On Wednesday of this week some of us met to go over projects and assignments in Roush 330 next door to the room where my wife Loretta teaches the undergrad social studies methods course. She mentioned a week or so ago that one of her students had written and performed a song advocating for the integration of the arts in regular classrooms. So while we were working on 675 projects Eric came by and I set up the little RCA ez201 and we recorded. I downloaded, edited, copied some of the music and put it under the title I created and uploaded it to YouTube. Not exactly piece of cake but not brain surgery either.
I think Eric did a great job and can you imagine the reaction you'd get from your, perhaps unmotivated, student, when she/he see a video of him/herself on YouTube? I used iMovie on the Mac but the same result is possible with MovieMaker that comes with Windows.
The YouTube movie is called Paint and Write.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Notes from a Meeting
The following post is from the email I sent to our class after the 4.16.08 meeting. This seems like a good place to preserve its contents.
Some stuff from last night's meeting:
A new Word doc with revised email addresses. Please replace your "class list email" with "revised class list email" doc that is attached. Katie uses her gmail account and I've added my gmail address. When you have time please re-invite Katie to your Jackdaw using her gmail address.
There seems to be an issue with gmail being hijacked by Otterbein when a gmail account is being established or perhaps accessed from an Otterbein account. I will try to get to the bottom of this. Keep me informed if you believe you are not receiving invitations to Jackdaws and other docs from everyone.
Denise bumped into the ceiling for upload size with her Jackdaw. Learn how to see your file size and pay attention to this size when uploading files to Google docs. This size limitation may influence your choice of media for your Team Project.
I appreciate the willingness of all of you to help each other and to ask for and accept help from your peers. This spirit of community and the patience you all demonstrate in working through the fits and starts of breaking new ground is a tribute to your devotion to the teaching craft. I've always believed that one of the best markers of great teachers is a high tolerance for ambiguity. In some ways being a teacher is like having selective amnesia... everyday is a new experience.
From the beginning I've viewed EDUC 675 OL as a "hybrid" course, mostly online but with a face-to-face component. The problem with that is once you meet face-to-face it's difficult to go back to totally online. In that spirit, and for those of you who have had difficulty making the first 2 meetings I will be available in Roush 204 next Wednesday April 23 from about 4:30 until 8 to discuss projects and assignments and to work through tech issues with those who choose to show up. We'll look at future Wednesdays as time goes by.
Speaking of days of the week, I believe I committed to posting new assignments and projects by Sunday evening a couple of weeks in advance of due dates. I will post these on Blackboard and notify you of postings via email. Also, it is possible that assignments and projects may be modified from time to time, if you are adversely affected by changes (if you've already completed the task) let me know.
One other thing, on Friday I'm severing my long term relationship with my ISP, Time Warner Roadrunner. We've drifted apart, I crave speed and reliability and the bird has lost in few steps in her old age. I've taken up with the glitzy fiber optic newcomer ATT. What you need to know is that my columbus.rr.com address will no longer work and that you should be using my heigle.1@osu.edu address. I will attempt to insure that my 'reply to' address in future email is the OSU address but double check.
Hey, I think I will post this message on my BLOG...
Keep speaking to me and to each other... there may be such a thing a virtual community.
Some stuff from last night's meeting:
A new Word doc with revised email addresses. Please replace your "class list email" with "revised class list email" doc that is attached. Katie uses her gmail account and I've added my gmail address. When you have time please re-invite Katie to your Jackdaw using her gmail address.
There seems to be an issue with gmail being hijacked by Otterbein when a gmail account is being established or perhaps accessed from an Otterbein account. I will try to get to the bottom of this. Keep me informed if you believe you are not receiving invitations to Jackdaws and other docs from everyone.
Denise bumped into the ceiling for upload size with her Jackdaw. Learn how to see your file size and pay attention to this size when uploading files to Google docs. This size limitation may influence your choice of media for your Team Project.
I appreciate the willingness of all of you to help each other and to ask for and accept help from your peers. This spirit of community and the patience you all demonstrate in working through the fits and starts of breaking new ground is a tribute to your devotion to the teaching craft. I've always believed that one of the best markers of great teachers is a high tolerance for ambiguity. In some ways being a teacher is like having selective amnesia... everyday is a new experience.
From the beginning I've viewed EDUC 675 OL as a "hybrid" course, mostly online but with a face-to-face component. The problem with that is once you meet face-to-face it's difficult to go back to totally online. In that spirit, and for those of you who have had difficulty making the first 2 meetings I will be available in Roush 204 next Wednesday April 23 from about 4:30 until 8 to discuss projects and assignments and to work through tech issues with those who choose to show up. We'll look at future Wednesdays as time goes by.
Speaking of days of the week, I believe I committed to posting new assignments and projects by Sunday evening a couple of weeks in advance of due dates. I will post these on Blackboard and notify you of postings via email. Also, it is possible that assignments and projects may be modified from time to time, if you are adversely affected by changes (if you've already completed the task) let me know.
One other thing, on Friday I'm severing my long term relationship with my ISP, Time Warner Roadrunner. We've drifted apart, I crave speed and reliability and the bird has lost in few steps in her old age. I've taken up with the glitzy fiber optic newcomer ATT. What you need to know is that my columbus.rr.com address will no longer work and that you should be using my heigle.1@osu.edu address. I will attempt to insure that my 'reply to' address in future email is the OSU address but double check.
Hey, I think I will post this message on my BLOG...
Keep speaking to me and to each other... there may be such a thing a virtual community.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Thursday, April 10, 2008
What we take for granted
When Clare Kilbane and I taught 675 last spring we made lists of things we would change if either of us taught the course again. Two things were at the top of the list: "Get everyone's preferred email address up front" and "Use an standard naming convention for papers and documents emailed to the instructors". As Bobby Burns said (if his English was a bit more up to date), "The best laid plans of....". Technology is wondrous when it matches our needs and understanding. When there is a disconnect there is frustration and a tendency to revert to older ways of doing things. Some of us are gifted with super/sub-human patience (depends on you point of view whether you consider patience a higher order skill or just dumb laziness). At any rate, we take for granted things like light switches that work almost all the time, toasters that toast all the time, refrigerators that are remarkably reliable, etc. Computers and the internet are not yet at that level of no-brainer take-for-grantedness.
Back in the 80's when I worked for Apple Steve Jobs spoke of the computer as appliance, something that was to become so intuitive that it required no more thought to use than a toaster. While great strides have been taken in that direction we are not much closer to that goal than we were in 1988. The problem is that the toaster was pretty much perfected back in 1950 when the pop-up feature was added. Those geeky guys and gals in Silicon Valley and Calcutta keep adding bells and whistles to the basic computer at an alarming rate. The appliance analogy is no longer appropriate to describe our relationship with technology. The only existing analogy that springs to mind is the old one about changing parts on a flying airplane. "Let's try this new wing design, we'll install it at 30,000 feet over Kansas, piece of cake."
This new analogy requires an even greater tolerance for ambiguity than the significant amount of tolerance good teachers already possess. To make technology work for the good of education we all need to be prepared to fail, to employ vast amounts of trial and error, to re-think, to admit we do not know all the answers, to let some problems rest for a while, to be willing to ask direction even from our students. What we've taken for granted in the past is a world that had a lot of static features. Touchstones and landmarks anchored our thinking about the world and how it works. The rock solid premises in many subject area still hold, what does not hold is who has access to knowledge and how it is passed from person to person. Technology and the Internet have reconfigured the conversations between teachers and student. Content and the keys to knowledge are no longer in the sole possession of teachers. Students can uncover more content in a few minutes than could be 'covered' in a year long course a few years ago. The role of the teacher is becoming, must become that of a provider of order, an asker of significant questions, a skeptic about the provenance of truth, a risk taker, a creative light. In some ways not a lot different that what good teacher s have always done, however, the shift is away from 'knowledge' provider and toward all those other things.
How did we get from email addresses and naming conventions to teaching philosophy? Simple, we (as teacher and students) have got to be willing to try and fail, be problem solvers, sharers of solutions while maintaining some conventions that prevent total chaos.
Back in the 80's when I worked for Apple Steve Jobs spoke of the computer as appliance, something that was to become so intuitive that it required no more thought to use than a toaster. While great strides have been taken in that direction we are not much closer to that goal than we were in 1988. The problem is that the toaster was pretty much perfected back in 1950 when the pop-up feature was added. Those geeky guys and gals in Silicon Valley and Calcutta keep adding bells and whistles to the basic computer at an alarming rate. The appliance analogy is no longer appropriate to describe our relationship with technology. The only existing analogy that springs to mind is the old one about changing parts on a flying airplane. "Let's try this new wing design, we'll install it at 30,000 feet over Kansas, piece of cake."
This new analogy requires an even greater tolerance for ambiguity than the significant amount of tolerance good teachers already possess. To make technology work for the good of education we all need to be prepared to fail, to employ vast amounts of trial and error, to re-think, to admit we do not know all the answers, to let some problems rest for a while, to be willing to ask direction even from our students. What we've taken for granted in the past is a world that had a lot of static features. Touchstones and landmarks anchored our thinking about the world and how it works. The rock solid premises in many subject area still hold, what does not hold is who has access to knowledge and how it is passed from person to person. Technology and the Internet have reconfigured the conversations between teachers and student. Content and the keys to knowledge are no longer in the sole possession of teachers. Students can uncover more content in a few minutes than could be 'covered' in a year long course a few years ago. The role of the teacher is becoming, must become that of a provider of order, an asker of significant questions, a skeptic about the provenance of truth, a risk taker, a creative light. In some ways not a lot different that what good teacher s have always done, however, the shift is away from 'knowledge' provider and toward all those other things.
How did we get from email addresses and naming conventions to teaching philosophy? Simple, we (as teacher and students) have got to be willing to try and fail, be problem solvers, sharers of solutions while maintaining some conventions that prevent total chaos.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tonight, tonight
Tonight was the first meeting of EDUC 675 at Otterbein. All hands were present or accounted for and we picked up our 18th participant to make 6 teams of 3 for the course. So many interesting stories and levels of experience. I can't wait to see/hear blog entries and Jackdaws. It's my desire to help folks make use of all the pieces of knowledge they possess link to Web 2.0 tools. This is just a short post to try out an idea I have for modeling a new blog element: video. Here's a minute and a half video about the RCA video camera I showed in class. We'll see if it can be transfered to the blog as an element.
Try to comment on my blog so I know you are out there.
Dave
Try to comment on my blog so I know you are out there.
Dave
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
