Group items tagged

"Using Twitter in a face-to-face Workshop I've just been reading yet another article that expresses the view that Twitter is a trivial, inconsequential tool and has no place in learning, so I thought I'd write this posting on my experiences of using Twitter in a face-to-face Workshop."

Most of this material comes from Blumberg, P. (2008) Developing Learner-Centered Teachers: A Practical Guide for Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Please cite this reference if you use material from this website This site contains links to presentation or workshops I have done at various places over the past few years. These presentations provide more information about learner-centered teaching and offer some insights into how I conducted the workshops. All workshops have an active learning component either through small group discussions or individual reflection questions.

When times are tough, institutions are under more competitive pressure than ever to do well for their students. Unfortunately this is the precise time when cash is in short supply, faculty workloads may have increased, and development/support staff and budgets are often slashed. For institutions that want to do a more effective job of competing and meeting external demands for quality, it's time for a more frugal approach to innovation. One approach to frugal innovation: help faculty share low-cost, low-risk, easy-to-explain improvements in teaching and learning with each other.  That's really two ideas, and they go well together: Faculty helping each other improve their courses (with a slight assist from staff to help them get together) Low Threshold Activities and Applications (LTAs) -- small steps toward improvement -- that each faculty member can grasp quite quickly and try safely, easily, and inexpensively and that promise real rewards if successful, e.g.  better learning, time-savings.  (For on LTAs, click here.)  "Frugal": These kinds of improvements are a good fit for peer-to-peer assistance because LTAs can be communicated quickly and easily: e.g., in: a casual conversation among faculty, a 5-15 minute workshop scheduled as an agenda item in a departmental meeting and led by a faculty member, a page-long description written by a faculty member and appearing on the web or in a newsletter, an eClip (brief video clip online that explains how to do something or why it's worth doing), or just a few sentences in an email or on a web page.

"This is a true story. Professor "Jones" decides to experiment with a blog in his class. It takes him about 10 minutes to set up a free site using Blogger. He then watches students engage in lively discussions of case studies outside of class, and tweaks the blog as experience teaches him how best to use the system. Teaching with Technology column Thinking that others might want to add a blog to their class as well, he goes to IT and offers to lead workshops for faculty on blogging in higher education. A few weeks later he is informed by IT that they have not only rejected his proposal, but that he is in violation of university policy and must stop immediately. Professor Jones asks what university policy he has violated, and is told that the policy has not yet been created, but will be soon. Professor Jones asks how he could possibly have violated a policy that does not yet exist. Soon afterward the IT department announces a new initiative to implement blogging at the institution. A committee is formed, and after nearly a year of deliberation they choose to pay for a system-rather than adopt a free, readily available system-because it allows for centralized control. IT sends out an email announcing the new system, along with a text document outlining a long list of policies that strictly limit how it may be used. No one adopts the system, leading IT to complain that faculty do not want to use technology in their teaching."

" Details last edit by sleslie sleslie Sep 1, 2010 8:54 am - 138 revisions hide details Tags * clwe * loosely coupled * ple * plwe * small pieces * web 2.0 Protected A Collection of PLE diagrams As preparation for a workshop I am giving this fall I thought it would be interesting to collect together all the diagrams of PLEs I could find, as a compare and contrast sort of exercise. If you have others, I'd love to know about them. You can log in with the guest account (edtechpost_guest, same password) or email them to me at edtechpost@gmail.com."

Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? Added by the EDUCAUSE Librarian Author(s):Ann H. Taylor and Carol McQuiggan View a PDF of this article © 2008 Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan. The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3 (July-September 2008) Faculty Development Programming: If We Build It, Will They Come? A faculty development survey analyzed what faculty want and need to be successful teaching online By Ann Taylor and Carol McQuiggan The number of courses offered online grows every year, resulting in an increasing number of higher education faculty entering a virtual classroom for the first time.1 It has been well documented that faculty need training and assistance to make the transition from teaching in a traditional face-to-face classroom to teaching online.2 Faculty professional development related to teaching online varies widely, from suggested readings to mandated training programs. Various combinations of technological and pedagogical skills are needed for faculty to become successful online educators, and lists of recommended competencies abound. Although many institutions have offered online courses for more than a decade and train their faculty to teach online, the research literature reveals that little is known about how best to prepare faculty to teach in an online environment. Designers of faculty development programs typically rely on commonly held assumptions about what faculty need to know-a constant guessing game regarding what topics to cover and what training formats to use. The resulting seminars, workshops, training materials, and other resources are typically hit-or-miss in terms of faculty participation and acceptance. To provide faculty with the proper training and resources for online teaching requires more information to determine

"Welcome to The Kit Room. Alongside regularly updated video casts, find workshop notes in The Kit Room Downloads, tips and links on The Kit Rumor and The Kit Room Inventory, the complete list of kit available to students studying Film and Television at LCC. The Videos are also available free on Apple iTunes. Click here to go to the store. Link up with film makers on the Face Book group The Kit Room Facebook Group."

Professional Development Opportunities Over Video via the CILC The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) is a great resource for not only identifying and/or announcing classroom collaborative projects, but also for finding professional development providers for your school and district who present over video. I'm pleased to announce that five of my educational presentations / workshops are now being offered over video (H.323, Skype, iChat or Google Video) via the Professional Development Marketplace of the CILC.

Videos for PD The following are links to educational videos I use for professional development workshops and presentations with teachers. If you know of other videos that should be included in this list, please add a link as a comment to this page. Some of these videos are hosted on YouTube, TeacherTube, or other sites as embedded Flash media - Tips for downloading offline copies of Flash videos are also available.

Guide for students on signing up for a group project or workshop using the sign-up tool in Blackboard.