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Demetri Orlando

Information-rich and attention-poor - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

  • hundreds of thousands of Web-empowered volunteers are able to very efficiently dedicate small slices of their discretionary time, the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell.
  • With almost all of the world's codified knowledge at your fingertips, why should you spend increasingly scarce attention loading up your own mind just in case you may some day need this particular fact or concept? Far better, one might argue, to access efficiently what you need, when you need it. This depends, of course, on building up a sufficient internalized structure of concepts to be able to link with the online store of knowledge. How to teach this is perhaps the greatest challenge and opportunity facing educators in the 21st century.
Bill Campbell

Lessons Learned from the Hybrid Course Project at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee - 0 views

  • Lessons Learned from the Hybrid Course Project
  • Lesson #1: There is no standard approach to a hybrid course.
  • Lesson #2: Redesigning a traditional course into a hybrid takes time.
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  • he broke his content presentations into less than ten minute streaming video clips, and he interspersed his mini-lectures with student-centered problem-solving activities.
    • Bill Campbell
       
      As I was reviewing information from Brain Rules to confirm my recollection about the 10 minute rule, I found the following quote from Medina that also seems signficant with regard to a possible hybrid course advantage. He says the most common communication mistake is "relating too much information with not enough time devoted to connecdting the dots. Lots of force feeding, very little digestion." Might this be an advantage of presenting information online in a content-heavy course? Maybe the logistics of breaking up a 45 minute period that don't work well face-to-face might work better by presenting some content online. My gut says yet, but I'd like to see real examples of this.
    • Bill Campbell
       
      This is interesting because it is consistent with the research report in the book Brain Rules by John Medina. Brain Rules reported that students attention in a class drops a significant amount after 10 minutes and that you need to change gears to get another 10 minutes. So breaking up a video lecture into 10 minutes segments seperated by releveant problem sovling fits right in with that.
  • Hybrid instructors should allow six months lead time for course development.
  • Lesson #3: Start small and keep it simple.
  • "Integrate online with face-to-face, so there aren't two separate courses."
  • "The emphasis is on pedagogy, not technology. Ask yourself what isn't working in your course that can be done differently or better online."
  • Lesson #4: Redesign is the key to effective hybrid courses to integrate the face-to-face and online learning.
  • , instructors need to make certain that the time and resources required to create a hybrid course are available before they commit to the process.
  • Students need to have strong time management skills in hybrid courses, and many need assistance developing this skill.
    • Bill Campbell
       
      Participation in an online course might be an authentic way to provide high-school (and maybe older middle-school) students the opportunity to practice time management skills in an authentic way. However, this would need to be handled carfully so students who are not successful at first are not completey lost or so far behind that they can't be successful later after learning from their mistakes.
  • Contrary to many instructors' initial concerns, the hybrid approach invariably increases student engagement and interactivity in a course.
  • Lesson #6: Students don't grasp the hybrid concept readily.
  • Lesson #5: Hybrid courses facilitate interaction among students, and between students and their instructor.
  • Surprisingly, many of the students don't perceive time spent in lectures as "work", but they definitely see time spent online as work, even if it is time they would have spent in class in a traditional course.
  • Lesson #7: Time flexibility in hybrid courses is universally popular.
  • Lesson #8: Technology was not a significant obstacle.
  • Lesson #9: Developing a hybrid course is a collegial process.
  • Lesson #10: Both the instructors and the students liked the hybrid course model.
  • They stated that the hybrid model improved their courses because Student interactivity increased, Student performance improved, and They could accomplish course goals that hadn't been possible in their traditional course.
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    Teaching with Technology Today: Volume 8, Number 6: March 20, 2002
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    This article about the lessons learned during a higher-ed blended learning project is a decade old but still interesting and relevant.
Demetri Orlando

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading
  • What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation
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    NYT article questioning the impact of the web on reading.
Demetri Orlando

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - 0 views

  • They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d already visited.
  • The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.
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    Interesting discussion of the impact of the net on reading.
susan  carter morgan

The Chronicle: 6/2/2006: The Fight for Classroom Attention: Professor vs. Laptop - 0 views

  • At other times, she uses the wireless Internet access in the college's classrooms to do some online shopping or chat using instant messenger. "If it's material that I know, most of the time I will surf the Internet a little bit," says Ms. Mei, a junior.
  • "They claim that they're taking notes — and they may well be," he says. "But it still is annoying."
  • "A couple of them have said, 'I don't have any paper,'" says Mr. Aylesworth. He had them borrow some from classmates.
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  • "I'd say banning laptops or shutting off wireless on demand is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater," says Brian D. Voss, chief information officer at the university. "Both are draconian solutions to a problem that requires something a bit more diplomatic."
Demetri Orlando

Have we forgotten how to concentrate? - Times Online - 1 views

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    i wanted to read the whole article, but needed to get back to checking email ;-)
Demetri Orlando

UVA Med School Embraces Innovative Teaching - 5 views

  • they are expected to graduate with the habits of mind—curiosity, skepticism, compassion, wonder—that will prepare them to be better physicians
  • About half of all medical knowledge becomes obsolete every five years. Every 15 years, the world’s body of scientific literature doubles.
  • better integration of formal knowledge and clinical experience and a learning process that is individualized, not one-size-fits-all
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  • One of the goals of this whole model—of having students do a lot of the learning themselves rather than passively listening—is that they need to be lifelong learners
  • Gone is the traditional 50-minute lecture. (Also gone is paper, for the most part.) The students have completed the assigned reading beforehand and, because they’ve absorbed the facts on their own, class time serves another purpose. Self-assessment tests at the start of class measure how well they understand the material. Then it’s time to do a test case, to reinforce their critical thinking and push their knowledge and skills to another level.
  • The room’s interactive technology allows her to link to students’ laptops; it also enables their work to be broadcast onto the big screens. Instead of a blackboard, she can use a document camera, which is like an overhead projector, allowing her to write or draw a diagram that will project on the screens. Absentees can view a podcast of the session.
  • We’re trying to create a situation in which they are thinking as a physician working with a patient, not as a professional test taker,
  • Immediately following the exercise, students move to a separate room where, still highly energized, they watch the video and reflect on their decision making as physicians in that particular situation.
  • studies in modern learning theory indicate that hour-long lectures are not the best way to teach students because the average attention span for listening to one is about 12 minutes.
  • The circular learning studio, Pollart notes, is designed for learning, not teaching.
  • There was some initial resistance. Some faculty felt a little offended
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    a lot of these ideas are applicable to k-12
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