20 Minute Professional Development – Monday Morning Mentor

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.

• September 17: Cell Phones, Laptops and Facebook: What Can I Do about Them?
• September 24: How Can I Use Informal Writing as Part of a Low-stakes Grading Strategy?
• October 1: What is Blended Learning?
• October 8: How Can Objects and Analogies Improve my Teaching?
• October 15: How Can I Promote Deep, Lasting Student Learning?
• October 22: How Do I Choose Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Activities?
• October 29: Peer Review of Online Teaching: What Works Best?
• November 5: Can I Safely Use Facebook with Students for Class Interaction?
• November 12: How Do I Stay Calm When Students Push My Buttons?
• November 19: How Can I Connect Students’ Interests to Course Content?
• November 26: In Blended Courses, What Should Students Do Online?
• December 3: How Can I Enhance Class Using Story, Popular Media and Objects?
• December 10: How Do I Address Teasing and Bullying Behavior in the Classroom?

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.

Technology Resources to Start Your New Academic Year

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

What's Your Story?

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!

Some of Ted Talks' Best: Round 1

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?

I'm Digging Diigo; Are You?

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.

1. Free (and more free with Educator's license).  Sign up with an .EDU account and get access to more resources.
2. Links are accessible on any computer by logging in.
3. Users can join and create groups of common interest or purpose and keep community links.
4. Users can easily share links with other friends on the network or other groups.
5. In addition to creating Lists (categories), users can also tag each link for easier classification and search.
6. Users can annotate (including multi-colored highlighting) the site they bookmark and share both the site and the annotations with others.
7. 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).
8. 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?

Information Redirection: RSS Feeds

"Where did you find out about that?"  I get asked this question a lot about the various links, information, and ideas that I share with colleagues and friends.  My usual and most likely answer (when it's not Facebook or Twitter) is my newsfeed.  

The understatement of the century is that there is a lot of information on the Internet and more and more gigabytes being added every minute.  Finding information is hard and sometimes, it feels like the proverbial needle in the haystack.  I’ve talked before about ways in which you can channel information to you, using Google Alerts, and today’s discussion of RSS feeds is another invaluable tool for someone who needs to stay abreast of information or wants to use the latest information to help inform and shape their students’ experience.  

This video help explains just what RSS feeds are and provide a good start to the conversation.  An alternative to the video is this site, which has a good clean description of what RSS does and how it does it.

One of the most ideal places to create a feed reader is of course Google Reader.  However, we cannot use Google Reader since it isn’t part of the Google tools allotted to us with our school Gmail accounts.  But if you have your own Google Account, it tends to be the best place.  Here’s a good place to find other recommendations on RSS Feeders.  One feature in an RSS reader that I find essential is the ability to create folders to put similar feeds into.  For instance, I might group RSS feeds on “gaming and education” into one folder while I might put feeds relating to community college education into another one.  

Once you know what kind of reader you’ll be using, you’ll then want to assemble the different sources to pile into it and organize your information.  If you are looking for ideas about what to follow and why, this site offers 100 different uses of RSS feeds.  

So What can using RSS do for your classroom?

• You can require students to subscribe to a host of sites much like some instructors require students to subscribe to newspapers.  These feeds could be a different materials they need to consider before coming to class or sources they must consider in constructing a project. 
• If you have students create blogs, you can use an RSS reader to feed all of their blogs into it, so you don't have to go to each individual one.
• You can create a collection of RSS feeds within Angel (under Resources) and require students to draw upon those articles for class discussions, homework, or other class-relevant material.

For more information, you might also want to check out:

• 7 Things You Should Know About RSS Feeds
• RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators

 
Have you used RSS Feeds?  What do you like/dislike about them?  Have you used them (or considered using them) in class?  What other ways do you foresee this being useful for teaching and instruction?

ANGEL Tip #2: Rearranging Items in ANGEL

Many of our faculty “refresh” their courses every semester.  They find new  examples or new ways of introducing content and materials.  Our students today might not find it as interesting as, say 20 years ago, to just read lecture  notes.  They are used to an environment that is technologically stimulating.

As you begin to prepare your ANGEL course for the new semester you might want to consider adding new ideas or new ways to focus on your course content.

ANGEL tip #2:
In ANGEL, by default,  all new items that you add will appear at the bottom of the page. Organization is essential in an effective ANGEL course and your students will find it helpful, as they navigate their course, to find content arranged in a way that makes sense and where they can access it quickly.

You can rearrange the order of your content items under the "Lessons" tab and within each folder (maybe a list of weeks, assignments, samples, etc.).

If you want to move the newest items to the top (or in another area on the page, you can do the following:

1.  If you wish to rearrange items in a folder or on a page you must first
be in the folder or in the page.
2.  Click the Rearrange link at the top of the Lessons area.
3.  Drag and drop folders to the appropriate location.
4.  Click the Save button to finalize changes.
 
I hope you enjoy this tip and if you have any you would like to share or request, please feel free to comment.

First Steps in Using A SmartBoard

Many of us have heard about interactive white boards or "Smart Boards" but haven't yet had a chance to use them.   One suggestion before starting use the Smart Board is to download the Smart Notebook software.  This is the software that gets used on your Smart Board to create materials--text, image, videos, animations, games, etc.  The Smart Notebook 11 software can be downloaded directly to your laptop or your PC.  30 day trials are available.  Product codes are also available for North Shore Community College full and part time faculty, if you'd like to use for more than 30 days.  Please email dhoule@northshore.edu and I'll send you the link to a product code.

There are also some great short videos that will help get you started:

Downloading Smart Notebook 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZiyko_eVjI

Smart Board Tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwla8E6jz4g

Smart Notebook 11:  The Activity Builder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVwcyfJzAtA

Smart Notebook 11
http://www.teachertechnologies.com/2012/05/smart-notebook-11/

Of course, your Academic Technology department is here to help.  Please contact me, Dave Houle, at dhoule@northshore.edu and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Enjoy your Smart Board and Smart Notebook exploration.

ANGEL Tip #1: Personalizing Your Announcement in ANGEL

Okay, here is my first attempt at blogging.  Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay and trying new things with technology can enhance our way of communicating.   I work in the Academic Technology department at North Shore Community College and have been asked to help “blog” about what I consider important things concerning academic technology at NSCC. You will occasionally see blogs from all of us.

I thought I would introduce an “Angel tip” segment for this blog.  I will attempt to have a new one every month. As you probably know ANGEL is our Learning Management System (LMS) here at North Shore Community College and everyone at NSCC has an ANGEL account.  All credit courses offered here have an ANGEL shell and faculty use these shells in a variety of ways.  Some use ANGEL for their online courses, others may use it as a supplement to their onsite course.

Typically, when I conduct a “New to ANGEL” workshop I will talk about the importance of posting an announcement on the ANGEL course homepage.  When students log into their ANGEL course it is important for you to have a message welcoming them, directing them or updating them on the course.  Personalizing your course is a great way to make the student feel as though you know them. You can do this by having the announcement begin with their first name.

  

Now, here is Angel Tip #1 for you: 

You can use an “agent”  to add a student's first name to an announcement. 

To do so just add the following   $FIRST_NAME$    into the announcement text box.  Add it exactly as I have written it.  This will enter the student’s first name on the announcement page.  It will also work using course mail.

I am hoping you enjoy this tip and if you have any you would like to share, please feel free to comment.

Death by 1000 Clicks with Your Online Content and Course

Click, click, click  goes the mouse.  It’s very simple and small action.  A mere light pressing of a button with a finger.  It brings to mind Staples' “That Was Easy” giant red button.  Unequivocally, clicking a mouse button for many people is a relatively easy task.  But we should be wary of the fact that clicking the mouse is merely a representative action.  It’s a real-world action that mainfests as input and action within the bits and bytes of a computer.  In older days, clicking the mouse meant to select something.  Later on, the double-click allowed for something to be executed (“opened”) or highlighted.  Over the years the graphic user interface (GUI) known as the mouse has become expansively more useful.  

In fact, the clicking of a mouse has been made infinitely complicated—and that’s with only 2 buttons.  For instance, in Word as I type this blog post, with only 2 buttons (though my mouse has 7 buttons) , I can do the following tasks (Note:  These are all capable without actually using the tool bars or menus at the top of the screen):

Place my cursor on the page at a particular point.

1. Navigate the document
2. Select a text by highlighting it
3. Cut
4. Copy
5. Paste
6. Drag and drop
7. Choose bullets
8. Choose numbers
9. Choose word styles
10. Choose font colors
11. Choose font type
12. Choose font size
13. Highlight a text in varying colors
14. Boldface
15. Italicize
16. Underline
17. Align Margins
18. Look up words
19. Look up synonyms
20. Translate
21. Access the Fonts Menu
22. Access the Paragraph Menu
23. Access Options Menu

That’s over 20 actions with just 2 buttons and movement.  Not only that, those actions range from the simple to the complex in terms of outcome and what a person would cognitively have to do for each (e.g. selecting a font vs. selecting a synonym:  one appeals to aesthetics, the other appeals to articulation).  

My point is to emphasize the degree to which a click is not a simple action.  It’s complex and in the digital world, it’s about as complex as operating a vehicle in terms of the decisions that need to be made (that being said, it’s not nearly as life-threatening).  You have a limited amount of tools within driving (wheel, gas, break) and from it, an infinite amount of choices can be made.  Initially, you drive cautiously as you learn the tool, but eventually are making complex calculations about your driving though sometimes not consciously aware of it.  Similarly with the mouse, we’re doing lots with it and we automate that to some degree but that doesn’t negate the idea that it takes a toll on our cognitive load.    

So why all of this talks about clicking?  Because we often think of it as a small action, but it’s not.  When in the context of navigating a website, the hyperlink teleports us into a new visual landscape, a new place to familiarize ourselves with, a new place with additional doors.  It's a portal to further portals and too many portals can be frustrating.   When a person clicks through to the new place, they have taken a mental leap from one place to the next.  And these leaps take a toll.  They take a toll on the person’s time but also on their attention and stimulation.  Clicking can be mentally exerting even when it isn't physically exerting.


When thinking about your online content or course material, it’s essential to keep this in mind.  Providing too many links (of which I’ve certainly been guilty) drains the attention and time of the students.  If we paralleled the idea of links in the real world, it would look something like this:  You have assigned the student 5 readings this week.  Instead of saying, all the readings can be found “here” (library reference desk, a hand out you provide, or some other place of where it can all be accessed), you tell your students, “go find them they’re spread throughout the library”  or “I’ve placed the readings in 5 different rooms.”  Then, having them do this every week that you have readings.   The physical quest to find them parallels the mental quest and a certain amount of frustration about having to fetch. 

This is not to say you should dump everything into one folder, but students should have a clear and direct path to access their material.  Putting folders within folders within folders means students clicking further and further and if they follow the wrong path, they must double back and continue clicking through.  The extra clicks are taxing on the student’s time and attention.  It’s not so much they are looking for the distraction or a reason, but 1000 clicks can (virtually) kill the student’s motivation.  

With Angel, so much of what we use in the course in located in the Lessons folder.  This means that students must come first to Pipeline, then to  Angel, then to your course homepage, and then to Lessons.  That’s 4 leaps already.  How many of us click through 4 layers of a website to find information?  Look to make it easy or clear for them to get to what they need.  Don’t make added levels unless there’s a substantial reason.  Keep information cohesively together so that your students can focus more on what you want them to learn or do and less on how to get there.   

So under Lessons, you might present them as such:  
Introductory Material

• Introduction
• Syllabus
• Course Walk Through
• Introductory Discussion

Guidelines, Rubrics & Learning Tools

• Assignment #1 Guideline
• Assignment #1 Rubric
• Discussion Guidelines

Module 1*

• Learning Guide**
• Reading 1
• Reading 2
• Discussion
• Dropbox

Module 2
Module 3
 
*Faculty often create a folder of Learning Modules and then puts these into it.  Personally, I’d recommend against this, because you’ve just created another level.  

**Once in a learning module, rather than creating more folders, try to align things in a hierarchal manner that mirrors how you want students to move through the material.  If you want the learning guide first, put it at the top.  We look at pages and move from top to bottom in them, so it makes sense to align your material that way.  For more on information design, consider this article or even this one which focuses on website design but has some ideas useful for instructors (after all, the Angel shell is really just a type of website).


How do you deal with the clickiness nature of the digital world when trying to provide content for your students?