the latest educational fads or embracing purported best digital learning practices or essential 21rst century learning skills.

Still, a Luddite I am not. Here is a classroom use of technology that I now have woven into several of my classes. Drawing upon the research that repeated testing enhances learning, I have begun regularly building into my classes collaborative within class computer-assisted testing.

Here is a practice Introductory Psychology "unquiz." My 25 students collaboratively got 90% correct the first time (despite the fact that I had not lectured over the material)—and 100% the second time. Much to my surprise my 300 level students (most soon to be graduate-school bound) collaboratively got 100%.

Let's see how YOU do. You don't have to type in your true name or email address.

Here again is the "unquiz."

I would welcome your feedback.

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t read books…

101_0030

    "I don't read books," a young Carroll colleague recently told me as a second colleague nodded his head in agreement. "I just don't have the time for pleasure reading or for reading outside my discipline if I am also to keep up with my research agenda and stay abreast of the psychological literature. When I read I do it online."

    Perhaps this is yet another signal that I am becoming a stranger in a strange land. Walk into my office and you'll see books lining the walls, stacked on the floor, on my desk, and  piled on the chairs around my desk. Novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction—paperback and hardback, pages stained with coffee, annotated, or dog-eared and occasionally, dog-drooled upon. Follow me home to my study and you'll find more of the same! Books and the many authors who write so much better than I and who think in such
different ways than I have clearly shaped who I am and who I aspire to be. I am book-marked!

    I love to read! Thank you first-grade teachers past, present, and future for engendering a love of reading in children. I especially enjoy reading books or articles outside the narrow confines of my academic specialization and by authors from different cultures. Though I own a Kindle, it lies in a drawer umplugged and gathering dust.Though I have on my computers applications that allow for reading ebooks, I find the act of reading on a computer an entirely different (and
less pleasurable) experience than reading print on paper. Though I have attempted to listen to audio books, I fail to be transformed by them in the same way as when I read the presentation.

Two recent psychology-related books which I read this summer are Richard J. Davidson (with Sharon Begley)'s The Emotional Life of Your Brain and Cathy Davidson's Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. Both are autobiographical in explaining the foundation of their research efforts.

    R. Davidson (who was named by Time Magazine in 2006 as one of the 100 most inflential people in the world) makes a compelling case for the neurological stucture of six dimensions of emotional style:

  • resilience (how quickly one recovers from emotions)
  • outlook (how long one can sustain positive emotion)
  • social intuition
  • self-awareness
  • sensitivity to context
  • and attention (focus)

He suggests ways to measure and to change one's emotional style.

C. Davidson (of whom I first became aware because of her "This Is Your Brain on the Internet" course fame) provides a rambling, provocative, anecdotal and inspirational book which asserts that there is a mismatch between work and the ever-changing workplace and which shares her evolving thoughts about 21rst century literacy. She is scheduled to give a presentation and lead a faculty workshop at Carroll on October 8, 2012.

    Most of my summer reading was fiction, however. What suggestions do you have for me to read next?

 

 

 

Retooling (Part 1)

Time to retool. Just had installed a new IMac in my lab with a new color laser printer. How things have changed from my TRS80 Radio Shack computer and "dumb" terminal days!

Almost ready to take the plunge and to migrate my personal Mac Laptop Pro to the MAC Lion operating system. So much to learn…

I am blessed this year with an unusually talented group of bright, young, fun, eager-to-learn, student assistants. Just had my office dual operating system Mac Laptop (OS10.6 and Windows7) recloned with Carroll software. Have been playing with an Ipad and an Kindle. Gearing up for teaching the Research Seminar next semester (hope I get a few students!), and most importantly, just sharpened a new box of pencils and added to them extended erasers! Some needed school supplies never change!

Time to revisit. I see that Jane Hart is about to announce the final polling results of her Top-Tools-for-Learning  List. Always worth revisiting, so I examined each of the 100 tools listed and will be directing my research assistants to a subset of them before I "cast my vote." For me the critical questions are:

  1. Will mastering this tool increase the likelihood of my becoming a more effective teacher?
  2. Which of these tools will enhance my research and my research communication capabilities?
  3. Which of these tools do I want all my students to know how to use? (Which are best for freshmen versus seniors?)
  4. Which of these tools will be around in the next four years?
  5. Which of these tools serve me best when I am engaged in my nonacademic role as partner of Schneider Consulting?
  6. Among subsets of tool types, which best serve my needs?
  7. How much learning time do I or my students need to invest to use these tools?
  8. Are these tools portable across the browsers I most frequently use?
  9. Are these tools portable across the hardware I most frequently use and am about to explore?
  10. How much of the attractiveness of these tools to me is simply due to their "wow factor" and the fun they engender?

    Stay tuned.