Too much Technology in the Classroom?

In the recent article, "More Face-to-Face, Less Face-to-Screen" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Sharon Marshall writes about the struggle to maintain face-to-face connections while still taking advantage of technology in the classroom.

Trend Toward Self-Paced Online Classes

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently featured the article "Will Technology Kill the Academic Calendar?" which discusses the trend of some community colleges to offer classes that allow students to start and complete the course at any time and that consists of assignments without deadlines. The discussion includes whether this module is primarily financially driven and whether students' needs can really be met without a cohort and the structure of a traditional semester.

New Google App and the Future of Cloud Computing

ReadWriteWeb recently posted a blog entry covering a new Google app and the future demise of desktop applications.

First up, a quick review of Google Docs ability to share drawings--or more specifically related to learning environments: Quick one-page graphical reports that students could create to enhance learning for them and their classmates.

Second, a reference to a new Pew Trust Study that talks about the future of cloud computing and the demise of desktop computing by the year 2020.

In other words: Status Quo, just when you get settled, it's time to change things up again.

Talk of the Nation: Simple techniques can make you a great teacher

The title says it all. Find the podcast of the show, and a transcript after the jump.

Direct learning while students read

Something I learned from an instructor several years ago was the power of creating interaction with students in the middle of a reading assignment. The example at the time was to have students read focused content (in this instance about "Character" as it relates to Ethics) and then prompt the student with questions in the middle of the content before they continue reading. In this example, he would embed a form into the page, and ask questions related to having good/bad character. This form would then be processed and the instructor would get an e-mail which he could respond to if necessary--for instance, if the student didn't quite get the concept correct.A new tool, Tal.ki provides the opportunity to not only embed a single question, but entire conversations between students and the instructor around any given topic. There are some limitations to the implementation, the biggest of which seems to be the inability to focus a specific topic on a page. This might be addressed, but I'm still looking. Call if you're interested in exploring this with a Distance Learning staff member.

Challenging Perceptions About Distance Education

In a recent column in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Yale University Librarian and San Jose State University and Wayne State University distance learning instructor Todd Gilman discusses the reactions he has received from colleagues who have never taught online classes and debunks some of the myths about distance learning that still seem to perpetuate.

Lessons Learned from the Global Campus

Inside Higher Education has an interesting article about the demise of the University of Illinois Global Campus online education, degree-granting, for-profit project. It sounds like the model they embraced - to take course content crafted by experienced on campus faculty and have less experienced, less expensive faculty teach that content - was at the heart of the problem. One of the commenters in the article, Nicholas C. Burbules, a Urbana-Champaign educational policy professor, spoke about how online education is not just a different mode of delivery of on-campus course content. It sounds like the university is now moving in the direction of examining current successful online programs and building those programs into something bigger. This is something to consider when building distance and online classes - instead of just thinking about taking curriculum that works in the in-class environment and delivering it virtually, perhaps this points in the direction of considering what instruction has proved very sucessful (maybe even more sucessful than in the physical classroom) and how can we build up the strength of and expand online learning from those examples.

How Colleges Should Be Using Social Media

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed S. Craig Watkins, an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future about social network and the future of education. He speaks about the characteristics of this generation of technologically comfortable students and the manner in which technology is affecting instructor's teaching style and pedagogical techniques. Watkins also touches on concerns about privacy where higher education intersects with personal social network accounts.

Tech-free Classes?

NPR has an interesting article about Jose Bowen who is a Dean at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Contrary to how it may sound, he is not actually anti-technology when it comes to teaching. In fact, he has created and uses online games as a way of teaching music history to his students. Bowen is advocating an inversion of current teaching models (such as lecturing) in which instructors wait until students enter the classroom in order to introduce them to class materials and content. Bowen advocates using technology to familiarize students with content before coming into the classroom and then use the classroom time to interact directly with the students, rather than lecturing. This may be a really useful way to structure classes at ECC in order to take advantage of the technology we have available while freeing up precious class time for more interactive and collaborative work.

This Magic Moment...

ThisMoment, currently in Beta, is a new website that allows users to gather "presentations" about specific events. Links, videos, Google maps, comments, and other things are all linked together on a single page providing a multi-faceted perspective on a given moment in time. Could be an excellent opportunity for web presentations by students, especially if linked together. See a quick page I made on the USA vs. Honduras World Cup qualifying match.