"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
Over the past five weeks, the graduate students in my Educational Technology and School Leaders class embarked on a journey into cyberspace – a first for many of them and one for many of them as mystical as the illustration here. Five weeks ago, my students were self-described technophobes. They were worried not only about… Read more Our Class Technology Journey
My Fall 2010 online course kicked off this past weekend, and unlike face-to-face classes, the process of getting to know my students is slow but interesting. Three-quarters have now logged in, but by the nature of the design, it will be a week before many of them begin interacting with each other. My students are… Read more Blogging Into the New Academic Year
Over the weekend, I finished reading Bill Kist’s book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age. Of course, given my past posts, this book really resonated with me. But I think it is a good resource for any faculty exploring the use of social media in instruction. One of the things I… Read more Bill Kist Book
I am currently reading Bill Kist’s new book, The Socially Networked Classroom. While written for all levels of education from elementary through postsecondary, he focuses on the use of social media in classes from middle school and above. As I continue to work with K-12 teachers in my graduate course, this book addresses many of… Read more The Socially Networked Student
I am heading out for a couple of weeks vacation, but I wanted to try and capture some thoughts about the summer institute our team at the CTE completed on Friday. My last two posts focused on the first two days. The further we got into the week, the less energy I had at day’s… Read more Teaching Online (Versus Online Teaching)
I am about one-third the way through Charlene Li‘s and Josh Bernoff‘s 2008 book, Groundswell. The groundswell that these two analysts from Forrester Research discuss is the impact of social media on businesses. Striking a similar theme to that espoused by Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody and David Weinberger in Everything is Miscellaneous, Groundswell… Read more No Groundswell in Higher Ed?
I am a huge fan of Hugh MacLeod‘s art. His “Great Ideas” really resonated with me. I could not help but think about the resistance I have seen over the years regarding moving from class-based instruction to online instruction. My hope is that faculty are beginning to move beyond their fear of online learning to… Read more Great Ideas
I just finished reading Cassandra Smith’s Who Let This Disaster in My Classroom?: A Practical Guide for Online Instructors and Some Funny Stories Along The Way (2009: Resource Publications). What a disaster! And not in a good way. I bought this book because I was intrigued by Tony Bate’s review in his blog. Tony had… Read more Who Let This Disaster on My Reading List?
My colleagues at the Center for Teaching Excellence, Jeff Nugent and Zach Goodell, have been co-teaching a graduate course this semester here at VCU. Teaching, Learning and Technology in Higher Education (GRAD-602) is designed to provide students in the Preparing Future Faculty Program with an introduction to contemporary instructional practices and exploration of relevant issues… Read more Next Generation Faculty
Jim Groom pushes the envelope all the time, which is why we love him! The person who coined the phrase “edupunk” is back as Rorschach from the Watchmen with a warning for “so-called professors” – you cannot, as Jon Mott suggested at ELI, have corporate learning management systems like Blackboard and edupunk style learning co-exist. … Read more I Am The So-Called Professor