The Wonderful Ways of Using a Word Cloud

One of my most recent and enjoyable discoveries is word clouds.  Those not entirely familiar with them, may want to find this very interesting.  Word clouds are program-generated images that display the words within a specified text in proportion to how often each word comes up.  Ultimately, it visualizes according to size, the most common words within a text.  (Also, just to clarify, most of these programs will automatically remove prepositions and other such small structured words; some will allow you to put them back in).  Using a word cloud opens up opportunity to consider meaning and interpret the text differently than we might otherwise do.

Jefferon' s Rough Draft of the Declaration of Independence

 An example I used recently was to compare the original draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson to the finished draft that was signed in July 1776.  This proved a great example on numerous levels as it showed students how a text can change as something enters into a group process.  It also allowed for students to see tonal changes that they might not have seen otherwise.  The visualization of the text helps make connections that students might not otherwise been able to conceptualize.  

This has been a very useful tool in opening up discussion and helping students to see (as well as look for) patterns.  Usually, when students hit the wall with a hard or unfamiliar text, they grow resistant or just frustrated in trying to make sense of it.  However, word clouds offer a lifeline of ideas without necessarily "giving it away."  The word cloud gives a different view, but it does not give the students the answer on how to analyze a text, which is good.  It helps, but it doesn't do the work.

 The applicability of this tool can be addressed in many different disciplines such as history (consider using this for unlocking primary sources), literature (measuring symbolic value vs. word value), politics (all those speeches and texts to use), and even math (discussing probabilities, frequency, etc of word usage).  Not all word-cloud generators are the same and there are often restrictions to the length that you can play with them.  Two of the more popular word cloud generators are Wordle and Tagxedo.  

Final Draft of the Declaration of Independence

Worlde is a simple program than Tagxedo.  You can copy and paste a text or add a RSS feed, or enter a del.icio.us user name.  The generated word cloud can be manipulated in limited ways in for layout, font, color scheme, and choice of words, etc.  It's a very clean and simple tool for the neophyte and allows for the user to get accustomed to working with word clouds.  Tagxedo is a bit more robust.  You have a lot more options from the beginning, including using Twitter, RSS feeds, URLs, internet searches, and news.  Additionally, once the word cloud is created, you can reformat in numerous more ways than Wordle.  However, that being said, the fact that you can copy and paste a large chunk of text into Wordle rather than just use a website can be more useful to some people.

Regardless of which one you enjoy, I encourage you to try them out and let me know what your results were.  

Have you used word clouds before and to what effect?  How do you foresee word clouds being useful in your class?  What could a word cloud do to unlock your students understanding of the material?

A Guide to eContent for North Shore Community College

In addition to the eContent Fair that we had in late may, the NSCC Goverance Information Technology Committee has constructed this guide to understanding and using eContent materials at our college.  It should provide faculty with the clearest sense about how to move forward using eContent.  That being said, if you have further questions about using eContent in your class, we welcome you to contact us to talk.  

E-Books
 
Facts about purchasing e-books:
More and more students and faculty are getting on the e-book bandwagon.  The most common reason given is the reduced prices as compared to regular print books.
 
In most cases, e-text books aren’t bought so much as rented.  Often times, students only have rights to the e-book for the duration of semester or two.  In some cases, students will have rights to access the e-book until such time as a new edition is printed by the publisher.  Special allowances can sometimes be negotiated for e-books that a student will likely need throughout their college career (a nursing handbook for instance.) 

Publishing companies will offer pricing discounts on e-books based on the number of students in each class.  The more students who purchase the e-book, the lower the cost of the e-book will be.  Additionally, larger prices breaks are available if several classes or even an entire department decide to go with one e-book or a single publisher.

There are often different prices for people purchasing solely an e-book and for those purchasing the e-book along with additional online supplementary material.

The NSCC bookstore is part of consortium of college bookstores and, therefore, probably gets better prices on e-books than students buying on their own would.  

Many companies offer custom text book options.  This allows teachers to select just what they want out of a single book or allows them to combine sections of different books into one package for their students.  This can lower the cost of purchasing as the students don’t need to buy whole books when just chapters will do.

Students have the ability to download a copy of their e-text book to an e-reader such as a Kindle or an iPad.  As of right now, this type of feature is not widely possible, so most publishers encourage students to make use of an online portal. 

Facts about the nature of e-books and curriculum:
Most e-books are more than just flat text files or PDFs.  
 
Many publishers have created online course material to supplement their e-book offerings.  This supplemental material often takes the form of an internet portal.  

Students will have a username and password that they set up with which to log into the publisher’s portal.  There they may find various tools such as:

• Interactive version of the text book that allows for the insertion of student and instructor notes as well as bookmarking and highlighting
• Videos
• Interactive diagrams
• Sound recordings
• Sample test questions and guided examples
• Assignments or notes left by the professor
• Simulations and Learning Games

Professors can use the online portal to gather and track information about student use.  For instance, a professor would have the ability to see how often each student logs into the site and for how long they stay logged in.  Some publishers have even gone so far as to collect data about what sample questions students are answering correctly or incorrectly.  This could help a professor determine which content areas the class is struggling on.  

Note: Not all e-books have speech to text capability which may make accessibility an issue.  Some books will work with 3rd party accessibility software like JAWS (for more information on JAWS please contact Disability Services.)

Depending upon the publisher, some portals may interface directly with NSCC’s Learning Management System (ANGEL.)  This means that students can access the e-book materials from within an existing ANGEL course.  In virtually all cases, at a minimum, a link to the publisher’s portal can be placed within ANGEL.

Facts about e-book support:
Publishing companies provide technical support for their products to faculty and students.  There are FAQs and basic troubleshooting tutorials available 24x7 on the publishers’ websites.  Additionally, depending upon the publisher, live phone or internet chat support is available during daytime hours (for example, from 8AM – 7PM.)
 
Note:  While the college can provide instructional support, it cannot provide technical support for these online portals.

To support faculty who are making the transition to e-books, many publishers offer training videos as well as user group discussion panels and meetings.  

Some publishers will send a specialist to the campus to conduct live trainings for faculty or even provide in class demonstrations for students.  Often that specialist is then available at later date via phone or email.

Questions to ask yourself before you decide to use e-books in you classes:

1. Do I want both the print and e-versions of the text books to be offered to the class?
2. If I’m using several text books, is it possible to combine them into a single custom text book?  If I am only using a few select chapters from a text book, is it possible to create a custom text book?
3. Are other professors at the school using the same text book or publisher?  Perhaps greater cost benefits can be realized by placing a combined order.
4. Will using e-books and the expanded online tools offered by the publisher change my goals for the class?
5. Am I prepared to fully utilize all of the tools that come with e-books or am I just looking to provide the students with an electronic version of the book that is cheaper than a print version?
6. How, if at all, will my in class instruction change because of the options afforded me by the e-book?
7. How much training will I need before I feel comfortable teaching with the whole e-book package?
8. What type of usage would I and my students make of the publisher’s online portal?  Would I want to sign into the publisher’s portal during class and teach from that?  Will I ask students to complete assignments in the publisher’s online portal?

Next Steps:
Before making a decision about e-books please contact Academic Technology at itd@northshore.edu and/or Information Systems.
 
Academic Technology has experienced instructional technologists and designers that can help you formulate a plan to effectively use the new tools that will now be at your disposal.  Additionally, they may have pre-existing contacts or arrangements with the publishing company you’d like to use.   

Working along with you and Academic Technology, the Information Systems department will be able to help determine the amount of ANGEL integration that can be achieved.  This would possibly alleviate the need for a professor or students to manually register at publishers’ websites.  Additionally Information Systems can check to make sure that the computers available on campus are properly configured to support the media content provided in the publishers’ portals.

eContent: What's All That About?

Last week, as part of the Center for Teaching and Learning Assessment's annual "Teaching and Learning Conference," Academic Technology hosted an eContent Fair for faculty to meet with different publishers to discuss and discover what kinds of resources were available to them.  Over the two days, we had four different publishers talking about what they have available for a wide range of disciplines.  Cengage, Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson had representatives to talk with faculty about what more these is to offer besides the traditional textbook.

Some of our reasoning in offering this to faculty and moving forward to do this again in the future is the fact that publishers have come a long way in what they have to offer faculty.  Years ago, when faculty thought of ebooks in lieu of textbooks, they mainly thought of a digital form of the textbook either as a website or .PDF.  But the fact is, the resources that publishers provide for students and faculty are rather substantial.  As faculty, we struggle with assigning an expensive textbook that will be financial hard to justify for many students, especially after having paid for the class.  But I think if you want to get the most out of the price they have to pay for the textbook, it would be beneficial to make use of the digital resources that many publishers have to offer.

So what are some of these resources available?  What follows are some of the highlights.  Not all publishers have all the features mentioned, but many have a good range of them and it’s worth contacting the publishers to find out what resources you will be able to use.

Enhanced Content
With many of the ebooks today, it’s not just the text in digital format, but more content can be added or even customized for particular purposes.  Assigning specific chapters, supplemental links, primary sources, additional videos and sound clips can take a few minutes and clicks to establish the course materials in the order you want them accomplished.   Faculty can add their own customized content such as instructor notes, added links, and files.

Interaction
Not only can faculty annotate the text, but the tools are present for students to annotate their readings with highlight and virtual sticky notes.  This encourages students to interact and engage their text in ways that older ebooks certainly couldn’t.  Beyond this, some ebooks come with additional programs that might include games (crosswords puzzles, virtual flash cards, trivia questions, etc) and some even have simulations and video games that make students work through different problems or projects (such as a virtual body to explore in an anatomy class).  Discussion forums can also be created (often with suggestions for questions by the publisher or with the faculty’s own choice).

Evaluation
Many of the ebooks provide a pool of hundreds of questions per chapter to create quizzes and tests.  Some of the publishers have created adaptive software and ranked the questions so that students will get increasingly hard questions as they are more successful—increasing the challenge or meeting the student at where he/she is at.   When used as formative evaluations to determine a student's understanding, quizzes like these can be highly useful for learning. But beyond standard quizzes, many ebooks offers other useful elements.  Papers and major assignments can be submitted and graded online by the faculty who can draw upon a pool of comments generated by the instructor in present and previous courses.  With everything centered in the portal for the course, students can chart their progress and learn about where their performance is lacking or where they need more assistance.

In the large picture, the usefulness of eContent material is to get the most out of a significant investment for both you and the students.  Additionally, the various materials (and means of tracking) allow for the instructor to have a much clearer sense of what the students are learning and where they are struggling.  This can mean better results in the class as you can better tailor your time with students in accordance with where they need the most help.  If you are further interested in eContent for a book you are already using or in a text you’re interested in using, click through to the publishers, see what they have to offer, and contact a rep.

Do you use econtent?  What are some of the advantages and disadvantages?  

Books We’re Talking About: The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map

So during winter break, I caught wind of an interesting idea with regards to syllabus.  What if you made a more visually-oriented syllabus to emphasize information and step away from the text-overload that syllabi (particularly mine) tend to be.  Having finished my syllabus with hours to spare, I decided to spend those hours visually re-creating the syllabus. I liked the finished product, but it wasn’t much more than just adding glitter and flare, but not necessarily doing much with how I used the visual dynamic to enhance learning and the student’s experience.  I planned on still using it, but wasn’t feeling the full potential of the visual syllabus.  But then I read The Graphic Syllabus and the Outcomes Map:  Communicating Your Course by Linda B. Nilson (Jossey-Bass, 2007).  

Within the first chapter of this book, I already had a clearer picture of just what I should be aiming to do with a graphic syllabus that I was missing before.  Nilson’s premise is clear and easy to understand (albeit, challenging to fully execute).  Given that many people absorb much information visually and contextually, it doesn’t make entire sense to have a syllabus that is segmented into its different silos of:  objectives, goals, assignments/assessments/readings.  Her goal is to help the reader consider the ways in which one can depict how all these parts of the course fit together in the syllabus.  

This is useful for two reasons.  The first is that it helps the faculty member have a clearer sense of what he/she is assigning in terms of work and make sure it explicitly connects to objective and goals.  This grants a clearer vision of what the instructor is doing.  The other reason is that it gives students a stronger context of how it all fits together.  Beyond just the “why do I have to take this course” questions, a graphic syllabus can instantly connect the student with context that clarifies questions of why as well as better understanding how information fits together for their growth within the course.  

Nilson delves into a variety of issues and concerns about how to go about it and illustrates that there is good variation about how to do it.  She provides readers with thoughts about how and why one might do it, but shows there are many ways to go about it.  In particular, she provides dozens of graphic syllabi from previous courses (her own and others) in various disciplines to help stimulate ideas across departments.  To help readers better envision their own syllabus in a new light, she regularly compares what a text syllabus looks like in contrast to the (same) graphically-enhanced syllabus.  

Within the first two chapters, she already had me hooked and thinking differently about my own courses.  I’m imagining a comic-book syllabus for my comic book course that would be “teaching” as one progresses through the different elements of the syllabus.  But immediately, it helped me to reconsider that American Literature course I had created my first visual syllabus for.  I’ve found that I like doing American Literature 1 by addressing different types of writing and moving through the significant pieces in chronological order.  This works in many ways but is limiting because students will lack context (or forget) of how the different types of writings fit with one another.  By thinking about Nilson’s ideas, it allowed me to craft something more meaningful for the students as you can see from the impromptu outline below.  

And that’s probably the other element that I like about Nilson.  She emphasizes that one does not need to be an artist to creating a graphic syllabus—nor does one need numerous programs and equipment.  I did the image below in Excel.  Both MS Word and Powerpoint have outline/mapping tools that you can utilize and master very quickly.  You can go high-end (and she shows examples of such), but you can still be graphically rich and simplistic in the types of visual you use (Good thing too—I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler!).  

One final consideration with approaching a graphic syllabus (beside, “read the book!”).  I would still recommend gathering the material together in a textual format initially.  That is, first create your standard textual syllabus and save a copy of it before proceeding to create a graphic syllabus.  One big reason and one small reason for this.  The big reason is that you want to make sure your syllabus is accessible to all students.  Therefore, a student who cannot access the visual syllabus might need the text made available and the graphic elements may not be useful.  The other reason for composing it as text before moving into graphics is that you’ll have a great “before” and “after” examples to share with your colleagues (and maybe even us here on the blog!).  

• Have you tried a graphic syllabus?  How did it go?
• Are you interested in attempting a graphic syllabus?  What would you need to do it?

Freeing The Course Part 4: Assignments

In this final entry on freeing the course (check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), we are looking at free tools and resources relating to assignments.  These might be ways of changing up assignments, making them more interactive, or even in some cases, easier to evaluate and access.  Many of these resources we’ve mentioned before in different capacities, but they are definitely great for thinking about assignments as well.

GoogleDocs
Yes, GoogleDocs, again.  Whether you want them to develop a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, you can use GoogleDocs for the space to be used.  You can also create surveys and possibly quizzes if you want to engage your students further.  What’s great about GoogleDocs is its collaborative nature and the ways you (or your students) can share files coupled with the document history where you can directly compare differences between older and newer versions.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on GoogleDocs.

Diigo
Diigo is a familiar tool on this blog and rightly so.  It’s a social bookmarking site where an instructor could create a group for the class.  Herein, they could add substantive links related to course topics along with descriptions and explanations of what the sites were.  Another idea would be for the instructor to incorporate a large range of links and assign the students different links to go to within Diigo and annotate.  Diigo allows for individuals or groups to annotate their bookmarks, thus allowing for an engaging dialogue among the students about a site’s content.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Diigo.

Wikis
Yet another great tool we enjoy on this blog, Wikis can be used in a variety of ways.  Whether you’re sending students to create an entry on Wikipedia itself, or encouraging them to make a course notebook in wiki format, there’s some great ways instructors can make students creators and owners of the course content.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Wikis.

Glogster
Glogster is a free digital posterboard that allows the user to put up images, text, sound files, and videos all integrated into a collage.  It’s a useful tool as a compliment to inclass presentations or as a means of online presentations.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Glogster.

Blogs
Blogs are great for assignments.  There are many different ways of using a blog, but there are several that seem to do well.  

1. The instructor writes the blog entries (as kind of mini-lessons or making connections from content to the world at large) and the students must comment.
2. Students create their own blogs and then comment on one another’s blog.
3. One blog is created for the class and different students must post about related material over the course of the semester.

Regardless of how you go about approaching it, blogs can be a great assignment that help students think and communicate more critically.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on blogs.

Screen-cast-o-matic
We’ve talked about this tool before as a teaching tool, but it could also be used as an assignment for students to create a narrated presentation utilizing course materials or research.  It’s a quick tool to learn and faculty could assign students to develop different videos around course concepts.  Faculty could also assign students to create a virtual tour of the internet to present their research.  Audacity is a similar tool, though it’s only for audio recording, but faculty might assign similar projects.

• More discussion about this tool.
• Youtube playlist on Scree-ncast-o-matic.

So what other tools out there help you to free up the course?  We’re always looking for new ideas and tools, so please let us know.

Freeing The Course Part 3: Course Delivery

We’re back again with Part 3 of Freeing the Course.  Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 and be on the eye for our future pieces. 

By course delivery, we’re talking about what can produce and provide for your students that goes beyond the readings.  This may include videos (externally or internally created), podcasts or lecture recordings, or even the presentation programs that communicate your teaching in the classroom. 

Video Resources
There are a plethora of video resources Video resources out there for you to take advantage of including Learner.org, YouTube.com/EDU, TED (and check out their latest feature on flipping the classroom option), and of course, the Library’s FilmOnDemand.  For more information about these resources, check out this previous post on Video Resources for Your Classroom.

However, here’s one quick reminder about using videos in and outside the classroom.  Always be sure to provide a clear frame for watching the video and a clear sense of what they should be doing with the video—that is, how they should integrate it into the other course material.  Students need to be directed to what to focus on in order for videos to work the best.  Instructing them to watch the video but not making clear what they are watching for can make follow up discussions lackluster and problematic. 

Presenting Unique Content
Rather than use external material, if you want to create your own course material to deliver to students, there are some great resources available for that too. 

We’ve talked about Screen-Cast-O-Matic on this blog before and it’s because it’s a great (and easy!) tool that allow faculty to create narrated screencasts (of powerpoints, websites, etc).  It takes minutes to learn and then, faculty can focus their time and energy on thinking about how they want to present the material for their audience. 

Audacity is a free sound recording program that allows users to make recordings for whatever purpose they might find.  In particular, you can make mini-lecture podcasts for your students that recap the day’s lessons or cover other material. 

Prezi is a fun presentation tool that provides a 3-Dimensional infinite canvass for you to connect your ideas.  The fascinating element about Prezi is that it allows you to visually display relationships in ways that are not as well executed in programs like Powerpoint.  Additionally, you can integrate images and videos into this as well as convert them in PDF for your students if you choose to.  Check out our YouTube playlist that explores Prezi. 

Finally, there’s Google Presentation.  It has many of the features of Powerpoint, but again, is free.  You can choose to download it as a Powerpoint file if you choose or even PDF.  You’re also able to share it easily with students.  Where this also wins out against Powerpoint is that if you share it with students, you can utilize the “Comment” feature to spur a discussion around the Powerpoint or encourage students to annotate the powerpoint about what they found useful or care to elaborate on. 

For our final post, we’ll be exploring communicate and course extras that you might consider as you move forward. 

What other free resources do you use in order to delivery the course content to your students?

Professional Day Part 3: Wondering and Wisdom

The final entry on 2012 NSCC Profession Day’s workshop on social media and higher education  (Check out Part 1, Part 2, and the Workshop Resources) focuses on a few fun insights and questions that came up in the discussion.  

1. The Type of Social Media Invokes a Particular Culture of Performance
This was an interesting conclusion that I had not full thought about before, but makes absolutely sense with the online environment.  Just as there are places where we can be “ourselves” and places where we must be “professional” and places that blur the lines, social media has its equivalent.  Facebook still remains a place that swivels from personal to professional depending on who is using it (and how they choose to use it).  We may not like what others are posting, but we know that their “Facebook” but it’s their space to do with as they please.  By contrast, LinkedIn.com invokes a different sense of etiquette and behavior.  As an arena for recruiting and networking, the interactions and connection people make are more professional.  There is less likelihood for chatting in the casual way we find on Facebook.  I’ve witnessed this first hand with former students who contact me via LinkedIn (formal, polite, and articulate) in contrast to those who have contacted me in some capacity on Facebook (informal, emoticons, and slang).  
 
2.  Move Beyond the Big Ones
Another faculty member emphasized the importance of over-reliance on the big social media sites for person or educational use.  Sure, Facebook and Twitter are good and we can reliably expect large amounts of people to have access to them, but some of the smaller social media sites may help to keep from distracting students or introduce them to new tools they might not have known about otherwise.  
 
3.  What Would McLuhan Think?
 If the “medium is the message,” then how are we to make sense of social media?  A faculty member made this insightful point that I believe is important to engage with for anyone using social media.  I agree that social media requires substantive study for us to understand the ways in which it mitigates communication and content.  But this is also why I think using it in the classroom, filled with students full emerged in much of it already, might help the students as well to understand the medium/message intersection.  This makes further sense when we look at Twitter and the implication of a “tweet” and the need to shrink and contort our language into shorthand.

4.  80/20 Rule
    Regardless of how you’re going to use social media in that classroom, it seems clear that there is an 80%/20% rule to consider when using it.  That is, you need to spend 80% of your time in the planning and developing phases of prior to the course and then, expect to spend 20% time actually executing what you’re looking to do.  That is, in order to use social media meaningfully in a course, you need to become familiar with it, determine how you want to use it, and provide resources to help students make sense of the way that you want to use it for class (providing guidelines, expectations, etiquette, etc).  

5.  Future Workshops on Social Media
Some faculty suggested that it might be more useful in the future to offer three workshops on the topic of social media.  

• Workshop 1:  Social Media for the Socially (Media) Isolated.  This workshop would be a very simple introduction to several of the big social media sites and their general uses.
• Workshop 2:  Social Media Concerns.  This workshop would run more like a discussion about the challenges and concerns that faculty have when considering using social media for professional and educational purposes.
• Workshop 3:  Using Social Media.  This workshop would focus largely on the research and tools out there that have effectively (and ineffectively, I suppose) used social media for educational and professional uses such as this.  

Overall, the workshop was rewarding for me to run but I also hope that faculty enjoyed them and benefitted from them (or from these posts).

Professional Day Part 2: The Importance of Social Media for the Community College

So the last post discussed some of the concerns for ourselves and our students when contemplating social media.  This post will examine some of the important reasons to consider and engage in social media in the college level.

Social Media = Virtual Community
Social Media is about devleoping and engaging an online community and that virtual community can transcend into the real world.  As North Shore Community College increasingly teaches more students online, we need to foster and engage our students in a similar fashion.  After all, the student that leaves in Western, Massachusetts going to NSCC full time via online classes is also part of our community.  Just as faculty have a physical presence in physical community, a virtual presence is also needed.
 
Role Models Needed
Students need role models.  This is often true in the phsycial classroom and equally true in the online environment.  They need people to look up to who can show them how to be professional and what it means to be responsible in public in an online environment.  Faculty can and should serve as that those role models, exhibiting profesionalism and etiquette.  There's often criticism and belittling of how students use (or misuse or abuse) social media, but if we don't provide concrete examples for them to emulate, are we helping or perpetuating the problem?
 
Tangible Social Connections
Because social media is much more clearly quantified (you can clearly delineate how many connections from a particular organization/geographical space that you have as well as easily quantify the amount and types of interactions), students can emerge from their degree with a clearer sense of what kinds of networks their education opened them up to.
 
Improving Social/Cultural Capital
With those tangible social connections, comes increased social and cultural capital.
First generation and low-income students can lack substantive social or cultural capital compared to middle class and students of college-educated parents.   While college is significantly about the education and work one does, it's also about establishing and expanding one's social network and thereby improving the opportunities afforded in the student's life.  Maintaing connections through social media is important for students as they move on in their lives.  This is because our social connections can often shape our opportunities and this is the case not just with our strong social bonds but our weak social bonds as well.
 
Crisscrossing Interactions
Engaging in social media also provides later opportunites for interaction and learning on both student and faculty's behalf.  Just as we are likely to keep connected with students in the real world at the end of a course, virtual connections also help to bridge the chasm of time and space.  This can make it much easier if you wish to call upon former students to guest speak in your class (particularly in fields like nursing or business) or for them to engage you for ideas and information.
 
Informing Students of Class, NSCC, and the world at large.
Social media also serves as a continued conduit with students with regards to the class, the college, and the world at large.  Utilizing social media for education can help students learn how to use social media as a meaningful tool while also keeping them connected to the institution and faculty that have hopefully guided the student to understand the world more.
 
With regards to these ideas, if you plan to use social media in the classroom in some direct or indirect way, I'd highly encourage you to think broadly ahead of time and develop a clear policy about the nature of how you want to use social media, how you expect students to engage it (with regards to you or the online social space that you construct), and other important considerations that might be helpful for them (and yourself) to better understand while providing clear understanding for how exactly socializing will occurr.

For the final part of this series, I will highlight some of the important points that I took from faculty during these workshops about social media.

Professional Day Part 1: Concerns of Social Media

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 was North Shore Community College's Professional Day. I ran a workshop on using Social Media.  My goal was provide some ideas and approaches to using it.  However, in order to get there, there were issues to address that commonly come up when discussing social media.  I wanted to address and negate some of these concerns and inflated fears.  I also wanted to help colleagues understand why its important to be using social media or how students can benefit from our usage of it.  Finally, I wanted to highlight ways in which it can be used in the classroom.  What follows is a series of posts highlighting some of what I hoped to communicate and also some of what I heard and learned from my colleagues.   

Concerns and Fears around Social Media
It’s making us stoopiderer
This argument was first brought up by Nicholas Carr in The Atlantic Monthly and followed up by his book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.  The book is a thoughtful book, but he can't get around the fact that his argument is based upon his self-admission that he can't think as deeply as he used to but disproves this by writing a deeply and critical book about said issue.  Furthermore, some of the research that he uses is not as clear cut or relevant and this has been strongly addressed by Brian Chen in his book, Always On: How the iPhone Unlocked the Anything-Anytime-Anywhere Future--and Locked Us In.  Additionally, Carr's argument is focused on the Internet as a whole and not just social media, of which there are some differences.
 
It’s distracting.
Without a doubt, our social media has the potential to be distracting, BUT we don't make it less by distracting by avoiding it.  Rather we learn to discriminate with social media, just like we do by driving--by doing it and learning what to focus on and what to ignore.  Everyday life is extremely distracting, except we've learned how to make it less so, but immersing ourselves it in and realizing what's important and what's not, how to prioritize, and how to make judgments about the streams of information.  
 
It’s leaving people vulnerable.
Around issues of privacy, yes--there are concerns about this.  After all, the latest fright running through the media landscape is that employers are asking for passwords to potential employees' Facebook accounts.  Yes, avoiding the online world altogether doesn't work for two reasons.  1.  You're already on the internet.  Particularly those of us working at NSCC, things like our salaries are already out there.  Avoiding engaging in the online environment means that all information that is out there about you is put out there by someone else.  2.  A lack of an online presence will become increasingly questionable or be an indication of a lack of a skillset that is increasingly relevant to all sorts of work.  
 
It’s not “real.”
There's concern about the substance of social media and claim that it's ephemeral nature leads to no "real" world interaction.  With programs like FourSquare, social media is used to project us into the real world.  However, Clay Shirky  among others would feel that it does have real world influence and in the case of Wael Ghonim, one of the leaders in the Egyptian Revolution, it certainly did constitute something real.  
 
It’s superficial.
What does pressing "like" even mean?  I have 400+ "friends" and 200+ "followers" but it doesn't really mean anything.  Possibly.  But blaming the tool might be missing the point.  Social media quantifies and reflects how we move through the real world.  If we don't feel "connected" to our 400 "friends"--doesn't that speak to ourselves and the superficiality of our connections?  A better way of thinking about this is that social media shows us all the people we are bonded with in some way.  Some bonds are strong; others are weak.  A social network reminds you of all the people you are connected to, but it's up to you to decide how to engage with them.  
 
It’s an echo-chamber.
Besides issues of filtering that are occurring according to Eli Pariser, there's also self-filtering that is occurring.  This is inducing a concern of each person's social media being merely an echo-chamber for them to yell but not listen.  Again, this is something we will foster by choosing to not engage and interact.  
 
My points here aren't to say these aren't important concerns, but avoiding social media in our lives or in our classroom doesn't make these challenges go away and we leave our students less prepared for the world they are entering in. They need to see how we interact through social media as role models but also to understand the ways information and disciplines are changing as a result of social media too.  

In the next post in this series, we'll focus on The Importance of Social Media for the Community College.  The final post will look at what I learned and took from the event.

Professional Day, April 2012

For those who did or didn't attend the the presentation on Social Media for professional and classroom use, we have provided the resources here for you.  A summary of the presentation in blog form will follow, but for now, enjoy!

Effective Uses of Facebook and Twitter in the Classroom

	Uses/Benefits	Personal	Professional	Classroom Announcements	Classroom Interaction
Facebook Usage	Friending Posting Sharing Tagging Liking PollingTracking/Data Collection Visually-oriented	Keep connected with family, friends, and interests about important and/or frivolous things.	Networking, CFPs, major scholars/professionals in the field, professional opportunities, industry news, and professional organizations.	Reminding students about assignments, last minute changes, recommending links/resources for class or the school, and sharing advice.	Developing discussions outside the classroom, organizing course information, and soliciting feedback.
Twitter Usage	Following Tweeting ReTweeting @Mentions #HashtagsLess concerns with anonymity	Same as above, but 140-space  posts.	Same as above, but 140-space  posts.	Same as above, but 140-space  posts.	Same as above, but 140-space  posts. Backchannel to class for conversation or notes. Language manipulation skills
Example #1		“Hey Joe—check out this video”	“Anyone going to conference X and wanna split a room?”	“Who has started their paper yet—remember, it’s due tomorrow!”	“The first 5 people to find legitimate internet sources on today’s lesson, will get a bonus point.”
Example #2		“My cat did the cutest thing.”	“According to ‘reliable news source,’ your industry is about to implode.”	“Class is cancelled today—keep reading for next class.”	“What are the three major things you took from today’s class?”
Example #3		“Who wants to go to a movie tonite?”	“The National Association of Stuff is hosting a conference in your town.”	“Here’s a link related to yesterday’s discussion.”	“What do we think of this link in lieu of last week’s class discussion on topic X?”
Example #4		“I’m bored…totally.”	“Anyone know anyone that works at Company X—I’m trying to get a hold of someone for a contract option.”	“Don’t forget to bring the other book to class tomorrow.”	“What challenges are you finding with this assignment, reading, or course?”

NSCC Resources:

• NSCC Learning, Education, Technology and Support Blog
• North Shore Community College Academic Technology
• NSCC Academic Technology on YouTube
• Video Playlist on Social Networking
• Video Playlist on Twitter

Further Resources

• Opening Facebook:  How to Use Facebook in the College Classroom
• 100 Ways You Should Be Using Facebook in Your Classroom
• Twitter in the Classroom
• Using Twitter in university research, teaching and impact activities
• 5 Ways Twitter Has Changed Education
• Personal Learning Networks for Educators: 10 Tips

Recommends Books on the Topic of Social Media, Digital Technology, and Modern Society

• Anderson, Chris. Free: The Future of a Radical Price. New York: Hyperion, 2009.
• Bauerlein, Mark. The Digital Divide: Arguments for and against Facebook, Google, Texting, and the Age of Social Networking. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2011.
• Botsman, Rachel, and Roo Rogers. What's Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. New York: Harper Business, 2010.
• Carr, Nicholas G. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010.
• Chatfield, Tom. Fun Inc: Why Gaming Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century. New York, NY: Pegasus Books, 2010.
• Chen, Brian X. Always on: How the Iphone Unlocked the Anything - Anytime - Anywhere Future-and Locked Us in. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2011.
• Jarvis, Jeff. Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2011.
• Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005
• Levine, Robert. Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back. New York: Doubleday, 2011.
• McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.
• Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York: Penguin Press, 2011
• Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2011.
• Rushkoff, Douglas. Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. Berkeley, Calif: Soft Skull Press, 2011.
• Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin Press, 2010.
• Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011