ITC eLearning Conference in St. Petersburg, FL on February 16-19
This is an outline of the sessions I attended on the third day of the conference
Feb. 18th Monday
Keynote:
Seeking the Gold Standard
Dr. Patricia McGee
Brief notes that I need to expand upon:
Software to grade discussions
Resources impact retention
Kids are alright—book about the game culture kid
Demographics:
Veterans & Traditionalists 63-84 had one job - influenced by radio
Baby Boomers 46-62 live to work - TV
Gen X 26-45 jobs are portable - computers
Nexters 6-25 many jobs - media and culture, 9/11, multicultural
Twitter is the rage: “it is what it is”
Teach me to think!
Watch a video where kids where holding up flash cards—not digital
We did the “clicker” and the percentage attending the conference: 29% faculty and 71% admins
V(irtual) L(learning) E(nvironments)—Scott Wilson's site.
Different learning levels: Macro (society), Meso (school), Micro (classroom)
Students have to believe in learning
Interesting sites:
Gabbly: put a chatroom anyone on your site
bubbl.us: create colorful mindmaps online
courses on facebook: add course schedules, assignments, etc to a facebook client
videojug: video app
connexions: a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc.
Dyknow: foster student/teacher interaction
MIT open courseware
cloud computing: wikipedia def.
go web2.0: complete web 2.0 directory
Digital study hall: content repository mirror
Sessions:
Tastes Del.icio.us! Instructional Uses of Social Bookmarking—Mon. 9:30
Britt Watwood, Center for Teaching Excellence, Virginia Commonwealth University
Del.icio.us tag cloud becomes a part of someone's resume and goes after the email address on a business card or email signature.
Check out Commoncraft screen shots: del.icio.us
tags: tags are like keywords; a website can have multiple tags; you can search del.icio.us using tags.
Minieyes: IBM free program--in this program you see the repeated words but not necessarily how they connect with each other; the related words are not necessarily grouped—there are no particular way you can group that .
What does a word cloud mean? He shows us all the key words in the conference program as a tag cloud, thus you get a sense of the conference themes.
He mixes personal and professional
When you are in del.icio.us you pick the words—it takes a little time to find out which ways of saying something is tagged the most.
Saving sites: you can save them and tag them and send them to colleagues
You can upload your existing bookmarks into del.icio.us—yes, even Google? Sites will suggest tags. Then you make notes to describe the site for the viewer. You can see the history of the site and bring up their del.icio.us acct and become fans of those people and they can add your acct to their network.
What does it mean to be in a network: he sets up a feed to Google reader; you need to know what their network in order to put them into your network. Look at two antennas.com to see ways you can see your network.
Interchanging of information is the social side of del.icio.us.
Use with students: he has students send him a screen shot of their acct; adds a tag for the class. There is one grade associated with del.icio.us. It is their no.1 search engine—it will search for specific items in the tag cloud. Sites have to pass some criteria. You can rss feed it and review the sites you get everyday.
My course: Have students do this at the beginning of a FYC course and show them how they will be able to find information on their topics re: research. You can still tag proprietary websites on campus, use the comment part to describe the site for in and off campus use. Use the more social side of it, push it.
The network process: To get your del.icio.us acct on someone else's network: go to it and put them in your network, they see you are a fan, and then they can put you into their network.
Can I start to give them my del.icio.us acct in my online class right now?
Student Student-Centered learning Strategies using Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Training Evaluation—Mon. 11:30
Dr. Jacqueline Carroll, Truckee Meadows Community College
Class rooms are often the teachers mod of practice. Is it mine? Probably not!
One of these people who talk soooooo fast. Egads.
Kirkpatrick's Levels:
Smiley survey
Learning
Behavior--transfer
Outcomes
--these are the four levels.
Heutagogic learning—self generated learning—self directed model
You will listen because it is one of your peers
I still need to provide more sign posts whereever
Peer interaction in groups is hard to do.
Taught a package FYC course
set a positive tone: these are tips etc , find out which personality or learning styles you are
foster peer interaction
critical thinking—use the db to content knowledge.
use the online ex in my writing classes.
in the online environment
students get two for one—mastery of content and practice in online learning
the group essay got the same complaints as the f2f class—I am doing all the work and I don't have time.
There is an impact on structure and content if you make the course more interactive or students centered and students are ready to appreciate this. Many want a straight ahead plan that can be seen from the beginning as this and that.
Androgogy—learning to learn on you own
There was a low response rate from those who had the enhancements. Mistakes are highlighted in the online classroom.
What was the best enhancement that you made: “I'm glad you asked that question” It was the learning styles inventory.
She sent them to do the inventory
Had them share it with other students
Then had them email a student with the same learning style and tell them what they did to learn better.
She said to email her for a list of the learning inventories that she used
Secrets for Working with Online Groups—Mon. 2:30
Group presenting was from the City Colleges of Chicago
Give students a series of experiences to learn
They did a case study of a Social Science classroom
You have to convince students that what they are doing is the right thing
Criteria for setting up groups
Create a proposal—that the instructor could say yay or nay.
Complete a group research project—the roles are defined, they bring research and put it together, create the paper, edit it, and so forth.
You can't assume that students know how to work in groups.
Let the students redesign the groups to how they want them to be.
Healthy Groups:
Energizer
Information seeker
Coodinator
Secretary
Harmonizer
Opinion seeker
Evaluator-critic
Effective group strategies
-- ask students when they are available so that you can create groups
--make a combination of self-critique, peer feedback and instructor critique.
Building blocks in Bb for free?
Process becomes important but is difficult to grade? Start a report system.
Example of a short group ex.: Do a group project in evaluating websites. This is short 15 min exercise. Then debrief the groups and discuss the ways they worked with each other. Use a series of wrap up questions.
Give students a process grade which starts out with two non-graded evaluations and then put in a real grade assessment at the end. You will do group work in the workplace so this is a valuable skill for you to learn.
Engaging Online Learners with Pop Culture Personal Web Sites—Mon. 4:00
The only thing I learned from this almost worthless session is that students tend to like your class if you can make yourself as human as possible. This presenter took them to her MySpace site. NOT something I would try. But the idea of humanizing your teaching is a good one.
