Tag Archives: Pedagogy

A Busy Week

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The last seven days have been very busy for me, especially with presentations. Here are some of the highlights, and a few things to come.

Last Friday (Nov. 21/08), I presented Academic Integrity and the Culture of Sharing to instructors of the Faculty Certificate Program with SIAST (in Saskatoon). View slide deck.

On Saturday (Nov. 22/08), I presented on the use of technologies in the research process for the Learning From Practice conference. I created a wiki to support this presentation.

On Monday (Nov. 24/08), I co-presented with Dean Shareski on The New Interactive Classroom: Education, Teaching & Globalization for the Talking about School & Society series. Related to this, there was something quite interesting that happened earlier that day. My colleagues, Patrick Lewis and Marc Spooner, were interviewed for a local CBC Radio program called Blue Sky. While this was going on live, I asked people from Twitter to call in and ask questions and email the program. Before we knew it, we had calls from Virginia and Massachusetts, and an email was reported from Holland. Not bad for local radio, and I really have to want to do more with this idea. The radio program is well worth listening to, so here’s the link.

On Wednesday (Nov. 26/08), I spoke to a group of undergraduate students about social justice and technology. We were INCREDIBLY lucky to have had Howard Rheingold join us from California to speak about the concept of smart mobs and technology for political action/activism.. Howard is a pioneer of online communities, has been doing great stuff recently with the Social Media Classroom, and is one of my heroes. I put together a wiki to support this presentation as well.

On Thursday (Nov. 27/08), I presented from my office to Manitoba for Awakening Possibilities. I was joined by a list of terrific presenters as we were tasked with “5 minutes to make a difference.” These presentations have been archived, and are available here.

And now, after this busy week, it is time to switch gears as I will be leaving to Ukraine next week. A colleague and I are involved in the project “Youth Development of Democratic Citizenship” funded by a Partnerships for Tomorrow Phase II grant. My role will be to look at how technology can mediate long-term partnerships in the Ukraine, and focus on concepts of democratic media, digital citizenship, and social justice.

And when I get back … I have a week to finish my annual review forms, and write a chapter on the concept of open teaching.

I am happy (and lucky) to be busy … but I’m just a little stressed.

Networked Student – The Video

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With a style borrowed from the Common Craft videos, Wendy Drexler has put together an excellent video depicting what she calls the networked student. This is a terrific description of how networked learning may look for an individual student. Thanks Wendy for your obvious hard work on this concept and video!

More info:

The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler’s high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros’ Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century.

“Choose Your Own Adventure” Comes to Youtube

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I fondly remember the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series of books from my childhood. While I remember loving the concept, I would literally stick my fingers between the pages as to simultaneously navigate multiple paths made by previous decisions. Years later, I tried to figure out why I could not let go of any particular path. I realized that it was not that I was afraid of failing because of a poor decision, it was that I might miss something of value, something meaningful, along the way. This has been something I have thought about for a very long time as choice, and living with choices that have been made, is an essential part of the human experience. For a better understanding of this concept, I highly recommend Barry Schwartz’s TED Talk “Paradox of Choice” (or the book by the same name.

Choose Your Own Adventures - Cave of Time

Anywho … these thoughts came to me when I discovered “Time Machine” today. This video is the first of a series by Chad, Matt, and Rob that brings the “Choose Your Own Adventures” concept to video format, and does so by making good use of Youtube’s annotation feature. This concept could inspire some very neat uses of digital storytelling with video. I know it will be only a matter of time before we see teachers and students bring this concept to life in the classroom.

So if you want to try it out, start here:

It is a very good thing I have multiple screens, I no longer have to use my fingers. :-)

Streaming from the iPhone w/ Qik

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I have been playing with Qik for the last couple of weeks. Qik is a service that allows you to stream video from your mobile phone. It has been released officially for the Blackberry, but has not yet been authorized for the iPhone. Thus, to use it on the iPhone, you need to jailbreak your phone.

Qik - University of Regina Tour

Today, I took a short tour of my campus green while I streamed video from my iPhone. The video is automatically recorded, so if you are interested in seeing the results, click here. You will notice that I seem like I am talking to myself, but I am actually responding to the text chat that is superimposed over the video on the iPhone. Viewers reported good results, although several complained that they had to continue to hit refresh to see the live video.

So, minus the lack of content and mumbling, what do you think of the quality of video and audio? More importantly, what are some possible implications or educational uses for video from a mobile device?

Green Screen (Chroma Key) Basics

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As I’ve stated before, Izzy Video is one of the best resources I have come across in regards to learning digital video techniques. Izzy Video is not free (it’s about $45 USD for a 6 month subscription), but Izzy does release a few free videos from time-to-time. The latest free video outlines the basics of using a green screen in video production. As usual, it is very well done and informative.

Izzy Video

And, if you have missed it, I highly recommend taking a look at Matthew Needleman’s K12Online Conference presentation, “Kicking it Up a Notch Film School For Video Podcasters“. This is an excellent overview of the procedures and techniques you should know to get started with video in the classroom. Matthew has done a wonderful job of making this presentation equally informative and entertaining.

The Personal in PLNs

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I will teaching two open online courses next semester, and I have been brainstorming a number of ways to do things a bit differently. In both courses, students will go through the process of forming their own personal learning networking. “Their own” is key here and is something I have been struggling with. In the past, I have just given students a list of people from within my network, but I am beginning to think that this practice may be problematic. First, is this not a bit contrived? Or is it? Is this an accurate way of representing how learning networks form? Maybe. I am not sure. Second, does this not just lead to replicating well-formed, existing networks? Or, does this contribute to the dreaded “echo chamber” effect?

Sure, I know that if I give a short list of network contacts to my students, they are not by any means going to form the same exact network that I have, but I would bet these would be very similar. And I am not by any means trying to criticize the members of my own PLN. In fact, I wouldn’t be connected to you if I did not feel that it was a positive connection. But I am curious of what I am missing. I want to understand personal learning networks not only by the connections that form, but also by those that are absent.

So, help me out here. What if I gave each of my students a single point on the the network, a single individual (probably via a blog address), and made all attempts to keep these points as unrelated as possible (yes, quite difficult in our x degrees of separation world). What networks would students form? How similar would these PLNs be? And what could we learn about how educational PLNs form?

Most importantly, if I used this approach with my students, would this in any way disadvantage their learning opportunities?

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Open Doctrine? K-12 Online Conference Teaser

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Here is the teaser and introduction to my K12 Online Conference presentation, in the form of a personal attack ad. As mentioned earlier on this blog, my presentation will be titled “Open, Social, Connected: Reflections of an Open Graduate Course Experience.” A portion of the presentation will be devoted to the idea of openness in education, and how the actualization of this concept helped to create a transparent culture of sharing among students and other course participants.

I hope you enjoy the teaser and I invite you to participate in the rest of the coming presentation at the K12 Online Conference.

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click To Play

Thanks to Dan Carr for his narration and for helping bring this concept to life.

Oh … and there’s an edupunk version. :-)

Edmodo Launches

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I do not know much about this free tool, but I was just notified that Edmodo has launched.

Edmodo is a private microblogging platform developed for use in the classroom by teachers and students. Edmodo provides teachers and students the ability to share notes, links, and files to foster communication inside and outside of the classroom. Teachers also have the ability to post alerts, assignments, and events to share with their students.

Edmodo looks like a very useful tool, has a clean interface (feels a bit Drupaly), and could be an excellent tool for classroom teachers looking for a private blogging option. If anyone starts using it with their students, please let me know.

Edtech Posse Podcast 4.5 With Ewan McIntosh

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From the Edtech Posse site:

Ewan McIntosh came over from Scotland to share a pint and a pretty decent conversation with us. Rob Wall, Alec Couros, Dean Shareski, Cindy Seibel and Kyle Lichtenwald sat down with Ewan at Bobby’s Tavern in Moose Jaw. A big thanks to Dean for hosting a great get together in his home city.

Conversation with Ewan McIntosh and Friends
(Photo credit, Dean Shareski)

It was terrific to meet Ewan, and it was a great day for learning with good friends.

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No, THIS Guy Is Edupunk

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My friend and colleague Marc (who really needs a blog) alerted me to this story regarding a recent legal ruling in the matter of the University of Ottawa and the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa (UPUO). The case arose when the U of O charged that Professor Denis Rancourt “had misrepresented his course in a detailed web posting, in such a way as to have described a dramatically different course not compatible with the official course description.” The 65-page ruling the case supported Dr. Rancourt’s actions as within the purview of academic freedom.

But here is the stuff I really like! See these pieces of the ruling that help to describe how Dr. Rancourt led this controversial course.

The ruling establishes that pedagogical innovation and implementation are fully protected under the academic freedom enjoyed by a professor, including the choice of grading system – considered an integral part of the pedagogical method.

In the specific case, the protected pedagogical innovations included:

(a) A large fraction of the class time used to present societal and political material – in a physics course intended to deliver fundamental physics concepts as the only required physics course in an environmental studies program – as a way to motivate student learning and to position the science in the broad societal context. This was achieved using invited scientist and non-scientist speakers that included activists, politicians, community workers, etc. The ruling clarifies that no “exception [was] taken to the use of activism and social and political issues as catalysts to learning.”

(b) Parallel student workgroups with evolving themes and freely changing student memberships and town-hall-style whole-class discussions instead of traditional lectures delivered by the professor.

(c) An open invitation to all community members to freely and fully participate in the class, without necessarily officially registering and paying tuition, as a way to bring in the community to enrich class discussions and strengthen relevance and community connections. This brought in a variety of perspectives and expertises that would otherwise not have been available.

(d) Large latitude in individual student decision making regarding: order in which to learn things (e.g., workgroup membership and topic), depth of treatment, method of study, method of reporting progress, degree of cooperative work, etc. (Sharing was not considered cheating.)

(e) A satisfactory/non-satisfactory (S/NS) grading system rather than the traditional letter grade system (used in all other science courses given that term).

I have been very lucky that my Faculty and University has been supportive of my work in pursuing several similar approaches in my teaching. I am pleased to see the results of this case so positive for Dr. Rancourt as it has the potential to help other professors take risks toward passionate and creative forms of teaching and learning.

Learn more about this story here.

EC&I 831: Island Hopping Cruise Ship

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I’m finally getting a chance to go through some of the data collected from the study of my EC&I 831 graduate course. I absolutely love this passage from former student, Cindy Seibel, who describes her learning experience in the course.

To me this course was a personal journey loosely coupled in a community. I liken it to an island-hopping cruise ship. When we were on the ship on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there was an array of activities for us to participate in. Then we would stop at an island, get off and go on a personal investigation. We could sit on the beach and reflect, or go off an investigate something that had been triggered for us on the last ship’s activity. Our reflections and learnings were captured in our blogs and we would seek out each other through those expressions. Others outside the course would also participate in the same way, joining us randomly on the island or the ship. Then we would get back on the ship on Tuesday for a new buffet. So could we have done that with a closed LMS? I don’t think so. The public blogs were absolutely key to this experience. The open wiki was important as it forced us to “put ourselves out there”. That was an important part of the experience. We learned that there is a network out there if we choose to participate. The tools are almost secondary. Connecting to the network was key.

I love the cruise ship analogy. As well, I want to pay close attention to Cindy’s description of a “personal journey loosely coupled in a community.” It is an important distinction.