Group items tagged

From a VCU perspective, it is interesting that Zoom and Google Hangouts ranked at the top of the list.

"The right LMS is the one that most closely aligns with empowering students to create and collaborate.  This is contrary to most learning MANAGEMENT systems.  Managing learning is the last thing that is really needed.  Tasks and abilities are limited so that the process can be managed.  Learning is a messy process. Managing learning frustrates the learner and the instructor. "

"The site provides science students and educators, at levels from kindergarten to college, with a free online space to create, collaborate and share their own digital drawings, Wang says. It initially was inspired by Frankel's Picturing to Learn project, where MIT and Harvard undergraduates majoring in science created drawings to explain scientific phenomena to high school students, according to Wang. Excited about the potential for drawing as a tool for students and science enthusiasts in and out of the classroom, Wang saw an opportunity in that space to infuse new energy and greater creativity into science education, he said."

Facilitation has its own challenges. One was in facilitating collaborative work among the students. "There're a lot of assumptions made about students, that they're able to interact naturally in a group," Shen observes. "Even though you give them roles, you assume the leader will always know how to play the role of a leader, but not necessarily so." "We had to teach them group work skills too," she adds. "It's learning for both the teachers and the students."

"I'd say the biggest observation I've come across in the last couple weeks, is that the online co-learning model breaks down the barriers of the traditional teacher/student relationship. Collaborating, sharing, and building ideas and understanding through open discuss instead bland lecture (here's the information, learn it, regurgitate it for a test). Creating the open platform to express ideas, and then expand upon them with easy reference to the information on the web (i.e., youtube videos, spotify, etc.). The responsibility then lies with each of us (student and teacher) to clearly express our meaning, intention, interpretation, and understanding of material, and back it up with an openness to build on criticism, and defend our viewpoint. And as we've discussed, they, the students, have full ownership of their work, so they may use it for future reference, when needed. In a way, it's like what Beethoven, Debussy, and punk rock have done with music. Each in their own right said, screw the "rules" I'm going to create the music I feel is necessary. The music inside me." h/t to Joyce

Some of the literature technology projects developed through the course include:

A series of e-books pairing poems with accompanying audio tracks read by the poets;
Cureador, a tool for sharing book recommendations with friends and family;
ParallelLit, a tool for comparing literary translations side-by-side;
BookTracks, a forum for creating soundtracks to novels;
Think'der, a mobile encyclopedia of thinkers and theorists, inspired by Tinder, a popular dating app;
(RE)write project, an online collaborative reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, currently offering six alternative storylines; and
Kvizsterical, an online collection of engaging literary quizzes, with topics ranging from literary monsters to authors snubbed for the Nobel Prize.

Creating a sense of community in the classroom and making meaningful student-faculty interactions can help curb retention issues in higher ed.

We've known this stuff for decades, but, still...

"Instructional design is, or should be, nothing less than pedagogy intelligent about the medium within which learning happens. If you teach in an LMS, you are an instructional designer. If you teach in a room, you are an instructional designer. At our institutions, instructional designers or engineers or technologists should be as filled in about pedagogy as teachers are. They should not content themselves to be carriers of content from one format to the next. They should be experts in digital delivery, and consultants to collaborate with."

Looks like a cool, powerful tool for in-class quizzing and review, designed to facilitate collaboration, competition, and discussion.