Author Archive for Kate

The Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint

Published
by
Kate
on May 5, 2008
in Powerpoint and Presentations, Technology and What if . . .
. 1 Comment

What would it look like if Honest Abe had PowerPoint at his disposal on that fateful day in 1863?

Quite possibly, this.

Its creator, Peter Norvig, also describes his rationale here, and considers the value of PowerPoint in “PowerPoint: Shot with its own bullets,” which was published in The Lancet.

We don’t need to throw the baby out with the bullet-pointed bathwater, but the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation might prove useful for those discussing with students (or colleagues) what makes for good (and bad) PowerPoint.

You know when you encounter one of those little technology glitches?

Published
by
Kate
on February 29, 2008
in Fun and Technology
. 0 Comments

. . . you know, right in the middle of a class or conference presentation?

Well, now imagine if that happened and Robin Williams just happened to be in the audience at the time. That’s what happened at the Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference in Monterey on Wednesday.

Yeah, I know it’s not going to happen to any of us. But just the thought of it might make those few awkward moments funnier next time ’round.

Outsourcing grading and written feedback

Published
by
Kate
on August 24, 2007
in Assessment, Feedback, Grading, Pedagogy, Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing Instruction
. 0 Comments

I was surprised today to find an ad on InsideHigherEd to a company called EduMetry, which offers various outsourcing services to colleges and professors, among them, a 24/7 virtual writing center, and “Virtual TA.”

Virtual TA is a program where the grading of papers, and the writing of “Rich Feedback” is outsourced.

According to “The Case for Rich Feedback,” on the EduMentry site,

One area crying out for attention is the extent of feedback students receive on their ongoing written assignments. Almost universally, assignments come back with a score or letter-grade and a few scrawls that are too brief, general, vague and or otherwise too minimal to make a difference. The student is left with little guidance on what to do differently.

The same page attributes this lack of rich feedback being given to students to a a lack of support that faculty members receive from the university.

But the solutions to that problem are smaller and fewer classes, and faculty learning how to give useful feedback, and students learning how to use that feedback.

I realize this kind of service would best appeal to those running the kinds of huge lecture classes in which “non-virtual” TAs currently do the grading and feedback writing for professors.

But the name “Virtual TA” is kind of a misnomer. They’re not virtual TAs; they’re real TAs you can’t see or visit with, who have no connection with the culture of the college or its student body.

Leaving aside the large lecture course, which I think is not a good idea pedagogically except in certain fields, I fear that this Virtual TA system might be employed in more standard college courses. And if it were, I can’t imagine it being a good idea for the professor, who won’t be reading the papers, and who won’t be learning all s/he can about the students, who themselves won’t be benefitting from the professor’s own feedback.

In response to that concern, EduMetry says (on their FAQ):

Wouldn’t you be interfering in the instructor-student relationship?

We have no direct contact with students. We are at the service of the institution and its faculty members. We provide instructors with a student-ID-scrambling utility that ensures a double-blind grading process. As former academics ourselves, we do everything possible to keep the professor in the loop (and not in the dark, as delegating grading might appear at first blush). In addition to having access to all the individual-student feedback, professors receive a summary report for the class that points out the highlights from the grading of that assignment. This report further ensures that faculty members are aware of how students did, adjust their teaching (content, pace, style, design of assignments) based on the summary feedback.

Truly rich feedback can be provided only by those who know both the subject, the students, and their work, as intimately as is possible given the circumstances.

It’s not the interference between teacher and student, mentioned by EduMentry above, that I fear.
Instead, it’s the gap between teacher and student that this creates.

I guess you might say I “mind the gap.”

How to explain RSS the Oprah Way

Published
by
Kate
on April 17, 2007
in Blogs and Blogging, RSS, Syndicated Content, Technology and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

One thing about the web is that you often find yourself somehow pointed toward a particularly interesting or useful article on a blog you’d never otherwise read. An example: someone pointed me to a Really Simple Explanation (RSE) of RSS feeds and how they work. It’s on a blog called “Back in Skinny Jeans,” and is entitled “How to explain RSS the Oprah Way.” “The Oprah way” is apparently cute, simple, and to the point.

Why, you ask, do I need RSS feeds? Well, they’re useful in all kinds of ways, for students doing research, employees keeping up with issues, classes keeping their collective eye on something in the news. They can be delivered to your web browser, to a feed reader, or to the sidebar of your course blog.

Now you may not like Oprah, but chances are you know someone who could use the simple explanation of RSS feeds, and why to use them, and how to use them.

That said, this article might never have come across my radar. It’s from a blog about celebrities and makeup and not really my scene. I was aghast when I saw another recent article, “What? Prince William and Kate Middleton broke up?!?” (I only care ’cause they went to my Alma Mater, honest.) And effegies of Richard Gere are being burned in India?!? Oh dear.

Anyway, I am spending too much time on my work, clearly, and not enough on media-watching.

But maybe the best media-watching is done effortlessly, via RSS, and is stored securely somehow until you go to access it.

So next time you’re trying to explain that to someone blissfully not geeky, try sharing this link.

Learning 2.0: free, fun, self-paced, and effective training in Web 2.0

Published
by
Kate
on April 5, 2007
in Administration, Blogs and Blogging, Faculty Development, Higher Education, Literacy, Technology, Web 2.0, What if . . . and Wikis
. 1 Comment

The article “Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks” on Wired.com describes a program where hundreds of staff members at North Carolina public libraries were asked to explore Web 2.0 in ways by trying out 23 things that were simple, yet meaningful and useful.

The result: Learning 2.0.

The impetus was the need for staff to know about Web 2.0 technologies:

When the IT director at North Carolina’s Charlotte & Mecklenburg County public library began training staff in the latest web technologies, she lured reluctant participants with bribes — a free MP3 player and the chance to win a laptop.

Six months later, the program they developed is the real prize. Learning 2.0., developed by public services technology director Helene Blowers, has become a surprise grassroots hit, available for free on the web and adopted by dozens of other libraries around the globe.

“The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look,” said Christine MacKensie, director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia, which just finished a four-month version of Learning 2.0. “And they certainly won’t now.”

The program is inexpensive to run, but is fun and engaging. Hundreds of staff members signed on.

Recognizing that librarians need to know how to participate in the new media mix if libraries are to remain relevant, Blowers challenged her 550 staffers to become more web savvy. Using free web tools, she designed the program and gave staff members three months to do 23 things.

They created blogs and podcasts, tried out Flickr, set up RSS feeds, learned about wikis, uploaded video to YouTube, played with image generators and Rollyo, and explored Technorati, tagging and folksonomies.

“Librarian avatars were popping up all over the blogs,” said Blowers.

In the end, the library system found that they’d just trained their staff in new media with very little financial output (save some blog hosting and the mp3 incentives), without going to the trouble and expense of bringing in staff training, or forcing people to sit through classes.

Although her original goals for Learning 2.0 were touchy-feely “E’s” — exposing staff to new tools, encouraging play, empowering individuals, expanding the knowledge toolbox, eliminating fear — the effects were both practical and financial.

“We don’t have to wait for some training company to come along and say, ‘For $20,000 we’ll show you how this stuff works,’” said Michael Stephens, who wrote Web 2.0 and Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software. “Helene put it on the web so anyone can use that program.”

Libraries all over the world are doing just that — moving the entire Learning 2.0 program to their own websites. The program has been duplicated by university and community library systems in Sweden, Australia, Canada and Denmark. In the United States, programs are underway in South Carolina, Florida, Maryland and California. Even the Combined Arms Research Library, a military repository, is trying it.

It’s no surprise that now the 23 Things idea is spreading beyond libraries, to two realms cac.ophony.org readers are much more familiar with: higher education, and business.

Now Blowers’ program is spreading beyond libraries (even virtual ones, like the teen library in Second Life teen library in Second Life): A public relations firm wants to set up a Learning 2.0 program for its staff, and several universities and an elementary school want to use the system to educate teachers, she said.

Several years ago, I taught a semester-long course and some weekend workshops with Paul Allison and Ken Stein of the New York City Writing Project. We walked participants (mostly high school teachers, but also some CUNY and SUNY college faculty) through various experiences, from setting up a blog, editing a wiki, to using bloglines, del.icio.us and tags (this is a few years ago, mind you, when bloglines, del.icio.us, and podcasts were “new” new, or at least a newer new, not old hat, as they are now). Then, as now, new stuff was coming out every week.

The New York City Writing Project was interested in giving teachers a chance to blog, so they’d see if, and how, blogs might be useful for their students. They ended up finding out how blogs, flickr, podcasting, WiKis and all kinds of other web 2.0 applications could be useful in teaching literacy and communication skills, and they ended up using these, and other aspects of Web 2.0, in their classrooms. The 23 Things idea is very similar, though the 23 things could easily be tweaked to include the newest useful Web 2.0 technology, since good new stuff comes out all the time.

Perhaps the best thing about Web 2.0, and Learning 2.0 is that so many resources that work, like the 23 Things program, are free to use and free to build on.

Technology-across-the-curriculum, or “Why can’t Johnny sort his email into appropriate folders?”

Published
by
Kate
on January 4, 2007
in Assessment, Blogs and Blogging, Higher Education and Literacy
. 0 Comments

I read with interest today’s report on Inside Higher Ed that the Educational Testing Service has a test of Information of Communication and Technology Literacy. Here’s a web demo.
Inside Higher Ed reports that Cal State is contemplating requiring the test of its students:

The California State University system … [is] putting the finishing touches on a test — developed in conjunction with Educational Testing Service — that they believe accurately gauges students’ technological literacy. And they are contemplating making the test a requirement that students would have to pass to move on to higher level courses, much like they do now for writing proficiency.

“People are good at learning technologies, but they are not so good at applying them,” said Barbara O’Connor, a professor of communications at California State University at Sacramento. O’Connor has become a strong advocate for increasing technological literacy.

My first instinct was to cringe at the idea that Cal State would make “the test a requirement that students would have to pass to move on to higher level courses, much like they do now for writing proficiency.” I hope that CUNY would not turn the technology skills test into a stick with which to beat students.
But I am also a strong advocate for increasing technological literacies– and I know all of you are too.

Don’t we all, already discover which skills are lacking and help students to acquire them? The first day of many classes using Blackboard or a blog is often the day students are given instructions to log on and post; if they have trouble, they’re given extra help by the professor or asked to get someone at the computer labs to walk them through. Skill building in the context of the course, with attention paid to which skills are needed and when, seems a no-brainer to me.

There are seven proficiencies tested in the 75 minute test, here are three examples:

Under “Manage” information, activities include:

  • Sorting e-mails into appropriate folders
  • Re-ordering a table to maximize efficiency in two tasks with incompatible requirements
  • Documenting relationships using an organization chart

Under the “Evaluate” header, activities include:

  • Selecting the best database for an information need
  • Determining the sufficiency (or lack) of information in a Web site, given the information need
  • Ranking Web pages in terms of meeting particular criteria
  • Determining the relevance of postings on a Web discussion board

Activities under the heading “Communicate” include:

  • Formatting a word processing document
  • Recasting an e-mail
  • Adapting presentation slides
  • Preparing a text message for a cell phone

Those are mostly really useful things for students to be able to do in some educational or work settings. Some skills are useful for all. (Some not so much.) I don’t think many Baruch students need much help on “preparing a text message for a cell phone,” but that’s another story.
My gut reaction to this is that students learn technological skills by using technological skills. And they all have different proficiencies.

First year composition teachers know that lecturing to a class of students about grammar doesn’t do much. Each student has their own patterns of error: they don’t all have the same skills that need work. You can give some brief targeted lessons about the most common patterns of error, but they have to be brief and targeted.

I think technology skills are similar. If most of the class does not know how to post to the new blog, a brief lesson and a handout with the details for reference, is in order. But I don’t think the skills noted in the brief snippet above (and those in the other 4 areas tested) can be easily and quickly taught except where integrated into content-based courses. We have to continually teach (and test) these skills in courses where they are needed and used.
Sure, we could use some more technology workshops and maybe even a test that helps students decide which of those workshops to attend.
What we can’t do is teach all technology/writing/critical thinking skills at once. Non-context-specific technology education is boring and does not work.

Veni, Vidi, Wiki

Published
by
Kate
on September 7, 2006
in Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Group Composing, Technology and Wikis
. 2 Comments

Wired online has a nice article today talking about Wikis beyond WikiPedia. In particular, it explores some of the other programs that are useful for groups creating a WiKi:

Several companies are trying to cash in on wikis by making it easy for non-techies to start sites allowing quick and easy collaboration. Among them are Jot, Wetpaint, PBwiki, Wikispaces, Wiki.com and Wikia, started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.

Some of these wikis already allow WYSIWYG editing. “I’d like to see the PTA wiki. We are on the cusp of making the tools simple enough for the Parent Teacher Association,” said Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. Socialtext is attempting to make its WYSIWYG click-and-type editor more widespread; at this year’s Wikimania conference, Socialtext announced it was working with Wikia and Wikimedia to integrate Wikiwyg into Wikipedia’s software.

I am wondering if any of our readers (or bloggers) have used any of the above Wiki sites for course-related wikis.
Check out the article!

Also: file under meta-blogging, I guess, but I just copied and pasted from Wired’s website and noticed that all the hotlinks carried over. I never noticed that before. WordPress (the blogging medium we are using here at http://cac.ophony.org) is good.

Great Works Faculty Development Seminar

Published
by
Kate
on September 5, 2006
in Baruch College, Blogs and Blogging, Communication Intensive Courses (CICs), Faculty Development, Low-Stakes Writing and Technology
. 1 Comment

Last semester, Communication Fellows assigned to the Great Works program at Baruch designed and facilitated at a three-session faculty development seminar. We met three Friday afternoons during the semester, with about 12 faculty members. The group explored ways of using communication across the curriculum (CAC), and participants shared ways of constructing communication-intensive assignments (including writing, speaking, and computer-mediated communication), techniques for responding to student writing, ways of using low-stakes writing to enhance the learning experience (as well as to enhance writing skills), and other topics of interest. I can only speak for myself, but I found the sessions to be engaging, useful, and fun.

This semester, there will be a new Great Works Faculty Development Seminar. You can get all the details and fill out an application here. As the application states,

This semester, we would like to continue the program by bringing together Great Works faculty members again to explore and share strategies for using written, oral, and technology-facilitated communication activities in their classrooms as tools for learning.The program will again function as a semester-long seminar, facilitated by the Institute’s Great Works team. Participants will meet three times during the semester. Between sessions, we will maintain contact via a blog, and participants will be asked to do some reading and preparation for each session. Each of the meetings will be three and a half hours long, including two 90-minute working sessions and a half-hour working lunch. We will conduct each meeting as a roundtable discussion and will rely upon the faculty to lead by sharing their experiences and expertise with others in order to generate ideas for teaching with communication-intensive methods.

Last spring, the Great Works Faculty Development Seminar participants communicated between sessions via Blackboard–in part, so we could talk about the usefulness of the medium in our classes. I’m pleased to report that this year, as the description states, the group will be keeping in touch via a blog. In addition to sharing ideas and methods that work, faculty willl also have a chance to try out blogging and see how the medium might work for their classes.

If you’re a Great Works faculty member (full-time or part-time), please apply. The deadline is Friday, September 8th (though obviously, if you see this later, please contact us via the links on the application anyway). There’s a stipend to compensate you for the time spent in meetings (three 3.5 hour sessions, with lunch provided) and doing some preparation in-between the sessions (reading, thinking, blogging). We hope you’ll join us!

Helping Baruch Students Become “Polished Professionals”

Published
by
Kate
on August 30, 2006
in Baruch College, Interpersonal Communication and Symposium
. 2 Comments

There was an item on NPR on Monday about the new $2 million grant Baruch has received from the Star Foundation, to help students become “polished professionals”. The 60 second interview was on NPR’s Marketplace report, and you can listen to it here. The new initiative may help meet some of the concerns expressed by business people who were at my table during the BLSCI symposium in the spring. Our table’s members were very concerned about students needing more exposure to business people and their communication practices and needs, before they went on the job market.

One of our group’s recommendations, at the time, was to have Baruch classroom’s adopt a business person, who could serve as a resource for them–visiting class, giving feedback on course projects or presentations. Serving as a mentor, but not to individuals so much as to the class. This would mean students had more exposure, early and often, to “real” business people, who might give them feedback in a non-threatening setting (in other words, before they were in an internship or job). We were thinking it could supplement the mentor partnership programs Baruch already has in place.
This is not currently in the works, of course, and I’m not sure specifically how this latest grant will be used, but it sounds like it is aimed at meeting similar needs of students.
The transcript on the NPR website reads:

MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: Tomorrow, new freshmen will pour into colleges across the country. When it’s time to look for work they might need some help. Amelia Templeton says one New York City College is ready to provide it.

AMELIA TEMPLETON: CUNY New York’s business school got a $2 million grant from Star Foundation, a group that promotes access to higher education.The money will be used to turn the students into polished professionals.Eighty percent of Baruch College’s students are first-generation Americans, most come from lower-income backgroundsIf they want to land a job at JP Morgan they’ll need more than a college diploma, says Ben Corpus. He runs student affairs at Baruch.

BEN CORPUS: “Those doing the hiring are strongly influenced by how you shake hands and how you walk into the room and how you present yourself. Because if you don’t have that presence, that swagger, that could be a factor when you’re down to the finalists.”

The school will use the money to place students in internships, and also offer workshops in dining etiquette, accent reduction and networking skills.

One laptop per child

Published
by
Kate
on August 3, 2006
in Asides, Interpersonal Communication, Literacy, Resources, Technology and What if . . .
. 0 Comments

one laptop per child laptop prototype

This may not seem immediately relevant to us, as college educators, but with any luck it will be. And sooner than you think.

Many of you have heard about Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child idea.

This is their Wiki.

This is the FAQ. This is a link to recent press stories (via the Wiki).

The non-profit group is trying to get 100 million brand-new $100 laptops in the hands of the world’s children soon. Very soon–with shipping to begin as early as the end of this year. The crank-powered computers will be networked together, so they will be able to communicate even in areas where there’s no good internet access. (Thank goodness they run on cranks and not our dwindling power supplies, eh?)

Why is this so revolutionary? Well, think of the world in 5-10 years, when those kids are ready to work. Think of the exponential rise in literacy–both text literacies and tech literacies. Think of 100 million kids who can program in the code the computers will be using. Think of 100 million kids who can type and get their messages out. This could change the world more quickly than any other educational development ever. It’s exciting.

Now, besides and beyond the issues surrounding the actual laptops getting into the actual kids’ hands… what needs to happen to make this wonderful new world happen? What pitfalls do you see?