participation

Teaching: Fresh Approaches to Faculty Development — from chronicle.com by Beckie Supiano

Excerpt:

Baranovic can’t imagine returning to the old model: He’s sticking to panels in Zoom. Among the benefits, he says: “This arrangement breaks institutional silos, allows faculty to talk more about their experiences, shares effective practices from sources faculty trust (their peers), creates a stronger sense of community, makes it easy for panelists (they receive the questions ahead of time if they want to prepare, but because they’re speaking to experience, they don’t really have to prepare), and creates a form of support that works like therapy but doesn’t feel like therapy.”

Next, Baranovic hopes to turn the panels into a podcast format for professors unable to attend in real time.

From DSC:
As someone who had been involved with Teaching & Learning Centers for years, I can tell you that it’s very disheartening to put together a training session for faculty members and have very few — if any — people show up for it. It’s a waste of time and it leaves the T&L staff and/or IT staff members feeling discouraged and unvalued.

Over the years, I developed a preference for putting things into an asynchronous digital format for faculty members and adjunct faculty members to access per their own schedules. The institutions that I was working for got a greater ROI from those sessions and they were able to visit an internal “course” or website to reference those materials on-demand.

I also like the idea of podcasting here, but that takes a lot of time and effort — and isn’t always possible when you are one person trying to assist hundreds of faculty members (from a technical support and an LMS admin standpoint).

As an Instructional Designer, I also want to comment that it’s hard to help steer a car if you can’t even get into the car. Those institutions that are using team-based approaches will be far more successful in designing and developing more polished, effective, accessible learning experiences. Very few people can do it all.

It’s (Past) Time to Redesign the Teaching Profession — from gettingsmart.com by Katie Kimbrell

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

I don’t care if you don’t have kids, if your kids are grown, or if you think for some reason you’re shielded from this threat: This crisis should concern everyone. Just like when any core institution is threatened to subsist, reinvention is not just an opportunity to do better, but an imperative to survive—both for an institution, but more importantly, for our collective humanity.

Please note that this piece is not making an argument for the concept of agency teaching (ie. please don’t send me your theses on why my idea is bad), but rather to demonstrate a point about the need to rethink the teaching profession and to treat educators as humans and critical stakeholders in the way we redesign it.
…
Asking a critical mass of past, present, and future educators these questions is where the empathy work begins—and therein the only way we will be on the right track in designing a system that works for all the humans inside of it.

Also relevant/see:

Who is Going to Teach the Kids? — from by Cameron Paterson

Key Points:

There have been profound changes in the work and workload of teachers.
During remote learning, both teachers and students discovered a new sense of autonomy.
Reprioritizing the focus of work for teachers is critical to the success of schools.

Learners need: More voice. More choice. More control. -- this image was created by Daniel Christian

Want Students Who Think for Themselves? Let’s Eliminate Our Standardized School System [Morita]

On 03/27/2022, in education, education reform, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, more voice more choice more control, motivation, participation, passions, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

Want Students Who Think for Themselves? Let’s Eliminate Our Standardized School System — from edsurge.com by Zachary Morita

Excerpt:

It is a wake-up call when a student feels defeated by an educational system that focuses on standardizing students who feel like they are “the problem.” We can’t expect students to understand the purpose of education on their own. They need educators, leaders and supporters to guide them to create the education system they deserve to succeed in life. I stand by what I share with all of my students: that we must reimagine and redesign our education system so that students are NOT the problem.

Instead, we must ensure that learners are intrinsically motivated through learning activities that are challenging, purposeful, relevant and empowering.

Students Co-authoring Their Own Learning [Vander Ark]

On 03/27/2022, in education, education reform, experimentation, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, more voice more choice more control, participation, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

Students Co-authoring Their Own Learning — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Key Points

By inviting learners to co-author learning experiences, journeys and records, we help them build the most important skills and dispositions they’ll need to succeed in a changing world.
Helping learners weave together learner-chosen and co-authored experiences into coherent pathways is the new learning design challenge.

One District’s Ongoing Hybrid Success — from by Erik Ofgang
Early in the pandemic, Kyle Berger, chief technology officer for Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District, installed cameras in every classroom for hybrid learning. Those cameras continue to be used in innovative ways.

Excerpt:

In the meantime, the cameras continue to be utilized in a variety of ways, including:

For students who are out of school with COVID or for other medical reasons to keep participating in class.
To allow a teacher to quickly record an explanation or lesson so students can access it later. “The way they’re mounted on the ceiling, the teachers started taking that to a different level because you could reach up to the webcam if you wanted to and you could turn it to point down, and now in a sense, it’s a document camera,” Berger says.
To help with the substitute teacher shortage. “We can bridge two classrooms together through our video solutions, and maybe just have an instructional aide in the second classroom,” Berger says.
To allow educators to engage in professional development by watching videos of their own lectures and lessons.

“It’s really allowed us a lot more flexibility to continue to navigate the ever-changing environment and education right now,” Berger says.

From DSC:
I’d probably use the word hyflex here instead of the word hybrid…but you get the point. I would also assert that for the following relevant article as well:

Hybrid classrooms – impressive solutions but are we asking the right questions? — from acreelman.blogspot.com by Alastair Creelman

Reflections on “Do We Really Want Academic Permanent Records to Live Forever on Blockchain?” [Bohnke]

On 03/19/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Alternatives, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education, elearning, formal learning, future, future of higher education, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, online learning, open courseware and systems, participation, professional development, project-based learning, publishing, real-world assignments, social learning / networks, society, student-related, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Christin Bohnke raises a great and timely question out at edsurge.com in her article entitled:
Do We Really Want Academic Permanent Records to Live Forever on Blockchain?

Christin does a wonderful job of addressing the possibilities — but also the challenges — of using blockchain for educational/learning-related applications. She makes a great point that the time to look at this carefully is now:

Yet as much as unchangeable education records offer new chances, they also create new challenges. Setting personal and academic information in stone may actually counter the mission of education to help people evolve over time. The time to assess the benefits and drawbacks of blockchain technology is right now, before adoption in schools and universities is widespread.

As Christin mentions, blockchain technology can be used to store more than formal certification data. It could also store such informal certification data such as “research experience, individual projects and skills, mentoring or online learning.”

The keeping of extensive records via blockchain certainly raises numerous questions. Below are a few that come to my mind:

Will this type of record-keeping help or hurt in terms of career development and moving to a different job?
Will — or should — CMS/LMS vendors enable this type of feature/service in their products?
Should credentials from the following sources be considered relevant?
- Microlearning-based streams of content
- Data from open courseware/courses
- Learning that we do via our Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and social networks
- Learning that we get from alternatives such as bootcamps, coding schools, etc.
Will the keeping of records impact the enjoyment of learning — or vice versa? Or will it depend upon the person?
Will there be more choice, more control — or less so?
To what (granular) level of competency-based education should we go? Or from project-based learning?
Could instructional designers access learners’ profiles to provide more personalized learning experiences?
…and I’m certain there are more questions than these.

All that said…

To me, the answers to these questions — and likely other questions as well — lie in:

Giving a person a chance to learn, practice, and then demonstrate the required skills (regardless of the data the potential employer has access to)
.
Giving each user the right to own their own data — and to release it as they see fit. Each person should have the capability of managing their own information/data without having to have the skills of a software engineer or a database administrator. When something is written to a blockchain, there would be a field for who owns — and can administer — the data.

In the case of finding a good fit/job, a person could use a standardized interface to generate a URL that is sent out to a potential employer. That URL would be good for X days. The URL gives the potential employer the right to access whatever data has been made available to them. It could be full access, in which case the employer is able to run their own queries/searches on the data. Or the learner could restrict the potential employer’s reach to a more limited subset of data.

Visually, speaking:

I still have a lot more thinking to do about this, but that’s where I’m at as of today. Have a good one all!

Revisiting Camera Use in Live Remote Teaching: Considerations for Learning and Equity [Turner]

On 03/17/2022, in adjunct faculty, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), colleges, communications, community colleges, digital learning, distance education, education technology, higher education, instructional design, IT in HE, law schools, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, online learning, participation, pedagogy, policy, privacy, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, remote teaching and learning, student-related, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, telepresence, United States, universities, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Revisiting Camera Use in Live Remote Teaching: Considerations for Learning and Equity — from er.educause.edu by Patricia Turner

Excerpts:

Given the need to balance equity concerns with effective teaching practices, the following suggestions might be helpful in articulating an approach to using cameras in live remote teaching sessions. This list is not exhaustive; these suggestions are offered as a starting point from which to begin thinking about this issue.

…
Given what we know from research about interaction, active learning, equity, and inclusion, one possible philosophy is this: if we believe that some students are not using a camera because of privacy issues, because they lack a quiet space in which to learn, or because of inequitable circumstances, we can let our students know that we are available if they need help and that, although we can’t solve all problems, we may be able to help students get the support and resources they need.

Inclusive Hiring in Tech: How to Write More Inclusive Job Descriptions [from one of our nieces, Jill Bender]

On 03/07/2022, in Amazon, Apple, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), career development, computer science, corporate / business world, culture, innovation, participation, programming, technology (general), United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Inclusive Hiring in Tech: How to Write More Inclusive Job Descriptions — from one of our nieces, Ms. Jill Bender

Addendum on 3/8/22:

How sponsorship can help women in tech advance — from mckinsey.com

You Sleuth is a family-friendly outdoor game that requires a moderate amount of walking. You can play by yourself or with a group of friends or family. If you are looking for something new that will stimulate your mind while sneaking in a little exercise and fresh air then register today. Read the rest of the FAQ for more details about how You Sleuth works.

From DSC:
What might this look/work like for learning-related applications? Also, if you are studying to be an actor or actress, might there be some new opportunities for you here!? If you are a writer, might there be some new sorts of collaborations opening up here? As the next version of the internet is developed, what new affordances/opportunities might exist in this area?

How Art Class Became a Rare Bright Spot for Students and Families During the Pandemic — from edsurge.com by Daniel Lempres

Excerpt:

When schools went remote two years ago, the National Art Education Association (NAEA) was quick to offer guidance on how best to reach students who have experienced trauma. They offered strategies for remote learning, as well as mental and emotional wellbeing.

Now more than ever, art educators must employ the tenets of social emotional learning, the NAEA says. In a recent report, the association recommended trauma-informed teaching strategies to promote mental health through self-expression—for their students’ sake and their own.

But with asynchronous lessons and virtual events, the amount of parental participation skyrocketed, she says.

Power Lesson: Poetry Gallery Walk [Luther]

On 03/02/2022, in creativity, education, Emotion, experimentation, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, learning, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, participation, passions, reading, relationships, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

Power Lesson: Poetry Gallery Walk — from cultofpedagogy.com by Marcus Luther

Excerpt:

So three months into the school year, it was time to “pay the piper” in our AP Literature classroom in a major way. This meant veering away from normal processes of literary analysis and having students not only write their own reflective narrative poems, but spend time in an incredible, silent space moving around the library and writing notes of affirmation on each other’s writing.

Here is “how” we made it happen, then, as well as “why.”

Why the World’s First Virtual Reality High School Changes Everything [Steve Grubbs]

On 03/01/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, accreditation, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), change, changing business models, collaboration, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, creativity, credentialing, cryptocurrencies, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, graphics, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, immersion, innovation, instructional design, interactivity, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, Metaverse, multimedia, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, parents/guardians, participation, platforms, simulations, social learning / networks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, United States, vendors, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, wearables, web-based collaboration, Web3, XR - extended reality, youth, by Daniel Christian

Why the World’s First Virtual Reality High School Changes Everything — from steve-grubbs.medium.com by Steve Grubs

Excerpts:

The recipe required key ingredients to happen. In addition to an accredited school to manage students, admissions and the for-credit learning, it also needed a platform. That’s where EngageVR comes in. There are other platforms that will ultimately host schools, perhaps AltSpace, Horizon or others, but the first is on Engage.
…
The bottom line is this: creators, coders, educators, entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, parents and students all played a role in finally bringing the first global virtual reality high school to life. It won’t be the last school to open in the metaverse, but to all those involved in this inaugural launch — the Neil Armstrongs of your age — a special tip of the hat today for having the vision and the willingness to launch a better and more equitable era of education.

Also see:

World’s First Metaverse VR High School Speech & Debate Tournament Announced for March — from victoryxr.com
NFT in Edu: What Does the Future Hold? — from gettingsmart.com by Rachelle Dené Poth
Geo Guessing Is Even More Fun In VR On The Meta Quest — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Preparing your business for the metaverse — from currency.com by Raphael Sanis

Contents

Also see:

Get Ready To Market In The Metaverse — from forbes.com by Sarah Malcolm
Exploring the metaverse: What laws will apply? — from dlapiper.com by Tom K. Ara, Mark F. Radcliffe, Michael Fluhr, & Katherine Imp
Meta’s AI Tech Lets You Craft VR Worlds With Your Voice — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
HTC Vive Announces Viveverse, A Cross-Platform Metaverse — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

What Do We Mean by Accessibility, Inclusion & Belonging? [Howard]

On 02/27/2022, in accessibility / UDL, assistive technologies, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), collaboration, communities of practice, Emotion, neurodivergent/special needs, participation, by Daniel Christian

What Do We Mean by Accessibility, Inclusion & Belonging? — from inclusionhub.com by Jeffrey Howard
Accessibility, also referred to as a11y, is about ensuring systems are designed so everyone can fully participate in public or professional life, while inclusion means everyone has the resources and opportunities they need to realize that. Belonging goes one step further, fostering a culture where everyone feels accepted and supported.

Excerpts:

In this spirit, “a11y” has become a globally recognized rallying cry for greater accessibility—the 11 referring to the software engineering convention of shortening long words to the number of letters they use. A11y has transformed into a symbol for increased accessibility, inclusion, and belonging.

So, if accessibility ensures everybody has the means or tools to reach the table, and inclusion guarantees a seat and relevant opportunities, belonging encourages an emotionally and socially supportive space where each person feels welcome and valued.

It’s easy to tell the difference between when you feel merely tolerated and when you belong.

Learning Ecosystems

Reflections on “Teaching: Fresh Approaches to Faculty Development” [Supiano]

Inclusive Hiring in Tech: How to Write More Inclusive Job Descriptions [from one of our nieces, Jill Bender]

You Sleuth = The game of Clue + Augmented Reality (AR). DC: What might this look/work like for learning-related applications?

What Do We Mean by Accessibility, Inclusion & Belonging? [Howard]

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