Education Building

I introduced two new people to GoogleDocs as a collaborative platform last week, and I was happy to do so. Instead of sending documents back and forth, we can write, edit and annotate one document in real time.

A colleague used the form function in GoogleDoc, embedded it into an email and had the results fed into a spreadsheet to build our meeting agenda. Fast and streamlined (if only the meeting was that way – grin).

And here is an example of Derek Bruff using Google Spreadsheets to have students collaboratively add items to a timeline. You can read his post for an explanation of why he chose that approach, his objectives, and what happened.

For more about GoogleDocs, there is a Seven Things (links to .pdf) summary from Educause, and please feel free to add a comment with your own readings, experience or questions.

In the ProfHacker stream of the Chronicle, was an article on why the instructions: “Your paper must be double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, with one-inch margins” does our students a disservice.

It goes back to the tension between teaching content and teaching communications. Where do they overlap, and how much responsibility do you take to teach your students verbal, visual and written communications skills.

The article ends with a suggested paragraph that outlines expectations (teaching students that even creativity has it’s objectives), and I’ve got a couple of other. Why not have students format a formal term paper using the guidelines from a disciplinary journal? Format reflective pieces as a personal letter, and then short, narrative assignments as newspaper articles? Reminding students that different formatting shifts the message of the writing, and we (hopefully) create more thoughtful, autonomous writers.

This New York times article suggests that Clickers be used to track attendance. I think that’s an expensive and complicated way to…. measure attendance. It’s got so little to do with learning.

Read instead Derek Bruff’s blog on engaging students and encouraging learning using classroom response systems!

George Siemans writes an article that captures one of my personal pet peeves – the ideas that this generation is “astonishingly unique”. Some time ago my grandmother sent me a copy of the valedictorian address that she wrote in in the 1930s. She spoke of the world that her generation were facing, their responsibilities and how the world was entirely different from her parents world. My father could have written nearly the same speech 25 years later, and so on.

George has taken this idea and written a blog posting on the skills an effective educator needs (regardless of the year, decade or century): http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/11/08/its-new-its-new/

A few things that struck me was the need for experimentation. I feel sometimes that I’m asked for the perfect blueprint. It’s not that. It takes reflection on your own process and results. The learners need autonomy: have your learners lost that drive to ask and experiment? What patterns have they learned throughout the years of schooling?

It’s a nice concise look at the de-contextualized skills that are needed.

Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday’s Educational Technology Series session on backchannels and polling in the classroom.

For those who were unable to attend, feel free to check out (and add content to) these resources:

• SFU wiki page on backchannels for education
• SFUedtechbc Delicious bookmark stream

We closed the session with very interesting discussion about how technology in the classroom can distract learners from paying attention to and participating in real-time learning activities. On the one hand, some participants want to limit access to technology to focus attention on what is going on in the here and now.  Others value having technologies in the classroom as a way of fostering engagement and grounding classroom discussions in accurate, real-world information.

I propose that thoughful planning, moderation, and establishing social norms and assigning roles are critical for using backchannels successfully.  We agreed that the issue of access to technology remains a challenge to address and that no one technological tool can solve the challenge of  helping people to learn what we want them to learn.

Have you experimented with a backchannel in your class? Share your story in the comments?

Would you be interested in exploring the issues of attention, multitasking information overload in formal learning contexts?

On July 13,  David Rubeli will be leading a one-hour workshop on backchannels and polling in classes. You can register on the LIDC site.

In preparation for the session, David would like to know what questions SFU students, instructors and staff have about the backchannel. Post your questions here:  Harvard Question Tool

David will be sharing resources for the session on Twitter. Follow #SFUedtechbc or join the workshop HootCourse:

Though it seems like summer has hardly arrived, I’ve noticed that people are planning already for the fall semester.

If you are planning on using iClickers in your classroom this fall, now is the time to order the iClickers through the SFU bookstore. It’s the same process as ordering text books, which makes it easy. I recommend that you download the updated iClicker software from their site. The MAC and PC software were updated this Spring, with new features. You can get updated user guides on their site as well. If you have a clicker base unit, you are all set, and if not, you can contact Amy Severson (ajs [at] sfu [dot] ca) or 778-782-7245. iClicker has produced a short video (no audio) that gives you a basic preview of the software for delivering and reviewing questions.

Now is a good time to think about what kinds of questions you want to ask as well:

1. Tracking attitudes or opinions: ask questions that don’t have a right or wrong answer, but ask students to make a judgment based on their experience or what you’ve discussed or read in the classroom.
2. Exam questions: Practice questions from past exams can give students a sense of what might appear on the exam or where their gaps of knowledge might be.
3. Check in or Comprehension questions: Ask questions for which you’ve just provided the answer, to emphasize the importance of what you’ve said, or to help them apply what they’ve just been told.
4. Reminders: Asking questions based on pre-requisite or key points of the readings can trigger that background knowledge they’ll need to follow you on the next point (a useful reminder on the value of readings!)
5. Transitional questions: Rhetorical questions to spark their interest – they may not have the knowledge or background to answer the question, but it provides a bridge to the next topic.

Good luck in the new semester; you’ve got an opportunity to get to know your students, encourage application of knowledge, implement some active learning and give and receive feedback on student learning. Be prepared, and tell your students how your implementation will assist in their learning.

Course Blogs

KIN 417 Obesity, Adipocyte Function, and Weight Management – course blog authored by students in Diane Finegood’s fourth year course

Looking for Whitman (Blog for English courses at four universities)

Personal Blogs

Richard Smith’s blog

Institutional Blogs

BUEC BUZZ – current awareness resource for the students and faculty members in Business & Economics at SFU
Fraser Library Spotlight – Surrey Library News
Career Services Informer

Cornell Caring Community – Blog integrated into institutional site designed to address student suicides at Cornell University

During the session, please pose any unanswered questions you would like us to discuss during the Q&A period below. What would you like to talk about?

A round-up of some recent (and not so recent) postings and musing on clickers in the classroom.

Clickers are multiple choice question: how do you use them to encourage critical thinking? From the same author, more thoughts on using clickers in a statistics course.

This posting is short and with some very specific hints and tricks to using clickers. It offers opinions (but not lots of discussion) on topics such as how many questions you should ask per class, what to do if students forget their clickers, and aligning questions with specific learning goals.

Why using clickers just for attendance is not the ideal.

It comes down to writing effective questions for different situations or objectives.