teachers

Reflections on “IBM Foundation collaborates with AFT and education leaders to use Watson to help teachers”

On 09/28/2016, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, mathematics, microlearning, mobile learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, TVs, United States, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

IBM Foundation collaborates with AFT and education leaders to use Watson to help teachers — from finance.yahoo.com

Excerpt:

ARMONK, N.Y., Sept. 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Teachers will have access to a new, first-of-its-kind, free tool using IBM’s innovative Watson cognitive technology that has been trained by teachers and designed to strengthen teachers’ instruction and improve student achievement, the IBM Foundation and the American Federation of Teachers announced today.

Hundreds of elementary school teachers across the United States are piloting Teacher Advisor with Watson – an innovative tool by the IBM Foundation that provides teachers with a complete, personalized online resource. Teacher Advisor enables teachers to deepen their knowledge of key math concepts, access high-quality vetted math lessons and acclaimed teaching strategies and gives teachers the unique ability to tailor those lessons to meet their individual classroom needs.
…
Litow said there are plans to make Teacher Advisor available to all elementary school teachers across the U.S. before the end of the year.

In this first phase, Teacher Advisor offers hundreds of high-quality vetted lesson plans, instructional resources, and teaching techniques, which are customized to meet the needs of individual teachers and the particular needs of their students.

Also see:

Educators can also access high-quality videos on teaching techniques to master key skills and bring a lesson or teaching strategy to life into their classroom.

From DSC:
Today’s announcement involved personalization and giving customized directions, and it caused my mind to go in a slightly different direction. (IBM, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and others like Smart Sparrow are likely also thinking about this type of direction as well. Perhaps they’re already there…I’m not sure.)

But given the advancements in machine learning/cognitive computing (where example applications include optical character recognition (OCR) and computer vision), how much longer will it be before software is able to remotely or locally “see” what a third grader wrote down for a given math problem (via character and symbol recognition) and “see” what the student’s answer was while checking over the student’s work…if the answer was incorrect, the algorithms will likely know where the student went wrong. The software will be able to ascertain what the student did wrong and then show them how the problem should be solved (either via hints or by showing the entire problem to the student — per the teacher’s instructions/admin settings). Perhaps, via natural language processing, this process could be verbalized as well.

Further questions/thoughts/reflections then came to my mind:

Will we have bots that teachers can use to teach different subjects? (“Watson may even ask the teacher additional questions to refine its response, honing in on what the teacher needs to address certain challenges.)
Will we have bots that students can use to get the basics of a given subject/topic/equation?
Will instructional designers — and/or trainers in the corporate world — need to modify their skillsets to develop these types of bots?
Will teachers — as well as schools of education in universities and colleges — need to modify their toolboxes and their knowledgebases to take advantage of these sorts of developments?
How might the corporate world take advantage of these trends and technologies?
Will MOOCs begin to incorporate these sorts of technologies to aid in personalized learning?
What sorts of delivery mechanisms could be involved? Will we be tapping into learning-related bots from our living rooms or via our smartphones?

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

Also see:

Next Target for IBM’s Watson? Third-Grade Math — from nytimes.com by Elizabeth Harris
.
IBM Watson will help educators improve teaching skills — from zdnet.com by Natalie Gagliordi
The IBM Foundation has teamed with teachers and the American Federation of Teachers union to create an AI-based lesson plan tool called Teacher Advisor.

Cultures of Perpetual Learning [Richardson]

On 09/10/2016, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, career development, education, education reform, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, lifelong learning, reinvent, staying relevant, surviving, teachers, training / L&D, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Cultures of Perpetual Learning — by Will Richardson

Excerpts (additional emphasis by DSC):

Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of predictions about what the future of work holds for all of us, not just our kids. It’s interesting now to see some of those predictions actually playing out.

Case in point is this post in the Harvard Business Review that summarizes the Herculean change initiative now underway at AT&T. It’s a fascinating read on it’s own, but it’s even more interesting when you start to align some of the findings to the work of schools. Or maybe more daunting.

The biggest takeaway for me? Professional learning is now the responsibility of the learner. I’ve harped on that for a while now, but AT&T pushes that idea in spades.

All of this works within a “culture of perpetual learning.” AT&T employees know that their roles will change, on average, every four years. In other words, if you’re not constantly learning, you’re toast.

From DSC:
Several graphics come to mind (see below).

DanielChristian-No-longer-running-sprints--but-marathons

From the HBR article:

Rapidly Shifting Technical Demands
For the past three years, AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, has been making large strategic bets on a diverse range of wireless technologies—most recently the $63 billion acquisition of satellite television company DirecTV. Asked about the decision to venture into new businesses, John Stankey, the head of AT&T’s Entertainment Group, says, “We have no choice.” Customers are demanding constant connectivity; from 2007 to 2015, for example, data traffic on AT&T’s wireless network grew by more than 150,000%. The company forecasts that by 2020, 75% of its network will be controlled by software-defined architecture. That percentage was virtually zero in 2000. This means, says Stankey, that most of AT&T’s global employees “signed up for a deal that is entirely different from the environment in which their business operates today.”

ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

The pace has changed significantly and quickly

Ed Tech & AI: How Education Chatbots [could] Revolutionize Personalized Learning [Walker]

On 08/22/2016, in 21st century, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, education, education technology, emerging technologies, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, motivation, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, training / L&D, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, virtual tutoring, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Education Technology And Artificial Intelligence: How Education Chatbots [could] Revolutionize Personalized Learning — from parentherald.com by Kristine Walker

From DSC:
I inserted a [could] in the title, as I don’t think we’re there yet. That said, I don’t see chatbots, personal assistants, and the use of AI going away any time soon. This should be on our radars from here on out. Chatbots could easily be assigned some heavy lifting duties within K-20 education as well as in the corporate world; but even then, we’ll still need excellent teachers, professors, and trainers/subject matter experts out there. I don’t see anyone being replaced at this point.

Excerpt:

As the equity gap in American education continues, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been urging educators, investors and tech companies to be more open in investing time and money in artificial intelligence-driven education technology programs. The reason? Gates believed that these AI-based EdTech platforms could personalize and revolutionize school learning experience while eliminating the equity gap.

Also see:

Are ‘Motivation Bots’ Part of the Future of Education? — from educationworld.com

The Motivation, Revision and Announcement bots each perform respective functions that are intended to help students master exams.

The Motivation bot, for instance, “keeps students motivated with reminders, social support, and other means,” while the Revision bot “helps students to best understand ways to improve their work” and the Announcement bot “tells students how much studying they need to do based on the amount of time available.”

Somewhat related:

Deep Learning Is Still A No-Show In Gartner 2016 Hype Cycle For Emerging Technologies — from .forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt:

Machine learning is best defined as the transition from feeding the computer with programs containing specific instructions in the forms of step-by-step rules or algorithms to feeding the computer with algorithms that can “learn” from data and can make inferences “on their own.” The computer is “trained” by data which is labeled or classified based on previous outcomes, and its software algorithms “learn” how to predict the classification of new data that is not labeled or classified. For example, after a period of training in which the computer is presented with spam and non-spam email messages, a good machine learning program will successfully identify, (i.e., predict,) which email message is spam and which is not without human intervention. In addition to spam filtering, machine learning has been applied successfully to problems such as hand-writing recognition, machine translation, fraud detection, and product recommendations.

Love this VR of a classroom lesson – 7 uses that really takes you there — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Excerpt:

I received a fascinating link via Twitter from Chris Edwards, a Deputy Head in Surrey, who was interested in views on his experiment with a 360 camera and VR. In the 360 degree video, Mike Kent, a Geography teacher, delivers a great lesson and you can look round the entire room as students and teacher move around, get things done, interact with the teacher and go through a Q&A session. It is fascinating. They’re using this approach for lesson observations allowing the teacher, or their colleagues, to watch it back in full Virtual Reality. This gives the teacher a view of themselves, from the student’s point of view, as well as observe ‘everything’ that happens in the classroom. It made me think of different possibilities…..

Good lessons by great teachers must surely be worth viewing by novice teachers. The rich set of processes, actions, behaviours, body language and interactions that go into a great lesson are complex, wonderfully captured in this example and could be done on any subject. A bank of such lessons would be far more useful than dry lesson plans.

From DSC:
Donald covers a range of ideas including using these 360 degree cameras and VR in regards to addressing:

Exemplar lessons
Teacher training in school
Behaviour training
Students
Parents
Class layout
Research

Also see:
(You can turn around/view the entire room and somewhat move about the space by zooming in and out):

Also see:

From DSC:
Though the title of Ashley Coolman’s blog posting out at smartsparrow.com mentions technology in it, the article is largely not about technology at all — but rather about the benefits of active learning. That’s why I’m highlighting it here.

Enabling active learning through technology — from smartsparrow.com by Ashley Coolman

Excerpts:

To many, it seems as though any learning can be considered active. Is a student taking notes not actively engaged in a class, especially when compared to their peers sleeping or playing on their phones in the back of the room?

The problem here is that while the note-taking student may be engaging with the class and professor, they are not engaging with the material. When furiously scribbling notes, students are more focused on getting every word down rather than evaluating, understanding, and analyzing what it is they are writing. They have engaged with the lecture, but not the material being relayed — which is the most important part.

In a study on active learning called “Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom”, the researchers stated:

“Surprisingly, educators’ use of the term “active learning” has relied more on intuitive understanding than a common definition. Consequently, many faculty assert that all learning is inherently active and that students are therefore actively involved while listening to formal presentations in the classroom. Analysis of the research literature (Chickering and Camson 1987), however, suggests that students must do more than just listen: They must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems. Most important, to be actively involved, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.” (Bonwell and Eison 1991)

It is the degree and form by which students are actively engaging that matters. It is “learning by doing” that students really need.

Active learning is any learning activity in which the student INTERACTS or ENGAGES with the material, as opposed to passively taking in the information.

Furthermore, Cornell University found that research suggests learner attention starts to wane every 10–20 minutes during lectures. Incorporating active learning techniques a few times throughout class can encourage more engagement.*

*A side note from DSC:
A tool like Socrative may come in useful here.

The blog posting from Smart Sparrow also linked to this resource:

The problem is that lecture-based learning is not like filling a jug — you just don’t catch it all. Learning from lectures is more like holding out your hands and trying to keep the imparted knowledge from spilling through the cracks in this tidal wave of new information. Ultimately, students will catch some of the water, but most of it will be lost.

A side note from DSC to Calvin College faculty members:
If you doubt the immediately preceding quote, see if you can *fully* recall exactly what last Sunday’s sermon was about — including all examples, details, and wisdom that the preacher was trying to relay.

Ultimately, it’s about impact. What strongly impacts students stays with students — and isn’t that true for all of us?

Ashley lists the following resources re: active learning at the end of her posting:

Paper 53 is the ‘sketch-iPad’ you always wanted — from edtech4beginners.com

Excerpt:

Paper 53 is a brilliant app which combines drawings, notes, photos and sketches. It is available on the Appstore. The app is simple and user-friendly; just use your finger (or a stylus) to draw, paint, select colours, erase and lots more.

Google’s virtual reality field trips are available to everyone — from engadget.com by Jon Fingas
Students can also use Google Cast to share their screens across the classroom.

10 very good new educational web tools — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

Below is a collection of some new educational web tools and mobile apps to try out in your instruction. The purpose is to keep you updated about the new releases in the EdTech world and empower you with the necessary technology to take your teaching and learning to the next level. Some of the things you can do with these applications include: Learn English pronunciation from native speakers, easily save web content to Google, search YouTube without having to stop the video playing, learn basic math skills through challenging games and activities, unshare sent files in Gmail, create interactive and engaging videos by adding polls, short questions and quizzes, create beautiful presentations and animations using drawn images and stick figures and many more.

Teaching with digital timelines — from Derek Bruff

Excerpt:

This year the Center for Teaching hosted a few educational technology working groups for faculty, staff, and students interested in exploring ways particular technologies might meet their instructional goals. One of the groups investigated the use of digital timeline tools, like Tiki-Toki and TimelineJS, that facilitate the creation of online, multimedia, interactive, and collaborative timelines. I had used such tools in my own teaching, having asked my 2010 writing seminar students to create a class timeline on the history of cryptography, and I was eager to talk with other instructors about the potential of student-produced timelines.

Top 5 AI virtual assistants: Now and into the future — from interestingengineering.com

Excerpt:

In Silicon Valley and elsewhere there’s currently an AI arms race going on. The first wave of this race is centered around artificial virtual assistants that are poised to become our new digital best friends in the very near future. While many people are familiar with Apple’s popular AI virtual assistant, Siri, there are four other main players in the AI virtual assistant space.

From DSC:
Twitter is also a tool that you should consider putting in your toolbox — or in your students’ toolboxes. Consider how it was used here –> This Henry VIII Twitter Account Is The Best Way To Learn About Brexit | @KngHnryVIII tells it like it is (and like how it was in the 1500s).

Heuristic Media is working on 37 apps, 1 for each Shakespeare play — with The Tempest as its pilot app.

Addendum on 6/30/16:

A Good Infographic Featuring 30 Web Tools for Teacher Librarians — from educatorstechnology.com
.
7 Apps for Student Creators — from edutopia.org by Monica Burns
.
Introducing the new mobile app for Microsoft Flow — from flow.microsoft.com with thanks to Mr. Michael Haan, Technology Integration Specialist/Purchasing w/ Calvin Information Technology, for this resource

Teachers, professors, & students: Here’s an interesting way to use Twitter to learn about a historical figure.

On 06/30/2016, in adjunct faculty, education technology, Europe, faculty/staff, higher education, history, ideas, K-12 related, pedagogy, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, UK, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Twitter is a tool that you should consider putting in your toolbox — or in your students’ toolboxes. Consider how it was used here –> This Henry VIII Twitter Account Is The Best Way To Learn About Brexit | @KngHnryVIII tells it like it is (and like how it was in the 1500s).

Amazon unveils online education service for teachers [Singer]

On 06/27/2016, in Amazon, digital learning, open courseware and systems, teachers, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Amazon unveils online education service for teachers — from nytimes.com by Natasha Singer

Excerpt:

Just ahead of the back-to-school season, Amazon is making a major foray into the education technology market for primary and secondary schools, a territory that Apple, Google and Microsoft have heavily staked out.

On Monday morning, Amazon said that it would introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional materials for teachers in late August or early September.

Called Amazon Inspire, the education site has features that may seem quite familiar to frequent Amazon shoppers. Search bar at the top of the page? Check. User reviews? Check. Star ratings for each product? Check.

Interesting thought: “The future of online learning will happen via messaging services.” [Daily Bits Of]

On 06/22/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, change, changing business models, colleges, communications, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, elearning, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, future, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, microlearning, new business models, online learning, social learning / networks, social media, streams of content, teachers, training / L&D, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

What the bot revolution could mean for online learning — from huffingtonpost.com by Daily Bits Of

Excerpt:

We’re embracing the bot revolution
With these limitations in mind, we embrace the bot movement. In short, having our bite-sized courses delivered via messaging platforms will open up a lot of new benefits for our users.

The courses will become social.
It will become easier to consume a course via a channel that fits best for the course.
The courses will become more interactive.
Bots will remove some of the friction

The future of online learning will happen via messaging services.

Also relevant here:

From DSC:
By posting such items, I’m not advocating that we remove teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, etc. from the education/training equations. Rather, I am advocating that we use technology as tools for educating and training people — and using technologies to help people of all ages grow, and reinvent themselves when necessary. Such tools should be used to help our overworked teachers, professors, trainers, etc. of the world in delivering excellent, effective elearning experiences for our students/employees.

Safeshare.tv — a safe way to watch and share YouTube and Vimeo videos.

On 06/16/2016, in corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, digital video, education, Google, higher education, K-12 related, morals/values, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, user experience (UX), vendors, by Daniel Christian

safeshare.tv
A safe way to watch and share YouTube and Vimeo videos.

Association for Learning Environments | 2016 Regional Award Winners and Commendations (Australia)

On 06/09/2016, in architecture, Australia, innovation, K-12 related, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, smart classrooms, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Association for Learning Environments | 2016 Regional Award Winners and Commendations

Excerpt:

OVERALL WINNER OF ALL CATEGORIES:
The Learning Project for CAULFIELD GRAMMAR SCHOOL by Hayball (in association with LEaRN, The University of Melbourne)

Also see:

How innovative design is changing the education landscape — from educatoronline.com.au by Brett Henebery

Connecting the education community with research on learning — from digitalpromise.org

Excerpt:

When designing a program or product, many education leaders and ed-tech developers want to start with the best knowledge available on how students learn. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

Although thousands of academic articles are published every year, busy education leaders and product developers often don’t know where to start, or don’t have time to sift through and find studies that are relevant to their work. As pressure mounts for “evidence-based” practices and “research-based” products, many in the education community are frustrated, and want an easier way to find information that will help them deliver stronger programs and products — and results. We need better tools to help make research more accessible for everyday work in education.

The Digital Promise Research Map meets this need by connecting education leaders and product developers with research from thousands of articles in education and the learning sciences, along with easy-to-understand summaries on some of the most relevant findings in key research topics.

Also see:

New forms of HCI raise numerous career-related and curriculum-related questions for us [Christian]

On 06/03/2016, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, interactivity, interface design, internet, languages and translation, learning, lifelong learning, professional development, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, universities, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Questions from DSC:

Which jobs/positions are being impacted by new forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)?
What new jobs/positions will be created by these new forms of HCI?
Will it be necessary for instructional technologists, instructional designers, teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, learning space designers, and others to pulse check this landscape? Will that be enough?
Or will such individuals need to dive much deeper than that in order to build the necessary skillsets, understandings, and knowledgebases to meet the new/changing expectations for their job positions?
How many will say, “No thanks, that’s not for me” — causing organizations to create new positions that do dive deeply in this area?
Will colleges and universities build and offer more courses involving HCI?
Will Career Services Departments get up to speed in order to help students carve out careers involving new forms of HCI?
How will languages and language translation be impacted by voice recognition software?
Will new devices be introduced to our classrooms in the future?
In the corporate space, how will training departments handle these new needs and opportunities? How will learning & development groups be impacted? How will they respond in order to help the workforce get/be prepared to take advantage of these sorts of technologies? What does it mean for these staffs personally? Do they need to invest in learning more about these advancements?

As an example of what I’m trying to get at here, who all might be involved with an effort like Echo Dot? What types of positions created it? Who all could benefit from it? What other platforms could these technologies be integrated into? Besides the home, where else might we find these types of devices?

Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses the same far-field voice recognition as Amazon Echo. Dot has a small built-in speaker—it can also connect to your speakers over Bluetooth or with the included audio cable. Dot connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, provide information, news, sports scores, weather, and more—instantly.

Echo Dot can hear you from across the room, even while music is playing. When you want to use Echo Dot, just say the wake word “Alexa” and Dot responds instantly. If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, you can set a different wake word for each—you can pick “Amazon”, “Alexa” or “Echo” as the wake word.

Or how might students learn about the myriad of technologies involved with IBM’s Watson? What courses are out there today that address this type of thing? Are more courses in the works that will address this type of thing? In which areas (Computer Science, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, other)?

Lots of questions…but few answers at this point. Still, given the increasing pace of technological change, it’s important that we think about this type of thing and become more responsive, nimble, and adaptive in our organizations and in our careers.

“The flipped classroom is about moving the hard parts of learning into the classroom” [Bruff]

On 05/27/2016, in adjunct faculty, face-to-face, faculty/staff, flipping -- inverted learning, higher education, ideas, learning, participation, pedagogy, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, writing, by Daniel Christian

“The flipped classroom is about moving the hard parts of learning into the classroom”
— Derek Bruff

Class Time Reconsidered: Flipping the Literature Class — from Derek Bruff

Excerpt:

Reading a text or commenting on a blog post are usually activities we ask students to do outside of class. But Helen and Humberto have flipped that idea by bringing those activities into the classroom, where they could be collaborative and communal. Why? Because close reading of a text and responding to another writer’s argument are both important skills in a literature course. Why not have students practice those skills during class, when they can receive feedback on that practice from both their instructor and their peers?

And that’s what the flipped classroom is actually all about. Never mind that bit about lecture videos and group work. The flipped classroom is about moving the hard parts of learning into the classroom, where they can benefit from what Helen Shin calls “shared temporal, spatial, and cognitive presence.” After all, most of us only have maybe 150 minutes a week with our students during class. Shouldn’t we spend that time engaging our students in the kind of practice and feedback that’s central to learning in our disciplines?

Also see:

Flipping the Flipped Classroom: The Beauty of Spontaneous and Instantaneous Close Reading. — by Haerin (Helen) Shin, Assistant Professor of English, Cinema & Media Arts, Asian Studies

Teaching has always been a learning experience for me. Likewise, theory and practice go hand in hand, each supplementing and enriching the other. What I learned by “flipping” the “flipped classroom” model with this particular experience, which I hope to carry over to more classes to follow, is that there is always more room for further conceptual, and perspectival flipping in the interactive and dynamic process of teaching and learning.

Teaching while learning: What I learned when I asked my students to make video essays — from chronicle.com by Janine Utell, Professor of English at Widener University

Excerpt:

This is not exactly a post about how to teach the video essay (or the audiovisual essay, or the essay video, or the scholarly video). At the end I share some resources for those interested in teaching the form: the different ways we might define the form, some of the theoretical/conceptual ideas undergirding the form, how it allows us to make different kinds of arguments, and some elements of design, assignment and otherwise.

What I’m interested in here is reflecting on what this particular teaching moment has taught me. It’s a moment still in progress/process. These reflections might pertain to any teaching moment where you’re trying something new, where you’re learning as the students are learning, where everyone in the room is slightly uncomfortable (in a good, stretching kind of way), where failure is possible but totally okay, and where you’re able to bring in a new interest of your own and share it with the students.

…

Take two: I tried this again in an upper-level narrative film course, and the suggestions made by students in the previous semester paid off. With the additional guidance, students felt comfortable enough being challenged with the task of making the video; a number of them shared that they liked having the opportunity to learn a new skill, and that it was stimulating to have to think about new ways of making choices around what they wanted to say. Every step of realizing their storyboard and outline required some problem-solving, and they were able to articulate the work of critical thinking in surprising ways (I think they themselves were a little surprised, too).

…

Some resources on the video essay/scholarly video:

“How to Make Video Essays: Resources for Teachers and Students,” by Catherine Grant, The Audiovisual Essay
“Teaching the Scholarly Video,” by Christian Keathley, Frames Cinema Journal
“On the Origin of the Video Essay,” by John Bresland, Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and Arts
“Resources: [in]Transition,” A MediaCommons/Cinema Journal Project

From DSC:

A couple of comments that I wanted to make here include:

I greatly appreciate Janine’s humility, her wonderful spirit of experimentation, and her willingness to learn something right along with her students. She expressed to her students that she had never done this before and that they all were learning together. She asked them for feedback along the way and incorporated that feedback in subsequent attempts at using this exercise. Students and faculty members need to realize/acknowledge/accept that few people know it all these days — experts are a dying breed in many fields, as the pace of change renders it thus.
.
Helping students along with their new media literacy skills is critical these days. Janine did a great job in this regard! Unfortunately, she is in an enormous minority. I run a Digital Studio on our campus, and so often I enter the room with dismay…a bit of sorrow creeps back into me again, as too many times our students are not learning some of the skills that will serve them so well once they graduate (not to mention how much they would benefit from being able to craft multimedia-based messages and put such messages online in their studies while in college). Such skills will serve students well in whatever future vocation they go into. Knowing some of the tools of the trade, working with digital audio and video, storyboarding, working with graphics, typography, and more — are excellent skills and knowledge to have in order to powerfully communicate one’s message.

Learning Ecosystems

Cultures of Perpetual Learning [Richardson]

Amazon unveils online education service for teachers [Singer]

Reflections on “Teaching while learning: What I learned when I asked my students to make video essays” [Utell]

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