I heard about it; I did not feel it. Apparently, I missed the not-so-epic earthquake of New England.
I was in my basement apartment engaged in conversation--I guess I just
figured it was the hot air bellowing from me (or indigestion?). But New
England witnessed a 4.5 magnitude earthquake in Maine that was felt
down through Massachusetts.
Like
many people who missed the earthquake, I found out about it when
Facebook updates exploded with references to it. Dozens of friends were
asking Facebook if their world was just rocked. Enough asked to figure
out that yes, indeed, there was an earthquake, even before the official
notice went out. It was pretty interesting to come to Facebook some 20
minutes after the event to discover the event and witness everyone else
discovering the event.
But what struck me as absolutely fascinating was how quickly the meme-machine went
into action. Within 20 minutes, people were posting amusing pics about
the incident. It was a typical self-deprecating response with a bit of
post-modern twists to it as can be seen in the screenshot to the left.
But around 8:15PM, about an hour after the earthquake, I stumbled upon a
Facebook page: I survived the 10/16/12 earthquake.
By the time I encountered it, it had over 35,000 "Likes". That is,
already in less than an hour 35,000+ had seen it on their Facebook feed
or shared it with friends who had quickly learned about the earthquake
and joined. Over the course of the next 3 hours, this group swelled to
nearly double in ranks (about 71,000) before I went to sleep and up over
80,000 likes before I went to bed. So in lieu of watching the debate, I
watched the numbers grow. And as they grew, I took screenshots of the
page and numbers, showing that increase. The results can be found below
in the slideshow.
But the question I want to think about is as educators, how can we harness this potential of viral explosion
with informal learning. Granted, I understand there is a certain
frivolousness to what's happened. Most likely, 99.99% of people who
"liked" it will never revisit it. But that doesn't mean we can't learn
from the interaction and ask ourselves what are the takeaways from this
(non)event. A couple to consider:
- Fast response: A news event occurred and someone quickly responded
with a way to capture it in a way that brings attention to it (and mocks
it).
- It grew rapidly within a specified population. I'm not privy to the
demographics of the the fan page, but I'm willing to guess the
demographics were heavily skewered to these people: People who have or
are living in New England and people under 50.
- Absurdity + recent event + social media=Opportunity to connect (and
profit). Within 3 hours of the event, the FB page not only had 70,000+
likes, but also had quickly created an e-store with which to sell "I Survived the 10-16-2012 Earthquake" T-shirts.
- People got something out of liking it. Brief though the interaction
may be, there was something rewarding for people to participate in
this. There was some exchange--small or not.
If
we are more socially connected with our students what opportunities lie
in wait for us to re-purpose such events into opportunities for
learning and meaning-making? I don't have the answers for this one but
do wonder if we are more away of the phenomenon and think or discuss it
more, can we find ways of doing something with it. I look forward to
hearing your thoughts!
This year, Academic Technology is piloting a new on-demand online professional development service – Magna Commons.
Our
subscription to Magna Commons provides North Shore Community College
faculty and staff with instant access to current and archived versions
of the most popular Magna Online Seminars, covering a broad range of
teaching and learning topics such as student engagement, technology and
Web 2.0, grading and feedback, academic integrity, and course design.
There are also a variety of seminars specifically targeted to faculty
teaching in an online or hybrid environment. These seminars are
delivered by educators from institutions across the county. Each online
seminar presentation also comes with a PowerPoint handout, supplemental
materials, and a transcript.
Sampling of the professional development titles available:
- Five Strategies to Engage Today’s Students
- Ten Ways to Actively Engage Your Students
- How to Deepen Learning through Critical Reflection
- Active Learning That Works: What Students Think
- Finding The Right Technology to Support Learning Outcomes
- Grading Strategies to Promote Student & Faculty Success
- Engage Online Students with Targeted Feedback
- Selecting and Using Technologies in Online and Blended Courses
- Best Practices for Designing Successful Blended Courses
To
access the professional development seminars, you will need to create
an account on Magna Commons and enter in our Authorization Code. You
will only need to do this once. After you have done this, you will have
instant access to Magna Commons from any computer, whether it is on- or
off-campus, with your unique username and password. Seminars can be
viewed by subscribers on a computer or many mobile devices.
For
information on creating an account and accessing Magna Commons, please
refer to the announcement in the Bulletin on October 9, 2012 or email itd@northshore.edu.
Enjoy--and let us know if you check it out, some of your thoughts and experiences!
In
June, Academic Technology and the Information Technology Fluency Across
the Curriculum Committee facilitated the 2nd Annual Faculty Technology
Summer Institute. 15 faculty attended the Summer Institute to learn
more about student-centered uses of technology in a variety of
disciplines. Several sessions focused on various Web 2.0 and
instructional technology tools that could be used to engage students
inside and outside of the classroom or for student-based projects or
assignments that would allow students to use technology critically and
creatively.
The following resources (with information to learn more) were highlighted at the Summer Institute.
Google Documents:
A free online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation editor that
enables students to collaborate online in real time. Google Documents
is available to everyone at North Shore Community College.
Prezi: Online software that enables students to create “visually captivating presentations”.
VoiceThread:
An online program that enables students to have “conversations in the
cloud” around images, documents and videos. North Shore Community
College has a departmental license to VoiceThread. Please contact ITD
if you are interested in using VoiceThread with your students.
Diigo: An online collaborative research tool that enables students to bookmark and share Web resources.
Screencast-o-matic: A simple screen capture program that enables students to create online presentations with voice.
Glogster: A Web program that enables students to create online multimedia posters.
Quizlet: An online site that allows students to create and share flashcard sets. Mobile apps are available for on-the-go studying.
Wordle: A web site to create word clouds to visually display prominence of words in texts.
Poll Everywhere: A Web-based classroom response system that allows instructors to get instant feedback from students.
Dipity:
A Web site to Create and share “interactive, visually engaging
timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, and social
media”.
If you are interested in learning how to integrate any of these resources into your classes, please contact us at itd@northshore.edu.
• Have you used any of these Web 2.0 tools? If so, how are you using them to engage your students?
• What other Web 2.0 tools have you used in your classroom? What are the benefits to using Web 2.0 tools?
• What challenges do you run into when using Web 2.0 tools?
Consider Classroom Podcasts!
Often times when we think of using the Smart Classroom, we think of
using video materials or PowerPoints with our class. Podcasts, however,
are a great educational tool to use in the classroom—speeches, poetry,
stories, and news clips—are all great types of podcasts to bring into
the classroom or have your students listen to at home or on their
computers, cellphones or mp3 players.
One
application or web tool is “Stitcher”. It’s an on-demand internet radio
service and application for the iPhone, Palm, and Android devices.
Stitcher brings together content for thousands of providers, including
NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC, AP, and more. It also gives you
local stations so that you can easily utilize local content in the
classroom.
With
upcoming local and national elections, Stitcher is the ideal site to
engage students in the political process. Check it out at www.stitcher.com
or on your mobile device. (For instructions on how to use Stitcher for
different platforms, we recommend checking out Youtube for
instructional videos such as this one that shows you how to use it on your iPhone).
Podcasts are plentiful at the following sites as well:
If you’d like more information about utilizing podcasts in the classroom, please contact me at dhoule@northshore.edu.
Enjoy this new engaging experience for your students!
Have you used podcasts before? What was your experience like? How would you like to use podcasts in your class?
Well,
the semester is underway and students and faculty appear to be settling
in. I thought I would share some of the top issues we experienced with
ANGEL, our Learning Management System, here at North Shore Community
College this fall.
We upgraded to ANGEL version 8.0 in late August and there have been a few “quirky” things happening.
Our top issues (and resolutions) with ANGEL this semester:
1) Issue: Problem uploading files (PDF) to ANGEL when using Firefox
Resolution: Clear cache in Firefox by going to tools, options, advanced, network and then clearing cache.
2) Issue: Can’t see student names in ANGEL email site
Resolution: Use another browser
3) Issue: Students can’t see course
Resolution:
- Students – make sure the instructor uses the ANGEL system with the course.
- Instructors — the course needs to be made available to students.
- Go to the Manage tab in the course site.
- Click the General Course Settings link.
- Click the Access tab.
- Click on the drop down arrow in the Member Access section, and choose “All Members”. Remember to save your edit!
4) Issue: Links won’t work (always a good idea to test them before the course begins).
Resolution: Relink it by first copying the correct URL.
- Go to Lessons tab and the document where the link is.
- Under Settings for that document, highlight the words for the link.
- Click on the icon that looks like a globe with a chain link on it.
- Paste the correct URL into the URL section and click Ok. This should activate the link.
Besides
these recommendations above, one thing we always encourage people to
try is to log out of ANGEL, close your browser and try a different
browser. Unfortunately, due to the popularity of several different
browsers all of which update their software at various and intermittent
times, ANGEL will perform better in some rather than others, especially
if the browser being used was just recently updated.
What other issues or problems are you running into with Angel? Be sure to let us know by contacting us at angel@northshore.edu. We want to hear from you!
This
year, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CTLA) and
Academic Technology has partnered up again to bring faculty a
professional development series from Magna Publications,
called the Monday Morning Mentor. The goal of the Monday Morning Mentor
series is to offer faculty practical professional development
opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from
anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the
areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online,
assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.
New
video presentations go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only
accessible through Sunday. Presentation handouts and supplementary
materials are always available.
The following sessions are on the schedule for fall 2012. For session descriptions and objectives, click on the titles below.
Information on how to access the Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin.
We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to itd@northshore.edu.
The
following video will walk you through where to search for tutorials on
Smart Classrooms and Smart Carts as well as operational instructions and
documentation to help you in your use of technology here at North Shore
Community College. Hope this is helpful to you!
Technology Resources
I recently attended the annual Ed Tech conference at Bridgewater State University and saw a lot of intriguing things. One presentation was on a free website called Storify.
Storify is a website that lets you create a story using your social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.
In
fact, you can use several social networks and “drag” content into a
story you can craft on the site. You can upload posts, links, images to
create a story line. It also allows you to add text, thus creating
context for your story.
I
can imagine many ways an instructor could use it. A Composition
instructor might give students a subject and ask for a story that
includes photos, images and content. A student could comment on a photo
and create a story timeline describing how the photo came about. A
history instructor could ask students to begin with a past event and
chronologically evolve to current events by using photos, quotes,
facebook quotes, images, websites etc. They could comment on
similarities, etc. and start to conceptualize on how history repeats
itself.
Check out the website and tell us what you think!
So I recently contacted faculty to find out what are some of their favorite TED Talks. For those unfamiliar with TED,
get ready to be blown away and inspired. TED is where the cutting edge
meets the open public. It's a regular conference (and many
mini-conferences) that take place wherein people deliver a presentation
based upon their most recent and powerful research. Some have equated
them to Randy Pausch's famous Last Lecture
or the lecture of your life, and there's much truth to how these talks
can inspire, motivate, and make us think. This is why they are great for
the classroom. Coming in at 5-18 minutes long, each talk can serve as a
springboar for discussion, debate, and paradigm change within a vast
array of disciplines. Most recently, TED has recently released its TED-Ed platform, an easy-to-use toolbox for instructors to flip their classroom with TED Talks (or any Youtube video).
So
in our first round, we have four different faculty here at North Shore
Community College, sharing what they find to be some of the most
inspiring and useful TED Talks that they've come across--either for
their own experience or their inclass-usage.
Aimee Mullins: My Legs Give Me Super Powers
Laurie Carlson (English):
"She talks about prosthetic limbs as an enhancement rather than a
deficiency. The video deals with disability, feminism, and body image,
all of which I feel are important topics and ideas for our students to
be aware of and grapple with."
Bill Gates: Innovating to Zero
Barbara Ikalainen(Green Initiative Coordinator, Environmental Studies):
"I show this to my Environmental Science students to promote a
discussion on how to meet our future energy needs. He is referencing a
new nuclear technology (nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission). It's not
that I'm a proponent, but he brings up all the evidence of global
climate change and he is actively looking for a solution. The dilemma
that he poses is the difficulty of the democratic process towards
technology and changing public opinion and how solutions to climate
change will necessitate working with countries unfriendly to the USA."
Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Kara Kaufman (History): "This TED Talk is a great counterpoint to the book Origins of the Modern World,
by Robert Marks that I assign in World History II. Marks and Ferguson
are examples of a debate within world history scholarship regarding the
role of the West in the past 500 years. Marks takes a non-Eurocentric
perspective while Ferguson's point of view is Eurocentric. The TED talk
is also useful in that it is not a book. In other words, students are
already reading most of Marks' book, so I like that TED delivers
excellent information in an alternative, entertaining format."
Amy Purdy: Living Beyond Limits
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math):
"Purdy discusses her journey adapting to (and maximizing) life after
losing her legs. Really interesting. (For example: now she gets to be as
tall as she wants to be - depending on the prosthetics she chooses!).
Inspiring and Uplifiting!"
Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math):
"Grandin explains the "thinking in pictures" that comes with her
autism, and describes how that has influenced how her career in
engineering. An Interesting Contrast!"
Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your world-view
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math):
"Rosling demonstrates world trends, using interactive statistical
charts - with moving bubbles and colored snakes to describe things like
the relationship between GNP and longevity! Colorful, Fun and Easy to
Understand!"
Tavi Gevinson: A teen just trying to figure it out
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "A high school sophomore, Gevinson discusses her (plural) e-zines and her publishing success. Fun and Encouraging!"
We'll be posting more soon, but in the meantime, what are your favorite TED Talks?
Over the last year, I've become a huge fan of Diigo.
Diigo is a social bookmarking site and tool that allows you to access
your saved links on any computer. But of course, it's much more than
that or we wouldn't be talking about it here. You can get a fuller
sense of its capabilities by checking out our Youtube Playlist on Diigo. But for now, let's identify some of its best qualities.
- Free (and more free with Educator's license). Sign up with an .EDU account and get access to more resources.
- Links are accessible on any computer by logging in.
- Users can join and create groups of common interest or purpose and keep community links.
- Users can easily share links with other friends on the network or other groups.
- In addition to creating Lists (categories), users can also tag each link for easier classification and search.
-
Users can annotate (including multi-colored highlighting) the site they
bookmark and share both the site and the annotations with others.
- Users can subscribe to other users and groups public links via RSS Feed. (For more about RSS Feed, check out our blog entry on using it for education).
- Users can track the number of views a link has received.
So
that's a great range of tools that instructors can utilize for learning
and student engagement. With that in mind, here are some of the ideas
that you could use this program for:
Course Readings:
You could use Diigo to collect and organize your class readings. With
the Group feature, you could invite the class into Diigo, and break up
the readings into different lists: Week 1, Week 2, etc. One reason
this might be useful is that the instructor can annotate each link,
adding comments, emphasis, and raising questions. For instance, in the
image below, I've highlighted different text and the numbers within the
document indicate different comments I've raised with the reading.
What's great is that students too and can directly respond by commenting
which means you can have a conversation around a text.
Class Created Notebook:
In this sense, instructors can make students create a course notebook;
requiring them to go out and harvest relevant materials for each week's
reading. Again, the instructor can require students to comment on each
others' links or go in and comment on the students' links and require
their response. Here is a set of guidelines that require students to use Diigo to collection resources for a course.
Group Dissection:
For this one, the instructor can assign specific online readings and
require a group using the annotative tools, to have a conversation
around a text, by asking and answering questions, connecting it to other
material, etc. The beauty is that it's all within the document/reading
itself.
Research Resources:
Faculty can also use Diigo to create a range of resources for students
with regard to a research project. One List could be on methods,
another on recent research or acceptable resources to use for a project,
while another could be on citing and editing.
Research Collection:
Diigo could also be used as a resource collection created by one or
more students where all their research can be found and organized for a
project.
What
other ways do you foresee Diigo being useful to you? Have you tried
Diigo? What do you think about it? What concerns or questions do you
still have about it?
