Voice from the Past

Two annual especially emotional times for me here at Carroll are Commencement (parting is such sweet sorrow) and Homecoming weekend.
I’ll let the “movie” below do my talking since I need to make a PSY 205 Exam tonight. I must confess that I’d much rather being playing with technology right now. So much to learn.
My research assistants this year (6 fun, intellectually curious undergraduates) and I are experimentingwith Screencasting software. The “movie” below was producing using the Voicethread application and is a “sandbox version”—that is we are just discovering the application’s capabilities and uses. Do feel free to add your voice–I’d love to hear from you.
Thoughts while reflecting upon the May 2012 Commencement:Click the start button to play.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Twas the Night Before Classes: Doggeral by Robin the Newf

                                     With apologies to Clement Clarke Moore (1779 – 1863)

Twas the night before Classes and strewn through the house

    Are his books and his notes and his Mac and his mouse,

His syllabi are stacked on the desk with great care

Stapled, collated, and ready to share.

This Newfie is snuggled all weary from play


RTN3

Protesting, professing, a preferred yesterday 

Of swimming and walking and playing and eating

TTN4

Why bother with meetings? They're so self-defeating.

My persistence is dogged, I think with my heart.

My humor waggish; why be apart?

RTN2

What a bummer to give up the Dog Days of Summer

Discuss!

 

 

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?

 

 

 

Returning to Campus…

Photo on 5-3-12 at 11.40 AM

The campus should be abuzz tonight with Friday's arrival of 740 new freshmen. Just sent an email to my 6 research assistants alerting them to the imminent removal of my invisibility cloak. One, predictably, replied within 30 seconds:). These special students increasingly play a critical role in my accomplishing things both inside and outside the classroom. They are fun to be with, bright, and hard-working —though at times we annoy each other! I enjoyed very much the creative Ibook they wrote last semester.

Trying now to finalize syllabi and better organize materials on my computers at home. Do I REALLY need 87 apps on my Ipad???? How best can I serve Carroll as a Technology Fellow?

This semester I'm determined to get more writing done. I am most successful in that endeavor when I block off a time to write every day—and do so. Time will tell.

This will be a semester of winnowing and improving course materials. I'm going to take the plunge and use a "free" online text as an ancillary reading source in Experimental Social Psychology.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to protect the traditions of Carroll College when fewer and fewer people here remember anything other than Carroll UNIVERSITY. This saddens me, but perhaps it is a sign. I am going to try and heed the advice of a trustee friend this summer who gently suggested that I was perceived by some as overly cynical.

 I can learn much from the wisdom of Ruth and Abby Joy (below). Neither has a cynical attitude nor a negative thought.

Abby Joy and Ruth

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Stop the Internet—I want to get off!!!

From time to time I disconnect, disengage, from seemingly always being online. It is easier to so do during the summer, since I opt NOT to teach or commit myself to grant work during that time. As author Naomi S. Baron acknowleges in her thoughtful book Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, one needs to be alert to the personal, cognitive, and social consequences of “24/7” connectivity.
Is Google making us “stoopid” (sic) or smarter? How can I ever find time to explore, evaluate, improve the 3000+ learning tools which Jane Hart has alerted us to? How can I avoid being pushed off the edge of the “Edgeless University?”—-or should I resist?
I resolve these questions by stepping back, engaging in intense physical activity, reading widely, and consulting the Newf!

 
On the Internet No One Knows that You are a Newfoundland.

Preparing for My 64th Semester of Teaching at Carroll…

It was good to  be sitting at my office desk at school today. Spring semester classes don’t begin until Wednesday, and I had an unusually large amount of uninterrupted time to clean the office, organize materials,discard last semester’s uneaten lunch, and think about my three courses. Precious moments of uninterrupted, focused reflection, planning, and action are rare for me once classes begin, because I choose to have an open door policy for students and colleagues.
I’m teaching Introductory Psychology (after a one semester hiatus) for probably close to the 100th time. I taught it as a graduate student at Ohio State and I have taught here at Carroll a number of summers and evenings in addition to almost every semester since February of 1978. Indeed, this coming semester I shall yet again be teaching a daughter of one of my former students. In some ways Introductory Psychology is the most difficult course for me to teach. Most students are not majors, and it is a challenge to simply and with integrity condense a discipline I have explored for for almost forty years.
This semester, influenced by some conversations I’ve had with several colleagues and students, I am going to incorporate several innovations.

  1. a section on cross-cultural psychology which will occur at the time that social psychologist Richard Nisbett is speaking on campus about the “Geography of the Mind” (see my earlier blog).
  2. having students read and respond to some of my future (and some of my older “Curious David”) blogs that deal with psychological topics. I may create a special wiki for them.
  3. involving students in some fashion with research I shall be conducting with 12 seniors. I am toying with five research topics—the effects of color on behavior, revisiting the “Mozart effect,” revisiting “subliminal” persuasion, evaluation research (e.g. the efficacy of Rosetta Stone software), and systematic evaluation of Web 2.0 learning tools. As the President of this institution is fond of saying, “stay tuned.”

Carroll truly is being enriched more and more by the presence of international students. Today, while photo-copying, I struck up a conversation with a student from Brazil. Last semester I had the delightful experience of learning with and from a student from Vietnam. A former graduate school classmate of mine has just become an editor of a British journal. A Norwegian friend who mentored me in 1974 has just published a book. My discipline is finally becoming more culturally aware, much less chauvinistic—see  Arnett, J. J. (2008). The neglected 95%: Why American psychology needs to become less American. American Psychologist, 63, 602-614— and recognizing that the world is indeed flat.  How exciting; what fun!
There is much about which to be curious.That is vital to keeping me playful, energized, and wanting to teach and to learn.
Thanks to my incipient readership. Based on statistics I can monitor, I am already attracting a readership base at a higher rate than I did writing for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last year. And this without Mom’s help!

Keep those comments and feedback coming either through posting or by sending them to dsimpsonnorthlake@mac.com. 

Enough for now. I’m dog tired.

 

On the Internet no one knows that you are a Newf