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Barbara Lindsey

Google lets you custom-print millions of books - CNN.com - 0 views

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    Thx 2 Russel Tarr on Twitter. Another article critiqued Google's sloppy cataloging system and its impact on using and finding these books for research and education.
Barbara Lindsey

Upwardly Mobile » Blog Archive » Mobile Phones in the Classroom - Educatio... - 0 views

  • David Warlick asks on his blog; “what will we ask on our tests when students come in with Google in their pockets? Will they be better questions than we ask today?” Web-capable mobile phones allow users to both access and create the information which is shared on the Internet. My research explored the reality of making use of the mobile phone as a tool for accessing the Internet and the reaction of both teachers and their students to having ‘information on-demand’ or ‘Google in their pocket’.
  • Are students learning to cope with information overload and to become critical and discerning in their use of information? Hedley Beare (2002) has written extensively on the future of schooling. He states that it is ironic “that teachers currently give the information out to students that they have already deemed to be correct. There is not authentic context requiring students to critique information”. It is the ability to critique and use information that is such a crucial skill.
  • My research found that often students were being set internet based ‘research’ activities for homework with very little guidance as to how to go about finding the desired information, or more importantly what to do with it.
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    David Warlick asks on his blog; "what will we ask on our tests when students come in with Google in their pockets? Will they be better questions than we ask today?" Web-capable mobile phones allow users to both access and create the information which is shared on the Internet. My research explored the reality of making use of the mobile phone as a tool for accessing the Internet and the reaction of both teachers and their students to having 'information on-demand' or 'Google in their pocket'.
Barbara Lindsey

A physicist on the "Lessig style" (Lessig Blog) - 0 views

  • Watch TED Talks clips. :) More suggestions: Presentation Zen Deliver a Presentation Like Steve Jobs The Art of the Pitch (mp3)
  • http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00001B&topic_id=1
  • More recently, I've started watching and deconstructing Lessig's TED talk with my Art & Media Ed students (most of whom are becoming teachers) in order to better understand the power of Lessig's approach. We also review the critiques of PowerPoint put forth by Edward Tufte, Sherry Turkle, and David Byrne. As a point of reference, we view Peter Norvig's PowerPoint reworking of the Gettysburg Address. If you haven't seen it, Norvig's presentation translates Abe Lincoln’s moving 1863 cemetery speech into a series of six generic slides featuring bullet points, bland colors and a nearly incomprehensible ‘Organizational Overview’ graph. It clearly illustrates some of the profound limitations of PowerPoint as a communications tool. In contrast, Lessig uses visuals (and selected text) in a way that truly compliments and extends the conceptual/pedagogical aspects of his presentations. As Chris Tunnell has pointed out, the multiple slides, repeating images, and minimal text allows the audience to focus on, enjoy (and presumably remember) the material being presented. This is further enhanced by the logical (e.g. 3 stories and an argument) and sometimes poetic (e.g. "the refrain") structures that Lessig uses to organize his talks.
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  • http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html
  • Reusing text
  • Reusing images:
  • XML tags:
  • Minimal text:
Barbara Lindsey

Ending the semester, Lessons Learned (Part 4: Assessment) | Language Lab Unleashed! - 0 views

  • I see teaching as constantly re-tooling, tweaking, re-evaluating, scrapping, starting over.
  • One of my goals for this class (and for me) was to see what student-centered assessment would look like in a conversation class. I took a big leap and gave the reigns over to them. The content of the class and flow of the class was based on their interested and idea. They were there because they had personal goals that needed to be acknowledged and realized… or at least approximated.
  • What would happen if I felt they didn’t merit the grade they said they did? what if they all wanted an A+?
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  • This is what I asked each student to do: 1) create a series of three goals or metas, one progressively more complex than the other, and each building upon the other, that were to be accomplished his term. The first goal was to be done by the end of March, the second by the end of April, the third maybe by the end of the term…but probably not. 2) create a series of tasks that s/he felt would lead to realizing those goals. 3) blog about about his or her progress at least 2 times per week 4) At the end of the term: write up a final self assessment (in English or in Spanish), reflecting upon the progress completed, including the work done in class that would contribute to these goals, and assign a grade for the term. The students needed to evidence of their progress as a way of justifying their chosen grade. CAVEAT: If the grade s/he chose was lower than one than I would have selected, they would get my grade and an explanation. If the grade was higher, we would continue the conversation and try to see what it was that I was missing. I was willing to be (and wanted to be!) swayed, given that this was the student’s assessment of his/her personal learning goals in Spanish.
  • Some (but very few indeed) met ALL of their goals. Almost all acknowledged that they had set up unrealistic expectations for themselves (in terms of how much they could get done in a semester) and many used their self assessment as a way to set up future goals for their language growth. (Exactly the kinda thing you hope to see happen…learning extending beyond the limits imposed by the classroom).
  • A shy, timid young man, he did not mention in his evaluation the class discussion he led, and managed, and blogged about at the end of the term… nor did he see how any of this was helping him move towards his most lofty goal…to be able to travel with friends in Spain and to be able to communicate with ease and without anxiety.
  • It pains me to read this, but not because of the critiques she makes about me, the tools, or the class. It pains me because Edie passed on an opportunity to try something new, experiment, take a calculated risk…all things she will eventually have to do when she travels in another culture. It’s sad because she was the only student who did not “let go” of something during the semester and instead just held on tight to how she wanted this class to be, vs how it really, truly was. Unstructured to her meant undirected. Allowing the group to decide the flow of the class frustrated her, because the cadence of the class was not one that was controlled by the teacher and therefore predictable
  • In the end, she presented me with a chart that logged over 40 hours of Skype conversations with a native speaker she eventually found, and 110 pages (!) of chat transcripts with others with whom she tried to make regular contact. In class, as a result of her out of class experiences, she became more involved and engaged, eventually leading a class discussion about her interests in music, but doing so such that it wove itself in with the topic the class was discussing that week.
Barbara Lindsey

Wired Campus: Professor Encourages Students to Pass Notes During Class -- via... - 0 views

  • Back then, most of his students were unfamiliar with Twitter, the microblogging service that limits messages to 140 characters. And for the first few weeks of course, students were reluctant to tweet, says Mr. Complese. “It took a few weeks for this to click,” he said. “Before it started to work, there was just nothing on the back channel.”
  • his hope is that the second layer of conversation will disrupt the old classroom model and allow new kinds of teaching in which students play a greater role and information is pulled in from outside the classroom walls.
  • Once students warmed to the idea that their professors actually wanted them to chat during class, students begin floating ideas or posting links to related materials, the professor says. In some cases, a shy student would type an observation or question on Twitter, and others in the class would respond with notes encouraging the student to raise the topic out loud. Other times, one of the professors would see a link posted by a student and stop class to discuss it.
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  • I am one of Cole’s “experimental lab rats,” and I must say that Cole and his colleague changed the way that I view teaching and learning. That course disrupted my notions of participation, identity, and community, and the changes are for the better. The course was so intellectually stimulating that when the course ended, I experienced a tremendous loss. The loss was so great that I felt myself trying to create Twitter communities in my future classes because I missed that engagement. If you are curious about our course, visit my course blog. https://blogs.psu.edu/mt4/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=655&tag=CI597C&limit=20 From there, you can access other students’ blogs and see some of the other conversations that ensued. For those who are critiquing Cole for his “grand experiment,” I must say that those of us who were in the course take pride in being a part of such an innovative course that challenged our perspectives of teaching and learning. We truly became a community, and that community has continued to this day on Twitter. I have even started using Twitter when I teach my undergraduate courses! Thank you, Cole (and colleague), for making a difference in my life! If you still curious about the course, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE935OqkKE8 and hear more about it.
  • @Bill Sodeman, FERPA does not come into play in what we did here. Twitter was not a replacement for a course management system and we didn’t hand out grades or force anyone into the environment. Those who adopted found it worthwhile. Also, controlling access would have killed one of the other really important (and unintentional) things that happened here — people not enrolled in the course followed and contributed via Twitter live!
  • We introduced quite a variety of technologies as we explored themes of community, identity, and design — all while participating in some very rigorous readings and conversations. I wrote a few posts about it a while back. Twitter was the most surprising outcome on many levels. At the end of the day, it was the class that became the community. Twitter empowered that in a strange way — a way that has us thinking about how we do this again. The one thing I am thrilled to see is that this conversation is happening — again, not about Twitter per se, but about rethinking practice. Thanks to everyone who is contributing thoughts!
  • @Megan Fritz The most intriguing part for me was the there was no official “monitor” of our conversation. Instead, we new that Cole and his colleague were tuned in, but it didn’t matter. We were in charge of our conversation. We became the drivers of the conversation, which made it meaningful for us as we constructed our learning. The channels of communication changed from bi-directional (teacher-to-student) to multi-directional (teacher-student-student-teacher, etc.). I would be bothered by thinking that the professor thought that we were “off track” and needed someone to monitor us to keep the back channel on track. In our case, the back channel was very much on task and often sat in the driver’s seat. It gives a whole new meaning to student-directed instruction. While such openness can be scary and intimidating because the control is handed over to the students, the experience can be powerful because the teacher becomes a member of the community partaking in the negotiation of the steering of the conversation.
  • I’m a PR student at the University of Oregon and this term I’m taking a social media marketing class with Kelli Matthews. She allows us to tweet during lecture as long as we tag content with #j412. If anyone would like to sit in just do a twitter search for #j412. We meet Monday and Wednesdays noon to 1:30 (pacific time). Or, check out our class website: http://strategicsocialmedia.wordpress.com/
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