"Predicting the future is easy. It's trying to figure out what's going on now that's hard" (Dressler, 2005)
My students in EDU6323 had a blast last week. The focus was on screencasting, and for many, it was the first time they had created and shared a screencast. Based on comments, I suspect it now will not be the last time. Several have already begun incorporating short screencasts into their classrooms or work settings.… Read more The Pedagogy of Screening
Ever developed one of those killer assignments that you know would be dynamite … and then you review the graduate student submissions and wonder – How could they have missed that!?!? Yep! It happened to me this week. It happened ironically during a synthesis assignment on attention, memory and thinking, and it pointed out to… Read more Lesson in Explicitness or Lack Thereof
In EDU6323 this week, my students explored social bookmarking. As one student noted in her weekly reflection – “Holy Moly – How Did I Not Know About This?” Her observation matched about 90% of my class…which is interesting given that social bookmarking has been around for nearly a decade. In my mind, this in some… Read more The Social Side of Social Bookmarking
In the third week of EDU 6323, my students explored web searches. I had them read the second chapter of Michelle Miller’s Minds Online, Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid, Eszter Hargittai and colleagues’ Trust Online, and Clive Thompson’s Why Kids Can’t Search. I also covered advanced search techniques on Google as well as… Read more Deeper Searches
It has been awhile since I blogged…but as I move into retirement from faculty development and spend more time teaching adjunct, my blog offers a place to reflect on my online teaching. I am currently teaching a graduate course for Northeastern University – Technology as a Medium for Learning (EDU6323). I was asked to completely… Read more First Week in EDU6323
As I noted in my last post, a new blogging challenge has emerged called blimage – a “blog image” challenge: You must use an image sent to you and “incorporate it into your blog, and write a post about learning based on it…Then pass an image of your choice on to someone else so they… Read more A Dam Blimage Challenge
Kristi Bronkey had a nice article in Faculty Focus yesterday entitled “Re-Thinking Direct Instruction in Online Learning.” She noted that while direct instruction had a bad reputation associated with passive learning, it did not have to reflect passivity. She suggested a model framed around the notions of “I Do, We Do, and You Do.” I… Read more Direct Instruction and Learning Science
Last week, I began discussing Michelle Miller’s new book, Minds Online: Teaching Effectively With Technology. In my post, “Cognitively Optimized Online Course,” I reviewed the first three chapters on online learning, how it works, and the psychology of computing. In this post, I look at the fourth chapter, on attention. Sooo … has the cute… Read more Attention, Cognition, and Online Learning
I am excited to be headed to Boston next month to join the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning Through Research at Northeastern University. CATLR, led by Cigdem Talgar, was formed by Senior Vice Provost Susan Ambrose, lead author of How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Each member of CATLR works with… Read more A New Center and A New Seven
Yesterday, Joyce Kincannon and I traveled up the road to Charlottesville and the University of Virginia for their second annual Innovation in Pedagogy Summit. We spend a good deal of our mental energy in our learning center focused on innovation in teaching and learning, and so this was an opportunity to see now another university… Read more Innovation in Pedagogy Summit