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Stephanie Cooper

ACU Connected Blog » Class Blogs as a Mobile Hub - 2 views

  • Ideas to Get You Started Here are a few basic strategies for integrating student voices into your class blog this semester. Comments – Obviously the most familiar way to add student voices to a class blog is adding comments to a post. At the beginning of the week, the instructor or TA would create a post that includes a discussion question or prompt. Then during or between classes students would stop by to add comments to the main question or reply to the comments of others. Question Queue: create a standing post where students can raise questions they would like to discuss in class. Rapid Response: ask students, individually or in pairs, to contribute a 3-4 sentence position statement they will then defend or debate. Student Posts – One way students can master new concepts is by having to teach them to others. Most blog software provides user roles for secondary contributors, so with a little preparation, students can have their own dashboard and post content as a full author to the blog. If you imagine student work more like a short essay than a single observation, then allowing students to make full posts may communicate higher expectations and value of their work. Reading Journal: ask students to post a summary of preliminary research or more formal abstract to the blog for peer comments and critique. Media Mashup: have students analyze appearances of course concepts in popular media by embedding a YouTube clip and then evaluating its relevance. Post by Email – A final feature we found in many mobile blogging tools was post by email. For students and faculty with mobile devices, this provided us a simple way to share content quickly back to the class hub. Since most native apps on the iPhone offered email sharing of photos, links, and media, post by email become the common avenue connecting mobiles to the blog. (At ACU, this feature is built on a Gmail account associated with each blog and the Postie WordPress plug-in described below.) Webliography: early in a survey course, ask students to construct a bibliography of useful study materials and web sites by emailing links with annotations to the blog. Photo Shoot: send students into the community (or out onto the web) to capture images that reflect social attitudes toward a common topic then email them to the blog for discussion. (New iPhone or iPod touch users may not know they can tap and hold on a web image to copy it before pasting it into an email. Remind them to cite the original source of the image, or better yet copy and paste the URL as well.)
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      This is great info to make class blogging successful.
  • WPtouch – An essential plugin for mobile blogging via WordPress is WPtouch (now standard on all WordPress.com blogs). Once installed, the plugin makes reading and commenting on mobile posts and pages easy. Simple to install and MU compatible.
  • CONS: essential links from sidebar widgets in a desktop theme must be added to the WPtouch menu manually.
Keith Hamon

26 Tips for Writing Great Blog Posts | Social Media Examiner - 0 views

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    What follows are 26 tips, from A-Z, to help you create optimal blog posts every time you sit down to write.
Keith Hamon

Teaching Carnival 4.1 - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

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    In that spirit of collaboration, the Teaching Carnival is back. … Each month, a new writer will collect and sort teaching-related links and will post them here. (If you are interested in writing one of these posts or contributing links to the roundup, see the info at the bottom of this page.) This is a great source for connecting to college profs who are writing about teaching in college.
Stephanie Cooper

A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

  • I developed a simple 5-point scale, which rates each post according to the level of critical thinking and engagement displayed in the post. The rubric is quick and easy and in roughly 1–2 minutes I know what to rate any given blog post:
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      This is a good example of a rubric for evaluating posts. Notice that the prof is placing emphasis on critical thinking and engagement - 2 of our QEP priorities!
  • gideonburton - September 27, 2010 at 12:13 pm
    • Stephanie Cooper
       
      I also like the way this prof evaluates the blog as a whole.
Stephanie Cooper

Collaboration: The Lost Skill? | Dangerously Irrelevant - 2 views

  • I have seen tweets and blog posts recently about frustration that teachers are having getting their students to collaborate. These were mainly secondary teachers and library media specialists. It was even an #EdChat topic a few weeks ago: "How do we engage students who find participatory learning uncomfortable?" What do you find most difficult when getting students to collaborate? Criticism from their peers? A bad experience with a previous teacher? It seems like there's so many factors that can come into play.
  • How are we fostering this skill beyond kindergarten? What have you found that really is motivating for students to collaborate? What gives them true ownership of their learning? There's awesome digital tools that aid in collaboration, but those tools don't MAKE the collaboration. It's a skill that still has to be fine tuned. It's a skill we should all be modeling effectively if we want our students to do it effectively. If you're looking for some great suggestions on how to foster collaboration in your classroom, I would suggest reading Michelle Bourgeois' post titled:  The Collaborative Classroom: It’s a Juggling Act. In this post Michelle tells a story of teaching students how to juggle and says. "Just like the art of juggling, there are several skills that need to be balanced and constantly monitored in a collaborative classroom to make it all come together." Please be sure to check out Michelle's post on how to monitor and keep balance of some essentials in classroom collaboration.
  • We should be fostering this skill in our classrooms, not hindering it. How often are you allowing students to collaborate? Not to say that awesome things can't come out of individual thinking, but as I always like to say, "We're better together." Sure, one mind can do awesome things, but a collective could really rock someone's world.
Keith Hamon

Can We Teach Creative and Critical Thinking? - Education - GOOD - 1 views

  • Critical thinking is, among many things, the ability to understand and apply the abstract, the ability to infer and to meaningfully investigate. It’s the skills needed to see parallels, comprehend intersections, identify problems, and develop sustainable solutions.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      We have not adequately accounted for abstraction in our discussions of CT or investigation. I wonder if CT is such a large, amorphous category as to be almost meaningless? Perhaps not, but it is clear to me that almost every discussion of CT must begin with a clear delineation of just what we mean when we say critical thinking.
  • sound critical thinking is imperative to social progress.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This social imperative is somewhat troubling to me. Is not good critical thinking its own reward?
  • Cultivating critical thinking may be accomplished with modeling
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Modeling is a promising technique, but how often do teachers expose their own thinking processes to students? Don't we usually let them see only the polished final product of our thought, and not the messy critical thinking we went through prior to our polished position?
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  • School trips, service learning requirements, and various other kinds of hands-on situations allow students to make connections at their own pace
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Nice methods that change the complexion of the typical classroom from one of content-delivery to content application.
  • teachers suggest, and insist, that students investigate further, making—but more importantly, justifying—inferences and conclusions.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Is it not obvious how the focus on the "right answer" undermines this willingness to explore? Why would most students expend any energy on an issue when they already have the answer that will be on the test, the "correct answer"?
  • It’s hard to design test questions that effectively measure a child’s ability think creatively.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      Note the writer's confusion of critical thinking and creative thinking. Are they usually confused? Should they be? Is there any advantage to distinguishing between them?
  • At the heart of teaching critical and creative thought is the ability to ask the right questions to students. In turn, they need to be able answer in a way that demonstrates their ability to see the parallels and intersections;
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This kind of open-ended discussion and work in class is key to the QEP classroom.
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    But how is creative or critical thought defined and taught? And by what assessment can we measure it, if at all?
Keith Hamon

Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning | Sex and Word Clouds: Crafting Effectiv... - 1 views

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    Several of the most prominent words are included in the title for this blog post. While the word cloud did not write the title for me, it helped me identify important elements from my post and served as an ideal starting point for creating an interesting and informative title for potential readers.
Keith Hamon

Google+ Your Business - Google+ - 0 views

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    tips on how you can make your posts more Google-y and have more authentic, personal, and intimate conversations.
Stephanie Cooper

Tomorrow's Professor Postings - 1 views

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    I thought some of you might be interested in following this blog.
Thomas Clancy

On private "classblogs" vs. the wild, wide open ~ Stephen's Web - 1 views

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    Please note this post and its comments (Downes' is a good blog to follow, too, btw). This is a "line" with which we are familiar--private vs. public student writing. Are we prepared to argue in support of "the wild, wide open"? Should we be appeasers and give our faculty the choice? *Let's discuss as a workshop topic.*
Keith Hamon

Building an Online Presence More Important Than Ever - 0 views

  • For older students, Silvia Tolisano, a technology and 21st-century learning specialist, offers a comprehensive blog post on helping students take their blog skills to the next level. She focuses on the ability of blogs to help students become better writers, and be part of a network and contribute to a larger community.
    • Keith Hamon
       
      This is close to the heart of what we are doing in ASU's QEP.
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    Educators have long cautioned students about posting damaging information online, but now it's also becoming important to build a positive digital footprint. When should students start building their online persona? The earlier, the better.
Stephanie Cooper

I hate writing but love to blog….why? | The Thinking Stick - 0 views

  • o why is it that I hate to write and love to blog? First, I think a lot of it has to do with the computer and word processing. As I type this in my Firefox extension Performancing every misspelled word is underlined in red for me, giving me instant feedback on what I have misspelled. Does it catch all my mistakes, heck no, but you should see a post before it actually goes live. Secondly, I can type faster then I can write…about 75 words/minute and you can actually read what I’ve written when I’m done. Finally, I don’t see blogging as writing…it’s idea generation, it’s the free flow of ideas between people and it is a conversation. I love to talk (if you have a hard time writing you usually do…coping skill). I would rather stand in front of a group of parents and give a presentation, or have a face to face parent conference than write a letter home.
  • Blogging gives me an audience, just like giving a presentation…I almost feel that way sometimes…like I’m presenting information, my thoughts rather than writing. It could be a podcast, a video, or blogging…it’s about having an audience. I wonder if I would have blogged in school, given the chance? It would have depended, I bet, on how the teacher used it as a tool. Was it a reflective journal to layout your thoughts, or did every period, capital and ‘ie, ei’ combination have to be perfect. If that was the case I’d have hated it. Blogging is different…it’s not writing in the sense we think about it. People ask me why I blog and I truly can’t give them an answer…I just do, because it’s an outlet for me. I’d bet that I’ve blogged more in the past year then I wrote my whole life leading up to it. It’s been that powerful for me as a tool, and I see it in my students as well. In myspace and youtube…this networking, conversation, sharing atmosphere is contagious!
  • I think you hit on the larger issue, though, is that blogging is much less structured (mostly) than a typical piece of writing. Blogging is much more stream-of-consciousness than writing. As I am writing this, it is a direct connection from idea to publication. I think that is the blogging revolution. I would wonder how different your post would have been, or my comment for that matter, had we outlined it before writing it.
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  • Good writing is really about good editing. Too much time in school is spent on conventions–grammar, spelling–and not on helping people find their voice. Blogging is not writing in the sense that much of blogging comes from a very authentic, unedited perspective. We say what we feel. We mean what we say. We just do not always overprocess it. We have chosen our audience by virtue of the topics and themes we choose.
  • Blogging offers realtime, real world feedback. How many people actually comment on misspellings? Who cares if I end a sentence with a preposition? Perhaps monitors in somepeople’s houses have red circles on them. People comment on the usefulness, the humour, the passion, the ideas. Call it what you will, Blogging is writing with an attitude. Yours. And yours alone. Sure someone might flame you, but you can delete their posts. Now I could proof read this. I could let it sit an daim to craft my thoughts better, but I like the rawness of this.
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    I liked this article because it talks about how it is easier for resistant writers to write by blogging.
Keith Hamon

Online Learning: A User's Guide to Forking Education | Online Learning | HYBRID PEDAGOGY - 0 views

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    At exactly this moment, online education is poised (and threatening) to replicate the conditions, courses, structures, and hierarchical relations of brick-and-mortar industrial-era education. Cathy N. Davidson argued exactly this at her presentation, "Access Demands a Paradigm Shift," at the 2013 Modern Language Association conference. The mistake being made, I think, is a simple and even understandable one, but damning and destructive nonetheless. Those of us responsible for education (both its formation and care) are hugging too tightly to what we've helped build, its pillars, policies, economies, and institutions. None of these, though, map promisingly into digital space. If we continue to tread our current path, we'll be left with a Frankenstein's monster of what we now know of education. This is the imminent destruction of our educational system of which so many speak: taking an institution inspired by the efficiency of post-industrial machines and redrawing it inside the machines of the digital age. Education rendered into a dull 2-dimensional carbon copy, scanned, faxed, encoded and then made human-readable, an utter lack of intellectual bravery.
Keith Hamon

The Best Posts On The "Flipped Classroom" Idea | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of... - 0 views

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    I'm a bit wary/skeptical about this whole "Flipped Classroom" idea and how it works in practice.
Keith Hamon

Student Electronic Portfolios: A Model | Expat Educator - 0 views

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    This post has two purposes: (1) Present a model you can use for your own students' portfolios. It is critical to know what you want students to present before you begin. (2) Provide videos that show you, step-by-step, how to set up portfolios using Google sites.
Keith Hamon

You Can Summarize Your Thesis in a Tweet, but Should You? - Wired Campus - The Chronicl... - 0 views

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    Students across the world are using the Twitter hashtag #tweetyourthesis to shrink their academic thesis work down to single 140-character posts.
Keith Hamon

A Taxonomy of Reflection: A Model for Critical Thinking - 1 views

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    In an effort to help schools become more reflective learning environments, I've developed this "Taxonomy of Reflection." - modeled on Bloom's approach.  It's posted in four installments: 1.  A Taxonomy of  Reflection  2. The Reflective Student 3. The Reflective Teacher  4. The Reflective Principal 
Keith Hamon

A Twitteraholic's Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter | The Edublogger - 0 views

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    Here's advice on using Twitter written with assistance from my twitter network and readers comments on this post.
Keith Hamon

Why Online Education Needs to Get Social - 0 views

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    Education is the second largest industry in America behind health care, and it too is experiencing a similar shift as it struggles to adapt traditional design and delivery models to the demands of modern audiences who are accustomed to digital interactivity. The challenge to transition successfully is especially pressing for online higher education. The Sloan Consortium reports that two-thirds of post-secondary educational institutions are seeing an increase in online courses and programs, so it's a market that education providers simply cannot afford to ignore.
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