Supporting Student Accessibility: Digital Equity | Special Needs & More — from Tech & Learning | November 2021
From DSC:
I was reading about a Ph.D. who was currently doing some research into the science of learning. This person had been teaching in a School of Education for years, but just (relatively) recently embarked on a Ph.D. During this person’s research, they came across a lot more information regarding the science of learning.
If this was true with someone who had been in education for years (and I can relate to that as well), it made me wonder:
- How can we better get the word out to our learners re: how they can maximize their Return On Investment (ROI) from their studying time and efforts…?
Then I thought, why couldn’t we put these tips directly into our banners on our CMS’s and LMS’s and/or link our banners to some other web pages/resources that provide such best practices and tips for our learners!?! This could occur within the corporate training world as well.
Examples:
Along these lines, we should have 11×17 (or larger) posters like this plastered in every hallway of every learning space out there:
How to Get Students to Watch Your Videoshttps://t.co/m2EeDAkHqq pic.twitter.com/L8mMQIsXqg
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) November 1, 2021
Think-Pair-Share: The Basics! — from lillyconferences.com by The Scholarly Teacher Team
Think-Pair-Share is a collaborative learning strategy that promotes critical thinking and peer learning. This is an excellent place to start if you want to add active learning to your lecture-based course without taking much class time.
From DSC:
The ability of many videoconferencing systems to automatically create breakout groups/sessions for you can be very helpful here.
Five Tips for Launching an Online Writing Group — from scholarlyteacher.com by Kristina Rouech, Betsy VanDeuesen, Holly Hoffman, & Jennifer Majorana — who are all from Central Michigan University
Excerpt:
Making time for writing can be difficult at any stage of your career. Pushing writing aside for grading, lesson planning, meeting with students, and committee work is too easy. However, writing is a necessary part of our careers and has the added benefit of helping us stay current with our practice and knowledge in our field. Lee and Boud (2003) stress that groups should focus on developing peer relationships and writing identity, increasing productivity, and sharing practical writing. Online writing groups can help us accomplish this. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, working online has become a necessity, but it can take time to figure out what works best for you and your writing colleagues. We recommend five tips to help you establish an online writing group that is productive and enjoyable for all participants.
Best Wireless Keyboard and Mouse for Teachers 2021 — from techlearning.com by Luke Edwards
The best wireless keyboard and mouse for teachers can give freedom to move without losing ease of input
The following don’t focus much on Apple’s products, but you can also see:
- The Best Wireless Mouse — from nytimes.com by Kimber Streams and Justin Krajeski | Updated September 7, 2021
- The Best Ergonomic Keyboard — from nytimes.com by Melanie Pinola
- The Best Bluetooth and Wireless Keyboards — from nytimes.com by Kimber Streams
150 learning theorists… 2500 years of learning theory… from Greeks to Geeks! — from onaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark
Excerpt:
These were written as quick, readable introductions to the many theorists who have shaped the world of learning. For Greeks to Geeks! Note that this is a personal selection, not a definitive list.
From DSC:
For IDs, trainers, teachers, faculty members, & teams who are working on creating and delivering online-based learning……the following article is a good one for us to check out and reflect upon:
Most Online Courses Are a Waste of Your Time — Here’s How You Know — from medium.com by Eva Keiffenheim
A quick guide that helps you find the worthy ones.
Excerpts:
Not all learning investments are created equal. People who’ve excelled at their craft are often not the best teachers. Likewise, creators who write the best sales copy don’t offer the most value.
Here’s precisely how you can spot bad online courses so that you won’t waste your time and money.
…
From DSC:
What if we could quickly submit items for a group to discuss, annotate, and respond to — using whichever media format is available/preferable for a person — like a massive 3D-based Voicethread? What if this type of discussion could be contributed to and accessed via Augmented Reality (AR) and/or via Virtual Reality (VR) types of devices?
It could be a new 3D format that a person could essentially blow all the way up into the size of a billboard. Think, “Honey, I shrunk the kids” type of stuff.
Input devices might include:
- Augmented Reality (AR) glasses
- Virtual Reality (VR) headsets/glasses
- Scanners
- Smartphones
- Tablets
- Desktops and laptops
- SmartTVs
- Other types of input devices
For example, a person could take a picture of a document or something else and then save that image into a new file format that would be vector-based. I say a vector-based file format so that the image could be enlarged to the size of a billboard without losing any resolution (i.e., wouldn’t become grainy; the image would remain crystal clear regardless of how big the image is). I’m thinking here along the lines of “Honey, I shrunk the kids!”
Other thoughts here:
- The files could be accessible online for attendees of classes or for audiences of presentations/webinars
- The files could be displayed on the walls of learning/presentation spaces for marking them up
- One could manipulate the 3D image if that person was using a virtual/immersive environment
- Users should be able to annotate on those images and/or be able to save such annotations and notes
A question for phase II:
Could this concept also be used if virtual courts take off?
Hmmmm…just thinking out loud.
The best webcams for boosting your video quality — from mashable.com by Bethany Allard
A basic necessity in 2021.
Also see:
- The Best Webcams — from nytimes.com by Andrew Cunningham and Melanie Pinola (June 2021)
What Will Online Learning Look Like in 10 Years? Zoom Has Some Ideas — from edsurge.com by Stephen Noonoo
Excerpt:
This week at Zoom’s annual conference, Zoomtopia, a trio of education-focused Zoom employees (er, Zoomers?) speculated wildly about what hybrid Zoom learning might look like 10 years from now, given the warp speed advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning expected. Below are highlights of their grandiose, if sometimes vague, vision for the future of learning on Zoom.
Zoom very much sees itself as one day innovating on personalized learning in a substantial way, although beyond breakout rooms and instant translation services, they have few concrete ideas in mind. Mostly, the company says it will be working to add more choices to how teachers can present materials and how students can display mastery to teachers in realtime. They’re bullish on Kahoot-like gamification features and new ways of assessing students, too.
Also see:
An Eighth Grader Was Tired of Being Late to Zoom School. So He Made an App for That. — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo
“I could not find anything else that exists like this to automatically join meetings at the right times,” says Seth, a high school freshman based in Walnut Creek, Calif. “Reminders are just really easy to ignore. I’ll get a notification maybe five minutes before my meeting, and it’ll just sit there and not do anything. [LinkJoin] interrupts whatever you’re doing and says, ‘Join this meeting. In fact it’s already opening, so better get on it.’”
Active Learning: 5 Tips for Implementing the Approach — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Active learning provides ways to get your students engaged without needing to revamp how you teach.
Excerpts:
However, neither listening to a lecture or reading a textbook is the most efficient way to learn or what active learning is truly about. “What exactly do we mean by active learning?” Deslauriers says. “We mean that first, you have to be engaged. Obviously, that’s number one. Number two, you have to be engaged productively. And number three, the productivity has to be toward a goal that is deemed worthwhile*.”
— Louis Deslauriers, Director of Science Teaching and Learning
in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University
From DSC:
I appreciated seeing/reading this solid article. Just a couple of reflections and highlights here…
* But worthwhile for whom? For the faculty members? The teachers? The trainers? Or for the learners, the students, or the employees? Where is agency here? Where does more choice and control come into play here? Where’s the motivation for me to learn something if someone keeps telling me what’s important to THEM? What’s relevant to THEM? Why should I care about this topic? How is it relevant? How will it help me get a job and/or make a positive difference in this world? Can I choose how deep I want to dive in?
Later…Deslauriers goes on to make a great point when urging a pause for students to practice some metacognition:
- Does this make sense to me?
- How is this relevant? <– DSC: There it is.
- Does it connect with something I already know? And if so, how do I integrate with what I already know?
- What sort of questions do I have right now?
- Can I repeat what the instructor just did? Or is it going to require a lot of practice?
“There’s no way you can undergo these mental processes when someone keeps talking,” Deslauriers says. But if educators pause during their lectures and encourage this type of focus, they can help their students learn more efficiently.
Instructors can hand out electronic clickers, use web-based tools such as Google forms, or even go completely low-tech by giving color-coded cards to students that correspond to different answers.
Also see:
- Why Traditional Lectures Won’t End Anytime Soon in Higher Ed Despite Better Approaches Being Available — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
For years, research has shown that students learn more through active learning than from passive traditional lecture, but the old habit is hard to break.
Using a Systems Approach to Build a World-Class Online Program — from onlinelearningconsortium.org by Dr. Michele Norton and Dr. Ben Zoghi, Texas A&M University
In this blog, we unpack some of our insights and capitalize on them as we take a systems approach to continue building a world-class online program.
Excerpt:
Insight 1: Shifting from Assigning Tasks to Developing Collaborative Partnerships
We often create to-do lists for all the aspects of our online course: the videos, the articles, the quizzes, putting it on the LMS, etc. We forget that they all go together to create one learning experience for our students.
The person who edits the videos has ideas you may never have thought of, even if they are not experts in your content. Thoughts are everywhere; you have to value each person that has a hand in the process and be open to building a collaborative partnership instead of navigating a transactional checklist.
Google Earth Lesson Plan — from techlearning.com by Stephanie Smith Budhai
Excerpt:
The 3D interactive online exploration platform Google Earth provides a pathway to endless learning adventures around the globe. For an overview of Google Earth and a breakdown of its unique features, check out How to Use Google Earth for Teaching.