Confession: I wish I received more emails from students like this…

Tags

21stCenturyLearning, educational technology, Instructional technology, teaching, technology

Tonight I received the following email from one of my brightest and most tech-geeky freshman honors students:

This is my document for Strategy 2. I thought that it would be cool to try out a new method for annotating and I thought it wouldn’t be as useful to me if I did it on that sheet.

This comes from my OneNote notebook where I’ve nested all of my research notes in English. The notebook is synced across OneNote on my home computer and OneNote on my iPod and school computers.

This should be viewable with the XPS viewer in Windows and it contains what I annotated.

These are the emails that make me feel successful because this student was not only willing to take a risk, but he was willing to advocate for his own learning.

Ok, some background on the assignment: I’ve been taking my students through our first research unit of the year. At this stage, they have learned how to narrow a topic, create research questions, use search strategies to find resources, and complete a website evaluation.  Now they are being asked to closely (actively) read their found resources and evaluate them on a variety of factors–credibility, relevancy (to their research questions), perspectives, strengths, and limitations.To break the process down, I created a table to chunk their complex task into manageable sections, each with its own guiding questions (download here = ActiveReadingAnnotatedBib) But as you can see from this email, the worksheet wasn’t the best tool for my student. Instead, he wanted to use a tool HE was excited about. I love that! I love that he took a risk, communicated his reasons for doing it, and then confidently used a tool that worked for him.

Isn’t this what our end goal should be? Our students taking our tasks and making them better? Or taking our tasks and personalizing them to fit their learning style, interests or skills? Shouldn’t we be striving to mold students who are confident advocates for their own learning? I think yes to every question. I hope I am able to become that teacher to every student some day…and until then I’ll keep emails like this to encourage me that it is possible.

Confession: I will pour 7 hours of my weekend into an iMovie project…

Tags

Education, educational technology, iMovie, iPad, Pennsylvania, PETE&C, teacher leadership, Video, Vimeo

From Lunch Duty to Tech Duty: Using Teachers to Implement BYOD in Schools from Brianna Crowley on Vimeo.

This week, I gathered video footage from my colleagues and administrators to create an introduction video for our panel session at Pennsylvania’s Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C). I took the video with a combination of my iPad and a flip camera I borrowed from the library. The video was produced in iMovie and is only my fourth video, so I learned a lot from the effort! Between gathering footage and producing, I think I spent over 12 hours on the project. But I wouldn’t change anything because this project engaged my creativity and allowed me to interact with colleagues more than I do on a regular week. Hence my confession.

If you are in the area and plan on attending PETE&C, stop by our presentation! Tuesday @ 2:15, Hershey Lodge, Cocoa Suite 6. Hope to see you there!

 

Three Ways to Use Twitter in the English Classroom

Tags

Classroom, Education, educational technology, English Classroom, Online Communities, Social network, Storify, Twitter, Web 2.0

Image via CrunchBase

Recently I’ve been working with some colleagues who are doing great things with Twitter in their English classrooms. I’ve also run into some teachers who are interested in the potential of Twitter but haven’t taken the plunge. So I decided to compile a few examples of how Twitter could be integrated into the English classroom just to provide a place for further discussion and exploration. I would love to hear other ideas for authentic and valuable Twitter integration, so be sure to drop a comment!

Tweet as a character

The first example of this comes from my own classroom. When I noticed that a few of my students were completing my in-class literature assignments more quickly than their peers, I decided to engage them in an extension activity using Twitter hashtags. Pulling three engaging characters from our current reading, Of Mice and Men, I had them come up with a hashtag for each of them. They impressed me with their creativity! For the mentally-challenged but superhuman-strong character of Lennie, one student came up with #Ferdinandthebull (for a reminder of the connection, click here). Another student suggested #angryelf for the small, pugnacious character of Curley. Once we had hashtags matched to characters, I invited all of my students to participate (once their other activities were complete) by reacting to the story AS the character of their choice. If they wanted to react to something that just happened through the character of Lennie, they wrote their tweet and simply added the hashtag #Ferdinandthebull to aggregate it into one conversation stream. Periodically, I would check in with these hashtag conversations and share them with the whole class. We ended up laughing at the imagined responses, and discussing any insightful tweet that challenged our understanding of the characters.

Twitter to Communicate

My colleague @Mr. Gessel and Jim uses Twitter in multiple ways to communicate with his high school students. Some days he posts an activating question and invites responses via Twitter; other times he sends out a Dropbox link for an assignment he wants his students to complete. Overall, he finds that his students are on Twitter frequently, so he wants to leverage it as a way to go beyond the four walls and forty-three minutes of his classroom each day. Belosw are some sample posts from his feed so you get the idea. Mr. Gessel uses the hashtag #telljim to aggregate student responses to discussion questions. His classroom plant’s name is “Jim.”

Journalism 1: Is it okay to fix someone’s grammar when quoting them? #telljim

— Mr. Gessel and Jim (@MrGessel) October 15, 2012

J1s: Read this article — cpj.org/blog/2013/01/i… — then Tweet #journalism1 how China’s struggle is similar to early America’s.

— Mr. Gessel and Jim (@MrGessel) January 9, 2013

Twitter and Shakespeare

A third way to use Twitter in and English classroom comes from two of my colleagues who are using Twitter to engage their 10th grade students with Shakespeare’s classic Macbeth. (Follow their class sample feed @HHS146). Like the activity above, these teachers ask students to compose a tweet from the perspective of one of the characters in Macbeth, but unlike my more spur-of-the-moment extension of classroom work, my colleagues have built Twitter to be a component throughout the whole play. Their unit’s main objective is to develop students’ understanding of characterization as well as develop their skill of analyzing different aspects of a conflict within and between characters. So after each scene, students post a tweet as one of the characters reacting to some plot element or reacting to another character. At the end of Act I, students aggregate these tweets into a Storify project and analyze their best tweet as well as a tweet from a peer. At the end of each of the subsequent acts of the play, the student requirements for tweets increases, and their tasks diversify.

One of the teachers creating this project has been recording his process as well as his reflections, and has agreed to share a few excerpts with me. (Update: the first of his posts about this project  can be found here.) When doing initial research on how other high school English classrooms were using Twitter he states:

It was a mixed bag, but most were simply using it as a method of back-channel communication or as my colleagues were already using it [to post links or send reminders].  I wanted something more, something with more depth.

As he continued to contemplate how to challenge his students to think on a higher level rather than just engage with a new “cool” technology, he reflects:

My father, a retired educator, is fond of saying, “If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”  As I did more and more research, and kept thinking back to Barnwell’s article.  He wanted to create a curriculum  that ‘instead of simply embracing Web 2.0 tools [...] utilizes technology as part of a larger creation process.’ That was what I wanted: creation.  However, at 140 characters per tweet that would be like trying to build the pyramids with limestone blocks the size of sugar cubes.  Tweets were simply too brief to do the job.  I think the issue my colleagues around the web had with Twitter is they saw it as the end of the intellectual conversation, that the tweet was the final product of the learning.  I needed a way to make the tweets just one step in the process.

And when he finally settled on using Twitter in conjunction with Storify, he writes the steps of the actual assignment that would lead his students to their end goal: analysis.

This would be an opportunity to practice composing tweets, learn about the characters and get a handle on the plot.  Their task was to Storify a response to their best tweet and also the tweet of a peer [..] The way this activity is structured I almost do not care what the tweet looks like, I am more interested in the analysis.  This is still true if the tweet contains errors or erroneous information.  I would find that interesting should the student point this out, even on his/her own tweet, while conducting the analysis because that would show growth and self-awareness.

His thought process is a real gem, so I hope he publishes his more detailed process on his own blog soon. so the rest of you can benefit from the planning, troubleshooting, and pedagogical reflection–awesome stuff.

Overall, I’m consistently amazed and inspired by the way I see Twitter being used to engage with students, bring relevancy to content, expand the walls of the classroom, and challenge students to be self-reflective. I’m excited to expand my own Twitter use past my personal development and bring the power of the network to my students. How have YOU seen Twitter being used effectively in classrooms? What have these ideas inspired you to question or think about? Keep the conversation going in the comments below.

To follow the teachers mentioned in this blog see @RobSterner and @Mr. Gessel and Jim and @EmilyR

Confession: I sometimes practice what I preach…

Tags

Active reading, Life of Pi, Literature, Reading list

With the advent of the courageous book-to-movie conversion of the literary prize-winner and beloved book club choice Life of Pi, I decided that this needed to quickly move up on my must-read list. I’m the kind of efficient and impatient person who cannot fathom why anyone would go back to read a book after watching the movie. The movie has already created the images and cast the characters for you, and why spend this time immersed in a plot where you already know the ending? I’m sure many of you have very solid and thoughtful answers to this, so please leave them in the comments.

Anyway, I decided to make Life of Pi my Christmas break read– a rare return to the physical world of paper and ink among my RSS feeds, iBooks, Kindle downloads and Audible selections. To my delight, I found myself unable to read more than a few pages without grabbing my post-it flags and noting the beautiful language and philosophical passages. Hence, by the end, my book looks like this.

Since I borrowed this from a friend, I didn’t feel that I could go crazy with written annotations, but I was glad to have pieces of the book to reflect back on when finished. I was reminded again the importance of sharing with my students a love of literature–true literary works, not just popular fiction. And also to practice what I preach by really engaging with the work. Here are some of my favorite passages.

My fingers, which a second before had been taste buds savoring the food a little ahead of my mouth, became dirty under [the waiter's] gaze. They froze likes criminals caught in the act.

If there’s only one nation on the sky, shouldn’t all passports be valid for it?

The [sea turtle's] expression was haughty and severe, like that of an ill-tempered old man who has complaining on his mind.

On finding a Gideon Bible at a hotel:

I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from the pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of Scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl’s kiss on your cheek.

It’s important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.

Doesn’t the telling of something always become a story?…Isn’t telling something–using words, English or Japanese–already something of an invention? Isn’t just looking upon this world already something of an invention?…The world isn’t just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn’t that make life a story?

It is a fantastical story painted on a canvas of philosophy. Pi reflects throughout on the duality of human nature’s basest instincts wrestling alongside a human soul reaching for the highest plains of love, forgiveness and acceptance.

Confession: Tried a new tool on the fly today! Checkthis.com

Tags

BYOD, digital tools, Education, social media, Twitter, web2.0

In my last post, I claimed that I don’t throw in new technology tools without careful deliberation…which is usually true. But of course 24 hours later I have contradicted that by trying a new tool with my juniors that I just discovered last night. How many of you have tried a technology tool on the fly?

Checkthis.com is a digital poster creation site which makes content creation and sharing almost as easy as a Facebook status. You don’t have to create an account to begin, and the interface is intuitive. I did create my own poster last night before asking my students to dive in today. Aside from one network snafu and one site crash, the assignment went off without a hitch! Here are the benefits of this presentation method:

• Uses open log-in so if students already have Twitter, Google, or Facebook accounts, it’s a breeze to save, publish, and log-in!
• Allows for multi-media integration without too many options for re-sizing font or photos that make the interface complicated.
• Easy sharing options and interaction with comments and reactions in the side window.
• Web tool for any platform. I had students on Kindles, iPads, and PC laptops all working at the same time.

Today’s assignment was for students to reflect on the events that had the biggest impact on their 2012 year, and find a way to represent these in a visual way on this poster. I created a sample and posted the link to our Edmodo wall (along with this helpful how-to sent via @checkthis on Twitter last night) to get them started. We will finish tomorrow and have a nice reflection piece along with a new presentation tool ready to be used in future projects.

My example for students (annotations added for this screenshot). I tried to incorporate various media including images to show them the potential of the tool for customization.

Confession: Falling for QR Codes

Tags

BYOD, Classroom, edtech, Education, K through 12, QR code, technology tools, web2.0

One of my teaching and tech-coach mantras is

Don’t just use the latest and greatest tool or gadget just because it’s cool.

Although I’m a sucker for the latest app on my personal iPad and I’ll be the first to waste–er USE–my planning period playing with a new web2.0 tool, when it comes to actually incorporating these tools into my classroom or curriculum, I am much more cautious. I’ve had too many experiences where I fly right into a new tool only to have it explode in my face, so before integrating a new tool or device, I allow myself some time to play with it myself and mull over its implications and impact.

And so begins my flirtation with QR codes. I’ve known about them for over a year, and used them in a couple of professional development sessions and conferences. But when I thought about how they could apply to my classroom or English curriculum, I drew a blank beyond gimmicky. Sure, I could put QR code around my classroom or use them to disseminate a link to my students, but how was using them better than using my classroom Moodle or Edmodo sites? Plus, until our BYOD initiative was in place this year, cell phones were officially banned from classrooms. QR codes are an inherently mobile tech tool–hence, a no-go for helping me beyond the tools I was already using. I pushed these goofy black-and-white boxes to my “not yet” category and explored other avenues of tech incorporation.

With the implementation a BYOD initiative and the loss of my classroom set of laptops, I began shifting my thinking to how my technology integration would change to using predominantly mobile devices. Now, I began wondering if QR codes could be more useful. The following are two ideas I have had rolling in my brain, and I plan on implementing in the near future.

Back-to-School Night

In mid-September at our high school, parents and guardians have the opportunity to follow their student’s schedule to meet each teacher and listen to a 10 minute presentation about the curriculum, classroom expectations, etc. I’m guessing many schools have something like this in place, so I’m also guessing many teachers will relate to my feeling of frenzy when I try to summarize myself, my curriculum, and my teaching philosophy in the 7 minutes remaining after the majority of lost parents stumble into my room for their “English” period. Next year, I plan on handing each parent a business card or syllabus with a number of QR codes to different websites or digital documents that they will find useful or interesting to understand my English class. One of these QR codes will most definitely lead them to a Google Form where I ask them to provide me some feedback on their student. This parent survey has been a practice of mine for years, but I usually have such a small percentage of return because of the lack of time (or the lack of parents that show up for this one night). Using QR codes in this way solves a few problems for me:

1. Limited time with parents. 
2. Copying of multiple documents that may or may not be interesting or useful to every parent.
3. Awkward and wasted time at the beginning of each new transition between classes. Now parents can use this time to already begin looking at my materials instead of waiting for me to greet everyone and begin.

Whole-Novel Reading

Ever since I read Arial Sack’s online article Reading Fiction Whole, I’ve been mulling over how to try this literature method. Her argument is that students may dislike reading in English or in school because we teachers segment the story–seemingly arbitrarily– to discuss or teach concepts. This segmentation doesn’t allow for authentic student interaction with the literature and can drag the story far beyond the normal time it would take to read a novel. Instead of every student reading the novel at the same pace and stopping at the same times (dictated by the teacher), students are given the novel, sticky notes, and time to read both in and out of class. This way, students are differentiated based on their own pacing with the story, and they have authentic, student-directed interaction with both the text and the teacher through the use of sticky notes.

Read her article–it’s excellent. But one of my sticking points in implementing the whole fiction concept was that I also have some specific skills or concepts I need to discuss with EVERY student. So how would I know when the students had reached certain points in order to discuss character development, foreshadowing, or have them work through some scaffolding to state a theme? And here was my epiphany moment! I could create a QR code for specific mini-lessons, activities, questions, or discussions that I wanted my students to complete, view, or discuss as they read the book. Here’s the plan:

1. Create or convert lessons/activities/discussions that I previously had on paper to digital forms. 
2. Create a unique QR code for each activity and number them.
3. Copy these codes onto a sheet of paper (again, numbered chronologically).
4. When I first hand out the book, have students cut out these codes and place them on certain pages of the book with masking tape.
5. Demonstrate how the code works and explain the expectations for them.
6. Allow them to all complete one for a pre-reading activity.
7. Trouble-shoot or field any questions.
8. Let them run with it!

This frees up my class time to conference with students, grade or provide feedback to their activities, monitor discussion boards, and pull aside any student who needs direct instruction or help in reading the novel. I am differentiating so the student who wants to read the novel faster than his/her classmates is not held back, and the struggling reader can still develop independent reading strategies but with extended time and potentially extra help.

I’m excited to put this together and will continue to blog about each step! Follow me on the journey but putting RedPenConfessions in your RSS feed or follow me on Twitter. Have any of you found ways to use QR codes to enhance your classroom? Comment and share!

Continuing Remembrance

Tags

Holocaust education history remembrance memorial lessons

As my students and I continue in our Holocaust Memorial Unit, we are reading Elie Wiesel’s memoir novella Night. Having taught this unit for all six years of my teaching career, I aways feel a bit unsettled at the end. How to bring a sense of closure that equals the significance and depth of this learning?

And so I return to my own lessons of remembrance. It is work, and it is valuable. How can I bring my students with me in this realization? Also, how can I reach out to those kinesthetic boys who I have recently seen sleepily nodding in our class discussion? I need movement…a change of pace and scenery…something memorable.

Could I share with them the unconscious morning routine I have developed? When I arrive at work the sun has not yet deigned to make an appearance, and the wind usually whips my bags around me as I make the trek from my car to the door. Winter in PA can be a dark and bitter event. Nearly every time I begin complaining in my head about what a miserable way this is to start my morning. And then I remember that in worse conditions innocent people were forced to stand at attention for hours with little more than ill-fitting rags to shield them. This has unconsciously become a silent remembrance for me in my daily life.

What if I offer my students a bit of that experience? Share with them the feel of the wind and the temporary discomfort. Have them see the walk that feel so long to me, but in reality is hardly worth mentioning. I could then explain how this walk has become a way for me to practically remember the Holocaust and in a very small way honor the suffering of its victims. Beyond that, I could share that this unit has become a regular way for me to honor the memory and legacy of those who died as well as educate future generations about history so that they can be on guard to it happening again. I wonder if they will get what I am trying to do or resort to a typical high school eye roll?

I could take them back to our classroom with its warmth and familiarity and ask them: what will you do to remember these lesson? How could you memorialize those innocent lives who were brutalized and disregarded? This could turn into a discussion or an individual reflection. But the trick is to help them understand that for this, a grade is insignificant…and I’m not sure I can pull it off. But among my other ideas this has the potential to create an impression and allow students to take ownership of their own closure to all that they have seen, heard, and experienced.

For now, I continue musing…while welcoming any and all feedback!

The Work of Remembrance–A Lesson from the Holocaust

Tags

Education, Gaza, Holocaust, TheLemonTree

It takes work to remember. To honor a person’s suffering you cannot merely acknowledge it, you must open yourself up to it—you must be willing to engage and wrestle with the darkness.

I confess that I came close to giving into the comfort of apathy. For the seventh year in a row, I took my two ninth grade classes to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. And on this seventh time, I thought, “I just don’t want to deal with it.” It: the images, the discomfort, the surreal experience of connecting past events with current understanding, the depressing reality of humans destroying other humans.

A month before this most recent trip, I felt myself resenting the paperwork, the forms, the administrative tasks, and the stress associated with taking over fifty students and a few of their parent chaperons on an out-of-state excursion. I bemoaned the instructional time I was losing to help them understand what was appropriate dress and behavior at a place of such significance. I let the petty discussions of who-would-sit-with-who and how many pages of discussion questions were appropriate crawl under my skin and cause me to have a general sense of irritation for the whole process. In short, I was over it. My plan this year was to safely guide my students to the museum in one piece, and then I was going to camp out in the transition areas waiting for my kids to stream by. I was going to merely endure this trip– possibly for the last time.

But when I arrived and began walking through the first floor, I slowed down. I realized that my students were watching me and looking to me for cues on how to learn in this dark, information-laden environment. So I began taking notes with them. Almost instinctively, I began reading the same placards and watching the same movies that I have seen seven times before…and I began learning again. There were sentences that jumped out at me that I didn’t remember seeing before. And I began asking questions– why didn’t I know that the U.S. was a leader in policies promoting compulsory sterilization before the Nazis ever implemented it? How did that start and have those policies been reversed? I was engaged.

Then my students began asking me some great questions: How did Hitler rationalize his actions, beliefs, and policies against fellow humans? What makes a person a “gypsy” (one of the groups persecuted by the Nazi party)? Why were the Jews such a marked target for ethnic cleansing? And I suddenly realized that my convenience and my comfort means nothing in the face of this kind of learning experience.

At times, I felt myself being sucked into the worrying game– trying to keep tabs on all of my students, making sure all the chaperons were calm, and ensuring that everyone was taking full advantage of this experience. But that worry accomplished little and prevented me from my own learning, my own remembering, my own respectful acknowledgment of the lives who were lost. Instead of being pulled out by small concerns, I forced myself to slow down and become the learner I wanted my students to be. I thought about my recent summer trip to Israel and my reading of The Lemon Tree and the bombing that was currently taking place in Gaza. I actively looked for the connections I could make with these experiences and the history displayed before me.

At some point, I realized that this museum, this yearly tradition, had taught me the importance of remembrance. To honor the dead is to engage with their stories, and, in the case of the Holocaust, to stare in the face the darkest hours of our collective humanity. In thinking that I could be in this museum without engaging or remembering was to dishonor those who had endured absolute evil unleashed upon them, and I realized that remembering and honoring mean more than just “thinking about” and “showing up.”

Remembering is engaging. Remembering is work.

So I’m driving home and wondering what is in store for this trip and the study of the Holocaust. As an English teacher with a writing-centered curriculum, I have a hard time devoting the time and depth I feel is necessary to truly engage with the topic of the Holocaust without allowing it to become a centerpiece of my curriculum. And then I wonder if it isn’t more the task of the social studies department’s curriculum, which leads me to dream about interdisciplinary projects and ideals. But I return to the difficult reality that delving into the Holocaust requires a significant investment of time, resources, and careful planning. These are my struggles as an English teacher and curriculum writer.

But when I think with the broader scope of an educator, I cannot escape the feeling that this remembrance is some of the most important work we can do.

Tips for the Technology-Cautious Among Us

Tags

edtech technology education web2.0 apps professional_development

As a one-period-per-day tech coach at my high school, I’ve been having some interesting conversations with colleagues about the role of technology in the classroom. They are asking some really great questions including this one

What’s the benefit of learning [insert Web 2.0 tool] when I could just as easily ask my students for a show of  hands to gather the same data?

Some of you techie teachers may immediately label this a Luddite question born out of someone who is resistant to technology. But from one tech-tool junkie to another–don’t judge. This is actually a fantastic conversation starter because it pierces the heart of a problem we currently have in our transition from paper-and-pencil to internet-capable.

Teachers are overloaded with learning whatever tool is the flavor of the month. As soon as they build their classroom in Moodle, Edmodo swoops in; as soon as they learn those darn voting eggs, Socrative shows up all seductive with ease of access and its multi-platform charm. For some of us, these “new and improved” tools gets our blood pumping and keeps us burning the midnight oil to learn. But for others, the path to technology integration feels like an insane hamster wheel.

So I thought about this colleague’s question, along with other comments that I’ve heard like

I’m just learning this tool to have my first marking period technology goal out of the way.

and

Sometimes I’m not sure what all this technology is adding to my classroom.

and

I just feel like I’m learning technology for technology’s sake.

As much as my heart cringes to hear this perception of technology, I must admit that there is some truth to these sentiments. So what’s the answer to this technology conundrum?  To turn away from the buzzing world of strange gadgets and flashy screens? To do things the way we know has worked in the past? Frenetically learn every new app that pops up on a Twitter feed ? Try each web 2.0 tool plopped into an already jam-packed professional development? No. As with all things in life, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

Sometimes you DO have to use technology for technology’s sake. I said this to a colleague recently and was nearly as surprised as she that it had popped out of my mouth. But as soon as it had, I realized its truth. Sometimes to understand the potential of a tool to enhance your classroom, you must simply learn it and play with it–regardless of how clear you are on how it will improve engagement or solve any of your differentiation problems. If technology tools feel foreign to you, you may just have to dive into one or two to understand their potential.

That being said, choose carefully. In the world of a million apps and a billion web pages, the trick to staying sane may just be to put on some blinders. After asking some good questions and doing some recon on the tools and apps that your colleagues love, choose a few to dabble in. Let yourself explore them, become comfortable with their interface, and understand their purpose and fit into your classroom habits and curriculum. Once you’ve chosen, allow yourself time to say “no” to any other flashy or exciting gadget and tool until you feel confident with the one’s you’ve already chosen.

And finally, ask yourself: how can technology best enhance what I already do or want to accomplish in my class? This is the heart of effective and purposeful technology integration. If a tool takes you hours to learn and you feel like a simple request for a raise of hands would be comparably effective, consider how this tool could serve a different purpose in your class. Maybe you need to re-categorize its potential role in your teaching or your students’ learning. Perhaps you need to go back to the drawing board to understand it’s potential to serve a different purpose than you originally thought. And perhaps, dare I say it? Perhaps this tool just isn’t the best use of you or your students’ time and it needs to be put away?

We cannot ask our students to be life-long learners if we are not willing to be continuous learners ourselves. But we also can not ask our teachers to jump at every new tool with potential. We need to listen to each other, be thoughtful in our decisions, and be willing to ask hard questions. 

Confession: I’ve only flirted with Open Course learning.

Tags

distance learning, e-learning, instructional design, MIT, OCW, online learning, OpenCourseWare

This is my third post in a series for my graduate course on distance learning. This week, we are tasked with understanding the planning and design decisions required to build quality distance learning  (usually synonymous with “online learning” these days) experiences. A few highlights from our learning this week are the following:

• Planning carefully and systematically is essential for any instruction. Although some believe online learning to merely be an alternative delivery mode, it requires special considerations, additional training, and often more attention to the planning stage than traditional face-to-face (F2F) classroom courses.

• When planning distance learning, choose technology carefully. Only choose technology tools that (1) meet the instructional goals, (2) are accessible by all learners, and (3) enhance the learning directly. Some instructional designers or online courses fail to consider potential bandwidth and technology access issues that will arise for some learners. Our professor this week cited an article by Wayne (2010) that highlights this digital divide: “In both their access to and use of the Internet and a suite of other technological devices and applications, households earning more than $75,000 a year significantly outpace lower-earning households, particularly those making less than $30,000 a year” (as cited in Dawson, 2011).

• Engage the learner in active participation with both an instructor and peers. Our textbook lists states this idea as “Interaction is essential” (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2009, p.147), and expounds citing another source of distance learning criteria that states “Quality distance learning programs…emphasize the involvement of the learner in all facets of program development and delivery…[and] allow frequent opportunities for participants to engage in a dialogue with subject-matter experts [SMEs] and other learners” (Simonson et al., 2009, p.148). Courses that do not require interaction among learners and between instructors and learners are likely to not be respected as quality learning environments because best practice suggests that interaction is essential for quality learning.

With these essential ideas in mind (along with a plethora of other guidelines for best practice) I am to choose an open course site to review. I have had previous encounters with Open Courseware before–but as sometimes happens, I have not revisited it for lack of time and a plethora of other distractions. I recognize it as a valuable tool for both my learning and possibly as a powerful resource for my classroom, but sometimes the availability of cool tools and amazing information becomes overwhelming. With this realization rattling around my brain, I was excited to have our assignment this week force me to return to an exploration of free university lectures, materials and classes.

After reviewing both  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Open Culture, I choose MIT to be the focus. According to their own “About OCW” page, MIT describes their OpenCourseWare (OCW) as

…A web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content. MIT OpenCourseWare is a free publication of MIT course materials that reflects almost all the undergraduate and graduate subjects taught at MIT. OCW is open and available to the world…

Generally, all Open Course sites provide learning through lectures (via video or podcast), presentations, and materials for free online. Anyone can access this knowledge as long as they are motivated to learn independently. Individuals do not receive official college credit or degrees, but this hasn’t stopped the genre from growing, according to this graph provided by Gregory Gomer in his article about MIT’s Open Courseware.

Does the course appear to be carefully pre-planned and designed for a distance learning environment? How so?

MIT OCW does appear to be carefully planned for the distance learner. From their easy-to-use interface with clear navigation and FAQ, even a novice internet user could find his/her way through the site with ease. The home page offers an immediate Table of Contents for courses organized by discipline, so the user can quickly find the course he/she is looking for.

I chose “Reading Fiction” as my course to explore. Finding a the course was easy, and again, intuitive navigation bars appeared both on the left-hand side of the window and at the top of the course homepage. Those looking to access materials via the internet did not have a difficult time finding the essential information. The permanent tool bar at the top provides quick links to the site’s “Help” page for learners who may need more  assistance navigating the technology tools or requirements.

Does the course follow the recommendations for online instruction as listed in your course textbook?

On the course homepage, important information appears clearly at the top of the page (i.e. the instructor’s name and when the course was originally taught). Beneath this, a brief description of the course  appears with a hyperlink to sample assignments completed by students in the course as well as the instructor’s requirements for the assignments. On the left navigation panel, the course syllabus intuitively appear below the link for the homepage and provides further detailed information about the course goals, the expectations of time, the course readings, the breakdown of percentages for graded assignments, and a calendar for the course content and deadlines. This detailed information follows the advice given by this week’s distance learning expert, Dr. Piskurich, who states that quality instruction provides the learner right away with a detailed syllabus to clearly outline the learning goals, expectations (both time and academic), and resources (n.d.). Additionally, our course textbook highlights the need for the course organization, activities and expectations to be as clear as possible because “students need this kind of structure and detail to help them stay organized and on task”(Simonson et al., 2009, p.249).

Our course text also highlights the need for the assignment instructions to be detailed and include the following:

• purpose of assignment
• target audience
• grading criteria
• point value
• examples of acceptable and unacceptable work (Simonson et al., 2009).

The link to list of assignments does follow all of these criteria which would prepare a learner with clear expectations. Additionally, the assignments require higher-level thinking and analysis rather than “rote memory” demonstrating that the students are completing task using more than simply the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Simonson et al, 2009).

Another benefit of MIT’s OCW offering of this course is the hyperlinked list of resources available for purchase through Amazon.com or available through a free download through other websites. This easy-to-access list demonstrates a thoughtfulness about the potential learners as it considers the learner who may be restricted financially, by providing him/her with access to the course text for free. Often, texts are also offered in an audio version which is linked on the “Readings” page as well. This considers diverse learners with varied learning styles and physical abilities, and demonstrates a particular thoughtfulness in planning.

A few ways a learner could be disadvantaged by the course are the following:

• language–the course materials and navigation are completely in English. However, on their “FAQ: Using OCW Materials” page, information is provided that allows the site and materials to be translated as long as the provided disclaimer is used. Additionally, the MIT OCW homepage offers a link to “Translated Courses” which provides links to materials offered in a few different languages.
• technology–learner needs to have the capability to download and unzip the course material documents. This requires proper software and access to a relatively fast bandwidth. However, to mitigate this problem, the materials are in one download which allows learners with infrequent access to internet to still participate. Additionally, a link to a help page appears beneath the download “button” which begins the process of accessing the course materials.

Did the course designer implement course activities that maximize active learning for the students?

Because this course is posted after the date of its initial offering, it is not an active course with an available instructor. In fact, this is the one huge drawback of all MIT OCW courses–learners do not have access to faculty members (About OCW, 2011). This disclaimer is posted on their FAQ page:

MIT OpenCourseWare is intended as a publication of MIT course materials, not as an interactive experience with MIT faculty. MIT OpenCourseWare does not offer users the opportunity for direct contact with MIT faculty. It provides the content of – but is not a substitute for – an MIT education. Inquiries related to specific course materials will be forwarded to the MIT faculty member associated with that course for their consideration. However due to the tremendous volume of email inquiries received it is unlikely he or she will be able to respond personally.

Additionally, learners do not have direct access to other learners choosing to take the same course. However, if a learner takes enough initiative, he/she may find other learners using the social media buttons provided on the home page of each course. Posting this course to Facebook, Twitter or Google + may allow isolated learners to connect with others who are interested in the same course. Because of its open and free nature, a learner could organize his/her own learning cohort to gain the valuable learning of discussion and interaction with other learners.

References

MITOpenCourseWare. (2011) Accessed through http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Pizkurich, G. (n.d.). Planning and designing online courses. [Video Program]. Laureate Education Inc.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.

Vaeth, Kimberly. 21L.003 Reading Fiction, Fall 2008. (Massachusetts Institute of  Technology: MIT OpenCourseWare), http://ocw.mit.edu (Accessed 04 Dec, 2011). License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA