From DSC:
As a follow up to The Chegg situation is worse than you think [Feldstein] (which discussed cheating, buying answers, selling answers, proctoring software, and more), it seems to me that one of the challenges that we face in our teaching and learning efforts has to do with the transformation of our students: Helping them move from a K-16 world to the world of work. The below graphic tries to capture that idea. 

Transforming gameplayers into lifelong learners.

DSC: This is a picture I took of the Michigan Hall of Justice, in Lansing, MI.

What I mean to say is that our learners’ future clients don’t care about our learners’ ability to cram and score high on tests and then forget about topic XYZ. They want our learners to know and be able to apply topic XYZ in order to solve their problems/issues/needs. (Not to mention that being able to cram and do well on a high-stakes test is not nearly as helpful as spacing out their retrieval of topic XYZ over a much longer span of time.)

I hope that our students are hearing/experiencing from us: “We’re on your team. We’re here to help you.” And being transparent with our teaching techniques is key (i.e., here’s WHY I’m assigning this item or asking you to do this activity).

 

How to Remotely Support Students Who Learn Differently — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
A new distance learning toolkit offers best practices and advice to support students who learn differently

Excerpt:

The National Center for Learning Disabilities recently partnered with Understood to release a  distance learning toolkit for educators to support students who learn differently during the pandemic.

The need for such a toolkit is clear. One in five students learn differently, and there is evidence that students who struggle academically or utilize individualized support in school are more likely to fall behind during distance learning.

The toolkit builds on the lessons of a 2019 report Forward Together: Helping Educators Unlock the Power of Students Who Learn Differently.

 

 

Specialties In Instructional Design and What They Do — from teamedforlearning.com
Specialties in instructional design can help both job seekers and hiring managers find the right fit for digital learning courses and programs.

Excerpt:

An instructional designer is anyone who designs and develops digital learning experiences. That may sound straightforward, but within that vague job title nest dozens of specialties. Even more confusingly, instructional designers may also be called learning designers or learning architects. Their work often overlaps with that of instructional technologists and content creators. Specialties in instructional design help both teammates and hiring managers to navigate this evolving position.

Untangling the complexities of the instructional design role can help both job seekers and hiring managers find the right fit. Identifying a specialty can help professionals carve out their own niche in the instructional design ecosystem. Greater clarity around what instructional designers actually do can help team leaders find the right instructional designer for their project.

 

Putting Your Best Self Forward: 6 Keys For Filming Quality Videos — from er.educause.edu by Jered Borup
The difference between a video that students watch and one that is ignored often comes down to a few, easily addressed factors.

Excerpt:

  • Key #1: Convey Your Voice—Is the audio clear, or is there background noise or reverberations in the room that distract from your message?
  • Key #2: Find the Light—Are you well lit with a light source in front of you, or are you backlit and/or have shadows on your face?
  • Key #3: Frame and Maintain Eye Contact—Are you about at arm’s length and eye level with the camera, or are you looking down or up at the camera?
  • Key #4: Stage—Do you have personal and/or interesting things in the background, or are you recording in front of a blank wall?
  • Key #5: Be Prepared and Natural—Are you speaking naturally in a way that conveys your interest in the topic, or do you sound somewhat robotic and/or scattered?
  • Key #6: Keep it Short—Is the video under six minutes?

This article is part of a series about incorporating asynchronous video into educational activities:

 

 

Never Going Back: What Online Teaching in the Times of COVID Can Add to Our Teaching Toolkits – Elisabeth Sandberg — from cft.vanderbilt.edu with thanks to Beckie Supiano at the Chronicle for this resource

Excerpt:

Teaching online has not been all challenges for Sandberg. From this period of teaching, she has gathered a set of experiences that, she expects, will benefit her in an in-person setting, too. For one thing, Sandberg has explored new ways of optimizing the element of time in students’ learning. Realizing that even the most entertaining presenters become soon-to-bore lecturers in online settings, she became more attentive to keeping her prerecorded video lectures brief and dividing them into pieces interwoven with online activities. The Explain Everything app (a collaborative virtual whiteboard platform with multi-media features) has been helpful for annotating these short pieces of recorded lectures. Sandberg’s renewed attention to student attention has also made her more mindful of things she assigns out of class, and what these might represent in terms of student efforts. “I learned over the summer,” she said, referring to the CFT’s Online Course Design Institute, “how to be more cognizant of how much time the things that I consider easy work really take the students. And that was really a revealing piece that I will carry with me when we return to in person.”

 


From DSC:
I agree…the teaching toolboxes have expanded. In the future, teachers, professors, trainers, (and now parents) will have a wider selection of options/tools/pedagogies to select from.

Whats in your teaching toolbox?

 

Teacher, Are You There? Being “Present” in Online Learning — from er.educause.edu by Richard West

Excerpt:

Video technologies are part of that shift in helping online learners feel connected to teachers and peers. This connection comes from people developing the sense that they are “present” in the class, even if they are not physically in the same room. How is it possible to be present when you are physically separated?

 

 
 

Teaching: Why the Term ‘Hybrid Class’ Continues to Confuse — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpt:

Hybrid Confusion
Why is it so hard to define a hybrid class? Or, rather, why is it so hard for colleges to describe it in a course catalog? That was the question that popped into my mind after seeing this chart, tweeted out recently by Kevin McClure, an associate professor of higher education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

A slew of different delivery formats...whew!

But is it really helping anyone to define every possible permutation of “hybrid”? More to the point, what should colleges take into account when trying to balance specificity with clarity in course descriptions?

 

Managing In-Person and Distance Learning at the Same Time — from commonsense.org by Paul Barnwell

Excerpt:

As schools begin to reopen amid the changing pandemic, many classrooms will experience some form of hybrid instruction during the transition back to fully in-person learning. Along the way, schools and districts are embracing a variety of hybrid teaching and learning models. One particular model that can work for both students and teachers is known as hyflex instruction, but to be successful you’ll need to make room for some extra planning and consideration.

 

Learning from the Living [Class] Room: Adobe — via Behance — is already doing several pieces of this vision.

From DSC:
Talk about streams of content! Whew!

Streams of content

I received an email from Adobe that was entitled, “This week on Adobe Live: Graphic Design.”  (I subscribe to their Adobe Creative Cloud.) Inside the email, I saw and clicked on the following:

Below are some of the screenshots I took of this incredible service! Wow!

 

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

 

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

 

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

 

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

 

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

Adobe -- via Behance -- offers some serious streams of content

 


From DSC:
So Abobe — via Behance — is already doing several pieces of the “Learning from the Living [Class] Room” vision. I knew of Behance…but I didn’t realize the magnitude of what they’ve been working on and what they’re currently delivering. Very sharp indeed!

Churches are doing this as well — one device has the presenter/preacher on it (such as a larger “TV”), while a second device is used to communicate with each other in real-time.


 

 

MI Governor Gretchen Whitmer's email from

This programming is being broadcast on special on-air channels established by each of the participating public television stations in Michigan. It is also available as a livestream and stored for on-demand viewing on a variety of digital platforms, ensuring accessibility to all students, teachers and families in the state.

Michigan Learning Channel -- which stations carry it

An example schedule from About MLC:

Michigan Learning Channel Program Schedule for January 2021

 


From DSC:
It’s great to see this inclusive, FREE, convenient piece of the K-12 learning ecosystem! I’m all about this. Perhaps such a developing platform could integrate further interactivity and social/network-based learning into it:

Let's use television -- and later on smart TVs -- to provide a free medium to all K-12 students -- and build on top of that platform as time goes by.


Also see:

The MIchigan Learning Channel on Twitter

 

When the Animated Bunny in the TV Show Listens for Kids’ Answers — and Answers Back — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

Yet when this rabbit asks the audience, say, how to make a substance in a bottle less goopy, she’s actually listening for their answers. Or rather, an artificially intelligent tool is listening. And based on what it hears from a viewer, it tailors how the rabbit replies.

“Elinor can understand the child’s response and then make a contingent response to that,” says Mark Warschauer, professor of education at the University of California at Irvine and director of its Digital Learning Lab.

AI is coming to early childhood education. Researchers like Warschauer are studying whether and how conversational agent technology—the kind that powers smart speakers such as Alexa and Siri—can enhance the learning benefits young kids receive from hearing stories read aloud and from watching videos.

From DSC:
Looking at the above excerpt…what does this mean for elearning developers, learning engineers, learning experience designers, instructional designers, trainers, and more? It seems that, for such folks, learning how to use several new tools is showing up on the horizon.

 

The Chegg situation is worse than you think — from eliterate.us by Michael Feldstein

Excerpts:

Forbes just ran with an article entitled “This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid“.

Ouch.

Chegg -- This $12 Billion Company Is Getting Rich Off Students Cheating Their Way Through Covid

[Per Michael] To sum up:

  • Publishers, after selling expensive textbooks to students, sold the answers to the homework questions in those expensive books to Chegg.
  • Chegg sells the answers to the questions to the students, who often use them to cheat.
  • To combat this problem, universities pay for proctoring software, which is apparently more effective at preventing students from going to the bathroom than it is at preventing cheating.
  • To add insult to all of this injury, “to chegg” is now apparently a verb in the English language. We will all have to live with that linguistic violence.

Addendum on 2/9/21:

 

From DSC:
THIS is incredible technology! Check out the Chroma-keying technology and the handwriting extraction feature of the Sony Analytics appliance.

#AR hits the active learning classroom! THIS in incredible technology/functionality! See through your instructor as they write on the board!

From Sony’s website (emphasis DSC):

No matter where the speaker is standing, the Handwriting Extraction feature ensures that any words and diagrams written on a board or screen remain in full view to the audience — via AR (augmented reality).

Even if the speaker is standing directly in front of the board, their ideas, thinking process, and even their animated presentation, are all accessible to the audience. It’s also easy for remote viewers and those playing back the presentation at a later date to become immersed in the content too, as the presenter is overlaid and the content is never compromised.

Also, the chroma keying tech can be useful/engaging as well.

Chroma keying hits the Active Learning Classroom as well

 

Grab your audience’s attention and increase their engagement with intelligent video analytics technology.

I saw this at IUPUI’s recent webinar/tour of their new facilities. Here’s further information on that webinar from last Friday, 1/29/21:

Designing Large Active Learning Classrooms webinar/tour on 1/29/21 from the Mosaic Program at Indiana University; also features rooms/staff at IUPUI.

 

8 Strategies to Prevent Teaching Burnout — from chronicle.com by Flower Darby
What can you do this semester to protect your well-being and support your students? 

Excerpt:

My takeaway? Don’t rely on your usual, in-person discussion strategies. Now is the time to think creatively about what works well online. So what else might you try?

  • Use chat box and polling frequently.
  • Offer individual reflection activities. For example, two or three times during class, ask students to write a five-word summary of the preceding section. Students can submit their responses in a private chat or as a text-entry assignment after class in your learning management system.
  • Provide a guided notes document, partial slides, or diagrams that students can annotate with their own notes during class, and then submit to you at the end of class in the LMS for participation credit.
  • Create a Padlet or Jamboard where students post key takeaways at the end of class. (Bonus: They can serve as useful review documents later in the term.)
 
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