Why Grocery Shopping is Toxic

I have just returned from my weekly trip to the grocery store and I feel sick.

I consider myself an active consumer, even though I tend to self-criticize myself for not shopping more at local farmer's markets and getting caught up in the food convenience maze.  While I'm shopping, I think about how to deconstruct the grocery store lingo all the time -- shop the perimeters for the most "real" food, remember to decipher the following accurately: the difference between "light" and "lite," "low fat" and "reduced fat,"  "low sugar" and "no sugar added," etc.

But there is one element of grocery shopping that I continue to find more toxic than any single ingredient in the overly processed food we buy here in the United States.  It's the experience of standing in line at the check out counter. Despite the fact that I do not purchase subscriptions to "women's magazines" (and I can't remember the last time I ever bought one), I regularly have some general sense of whose boyfriend Kim Kardashian is sleeping with, who last dumped Jennifer Aniston, how desperately they both want a baby, which female celebrities are pregnant, which are too fat or too thin, which have lost their baby fat the quickest and .... the ever coveted title, "the one who lost 10 pounds in two weeks" or "12 pounds in 30 days."

These magazines leave toxic effects on anyone and everyone who passes through the check out line, leaving no opportunity to avoid them if one chooses to shop at these stores.  The $5-7 we spend on each one is not a form of entertainment.  Rather, it's an opportunity for the media to spotlight and reward women for being a temptress, never being single, and starving herself while scorning those who choose to not have a man in her life, choose to not have a child, choose to focus on raising her newborn child rather than getting "her body back," or choosing to embrace her body in its natural form.

The truth is that women are never empowered to have "their own body" in this image-driven, look-at-me society which is getting more and more intensified with the continued popularity of reality shows like The Real Housewives of ________ (enter any city name here -- it really doesn't matter!), Toddlers and Tiaras, The Bachelor, etc.  Even "the beautiful ones" must alter their appearance to be beautiful and then their appearance is still heavily touched upon in Photoshop (wrinkles and pores vanish, bust lines are enhanced, and slim waist lines are carved away).

Like the paintings and sculptures of women that adorn the walls of the world's acclaimed art museums, our bodies today -- in real, 3d form and in images -- are still carved, chiseled, and sculpted into an ideal that has been constructed over thousands of years to fulfill the desires of men.  We exist to be looked at and, in turn, our actions are undervalued and our opportunities to participate, explore, and change the world are diminished.

Of course, these magazines will never cease from being displayed, for our economy relies too heavily upon women to feel like crap about themselves.  The worse we feel about ourselves, the more money we spend on products and services to make us look and act more like those who are idealized and celebrated on the covers of magazines.

In fact, in recent years, despite our country being in the midst of the worst economic crumble since the Great Depression, we've seen the emergence of an entire new industry:  The Med Spa.  Where women, now as young as their mid-20s, are "empowered" to spend hundreds of dollars to reclaim their once wrinkle-free faces by being injected with the same poison that paralyzes -- and kills -- a human infected with botulism, among other invigorating "treatments."  Meanwhile, eating disorders among pre-teens continue to rise and preschoolers demonstrate that they too have internalized the "fear of being fat" by associating "being pretty" not only with being thin but also with being "nice" and "having friends." 

So, the question is...when, oh when, will we integrate media literacy into the foundation of education in the United States to put girls/women and boys/men, on a path to becoming visually literate so they can actively deconstruct these toxic gender messages and be encouraged to support a life in which women are encouraged to live independently and fully participate in this world that needs them so very much?  Without the ability to view one's visual context critically, the underlying values that perpetuate the construction of gender in our society will continue to be silently internalized. And the check out line at your local grocery store will continue to remain toxic.

Teaching in the Era of Participation

Lately my thoughts have been entangled in an interplay of excitement about the possibilities of emerging technologies in college learning and concern over the viewpoints of many faculty who characterize their students as "apathetic, disengaged, and lazy."

These reflections have pulled me into a new topic that I've shared in my GETideas.org blog post this month -- Teaching in the Era of Participation.  I invite you to read the post here.

I also invite you to reflect on Michael Wesch's compelling new #VOST2011 collaborative video project which, to me, illuminates a student's perspective of how it feels to be a college student today, after growing up in a participatory era.  Below is a VoiceThread I've created in an effort to showcase the first remix of Wesch's project (the videos used to create the remix were authored by actual college students in response to Wesch's call for submissions) and craft a space for educators to reflect on the project and the thoughts it leaves you with.

Finally, I'll be sharing more of my thoughts on Teaching in the Era of Participation as the keynote presenter for Ohio State's Innovate 2011 on April 27th and the Online Teaching Conference at Orange Coast College on June 24th.  I'm excited about being invited to present at these great venues and look forward to meeting more inspirational educators in the months ahead.

I hope you'll join in on the conversation in the VoiceThread below:







How to Leave a Comment in the VoiceThread:

• Click on the “Sign in" or "Register” button.
• If you are new to VoiceThread, register for a free account using your e-mail address and name.
• If you have an existing account, sign in by entering your e-mail address and password.
• When you are ready to participate, click on the “Comment” button.
• To leave a voice comment with your computer’s microphone:
• Click on “Record.”
• If prompted, click “Allow” and start talking.
• When you are done, click on the red “OK, Start Talking” button.
• Click “Save” to retain your comment.
• Click “Cancel” to re-record your comment.
• Click “Record More” if you’d like to add to resume recording and add to your existing comment.

10 Uses of Wordle for Learning

It's always fun to revisit a favorite tool.  One of mine is Wordle.  This week I used it to create a fun, creative, and inexpensive invitation for my son's birthday party and here I used it for a little self-reflecting.  I just plugged in the url to my blog and Wordle created this lovely word cloud, identifying the words I use most commonly in recent posts.  This is my blog's self-portrait (at least for this week!).

created with wordle.net

 

10 Uses of Wordle for Learning:

1. Analyze a transcript of politician's speech.  What do the word patterns tell you about his/her message and word choice?
2. Analyze a self-written essay to identify the words you're using the most or over-using.  Is this a tool that could be used to diversify word choice?
3. Create a public Google doc.  Type an open-ended question at the top; such as, "Share a word or phrase that demonstrates what 'democracy' means to you."  After all students in your class have responded, copy the text of the Google doc and paste it into Wordle. Bam! Instant collaborative word cloud, demonstrating diverse opinions and perspectives.
4. Have your students/program/school identify their ethnicity and create a Wordle that conveys the diverse demographics of your group.  This could be a great graphic for a "People and Cultures Day/Week" event.
5.  On a computer, have each student type a brief paragraph about what they've learned at the end of each week. Each time they add a new paragraph, type it above the previous one in the same document (like a blog -- or better yet, make it a blog!).  At a significant marking point (midterm, for example), have each student copy all the text and paste it into Wordle.  Break into small groups to analyze similarities and differences in the word hierarchies.
6. Wordle uses size to convey 'hierarchy' between words. Identify other examples of how size communicates importance in our culture.  
7. Create a Wordle self-portrait and share it on your website or blog at the start of a term to introduce yourself to your new students.
8. Have students take notes on a chapter, article, or movie.  Paste the notes into Wordle and reflect on the most important ideas or key terms each student has taken away from the content.
9. Create a Wordle to introduce a new learning unit.  Use key terms, names of key figures, concepts, etc. 
10. Use it for formative feedback throughout a class. At the end of a learning unit, welcome students to reflect on the success of the unit.  Have them share 1) what worked well 2) what didn't work well.  Collect the feedback, make a Wordle for each category, and discuss each of them with the class. 

America Lacks an "Education Culture"

I just read a great article titled "The Real Challenge for Higher Education" by Garrison Walters that thoughtfully considers why America, once the most educated nation on earth, now ranks 11th in overall education levels when we focus on our younger student higher ed demographics (the article notes that the US is still second when focusing on our population overall).

While typically the reasons for the declining college graduation rates are excavated from the inner workings of institutions (professor motivation, learning methods, assessment, administration) and within our governmental structures (particularly funding), Garrison takes a different look at the problem and reveals a very important discussion. According to his argument, Americans lack a "pervasive education culture" which lays a context for an overall undervaluing of the linkage between economic and personal success and the attainment of a college degree. While I certainly don't want to suggest that we should, in any way, lose or focus on the dialogue around institutional and governmental reform around higher education, I think he has a worthy argument here that is relevant to every single one of us.

Try his experiment yourself. Ask a young college student why s/he is enrolled. How many respond, "I'm here because my parents made me enroll," or "I enrolled because my girlfriend did." I recall hearing some of those viewpoints while teaching at a community college ... but is that a new phenomenon? That's difficult to say.

Now spend some time thinking about how the social context in which a young person is raised informs his/her values. That thought really concerns me when I reflect on Garrison's argument. I have done some writing and presenting on generational differences in recent years and this has caused me to think about my own upbringing and how the events around me informed my viewpoints and overall values. My father, first of all, was the first of his family of 15 children to leave his hometown and travel across the country from New Jersey to the golden state of California to attain a college education. His gateway? Porterville Community College -- where college was free and open to all. That story, I believe, ingrained the importance of college inside me from an early age. I attended public K-12 schools and remember hearing some dialogue between my parents about budget cuts. My elementary school was closed and torn down to build great big houses. But, overall, I don't remember feeling affected by budget cuts until college when I had to battle to get a seat in classes. And then I'd often struggle understand what the point of each lecture was. I always gravitated towards the visual discipline of art and art history and I often think this is partially due to the challenges I felt trying to learn in a fully auditory lecture environment. I found my passion in life through college, particularly graduate school which provided me with my first opportunity to step in front of students. I'll never forget the fire that I felt inside of me that day.

Now as I watch my two young boys grow up in public schools in California, I often think about how the context of their educational experiences is informing their values of education. We talk frequently about college and ponder the opportunity of exploring their dreams in life. I don't focus a lot on the notion of "college = more money" which is the measurement too frequently used to define the value of a college degree. I want them to be motivated by their passion to learn and explore, rather than achieve a good income. That's part of our problem, as a country, I believe.

The other concern I have is more real to young students, as the effects are seen around them on a daily basis and they feel them more deeply. My boys' classroom teacher-to-student ratio has increased in the last year from 1:22 to 1:30, as a result of budget cuts. And they're in elementary school. This ratio is in place in kindergarten too. The classrooms are tight, hot, and kids are virtually on top of each other. Teachers spend more time than ever on discipline and class management and less time on learning; although they're held to meeting the exact same standards. A friend who teaches described her experience as "like playing 'Whack a Mole.'" How does that demonstrate and foster a value for learning in our young students?

This year my kids lost their computer lab assistant, library aid, and they're having an extra week of instruction cut out of the school year to avoid teacher layoffs.  Each family has been asked to contribute hundreds of dollars to help the school respond to the deficit.  Now I ask, "What kind of messages are these actions sending to our youngsters about our nation's value of education?" Clearly, children don't understand the big picture of how budgetary systems work. They see what's happening at their school and they these changes to one simple message: "school is not important."

Another huge contribution to youngster's valuing of education is media, also cited by Garrison. Any child who watches television today is exposed to a nauseating extreme to "the dream of being a celebrity." Disney Channel is an extreme example and one that parents still, too frequently, fall back on as "safe" due to the mythical idealism that Baby Boomers and Gen Xers associate with Disney.  The Disney Channel offering youngsters the "choice" to watch Hannah Montana live the "Best of Both Worlds" (a story about a teenage girl living on the beach in Malibu who dawns a blonde wig and night and lives a secret life as a rock star), The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (rich kids who used to live in a hotel and now live on a cruise ship), Sunny With a Chance (teenage girl who has left her family for a the chance of her life to star in a tv show in Hollywood, featuring comical scenes of classroom learning "between takes" when she can fit it in), and iCarly (a teenager with her own webcast and national following).  And let us not ignore the lack of diversity in the lead characters and perpetuation of gender stereotypes that are fostered through the viewing of these shows.

  

 These media fiascos cultivate dreams and values within our children. They teach our children that "success" is tied to fame, rather than learning and exploring the vast possibilities that await them in a college education. And these media messages carry directly over to overly commercialized music, as well. The Pussycat Dolls' (whose recent tour was titled "Doll Domination) "When I grow up" rants:

When I grow up
I wanna be famous
I wanna be a star
I wanna be in movies
When I grow up
I wanna see the world
Drive nice cars
I wanna have groupies
When I grow up
Be on TV
People know me
Be on magazines
When I grow up
Fresh and clean
Number one chick when I step out on the scene

And don't even get me started on their "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?" which, by the way, is featured on a recent Kids Bop album sung by young girls and has also been played at my childrens' school during recess (I know this because my seven year old came home singing the lyrics).  Is this our vision of role models for young girls?  Is this our vision for how we want women to be valued?  Today the majority of the college population is female (many of whom struggle with body image issues and eating disorders -- hmmm, wonder why).  What's on the horizon for our next generation?

As you read the words on this screen, begin to shape an awareness of the role you play in fostering an education culture; you need to voice support for higher education across the board and effectively navigate our youth away from countless hours watching these media "heroes" while teaching them to actively deconstruct the messages they convey at the same time (an outcome of integrating "visual literacy" as a core 21st century skill).

We all need to crystal clear that America's success in this global, information society is contingent upon an educated population of individuals of different genders, races, and ethnicities who can think critically, offer innovative solutions to complex problems, present ideas orally and in writing, collaborate in diverse groups and demonstrate a sensitivity of cultural differences. This is fundamental to the success, both personal and economic, of our children as they emerge into adults, as well as our country. As Garrison notes,

"[F]ew among our political leaders appear to be thinking about education as a K to graduate system, and far too few appreciate the changing levels of knowledge needed to function effectively in today’s society. Once, Americans thought everyone should have around a fourth grade education, then the line gradually moved up to the eighth grade and finally to the end of high school. But the line of minimum necessity has long since crossed into higher education; now, if all you have is a high school diploma, you’re a knowledge economy dropout."

Honestly, to me, it seems that contributing to an adjustment of our culture's values of education is the one thread in this complexly interwoven ball of tangled hair that we all can directly affect starting right now.

A Case for Social Networking in College Learning

Hello...life has interrupted the flow of my blog posts recently.  Hopefully, many of you have had the time to reflect on Ning's new business move.  I, myself, have not had time yet to explore other free social networking options but will be focusing more closely on this task in June.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ning has offered a low cost service for $2.95/month or $19.95/year which provides a Mini Network option.  The network is limited to 150 members and removes the option to create Groups or upload videos directly into Ning (although embeds are still supported).  This is the option they've crafted for educators.  Fortuitously for K-12 educators, Ning Mini networks will be provided to you for free at the generous funding support of an unnamed educational foundation.  Unfortunately for higher ed, there has been no matching offer to support the free integration of Ning networks into college learning.

Social networking is now used by 95% of our 18-24 year old college students, 70% use a social network on a daily basis (2009 ECAR Report of Undergraduates' Use of IT).  Traditional college age students today do not remember life before the internet.  Participatory learning -- learning in a peer-based environment through shared interactions online -- is no longer remarkable to most of our college students (The Future of Thinking, MIT Press, 2009).

Online learning in higher education continues to grow rapidly at roughly 17% in 2008 (Sloan-C) and if we hone in on community colleges we see an even higher growth rate at 22% the same year (Instructional Technology Council).  The significance of this growth in online enrollments is felt most profoundly when we understand that growth in higher ed overall in 2008 was relatively flat at 2% (Sloan-C).  And who is learning online?  82% of online college students were undergraduates in 2008.

The more college learning environments remain entrenched in traditional delivery of content, rather than integrating participatory learning experiences, which are naturally fostered with the use of social networks, the more extensive the gap remains between informal and formal learning in the lives of our students.  The recent decision to eliminate free Ning networks is a moment for us all to re-evaluate the importance of social networking.  If you've used Ning with positive results, then figure out a way to move forward. As for paying for Ning Mini networks, I'm not opposed to this option either.  I do find the cost worthy of the learning benefits.  The question becomes, "who pays?"  Is it appropriate for individual professors to pay for the tools leveraged to craft their students learning?  Are institutions open to supporting the use of social networks?  What if only a handful of early adopting professors are "ready" to do so?  Do they have less of a chance of gaining institutional support? Are their foundations willing to support college integration of Ning?  These are all questions I've been mulling over for weeks.

How does the Mini Network option support my model?  When I used Ning, I create a unique network for each of my classes (unless I'm teaching multiple sections then I have rolled them into one network).  So, there is potential here for a college professor, leveraging this model, to create many (six or more?) networks each year.  Each network surviving the course of a term, say six months, at roughly $3/month equates to about $110/year.  This also results in my networks being eliminated after the course of a semester, which feels simply wrong to me.  Shouldn't this be content that students can continue to learn from and experiences I should leverage and share with my colleagues?  Doesn't eliminating a social network immediately after a class is over undercut the very model of interaction and participation, not to mention life long learning?  More questions I have pondered recently.

I will continue to support social networking in college learning because I think it's essential for our students to experience formal learning experiences that are more closely aligned with the way they are learning outside of our formalized institutions.  Social networking increases opportunities for personalized learning, allowing students to share images of friends, family and images that support the course content (in art appreciation, students regularly share images of trips they've taken to architectural sites or museums, for example).  Encouraging videos to be embedded from YouTube promotes critical thinking through enabling students to apply course concepts and identify videos that synthesize ideas from class in new, interesting ways.  The use of media rich blogging stimulates expression of ideas beyond text, providing a method for sharing images (from field trips) or visual representations of course concepts.

A few free social networking options that have been shared with me are listed below. Again, I have not evaluated these myself and only share them because I've received many requests to do.  Please comment on this post with any feedback you have about these or other sites:

• Spruz -- which is promoting a Ning migration option
• Lunch
• Facebook -- a popular alternative which I use but don't host my own group
• Webs
• For more options, consider Phil Bradley's related blog post

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas about moving forward with participatory learning in higher education.  And I look forward to the day that a social networking environment is part of every college professor's standard teaching "toolkit," like an LMS.

Cheers.

Learning in the Social Web: Online Teaching and Learning 2.0

Today I presented a webinar about "How to Build an Interactive Learning Environment" and presenting the content really tied together a lot of my thoughts, teaching experiments and recent readings.  The presentation, enhanced with research results, is available on Slideshare, with my preferred title "Learning in the Social Web" if you'd like to see it.

Online Learning In The Social Web

View more presentations from Michelle Pacansky-Brock.

Effectively building online community is a topic receiving quite a bit of attention lately and online instructors who are focused on developing and facilitating quality, relevant learning experiences should be part of this dialogue.  Community building has been an integral element in online learning research, guided by the work of many including Palloff and Pratt (1999, 2005), and Swan and Shea (2005), and Yuen (2003).  Within the many flavors of theories and importance of fostering community is the embedded idea that learning online is learning in physical isolation and void of socialization, unless collaboration, interactivity and social presence are effectively integrated into the design of the course.  Research has shown that the feeling of being isolated is a factor that contributes to the lower retention rates in online classes (Galusha, 1997; Hara & Khling 1999; Kubala, 1998; Soles & Moller, 2001).

Now as we sit in the corridor of the 21st century, we need not look too far for community building powerhouse tools that offer educators and students the opportunity to share and collaborate through video and voice.  Much of the research I've shared in past posts about how the use of VoiceThread (a web 2.0 tool that integrates options for leaving text, voice or video comments) in online classes increases community.  Web 2.0 is our opportunity to explore these new philosophies in our teaching. Many other educators are exploring web 2.0 tools as a more interactive, participatory way to share content and engage students in online interactions.  

One of my favorite recently literature contributions on this topic is a white paper shared by Virginia Commonwealt University's Center for Teaching Excellence, From Content to Community: [Re]Thinking the Transition to Online Teaching and Learning.  The concept of "rethinking" a course redesign to deliver it effectively for online learning, suggests that we have now moved into a new phase of online pedagogy, one that engages the social wonders of the web -- where are students are actively engaged when they aren't in a formal online class. 

While new literature about online teaching and learning is encouraging applications of social media into formal learning, unfortunately, few LMSs currently integrate dynamic video and audio discussion tools into their basic toolkits nor do they offer opportunities for students to generate multimedia content. And this is a major reason that dynamic social presence in online classes isn't mainstream.  Many faculty adamantly defend the ability of text-based interactions to facilitate social presence but many studies today are proving that audio and video simply outperforms text in this area (not really a surprise, is it?).  

In the past week, a terrific article has been shared in many venues about the work of Douglas E. Hersh, Dean of Educational Programs and Technology at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC).  Hersh has developed a customized version of Moodle that integrates Skype for student-student and instructor-student interactions.  Skype is a free web 2.0 tool that enables free video and voice and instant messaging communications between users anywhere in the world.  The Moodle learning environment also providees students with "voice boards" in which they discuss topics.  Students can also anonymously rank learning experiences, providing a quick and effective way for instructors to obtain feedback throughout a course.  

Hersh embarked upon a study at SBCC that sought to investigate whether increasing the "Human Element" in onlne learning through the creative learning environment in their customized Moodle version, would result in students feeling more connected to their online learning environment and, in turn, improve the low student satisfaction, low levels of student achievement and high attrition rates (that are typically 10-20% higher than face to face classes). 

The results?  Class completion rates increased by nearly 10 and student satisfaction and student mean grade point averages also increased by a similar number.  As noted in the CCC TechEdge article, "A 10 percent increase in class completion reduces the 10-20 percent greater chance of attrition for online learners and begins to even the playing field between traditional classes versus online classes."

Now, here is what we all need to take away from this.  First, while Hersh's model doesn't explicitly reference "community building," I would argue that by enhancing social presence of the instructor and students through video and voice, and providing collaborative activities in the course design, these classes are triggering many essential elements of community building. 

The use of audio feedback for increasing community was explore by Ice, Curtis, Phillips and Wells (2007) and my own students enforced these results through their 2008 feedback about using VoiceThread.  As I've shared, 94% strongly agreed or agreed that hearing their online instructor’s voice through VoiceThread’s audio comment feature increased their sense that she was actively present in their learning experience (versus text-only feedback) and 98% felt this way about video comments.  Students feel more distanced through text-only communications and video and audio reduces this feeling of isolation, resulting in greater retention and increased motivation to succeed.  

So, why aren't audio and video integrated more regularly into online learning?  My hypothesis is that online instructors rely upon the toolkit within their LMS to teach -- just as I did in my first two years of online teaching.  Few faculty work at institutions that will take an innovative approach, like Hersh did, and craft a specialized LMS.  That, I'd put money on -- although I long to see the day higher ed puts an emphasis on innovation in instruction.  We need more thinkers and doers like Hersh. 

But do not fret my friends!  We are amidst a world that has been transformed by web 2.0!  95% of college age students (18-24) now use social networking and 70% do so every single day!  (ECAR, 2009)   Half of our students share (not access) videos on YouTube and more than a third report contributing to blogs and wikis.  Times are changing and these are tools we need to be mastering and using as tools to teach our "distanced" students.

The truth of the matter is that it's EASY to record a video in YouTube via your webcam, copy the embed code and paste it into an LMS.  I am always amazed at how many professors have no idea how to do this in Blackboard or Moodle (the only two LMSs I've really had experience with).  It's NOT difficult and it WILL change your students connection to the class.  Here is a simple screenshot of a video I recorded using my webcam in Viddler.com and simply pasted the embed code into a basic Moodle version (nothing customized here). 

Additionally,  VoiceThread and Ning are simple ways to integrate collaborative activities that offer students opportunities to connect with each other through video and voice and also see pictures of each other.  A recent survey I conducted with Michelle Macfarlane and Jennifer Molina demonstrated that 90% of our online students reported that seeing pictures of their fellow classmates helped them feel more connected to the class discussions.  

Let's do this...web 2.0 is a road towards empowering faculty to integrate community building tools into a students' online learning experience.  The area that we need to work on, however, is accessibility.  We, all of us in education, need to voice our concerns about tools that are not compliant with 508 regulations.  We are not there yet.  But, I believe, that if we engage with the tools now and integrate them thoughtfully and appropriately and share our expectations with web 2.0 developers (through blogs, Twitter, writing to the developers themselves) then things will change.  

Thanks for reading -- although this really should be a video post, shouldn't it?  ;-)

Hello Prezi - So Long Powerpoint!

For years I've been part of the anti-Powerpoint movement -- the group of individuals painfully opposed to educators who presumably "teach" with their entire lecture written on their slides, transforming their physical existence into a mere auditory translation of the text for the bored-out-of-their-mind students. I've considered the importance of teaching the "art" of designing effective presentations but today, I think I stumbled upon the answer.

Web 2.0 does it again -- another beautifully integrated, easy to use tool that turns the concept of a presentation inside out by focusing on key words and visuals spread out over a continuous two dimensional canvas, using hierarchy and zoom to convey importance. Now I can't help but draw the lovely metaphor between an artist's toolkit and the Prezi interface, as we embrace our new methods of creating in the 21st century (as an art history I rejoice in seeing the arts influence business innovations processes so inherently).

Here is a simple demo of Prezi so you can get the idea then you can take a trip over to the Prezi showcase to view lots more samples (many which are simply mimicking the Powerpoint interface, you'll catch on to them after awhile).




I also rejoice in a move towards a visually-centric content creation tool. This makes all the difference. Moving away from an interface that requires a user to click through pages or slides is a huge leap for the western user ... bravo Prezi! I have felt constrained and challenged as an art historian, and I've been very vocal about this in presentations I've given in recent years, as I've attempted to craft learning activities for my students to effectively achieve objectives focused on visual learning. But how does one have students engage, critique, analyze and study an image in a text-centric learning management system (like Blackboard)? That has been my biggest challenge as an online educator and that was specifically why I began to migrate outside of Blackboard and started to dabble with web 2.0 tools (like VoiceThread and Ning).

So, check out Prezi. It's quite amazing. Hmmm. Prezi training for educators and students-generated Prezi projects? Sounds like a turning point! And for those of you who are eager to ask the question, yes, Prezi offers subscription options that give you the ability to keep your content private. There is also an option for a "Public License" for students and teachers which I wasn't able to get more details about, as I am not currently teaching right now (unless somebody wants to hire me?? Grin.).

To learn more about Prezi, visit the Learning Center which provides many beautifully done, easy-to-follow video tutorials.

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age

Yesterday I stumbled upon The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age report by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg and the assistance of Zoe Marie Jones funded by the MacArthur Foundation, which was posted on the Creative Commons blog back in June 2009. I really can't begin to put into words how much this report has captured my excitement and my creative juices. It's a great way to start the new year!


Over the past several years, I've found myself aligned with K-12 bloggers and educational theorists who seem to be light years ahead of higher education in keeping their finger on the pulse of learning trends of young students and stressing the critical need to shift our tools and pedagogies to engage and educate this new generation. And, may I add, that I've learned tremendously from them! However, what has amazed and frustrated me is the fact that this "new generation" of Millennial students that are generally the focus of new learning studies and new approaches to pedagogy is now entering their 30s. That's right -- several graduating classes of Millennials have already cycled through our colleges and universities and we, the pontificating professors holding all the answers, are just beginning to rub our eyes and realize that a semester in our disengaged lecture halls offers fewer learning moments than a five minute customized search on YouTube. My 21-year old nephew is currently a senior at the University of California. Last year he received a very high GPA and in a casual conversation, I congratulated him on his academic achievements. Then I asked, "Did you learn a lot?" He paused, placed his hand on his chin and reflected for a moment and said, "Yeah, yeah, I did. I learned how to memorize and how to figure out what my T.A.s expect me to know for the tests." Terrific. I encourage anyone who is reading this blog post to have a similar conversation with a young person you know enrolled in college today. And, hey, drop me a comment and let me know what they say.

Despite the revolutionary effects that the Internet has had on the way individuals live, learn, play and ultimately learn, higher education has gone virtually unchanged since the medieval period -- and that's really not an overstatement. I've had this internal dialogue, often a scathing dialogue, with myself and colleagues many times. The report summarizes it best:

"Our argument here is that our institutions of learning have changed far more slowly than the modes of inventive, collaborative, participatory learning offered by the Internet and an array of contemporary mobile technologies. Part of the reason for the relatively slow change is that many of our traditional institutions have been tremendously successful, if measured in terms of endurance and stability. It is often noted that, of all existing institutions in the West, higher education is one of most enduring. Oxford University, the longest continuously running university in the English-speaking world, was founded in the twelfth century. Only the Catholic Church has been around longer and, like the Catholic Church, universities today bear a striking structural resemblance to what they were in medieval times. As is typically the case in the present, the medieval university was a separate, designated, physical location where young adults (students) came to be taught by those, usually older and more experienced, who were authorized (scholars, professors, dons) to impart their special knowledge, chiefly by lecturing. Over the years, such features as dormitories, colleges, and, later, departments were added to this universitas (corporation). The tendency toward increasing specialization, isolation, departmentalization, and advanced (graduate and professional school) training developed in the wake of the Enlightenment, gathering steam through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century."

But when I read the report, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, I found all these issues acknowledged, from the perspective of higher education, and the call for innovation loud and clear. Beyond that, the report acknowledges the validity of participatory learning as part of our culture that is "no longer exotic or new but is a commonplace way of socializing and learning." Participatory learning, according to the report,

"includes the many ways that learners (of any age) use new technologies to participate in virtual communities where they share ideas, comment on one another’s projects, and plan, design, implement, advance, or simply discuss their practices, goals, and ideas together."

Any individual who has a young person in his or her life or spends much of his/her time online understands this concept clearly. My son demonstrated it to me most clearly at age seven when he was both passionately learning about Pokemon and when he received his first digital video camera for Christmas. While I was expecting him to immediately use the camera to record his surroundings, the first thing he did was record himself playing his Pokemon video game on his Nintendo DS (he recorded the screen). His objective was to record the capturing of a specific Pokemon which, apparently, was quite an accomplishment. He then requested my assistance in uploading it to YouTube. We logged into our family account and I uploaded it for him.

I watched in amazement. Within hours, the comments began to pour in. Users, other Pokemon players, began to ask questions about how/where/when he captured the character. My son eagerly responded to an inquiry or two. YouTube had been his community for learning how to play and interact with the Pokemon game and he felt the obligation to participate, to give back to that community, once he was able to do so.

Today we have fifteen videos in our family YouTube channel. Fourteen of these videos have been viewed anywhere between 3 and 288 times. However, the ONE video that is related to Pokemon (all the others are videos of my family or videos of vacations we have been on) was viewed 5,622 times and it has received 22 comments. Hmm. I think you see where participatory learning is coming into play there.

The point here is that college learning experiences are still based upon a straight forward exchange of information, rooted in traditional hierarchies of professor-student roles anchored in physical classroom spaces. While our digital learners have been molded in a society that fosters participatory learning in informal environments -- encouraging participation, input, reflection -- their formal learning in college demands them to learn in entirely different ways that are foreign to them.

Even when learning occurs online, rarely is that learning transformed into participatory learning experiences. I have often imagined how dismayed students must be by this experience. I picture students in front of their laptops with multiple browsers open -- one of them being "Blackboard" or some other disengaged LMS, containing a course designed entirely in text, in which they're required to enter to learn english or philosophy or physics, while the other windows hold dozens of connections to individuals around the world, interactive games, opportunities to author and publish their thoughts through their blogs, etc. Because of the fact that online classes embrace the internet as the medium of the learning experience it seems incredibly unjust to transfer traditional pedagogies into this method of learning. If, instead, we view the Internet as an institution of learning with participatory learning at its core, as the MacArthur report encourages us to, then we are beginning to move into a new terrain, a new discourse.

On a more personal note, my interests in encouraging new ways of thinking about learning in our digital society is taking me into a new direction in 2010. 2009 was professionally surreal for me, as I ended up resigning from two full-time positions in higher education. One was a tenured faculty position at a community college that I had held for seven years, a position that I learned tremendously from and had grown out of professionally. And the other was a management position at a four year university that I had hoped would lead me to opportunities to foster more teaching and learning innovations with faculty. Why in the world would I resign from two positions in the midst of economic crumble as I have colleagues around me who are preparing for lay offs? I know, it does sound a bit "plucky" (an actual reaction from one of my colleagues). I can honestly say that teaching and learning will always be my passion. And, sadly, that's why I left higher ed. After years of reinventing my own teaching, carving new learning spaces for my students and receiving exceptional feedback from these students about the quality of their learning ... even winning the national Sloan-C Excellence in Online Teaching Award, I needed to find another, a better way, to contribute to changing our institutions of learning. That's why I left.

Today, in the dawn of 2010, I begin my adventure as an entrepreneur and educational consultant for my new business, Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture. I hope to leverage my experience and share my teaching ideas and resources with other educators. The validation of participatory learning and critical need for higher education to bend and morph in the face of new pedagogies of learning is breath of fresh air.

Where will this lead us as professors, as administrators, as support staff of institutions of higher education? What does participatory learning look like exactly? How shall it be measured? We don't know exactly. And this is also something the report is honest and lucid about which I think all educators will appreciate. We do know that we're in this together and we need everyone to embrace these new ways of thinking about learning in order to best meet the needs of our students today and prepare them for a successful life in our digital society.

Let's embrace this amazing shift and experience the new opportunities that await.

Thank you to the MacArthur Foundation for funding the report -- I look forward to seeing the effects. I also hope future studies will include community colleges in the frame of "higher education," as two year institutions are critical stakeholders in ensuring students of all socioeconomic backgrounds have access to college. I didn't see any community college professors included on the list of collaborators and I believe CC professors have unique perspectives on the learning needs of diverse student populations (as it relates to open access to education).

MoblEd 09: Learning has always been mobile...right?

Last week's MoblEd Conference in Pasadena, CA has left me with many thoughts that I'm still pondering and will encourage myself to do so for awhile. The question, "How are mobile devices impacting education?" wasn't quite as thought provoking to me at first as it has become in past few days. The presentations at the conference were stimulating and the contextual mobile environment in which they were shared were enriching.

My sincerest gratitude and applause are extended to Michael Berman and Laurie Burruss who organized the conference at Pasadena City College. Their efforts to engage a range of funding sources enriched many of the participants' experiences, as the first 60 (?) who registered received a free iPod Touch! To ensure the device became an integrable piece of the conference experience, a website was created in tandem with ConferenceConnect which facilitated easy and direct communications with mobile devices. As a presenter, I was encouraged before my sessions to set up discussion questions and share links with the participants via the site. There was even an option for poll questions to be created so participants could chime in and share their opinions on topics related to presentations.

This environment was very interactive and relevant to the way our students interact. Essentially, it was a stellar learning experience for anyone associated with higher education today. This is precisely the type of experience that enables an understanding of why innovation is pertinent and necessary in education today.

As many of the presenters noted, nearly 100% of college students today carry a cell phone so it makes a compelling tool to leverage for ubiquitous access to information and interactive learning. Abilene Christian University representatives -- William Rankin, Scott Perkins, and George Saltsman -- shared an intriguing presentation that showcased their efforts to contemplate how mobility could effect learning if all students had a parallel device (which is an important component to streamlining access to content, I presume). Their university provided each incoming freshman with a free iPod Touch or iPhone (the student had his/her choice) and their faculty was encouraged to integrate mobile learning activities into the freshman based curriculum. The results were compelling. The data showed strong evidence of strong engagement and satisfaction on both from both learner and the faculty perspectives. Not surprisingly, the sophomores, junior and seniors who wiggled their way into the survey weren't so keen on the idea of freshmen getting the free device, however.

The piece of the Abilene Christian presentation that really provoked me the most, however, was the brief dialogue shared by Bill Rankin, Director of Educational Innovation and Professor of English (with a specialty in medieval literature might I add). He contextualized the mobile device as something not quite so new to education. As an art historian, I appreciated his historical perspective on an emerging technology. He touched upon the fact that writing in the classical period used to be preserved only through directly writing by hand on a scroll. A scroll was a long stretch of "paper" (actually vellum or animal skin) that was rolled at both ends and stretched when it need to be read. Scrolls could become very heavy and cumbersome to work with the longer the text became. At the end of the Roman period, when Christianity began to spread but had not yet been legalized, Christians needed to flee for their lives and the one item they would always desire to take with them was their scripture. This was when reading became "mobile." The need to move from place to place created a demand for a mobile "device" to transport the written word. This wasn't exactly the "birth" of the codex or the book but it was when it became more popular. Books still needed to be copied by hand, however, and it wasn't until Gutenberg's invention in the 15th century that provided for movable type and multiple copies of texts.

Consequently, as books became more popular their mobility began to decline and collections of books or "libraries" began to require eager learners to come to the information rather than have the information go with them. What I take away from Rankin's message is the point that the vehicles that have been utilized to disseminate information into our society have historically been crafted out of a desire to learn and at the core of this desire is the essence of mobility, the longing to take knowledge with us. What I love about this realization is how it highlights a circle, as if some type of an organic flow or finger print of human nature, between classical times and our contemporary digital, mobile society.

The other piece that is so thought provoking is the notion that colleges and universities have emerged over the past hundreds of years as centers of learning around depositories of texts to which our students have been required to arrive, in physical form, to learn. The integration of mobile applications and online learning into the foundation of our learning infrastructure actually begins to return learning to original interests that drove the popularity of the book -- well, not exactly. Most of us are not running from religious persecution, although I certainly don't intend to downplay such a serious and important topic that is still relevant in the 21st century, but we clearly have a passion to have information with us at all times. The information we seek may not be scripture but it is content that helps us navigate our surroundings, answer questions, communicate with others.

Now imagine if higher all colleges and universities made a commitment to fully integrate mobile applications into education -- and I mean all aspects of education from the learning that occurs in classes (online, hybrid and face-to-face), to the communications between students/faculty/support staff, to the services we provide to our students (access to maps, research databases, registration, financial aid, counseling, etc.) 100% of college students could potentially have access to this content at all times because we know that nearly all our students have cell phones. And they take these cell phones with them everywhere, even to bed. Exquisitely, the ACU presentation was followed by a session by David Middleton and Michael Taylor of Seton Hall University who showcased the development of SHUmobile, a mobile application the university is developing to foster community and enable collaboration.

Now I really don't want to end this post on a sour note but my mind has once again become painfully aware of something that concerns me. How will our public colleges (community colleges) and universities stay in sync with the private universities who have the enormous funds to support these innovative ventures. Is it a matter of not having enough funds? Or is it a matter of values and priorities? I'm wondering how many public colleges and universities have a Director of Educational Innovation on staff.

Digital Dust

I am in the midst of a major move ... yes, I'm looking for a little empathy, but I've also had some intriguing thoughts about how the shift from our analog/paper past to our digital society is altering our memory and relations to our environment. As I've sorted, recycled, donated and trashed countless items in recent months there is one item that I came across unexpectedly that made me pause and reflect more than any other. It was a sharply folder piece of "binder paper" that I found tucked between two unrelated books on a shelf. "What is that?," I thought upon seeing it. I lifted it from its dusty surroundings and peeled back the corners of the discolored notebook paper, as memories of my high school locker days filled my mind. It just got better from there.

Once the paper was unfolded I saw handwriting, in blue ball point ink, that looked remotely familiar, yet very foreign at the same time. "That 'T' looks familiar," I thought "but there's one too many loops on it." I soon realized that was my hand writing and my anthropological dating techniques estimated that it was from roughly 1984 - I was probably about thirteen years old.

What was written on this piece of paper that was so important? Why did I keep it all these years? And what did this little discovery teach me about who I am and how I became this person?

The page was clearly titled: "Don't Quit." And the words below were a motivational poem that I had read probably hundreds of times in my childhood -- but hadn't thought about in decades. At first, I assumed it was a poem I had written as a teenager. I used to love to sit in my room and write poems about all the things in life that I felt I couldn't talk to people about. Funny how I didn't save any of them. So why this poem?

As I stared at the paper, I began to get murky memories of doing laundry at my parents' house. "Now that's weird," I thought. Then it clicked. This wasn't a poem I wrote. It was a poem my mom had cut out of an old magazine, probably Reader's Digest, and had posted it to the wall in our laundry room.

I used to read this poem each time I did my laundry -- as the water filled the basin and I waited to pour in the detergent. (Do teenagers still do that?) Little did I realize my mother's old magazine clippings contextualized into those repetitive laundry experiences would instill such powerful values inside me. But they did.

At some point in my life, I took that poem off the wall, carried it to my room, copied it onto my own piece of paper and preserved it for myself, probably in an effort to remind myself to keep going when things get rough.

So what's the big deal and what does all this have to do with digital technologies? Well, this experience made me reflect on how the loss of our tangible "clippings" changes the way we contextualize and share information with each other. As a teenager today, would I still record on a tangible piece of paper a message that influences me? Probably not. More likely, I'd record that message and save it digitally on a hard drive and/or post it to a blog (heck, a Google search for "don't quit" and poem returned 128,000 pages including videos portraying enactments of the anonymous poem!).

Now the benefit of the digital is preservation, entirely and completely, (minus the drive catastrophes) and, of course, sharing it with an endless audience and opening up that content to an interactive dialogue. But the disadvantage is also preservation. Isn't there something special, something sacred, something precious about an aged object that carries the essence of who we once were? This is eerily reminiscent of the loss of "the aura" of an authentic work of art that occurs through reproductions of that work, theorized by Walter Benjamin in his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."

This relic helps me remember my past, helps me understand where my relentless passion for life originated, and teaches me a thing or two about my mom too. My thirteen year old handwriting is forever gone and that old piece of paper is my precious relic that I'd never want to turn to digital dust.

Photo Credit: Laineys Repertoire on Flickr

VoiceThreads of Inclusivity

If you're a follower of my blog, you already know that I am a believer in the potential of VoiceThread as an online teaching tool. For the past year and a half I have woven VoiceThread into my online classes to facilitate a deeper comprehension of visual concepts but I've been eager to understand how VoiceThread also fosters community and enhances social presence in the online classroom as well.

In December I completed a thorough assessment of the effects of VoiceThread on the learning experiences of my online students. I'm excited to share the results here and will also be showcasing these results in presentations at several upcoming venues including MoblEd in Pasadena on April 23 and 24, the Online Teaching Conference in Aptos on June 11 and 12, the Sloan-C Symposium on Emerging Technologies in San Francisco on June 17-19.


I surveyed three sections of students which comprised two different courses (two sections of online Art Appreciation and one section of online History of Women in Art). Both classes consistently interacted in a VoiceThread to contribute to collaborative discussions and visual assessments of concepts from learning units (comprised of readings and lectures). Students were given the option to leave comments in text, audio or webcam format. In the VoiceThreads, I regularly replied to student comments before a due date, usually in either webcam or audio format, and my comments were made available to the entire class. My replies provided opportunity to redirect students in their application of concepts, contribute further guidance in discussions or applaud students for excellent work.

A total of 101 students were surveyed and 87 responded (an 88% response rate). Out of those who responded, 70% of the students either strongly agreed or agreed that the use of VoiceThread contributed to establishing a sense of community in this class. Community is an important element in fostering a student's motivation to continue with an online class, as online learners continually struggle with feelings of isolation as they go about their learning experience physically isolated from their classmates and instructor.

75% of the respondents strongly agreed or agreed that VoiceThread promoted their ability to learn visual concepts, an essential learning outcome of any visually-oriented discipline (art history, photography, humanities) and a point that is increasingly more compelling to all disciplines as we unravel the critical role of teaching visual literacy across the board in all disciplines as a 21st century skill. Visual literacy, the ability to understanding and decipher messages communicated through images, is an essential skill if one's goal is to live freely with the ability to critically deconstruct the manipulative messages that saturate the lives of Americans. I believe that if course management systems (Blackboard, Moodle, Desire 2 Learn, etc.) were to integrate more tools, like VoiceThread, that promote the seamless teaching of concepts and ideas with images, rather than tools that dominate with text and (sometimes) integrate images in a secondary, supplementary role, more educators would see the potentials of visual teaching regardless of their discipline.

Additionally, students noted an increased sense of feeling more connected to me through the ability to hear my voice in the audio comments and see me in the web cam comments utilized in VoiceThread. 82% of students strongly agreed or agreed that hearing my voice increased their sense that I was actively present in their learning experience. And 85% strongly agreed or agreed that seeing me in the web cam comments reached the same objective. These results build upon the recent research of Phil Ice who published a study in the Sloan-C Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks in July 2007 focused on assessing the use of asynchronous audio feedback on the learning effects of online learners.

As I reflect on these results, I am taken aback by the overwhelming pleas that students convey for increased community in their online classes. As educators, we need be in tune with our students feelings about learning online. Successful online programs are those that promote learning inclusivity. This means fostering online spaces in which students are respected as equals and expected to connect and construct content in the online class.

If you'd like to learn how to create a VoiceThread, here is a 10-minute video tutorial I created and you are welcome to download my Educator's Guide to VoiceThread.