Those of you who know me from my earlier days at CCCOnline know that I tend to be a bit of a fanatic about email. . .particularly what I consider poor use of email. Many of us get hundreds of emails a day, requiring a great deal of time to process.
The ProfHacker column in today's Chronicle references an Email Charter created by Chris Anderson of TED. This charter presents 10 rules designed to reduce the time we spend dealing with email. I'm making an end-of-year resolution to adopt these rules!
Some of these rules are simply a condensed version of business writing 101. . .be clear, be concise, make it easy for your recipient to respond. Others are geared specifically toward email communication, such as avoiding logos or signatures in your emails that appear as attachments to your recipients, or using the subject line for your entire message.
Rule #9 is probably my biggest failing. I always feel like I need to send that response that simply says, "Thanks!" So from this point forward, please understand that I DO thank you for whatever it is you did for me or responded to in a previous message, so I'm not going to clutter up your inbox with an email that says so!
Happy holidays to you all.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Face to Face is For Special Occasions
My thoughts exactly!
There was a time when the only way you could listen to music, watch a play or a sporting event, or attend a class was live and face-to-face, because there were no ways to transmit or record these events electronically. Quite clearly those days are gone and we are the richer for it.
Read the whole post.
Lisa
Monday, November 21, 2011
Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Just got back from the ACTE (Association of Career and Technical Educators) conference in St. Louis. Have you ever had butter cake? It's my new favorite dessert. And maybe my new favorite meal!
That aside, however, what I really wanted to share with you today was some insight from Sir Ken Robinson. He is the author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, as well as Out of Our Minds, a book on creativity and innovation. Sir Robinson spoke at our opening general session. He was very funny, but he also made a number of sobering points about education.
His general theme is that our schools fail to recognize anything beyond society's standard definition of intelligence or learning. (His talk reminded me of the concept of multiple intelligences, to a degree). He laments that we continue to try to teach the same way today that we taught hundreds of years ago--and that in the process, we are alienating millions of students and convincing them that education is boring, old-fashioned, and unnecessary to anything of interest or use to them.
You Tube has an animated video of a presentation given by Sir Ken. It's fun to watch, and contains much of the information he shared with us at ACTE. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. (The animation also made me want to revise every online lecture note I ever created and build them like this animation is built!)
That aside, however, what I really wanted to share with you today was some insight from Sir Ken Robinson. He is the author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, as well as Out of Our Minds, a book on creativity and innovation. Sir Robinson spoke at our opening general session. He was very funny, but he also made a number of sobering points about education.
His general theme is that our schools fail to recognize anything beyond society's standard definition of intelligence or learning. (His talk reminded me of the concept of multiple intelligences, to a degree). He laments that we continue to try to teach the same way today that we taught hundreds of years ago--and that in the process, we are alienating millions of students and convincing them that education is boring, old-fashioned, and unnecessary to anything of interest or use to them.
You Tube has an animated video of a presentation given by Sir Ken. It's fun to watch, and contains much of the information he shared with us at ACTE. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. (The animation also made me want to revise every online lecture note I ever created and build them like this animation is built!)
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A National Digital Public Library
An article in the Chronicle last week notes that plans have been underway for some time to develop a national digital public library. The goal of the project is to, "assemble the collections of archives, museums, and universities across the country."
In the last year, planning has apparently become more serious, with a target date of April 2013 to have it "up and running." It appears that there is cooperation among a number of organizations to provide funding AND to provide access to a variety of digital collections, with Sloan and Arcadia currently serving as the primary funding sources.
It's an intriguing idea, and of course, entirely possible technologically. Many challenges exist, however, as shared by Doron Weber, vice president for programs at the Sloan foundation:
"There's a massive amount of physical, logistical meetings that have to take place in the next 18 months," he said. It will be essential to get firm commitments from institutions about what they're willing to make part of the library. "Right now we have phenomenal support from most of the institutions in the country," he said. "I think it's always hard when you have to get very specific about what collections are in and what collections are out."
While the Chronicle article is password protected, there are several articles online about the concept, as well as a Wiki that houses planning information (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/Main_Page) and the DPLA page (http://dp.la/).
In the last year, planning has apparently become more serious, with a target date of April 2013 to have it "up and running." It appears that there is cooperation among a number of organizations to provide funding AND to provide access to a variety of digital collections, with Sloan and Arcadia currently serving as the primary funding sources.
It's an intriguing idea, and of course, entirely possible technologically. Many challenges exist, however, as shared by Doron Weber, vice president for programs at the Sloan foundation:
"There's a massive amount of physical, logistical meetings that have to take place in the next 18 months," he said. It will be essential to get firm commitments from institutions about what they're willing to make part of the library. "Right now we have phenomenal support from most of the institutions in the country," he said. "I think it's always hard when you have to get very specific about what collections are in and what collections are out."
While the Chronicle article is password protected, there are several articles online about the concept, as well as a Wiki that houses planning information (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/Main_Page) and the DPLA page (http://dp.la/).
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Blackboard "Share" Feature
Loved today's announcement that Blackboard with incorporate a "share" button into the system, allowing faculty to choose to openly share course content. It will be interesting to see how and when this is implemented and what kind of control faculty will have over what exactly they wish to release. Stay tuned!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Teaching Without 18 Graduate Hours in a Subject? GASP!
"But here, it's O.K. that I don't know something. I can figure it out, and my job is to help the students do the same thing. It's very collaborative." This quote from Sarah Benson, an art history and comparative literature professor at St. John's College, refers to her experience teaching geometry at the request of her college. She begins by noting that, "There is bit if imposter syndrome." Ms. Benson was asked to teach geometry precisely because she knew very little about it. Now THAT'S placing trust in your faculty!
"As much of academia fractures into ever more specific disciplines, this tiny college still expects--in fact, requires--its professors to teach almost every subject, leveraging ignorance as much as expertise."
This article, "Seeing Value in Ignorance, College Expects Its Physicists to Teach Poetry," from the October 16 edition of The New York Times Education Edition, truly fascinated me, particularly with the current emphasis not only in Colorado but around the county on the requirement that faculty have multiple hours or even an advanced degree in any area in which they wish to teach.
St. John's president and board apparently believe that we learn (and teach) best those things of which we are ignorant. The degree to which this college has eschewed what most of us see as the "norm" in higher education (far beyond even the concept of teaching something in which the faculty member is not degreed) is fascinating , and this article makes me wonder if these folks might have at least part of the solution to our concerns about teaching students to think critically.
"As much of academia fractures into ever more specific disciplines, this tiny college still expects--in fact, requires--its professors to teach almost every subject, leveraging ignorance as much as expertise."
This article, "Seeing Value in Ignorance, College Expects Its Physicists to Teach Poetry," from the October 16 edition of The New York Times Education Edition, truly fascinated me, particularly with the current emphasis not only in Colorado but around the county on the requirement that faculty have multiple hours or even an advanced degree in any area in which they wish to teach.
St. John's president and board apparently believe that we learn (and teach) best those things of which we are ignorant. The degree to which this college has eschewed what most of us see as the "norm" in higher education (far beyond even the concept of teaching something in which the faculty member is not degreed) is fascinating , and this article makes me wonder if these folks might have at least part of the solution to our concerns about teaching students to think critically.
Monday, October 10, 2011
David Wiley on what's missing from OER
From Iterating Toward Openness, The Primary Challenge of the OER Movement:
1. The Complete and Utter Lack of Assessment in the OER Space. Humans are famously terrible at judging whether they’re “getting it” or not during learning. One of the primary reasons the CMU OLI courses are (and have been shown to be) so incredibly effective in supporting learning is because they include frequent formative assessments that help learners check their own understanding. These assessments provide immediate feedback, allowing informal learners to determine with greater confidence whether or not they’re “getting it.”
The vast majority of OER in the world do not include any assessments.
I think there is more agreement of what is good content than there is on what is good assessment, so perhaps assessment is more difficult. If content is used for multiple reasons does that change what should be assessed or how it should be assessed?
Lisa
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