Hey Prof, Wanna Hang Out in Google+

The potential that Google+ holds for college teaching and learning is a hot topic.  If you haven't yet participated in Google+ but want to learn a little more about its super-charged collaboration features -- and highly customizable privacy layers -- errr, "circles" -- I invite you to read my latest GETInsight blog post.

Click here to read: Hey Prof, Wanna Hang Out in Google+?

YouTube Playlists: Tips for Teaching Effectively with Video

Evidence has shown that many college professors use YouTube for teaching.  I'm really not sure what that means, as there are a plethora of ways to "use YouTube" as a professor.  I think most professors today are linking YouTube videos into their classes but what else can we be doing?  Or how else can we use YouTube as a learning resource for our students?

I regularly encourage college professors to have a free YouTube account included in their essential teaching toolkit. First, having an account will at the very least open the door for you to start to think about creating and sharing your own videos (with a Creative Commons license, please, so we all can benefit from your greatness).  But even if you don't upload your own videos, an account allows you to begin curating your own video content into playlists which can kick up the volume of effective use of YouTube videos as content in your classes -- and then you can get more creative about how to use them to foster student-centered learning environments too.


What are YouTube playlists?
For example, in my YouTube account, I have set up a few different playlists and as I upload my own videos and search for existing videos, I can add related content to each playlist.  You can think of a playlist as a "collection" or a "folder" or a "group" if that helps.  Here are my existing playlists:
  1) Teaching with Emerging Technologies: Tips, tricks, and samples of effective practices for teaching with emerging technologies.
  2) History of Photography:  Videos that, well, are about the history of photography.
  3) Daguerreotype and Calotype:  Videos that demonstrate the two early photographic processes.  Now the videos in this playlist are also in my "History of Photography" playlist.

How can playlists be used effectively to support learning?
Let's say you are teaching a focused unit that covers a specific topic and you have three videos (keep them brief and focused) you want to share with your students.
Your options are:

1. Link out from your course management system to each of the three videos.  Booo! Why oh why would you want to send your students out to YouTube even once, let alone three times!  There's always something more tantalizing than your course content on YouTube. Be real.
2. Embed each of the three videos in your course management sytem.  Restrained applause. A better option, as your students' focus and flow stays within your course.  But embedding three videos takes up a lot of real estate in a course.
3. Embed your playlist!  Standing ovation!  Now we're talking.  With playlists, you can embed a small player in your course management system that plays each video in your playlist in a sequence, one right after the other.  
4. And how about taking this one step further?  Jaw drops to ground. If you use a collaborative environment (like Ning -- my favorite) to facilitate your students' learning, you can have your students collaboratively curate their own relevant playlists or groups of videos.  You give them the topic and criteria, they find they video and contribute it to the group.  Then this collaboratively constructed content can be engaged by the rest of the class in a range of activities -- like blog posts!

• Tip!  Be sure to clearly indicate how long the entire playlist is so your students can plan accordingly.  And keep it as brief as possible.   

Want to see this tip in action?  Watch this 3-minute video:

VoiceThread Example: Instructional Video + Formative Assessment

I am sharing an example of a VoiceThread I created for my online History of Photography students.  The VoiceThread is part instructional content (via a 7-minute video included within the VoiceThread) and part formative assessment.  The formative assessment is demonstrated through the slides following the video that incorporate objective and subjective/discussion oriented questions, assessing lower and higher order levels of learning.  The introductory slides are provided to anchor the activity with clear groundrules and expectations.

I should also note that VoiceThread is not the only assessment method I use in the class.  Traditional assessments and regular blog posts are also integrated.

I'm sharing this because I know how helpful it can be to teachers to have an opportunity to see examples of how tools are being used.  I hope this will encourage you to share examples from your own classes that demonstrate how you're integrating web 2.0 and social media tools into your students' learning.  I'm also sharing this example because as I interact with faculty, I am finding that many are aware of VoiceThread to some degree but few understand that a single VoiceThread has the potential to be a learning mashup, incorporating presentation slides, video, images and assessment rather than a container for a Powerpoint presentation.

I'm also experimenting with VoiceThread Groups for the first time this term.  I'll share more about that later.  

Feel free to add a comment in the VoiceThread if you'd like to experiment!  Just click "Sign in or Register"and if you don't yet  have a free VoiceThread account, create one with your name and email.




And in case you're wondering, here are the steps I took to create this example.  It took me about 8-hours to produce (which, YES, to me is the greatest obstacle for creating high quality online content):

Create Video

1. Create Keynote or Powerpoint presentation for the "video" portion.
2. Write transcript for the "video" portion.
3. Use a screencast tool (I used Screenflow) to record the Keynote and produce the raw video file.  I read the transcript as I record.
4. Export the raw screencast into a .mov file.

 Create Presentation

1. Use Keynote or Powerpoint to create the Introductory and Assessment slides.
2. Export the presentation to a PDF file(PDFs hold up much better than PPTs in VoiceThread and VT does not support Keynote files).

Create Online Transcript of Video

1. This can be done in a multitude of ways. I simply pasted my transcript into a Google doc.

Create a VoiceThread

1. Log into my VoiceThread Account
2. Click on the Create Tab
3. Click "Upload"
4. Upload the .mov file
5. Upload the PDF file
6. Drag and drop slides until they area arranged in correct order.
7. Click on the single slide that contains the .mov file.  It will appear in the 'placeholder' to the right.  Add title: "Click here to read the transcript."  In the URL area, paste the link to the Google doc.

Click "Comment"

1. Leave voice comments on each slide, replicating the text so the content is equivalent in both text and audio formats (for hearing impaired students).

Click "Share"

1. Adjust the Playback and Publishing Options.
2. Copy the link, html embed code or share with appropriate group.

VoiceThread Tip: Use Identities to Improve Communication With Students

Using Identities

When I take a step back and think about "how" I am using VoiceThread in my online teaching, I equate each VoiceThread to the time I spend with students in a classroom. In my VoiceThreads, students demonstrate their skills and understanding of concepts and I provide my feedback to some (not all) of them. Like a classroom, when I make a comment in response to a contribution, the other students have the opportunity to listen and learn or tune out. Like a classroom, some students demonstrate their proficiency of a concept while others are just beginning to wrap their arms around it.

While I've been using VoiceThread for four years, I continue to try new things and find creative solutions to some of things I'd like to improve. One of those things is the ability for students to clearly recognize that I've left a comment for them. For those of you who use VoiceThread, you know that a user's avatar appears only once on a slide, regardless of how many comments s/he has left.

Here's a solution I'm trying out this week for the first time. It dawned upon me that I leave three types of comments in my VoiceThreads:

1. Introductory comments: the ones that do not change term over term and provide students with a voice narration of the activity objectives, helpful tips, and objectives.

Screenshot showing Sample and Feedback Identities and student comments.

2. Sample comments: When an activity is more conceptual in nature, I will leave a "sample comment" on at least one slide giving the students a hook to get started and provided clarity about how I want the comments to be structured. This can really make or break an activity and usually helps to "break the ice" too.

3. Feedback comments: My VoiceThread activities are "open" for a period of seven days (Tues-Mon). I enter the VoiceThread early in the week to ensure there are no problems that I need to fix and then mid-week (Friday) I will enter the VoiceThread and leave feedback comments for the students who have participated. These comments are important, as they redirect students who are still forming an understanding of a concept/idea ("Great job. You're on you're way and here's how you can improve...) and they identify the contributions that demonstrate proficiency ("That was an excellent contribution because you...").

A single VoiceThread account has the capability to have multiple "Identities" built in.  For example, when I log into VoiceThread, I step into the "Michelle Pacansky-Brock" identity which has an avatar of my photograph.  Before I leave a comment, I can toggle over to any other identity built into my account.  Up until now, I've always used a single identity for all the comments I leave for my students. This week it occurred to me that I can use the VoiceThread "Identities" feature to "label" my introductory, sample, and feedback comments.

In other words, I now have three separate identities within my account:

1. Michelle Pacansky-Brock  (avatar is my photo) which I use for my "Introductory" comments
2. Sample (avatar is a yellow square with the word "sample!!" on it)  
3. Feedback (avatar is a blue square with <----- arrows)

Before I leave my comment, I quickly toggle over to the appropriate identity and then go to work. Above you see a a screenshot of one slide showing both the "Sample" and "Feedback" avatar.

Facilitating a Conversation Using the Move Tool

And here is a video that takes this idea one step further.  In the following video, I demonstrate how to toggle to a new identity to leave "Feedback" for a student and how to use the "Move" feature in VoiceThread (Shift + Click + Drag the gray segment in the horizontal bar at the bottom that corresponds to the comment you wish to move).  Moving the comment empowers you, the facilitator of the conversation, to insert your feedback comments directly into sequence so they play after the student(s) for whom you have left the feedback.

One final tip, I like leaving a single feedback comment in which I leave feedback for a group of students.  Personally, I don't leave comments for every student every week.  I leave comments for students who have missed major elements of the assignment's criteria (as this is a peer-to-peer learning environment so my role is to redirect the group when necessary) and I applaud excellent insights and contributions.

EasyBib: Mobile Research, Annotation, and Information Literacy

I had the pleasure today to spend 30 minutes with Jessica Bacques who took me on a virtual tour of EasyBib.  As a community college instructor, I have seen the challenges that my own students have faced with mastering both the research and annotation process, as well as effectively assessing the credibility of digital sources.  EasyBib offers an easy to use, web-based tool  (with mobile app option -- currently only iPhone but Android and iPad will follow soon).

Dynamic, Digital Note Taking
Really, EasyBib blends the best of both worlds -- it provides a paperless approach for students to begin the research process by creating digital "sticky notes" within their account that can be organized into groups by dragging and dropping them onto each other.  The groups can be labeled with titles and also identified through color coding.  Personally, watching the note taking demo brought me right back to my own middle school years when I had a teacher who demonstrated how to take research notes on paper notecards.  That strategy, honestly, is an excellent one but who wants to manage paper notecards today in our digital mobile society?

After the "sticky notes" are made, grouped, and coded, a user can then automatically drag them (in groups) over a separate working space and EasyBib turns the content from the sticky notes into a clean outline format.

One-Click Bibliography Entries
As for creating a bibliography (that can also be annotated), that's streamlined too.  To build a bibliography, users with an iPhone app can simply scan a book's barcode and in the web client a user can enter an ISBN number if using a book and EasyBib provides a list from which you just click the citation you want to use.  Throughout the creation process, users who have a Pro account can easily toggle their bibliography to appear in either MLA, APA or Chicago/Turbian format -- free accounts only provide content in MLA format.  If only I had this in grad school!

I know there are folks out there who are going to criticize EasyBib and argue that it takes the "rigor" out of research.  For me, I see it as an opportunity bridge a student's passion and interest in a topic directly into the research process, rather than watching them stumble and get frustrated with the languages of MLA, Chicago, APA, etc. and fumble with trying to bridge their digital world with academia's expectations.  There's no greater obstacle in research than getting hung up on the process.  Doing research should be seamless so one can focus on developing their thoughts, ideas, and arguments.

Fostering Information Literacy
And, one final feature that I think ALL of us could learn from!  Today we continue to stumble through a transition from academic traditions rooted in paper, peer-reviewed content to digital content that may be credible, somewhat credible, or a bunch of slop.  Web 2.0 has really blurred one's ability to discern credible information from crap.  To paraphrase what Howard Rheingold has said, "The number one thing our student need to learn today is how to develop their own crap detector."


In EasyBib, if you select "website" as your source type, you are provided with a box to paste the url to your website.  If that website is one of the top 5,000 sites accessed by EasyBib users (this is a beta feature and this number will expand as we move forward), it will apply a rubric to assess the validity of the site.  You can click on the "Learn More" link to view the rubric and begin to learn how and why the site is valid, may be valid, or is not valid.  To me, this makes a fabulous learning activity in and of itself for librarians, professors, teachers and students.

You can learn more about EasyBib here or watch the video overview below.  If you are using EasyBib, please leave a comment here to share your experiences!  Thanks.