I just viewed this excellent video by Tony Vincent (@TonyVincent) of Learning in Hand that explains the relevance of Padlet (formerly Wallwisher) and Lino, sticky note apps, in student learning. Padlet and Lino are both free apps, available for iOS and Android, that also work on standard web browsers, require an instructor account but do not require students to have accounts. Tony's 15-minute video is thorough, well-paced, easy-to-follow and a transcript is available here.
Instructors use one of the apps to create a "wall" or "canvas" to which students individually (or in pre-designated colors for small groups) add sticky notes. The notes can include a simple word, a phrase or sentence, a link, an image, or video! With padlet, instructors have the option to moderate the sticky notes as they are submitted or allow them to appear synchronously.
The collaboratively produced wall of sticky notes could reflect brainstorm results, responses to a critical inquiry prompt, links to resources about a topic, links to projects created by students (in Haiku Deck, Google Presentations/Slides, Slideshare, YouTube, etc.), a collection of images that represent a particular time period or event that could then serve as a visual backdrop for an introduction to a new course topic. Since laptops and mobile devices are supported with Lino and Padlet, there are lots of great ways these tools could activate classtime and, of course, they would be fabulous for blended and online learning, as well.
Take 15-minutes to view Tony's video (above or here) and also check out the very, very helpful image below which compares the features of Padlet and Lino. Thanks, Tony, for the great resources!
Last night I had the tremendous pleasure of facilitating the Mobile Learning Think Tank workshop at Pasadena City College, which was the brainchild of Rachel Fermi of PCC. It was an evening of sharing teaching experiments and inspiring new ways of thinking about learning through the use of social media and mobile applications (or both).
Ideas Really Do Grow On Trees by Michael Kieley
The evening opened with a presentation from Michael Kieley from Loyola Marymount who shared an activity idea from his class Visual Thinking. Michael took us through a visual journey about the power of mindmapping to facilitate brainstorming and organic blossoming of new ideas. Kieley has taught his class for more than a decade in a traditional face-to-face setting. I was honored (and inspired) to hear that he transformed his entire class after hearing my presentation last spring, Painting, Power and Pedagogy, at EduSoCal10. (And I should note that he attended the presentation virtually through the online UStream session...applause for the potential of technology here to engage remote audiences!) Since then he has blended web-based technologies into his students learning, including student-generated podcasts and VoiceThreads. That's an awesome feeling.
Mindmaps are visual renderings that begin with topic in the center, surrounded by sprouts that bifurcate into smaller branches. Participating in this growth-oriented, organic model of thinking, which is found plentifully in nature (trees, rivers, etc.), pulls students out of their linear thought pattern and dislocates the human (or should I say "adult") tendency to accept the first idea that "sounds good."
Michael shared how he offers students the option to use MindNode, a mobile app, to create mind maps on the fly from anywhere at anytime. I'm intrigued by the app and love that it offers a simple mind map creation process (drag, drop, label) and then offer the option to import the maps into a desktop to integrate hyperlinks, images, etc. Here is Michael's presentation from last night. Enjoy.
Welcome to our Classroom Dr. Spivey! by Lori Rusch
The award for student empowerment and inspiration goes to Lori Rusch for her enriching presentation about a Skype-based, student-organized and facilitated interview of a world renown art historian, Dr. Nigel Spivey. You may know Dr. Spivey from his engaging PBS video series, How Art Made the World (and if you don't, check it out!).
Rusch is a self-proclaimed "Freeway Flyer," a term used frequently in higher ed to describe the reality of part-time instructors who teach at multiple campuses, typically with no office and limited to no access to campus resources and often no clarity about the existence of their job from term to term. Lori's dedication to teaching and learning was evident long prior to her presentation. It was actually here on my blog several months ago when she wrote to me about this amazing student-driven project -- so it was quite a treat to hear the story in person and meet her.
The "event" that she shared was not part of her lesson plan. It was the result of student curiosity and a passion for learning. The process began when Lori shared clips of "How Art Made the World" with her high World Art History students at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. The video series inspired quite a passion and curiosity about Dr. Spivey amongst the students -- who would imagine an art historian becoming a celebrity on a high school campus? Go figure. Rusch let this energy and wonder flow naturally on its own and one day, she proposed to her students that maybe the class could interview him. The students responded with looks of awe and asked, "Why would he want to talk to us?" She shared with them that Dr. Spivey is a professor -- a teacher -- at Cambridge University and if he is an educator, why would he not want to speak to a group of students? Then the conversation unraveled and resulted in the ultimate question -- "Could we do a video conference with him?" Isn't that a beautiful scene to imagine in your mind?
Next, the students drafted a long letter to Dr. Spivey and crowd sourcing their own interview questions in Facebook, all facilitated -- not managed or controlled -- by their awesome teacher. Dr. Spivey replied and accepted the invitation. Ms. Rusch elected to leverage Skype for the interview platform -- totally free -- and had a preliminary chat with Dr. Spivey to lay the groundwork.
The interview occurred on a Friday morning -- 2 hours before the students' classes actually began. Colleagues told Lori that she'd be lucky to "get two kids to show up." They were wrong, oh so wrong! Not only did students come but they packed the room. These students arrived to hear/see this interview because they were excited and inspired, not because they had to be there. All the myths and comments I've heard about students "these days" being apathetic and unwilling to do more than they're required to do are sunk by this story -- which, I think, is why I love it so much!
Below I'm sharing two resources that Lori shared with us: 1) a presentation showing screenshots of the Facebook group and promotional posters the students made to encourage campus participation at the interview and 2) a clip of the live interview which focuses on her amazing, inspirational students. BRAVO!
Increasing Course Access and Communications with Blackboard Mobile Learn by Roopa Mathur
Blackboard is the dominant course management system used throughout higher education (while this statistic, I believe, will continue to shift as open source software redefines institutional preferences and options for personalized learning). Despite the widespread use of Blackboard, many faculty aren't leveraging the option to share their course content with their students through the Blackboard Mobile Learn app.
Ms. Mathur shared an eloquent picture of what the app experience is for a student user and noted that delivering her content through the app requires "zero extra time" on her part -- an important point for faculty to realize. What I was impressed with was the ability to actually participate through the app, not just push content out to students. The discussion board feature of Blackboard is live and dynamic on an app, which is nice. But I do wonder how engaging in a discussion board through a mobile app changes the quality of the interactions. Personally, I moved away from discussion boards and towards blogging and VoiceThreads because I found most student participation too shallow in DBs. The rhythm of mobile access is quick and occurs in spurts -- these are questions I'm left with. While I like to interaction option, it seems like a microblog (like a Twitter status update) would be more appropriate than a discussion forum on a mobile app?? Thoughts?
Increasing Student Engagement in the Classroom with Poll Everywhere by Sandra C. Haynes
Our final activity idea was shared by Sandra C. Haynes, of Pasadena City College. Ms. Haynes shared her personal experiences teaching large lecture classes to students who are increasingly more connected and interested in their cell phones than her art history lectures. This reminded me of a story that was shared by a session presenter at the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) Focus Session on Mobile Learning last spring. I read about this story in subsequent white paper written by Malcolm Brown and Victoria Diaz. There were two villages in China that each came up with unique solutions to the same problem. Each village devised its own method for managing the overflow of melting snow from the mountains at springtime. One village elected to construct dams, restricting the water's access to the village itself by forcing it out. The other chose to build channels throughout the village which would allow the water to run freely and, ultimately, become integrated into the village's landscape. This story is, of course, an analogy for the use of mobile devices in classes today. They are there. What to do with them is the question posed to faculty.
Well, Sandra has created effective channels in her teaching to welcome the use of cell phones by her students. She astutely noted that only a small percentage of her students own smart phones, which sharply contradicts the statistics shared in the 2009 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology that notes about half of higher ed students have smart phones. This point is important, as community college student demographics are unique and there are too few studies about technology ownership and use that focus explicitly on this student demographic (!).
So, in her quest for identifying a teaching activity using cell phones, her criteria was the use of a cell phone with SMS text messaging capabilities. She turned to Poll Everywhere which is a simple, web-based tool that offers the option to create poll in advance or on the fly (which she demonstrated last night) for free (up to 30 responses). Upgrading to a premium service yields more options. But the free version is pretty great and, as a group, we were able to respond to Sandra's poll she created before our very eyes. We all shared a chuckle when Sandra told us how much quicker her students were at responding, however (grin).
One of our virtual attendees (who engaged our discussion through Elluminate/CCC Confer), Zack from Folsom Lake College, noted that his campus has integrated PollEverywhere across the campus on electronic screens, enabling a constant pulse check on students' thoughts, opinions, and perspectives. Cooool!
Posterous Group Blog Experiment
In an effort to capture more ideas and continue to flow of discussion from the evening, I took my own risk with a social media tool experiment. I created a group blog with posterous.com. I am impressed and will use it again! Posterous has a reputation for making blog posting as simple as possible, and it didn't let me down. A user who wishes to post to a posterous blog (users can be restricted to a single author, a selected group or totally public), simply sends an email to a pre-subscribed posterous email address. That's it. Oh -- and media is embedded automatically. For example, I attached a PDF of a brief presentation and posterous engaged the use of Scribd to embed the pdf directly into my post. If you include a YouTube video url (not embed code) in the post, posterous also converts the url into an embedded video.
Check out our group blog here: http://mobilethinktank.posterous.com You'll find some great ideas and resources shared by Catherine Hillman, another virtual participant, about how she teaches her students how to leverage social media to manage their lives.
When using Posterous for a group, it becomes like a virtual bulletin board for posting ideas, examples, or evidence that meets the group's overarching topic or goal. If I were teaching art history now, I'd put my ancient art history students into groups and have them take photographs of buildings (think houses, strip malls, everything!) in their community that reflect influence of ancient architectural elements -- barrel vault, arch, pediment, etc. I did this as an individual project years ago and it was always a hit -- but making it mobile would be really incredible.
Live from the Archive!
Well, that about sums up the fantastic evening. Again, I was truly inspired by the energy and dynamism of the presentation and the conversation that followed -- I hope it continues! If you're as excited as I am, don't miss the archive of the Elluminate/CCC Confer session (which is closed captioned). Click here to launch the archive.
I realize posterous.com isn't exactly new but I'm new to it and just had to share my experiences. Posterous.com is a blog site that allows you to create one (or more) blogs that are owned exclusively by you or that you may designate as a "group blog." You identify who can contribute to your blog and those individuals can add a post to the blog simply by sending an email to your blog's unique email address. Within minutes, the email is translated into a new blog post.
Better yet, attach an image and posterous embeds the image right into the post (same for videos). Urls are turned into hyper links, except for YouTube urls which are actually converted into embedded videos. It's really quite genius. And for a teacher who's looking for a fast and easy solution to creating a group blog for a class (or several group blogs for student groups), it's a great solution.
I've created a group blog for the Mobile Learning Think Tank workshop at Pasadena City College next Thursday, December 9th. It will be our "sandbox" for a back channel and sharing new ideas that sprout out of the workshop presentations. I'm excited! We selected the presentations today and they're great. I'll share details soon.
Want to attend Mobile Learning Think Tank in Pasadena or virtually? Click here to register. It's free!
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.
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 ofDouglas 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? ;-)
I am an educator whose personal career goal is to innovate. In a context of budget blues, furlough Fridays, and a grimmer year around the bend, how does one sustain an argument for innovation when there is no other voice but her own singing this lonely song? I can feel my passion wane and my energy tank -- and this is a horrific feeling to me. Our students need innovation in education. I must remind myself of what I believe in, so I remember why I do what I do. If you too believe, please let share a comment here.
I believe...
in the energy sent through the spark in a student's eye.
in the need for educators to teach students that it's important to be passionate.
in creativity.
that today's students will create a better world for my children.
collaborative learning environments are more inclusive than lectures.
lectures need to leave the classroom and enter the iPod.
classrooms should be spaces for discussion, debate, and dialogue.
a teacher's job is to evoke passion in a student and engage him/her in the learning process.
online learning is revolutionary or destructive, depending on how it is managed.
we can do better.
we need to listen to our students more.
that failure is a necessary step towards improvement.
that risk taking should be rewarded.
in open education.
in global perspectives.
technology can help us.
I can make a difference. I just need to figure out how.
I am really jazzed to share the news of my upcoming Educause Learning Initiative web seminar! It is open to all ELI members and I am hopeful my students' voices will contribute to encouraging other educators to take risks with innovative uses of technology to enrich learning and expand face-to-face time and increase active learning in the classroom. If you can't join us for the presentation, please click on the link below and listen to the 20-minute "Student Interview" at the bottom of the page to hear end-of-the-semester reflections from some of my students. Enjoy! As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.
Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, will moderate this web seminar with Michelle Pacansky-Brock, where she’ll pull back the curtain on the classroom of the future, exploring a semester-long teaching experiment in which a class of community college art history students engaged in a technology-rich, web-enhanced, inclusive learning environment. You won't find any lectures in this classroom: they were all made available to students through Blackboard in the form of PDFs and podcasts, giving them options for how they learned. From there, students engaged in dynamic online modules that included VoiceThread discussions, all completed outside the classroom. The course design allowed for class time to be left freely available for discussions and other active learning activities like a "Wiki Challenge" led by fearless students on a quest for extra credit.
This is an example of a collaborative, active learning activity in which students created content using VoiceThread to learn about the experiences of Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The video below introduces you to the process of learning as an active, collaborative and interdisciplinary process, engaging young minds with older generations of individuals who really lived through the experiences of a war torn country divided by feelings of racial segregation. In the end, students learn and the world is enriched through their own contribution -- a VoiceThread available online.
My hope here is that colleges and universities will see the potential for integrating this model of pedagogy into learning in our own classrooms (virtual or not). These are our students of tomorrow.
Students at Praire Elementary in Elk Grove are learning about tolerance as Change Writers.
