Final Reflection on EDU255

This semester began on a positive note as we gathered in Prescott to launch the course. Each student created their weblog in Blogger. For many, including me, this was the first blog we had ever created. Here is the link to the completed blog from this course: http://www.tinaluffman.blogspot.com/. When you are previewing my weblog, you can see links to the other classmates’ weblogs. As you can see, each student learned how to use a variety of tech tools for the classroom as well as his or her personal life.

As well as creating weblogs, we also created wikis. I decided to create one for people who have gone to conferences so participants can share teaching ideas and lessons developed after attending. I am still waiting to hear back from the presenters of two conferences I have attended this past year to see if they will share the wiki with other participants. Here is the link to this wiki: http://0809workshops.wikispaces.com/. I certainly hope that someday I will hear from these presenters and will have some fun with collaborative editing.

Next we learned about RSS feeds. I have used Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing in my English and GED classes in the past. This week I learned that I was not really creating an RSS feed load into Blackboard but was merely loading a link to the Web site where students could scroll through and find interesting feeds on their own. In the Ning class I have created for this class portfolio, I actually did add the RSS feed. Students can see these new recordings coming into our class on a regular basis.

Since I am a current Facebook user, Social Networks in week five were not completely new to me, but I had not used Ning extensively in the past. I was excited to have time to spend using this network, so I am pleased to create this portfolio in Ning. It has been great having the opportunity to return there and create the Critical Thinking network. I plan to use this network for my ENG140 hybrid class this fall. One other network I have used is del.icio.us. This network is invaluable to me when I am not near a local computer. I can find all of my favorites wherever I travel. I highly recommend this site to anyone interested in locating your favorites anytime anywhere.

During the fifth week, we learned about photo sharing. I had an idea how to use these tools, but had no personal experience before with loading and creating photo sharing sites online until this semester. Now I have both a Flickr and a Picasa account. I have also learned that I can apply for a special account to load Flickr photos into Ning. I have also been able to create a slideshow of photos in Picasa to import into email and share with friends and family. The wikispace: http://0809workshops.wikispaces.com/ also includes a Picasa slideshow of images for Critical Thinking.

In the sixth week our class learned how to create a YouTube video for the classroom. I created a YouTube presentation describing their lessons for the week in the ENG140 summer class. It was nice to be able to talk with them informally through the Internet. I hope they enjoyed seeing my face and hearing my voice. That is a new treat for online students (we hope) since it is easy for them to feel the instructor is a non-entity in cyberspace. You can view my first YouTube recording here.

Our seventh week of class was the most challenging for me. We created an audio file in Audacity. I chose to explain to students how to open Tegrity Classes inside Blackboard since I had a recording that week for them to view. Recording the audio file was a cinch after figuring out how to download both Audacity and the correct LAME file onto my local computer. Now I should be ready to create audio files in a snap, thanks to superior assistance from Mark and friends at the college. We also created Jing recordings. I seriously needed help with this download and had called upon Todd. Even after he helped me, I took hours finally making my first recording, and because of the challenges and things I had done wrong, I decided to make my screen capture on how to download and install Jing. I can see why their website has so many tutorials. However, their tool is slick and invaluable to instructors. I can see where I will be able to find uses for this tool in the future.

All in all I feel much better prepared to face the tech savvy youth coming to college this fall than I had in the past. I also feel I have a much better tool box for serving the needs of the students. I will be teaching three online classes and one hybrid class as well as one or two face-to-face classes depending upon enrollment. Each of these tools will make my job easier and hopefully more effective. I am glad to have taken EDUd255 this summer along with each of you, and I certainly hope to see more of you in the future.

Grammar Girl Podcast Use

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/default.aspx
As you can see from my blog, I do see some value in using podcasts to present information to students. Sending out a podcast is a little more personal than an email, and I think that gives the information a little more personality, especially for an online class. However, in this podcast, I'd like to focus on Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.

A few years ago I had heard Mary Verbout talking about this podcast. Then a few months later, I was participating in the National Institute for Literacy listserv and heard other instructors talking about podcasts for our GED students. I then started wondering why I didn't make these available to my students. I emailed the link out to the class and encouraged them to save the link and to begin listening to these as a way to study for the GED exam. I have no data to prove how many of the students actually watched the videos or how much they improved their Writing score on the GED exam, but I did feel good about making these avaiable.

Now as I am teaching English classes for Yavapai College, I do put the Grammar Girl RSS feed link into all of my Composition classes under the External Link button in Blackboard. I let the students know it is there at the beginning of the semester and encourage them to listen to these on a regular basis. I still haven't assigned them, but I do think that is the next step I should take. We could have a brief quiz on one of these assigned podcasts when students return to class, or I could assign the one that goes along with the chapter they are reading for homework.

I could even take the last ten minutes of class each week to have students listen to the Grammar Girl podcast of their choice. My challenge for this is in getting headphones for all of the students. Perhaps that is something the college can do. Or perhaps I should take the students to the Learning Center for this activity. I believe they may have headphones. Amy and Lori? What do you think??

How to Download and Install Jing

How to Access Tegrity Recordings--podcast

See more Audio at TeacherTube.com.

Perceptive Change in Education with Web 2.0

Is online video changing the way your students perceive your teaching and education? What impact could it have in the future?


Students are always already changing. The quick pace of media makes for an interesting twist for we as instructors. It seems we can never again expect to create a class and have it be the same semester after semester. New technologies continue to show themselves to us as ways to better access the learning capacity of our students.

When we continue to learn new technologies, we say to our students that we are current and believable. Who wants to listen to a teacher stand in front of a classroom and lecture for 1.25 hours twice a week anymore??? I certainly don't. I didn't really want to sit and listen even before YouTube, wikimania, and photosharing.

Concerning the future, we as teachers are going to need to continue taking classes such as this one to stay current and believable with the students of the techno future. We will need to take these classes so we can keep up with our own children and grandchildren. In many ways we can be better protectors from the "bad" stuff out there if we are aware of what's out there. And we can be a better guide to the "good" stuff out there for our students and our own family members when we practice seeking useful material.

I believe that it will become more and more attractive to offer classes online. Having video capability will allow students from far distances as well as those living in the dorms to accommodate their work schedules, family schedules, or merely their personal preference schedules. When students can view the lecture and email the teacher, it will become less and less necessary for those students who are visual and auditory learners to come to the classroom. Already we are seeing an increase in Distance Learning and hybrid classes here at Yavapai College. This summer alone there are hardly any face-to-face classes left, especially on smaller campuses.

Web 2.0 also creates a level playing field. When students and teachers can each create the curriculum for the classroom, and each person's material is online for outsiders to access as well, who becomes the authority? Of course the teacher will still have the right and responsibility to assess the grades, but seriously, who is the authority? Whose ideas are better? Or does that even matter? Does what matters is that we come to the best possible decision, conclusion, quality of information? These are some serious considerations for us as educators and students.

YouTube in English class

Here is a YouTube link to a Wile E. Coyote clip. What in the world can an instructor do with this, you may ask? I attended a session on Critical Thinking by Colette Strassburg at one of the YC Institutes and was introduced to this method for introducing Concepts of Thought and Intellectual Standards to my English students. So go ahead and enjoy the video, and then I'll try to explain.

First I have the students read information in The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking for homework. Next I show them this video when we come to class. Third, I give them a brief overview of the Concepts of Thought: Point of View, Purpose, Question at Issue, Information, Interpretation and Inference, Concepts, Assumptions, and Implications and Consequences.

Now I have students get into groups and as quickly as possible write down one or two questions for each of these terms concerning Wilie's thinking process in creating the traps for Roadrunner. For example, for Point of View, we could say that the coyote's point of view is that the Roadrunner can be caught. After the students create these questions, they share them with the class and give me a written copy. I type the responses up and return them to the students for the next class.

When the students return the following class period, we consider the Intellectual Standards: Clarity, Accuracy, Precision, Relevance, Depth, Breadth, Logic, Significance, and Fairness. After this brief lecture, I have them get back into groups and draw a trap for Roadrunner. This time the groups get up in front of the class and share their trap and describe how it represents at least two of these Intellectual Standards. For example, the significance of the trap is that . . . , or the depth of the trap is sufficient for . . .

Students enjoy this activity and are ready for the work ahead of them to apply these principles to readings and hopefully real life issues in the future.

Here is another link to a YouTube video I had been using in my ENG140 class to introduce The Kite Runner. Students enjoyed viewing this trailer to get an idea of what the main characters looked like and to see the terrain in Afghanistan as well as the Bay area where the book takes place. The problem that occurred, as you can see, is that YouTube had to delete all of the background sound for many of the videos due to copyright infringements. One day I was showing this video to the class, and without warning there was no sound. I called the IT guys at the college, and they couldn't get the sound to work either. Then we realized what had happened. It wasn't equipment failure. There was no sound attached to this video anymore.

Since that time I have found another YouTube video to show the class, but this one gives away some of the plot and is not as good as the original. That's the way it goes sometimes. Still, it is valuable to use video to reach the students, especially in this new generation. Many students are visual learners, and I feel these students benefit a great deal from technologies such as YouTube.

Sheryl's tip on annotations: Tina, isn't that a great addition to a video?! I found that by accident, trying to learn the navigation in youtube. If you go to your 'my videos', each video is listed under 'uploaded videos'. On the bottom of each video is a tool bar that has several tabs. One of these tabs reads 'annotations', click on it. This will open the video and it will start playing. When you want to add an annotation, click on the video screen and it will pause and a little box will pop up. You pick which annotation you want to add, and a text box will open on the side bar. Enter the text and choose 'save'. You can move the box around once you've entered the text. When you are done, hit the play button and click the screen again when you want to add another annotation. It's really easy and fun! Hope this works for you...Thanks for the comments...it's been a pleasure! Sheryl

You Tube beginnings