Faculty Academy 2008

One way to boost readership is to assign your own blog as a reading for your grad students! All kidding aside, I blogged last week about two speakers at the ECVA Conference. In “How Much Hand Holding?“, I discussed what Michael Wesch had said about the new literacies required for teaching in the 21st Century, as well as what Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins-Bell discussed about implementing technologies in ways that solve pedagogical issues. In a gross simplification, Michael had stated that web skills should be a given and not taught by professors in a modern classroom, while Sarah had offered a contrasting view that students needed to understand the reason for using web tools and given time for the learning curve. Over the past week, sixteen students and myself posted 59 threads and replies around this forum topic:

Read what I blogged about regarding Michael Wesch’s and Sarah Robbins’ presentation September 12th, and my reflections on how they resonate (or not) with this class. Then discuss your reactions - for this class and for your classes as teachers. Are your students really technically savvy? Do they need instructions on how to use the web (and in what form should those instructions be?)? Should I mirror in this class with graduate students the same approaches you would use with K-12 students (and why or why not?)? Let’s be honest and self-reflective…you are not going to hurt my feelings, just hopefully make this course better.

I captured the resultant discussion in the Wordle below:

I love the almost serendipitous way Wordle places words such that you are tempted to make sense from the groupings! Right under students, one sees “use tools course think!“ Exactly!!!

It was interesting and reassuring to see their reflections. Almost all thought Michael went too far. With their K-12 students, they recognized a wide diversity of access, ability, and capabilities. They agreed with Michael that few students are actually tech savvy. Their students know at a surface level the few applications they use routinely, but struggle with applied learning on the web. Many of my grad students teach in Title 1 schools where a significant percentage of the students lack access to the internet at home. They liked Sarah’s approach of discussing the promise, the tool, and the bargain as part of technology implication into their courses.

As one can see from the wordcloud above, my grad students have their own students uppermost in their thoughts. It is somewhat frightening to listen to their comments about lack of access and lack of ability when it comes to their students using the web. I could not help but reflect on the contrast CogDog suggested today when he blogged about his visit to Shanghai and the Learning 2.008 conference. Al posted a picture of middle school and high school students who acted as the Geek Squad for the conference! A great opportunity for those kids, and a reflection of the payoff one-to-one initiatives can have! Too many kids in America are not gaining these opportunities.

Significantly, a good percentage of my grad students still feel over their heads in my class and expressed a wish that I had been less like Michael and more like Sarah as I introduced them to Web 2.0. It appeared that quite a few wished that I had spent more time holding their hands. They are really struggling with the paradigm shift they are now recognizing. It is compounded by the fact that they are taking their first totally online course and trying to learn about the very environment in which they are themselves struggling.

Good formative feedback for me as I adjust the course for the next few modules. I will work with these students to tease out better ways in which I could have held their hands. I’ll be teaching this course again in the spring and will need some virtual ways to do a better job holding hands as the next class jumps in to the Web 2.0 stream.

As always, if anyone reading this has suggestions, leave a comment. It would be most appreciated!

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The University of Mary Washington has always taken great pride in its athletics program, and includes some highly ranked teams. However, it was also good to see, as fellow UMW staff member Seth Casana pointed out to me, that the UMW Athletics department is going to broadcast some games live. They will be using the Ustream service that we employed for Commencement and our Faculty Academy. Go Eagles!

On Friday, I attended the ECVA Conference at Virginia Tech along with Jeff Nugent and Bud Deihl. Two delightful companions with whom to do a road trip - we left Richmond at 5:30am and got back at supper time.

At the conference, we had the opportunity to hear two excellent keynoters. Michael Wesch talked first about the new literacies required for teaching in the 21st Century. Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins-Bell then followed with a discussion about implementing technologies in ways that solve pedagogical issues.

Much of what Wesch covered was similar to a talk he did at the University of Manitoba last June. He maintains that the old literacy involved reading and writing, but that what needs to be taught today involves reading and writing on the web. Students today have access to unlimited information, so can find the typical questions one asks on multiple choice tests. It is more important to teach critical thinking with that information than the information itself.

Wesch made several points that I had not really reflected on before. First, he noted that the technologies he was using (wikis, YouTube, NetVibes, etc.) did not exist five years ago, so our students have not “grown up” using them. They have learned them during the same time period that he had. This goes a long way in my mind to putting a nail in the Digital Native / Digital Immigrant discussion. I would also suggest that while students today may not have necessarily grown up with the tools in use now, they did grow up with a comfort level to technology that their teachers still do not have in many cases.

The second point he made led to this blog post. He maintained that he does not need to teach reading and writing to students in college - it is assumed they have these literacies when they come into his class. In a like vein, he does not see it as his place to teach the use of tools in the Read/Write web to students - it should be a given that students either know how to use the tools or know how to figure out how to use the tools.

Wow!

I am currently teaching a graduate course in Instructional Uses of the Internet to a bright group of K-12 teachers. During the first two weeks, we have been focusing on Web 2.0. Many of my students - some of whom have been teaching twenty-plus years - are frustrated and overwhelmed by the myriad of tools and options afforded by the web. Several have stated that I as the instructor am not doing enough to “teach” - I am not providing detailed step-by-step processes for each thing I am asking them to do, such as build a homepage in Blackboard, set up accounts in delicious, wikispaces, and Google Reader. In some ways, I am attempting to model the “messy” way in which learning occurs today on the web, but I am seeing some pushback by these colleagues (and I do think of my students as colleagues). So I have been struggling with this concept of just how much hand-holding I should be doing with graduate students in a Web 2.0 environment. From Wesch’s viewpoint, it sounds like the answer is “none.”

I might agree with 18-year-olds, but these K-12 teachers are in many ways just like the university faculty with whom I work. As a faculty developer, I am mindful that my job in many ways is to act as a problem solver for them. They do not have the same motivations to “play” on the web that I have as an early adopter. They have become successful as faculty and researchers using an older paradigm, and are only now slowly awakening to the need for a new one - if they are awakening at all. Part of this awakening is driven by their students and a visceral feeling that these students know more about technology than they do. I think Michael adequately addresses this (they do not necessarily - this is stereotyping and students enter with wide diversity of capabilities), and some recent blog posts at NetGen Nonsense back up the growing realization that students are not as tech savvy as we give them credit for being. But the fact remains that most faculty, and many in my class, remain fearful of trying out these new technologies.

This shifted me into thinking about what Intellagirl said in her talk. She stated that the process she used in introducing new technologies was to ensure that she had talked through three aspects with her students - The Promise - The Tool - and The Bargain. She promised that the technology would help create bonds and connections, and also add fun to the course (which I agree is a good thing!). She tied the use of the tool to the learning outcomes. She recognized and helped students realize the learning curves associated with technologies and tools. So, she ensured the students had the time to become familiar with the tool. She wanted students not to escape into the tool, but to use it as an extension of their learning. She helped students understand that they left footprints in the web when they interacted with the tool and each other…and she wanted them comfortable with that. Finally, part of the bargain was that she was going to use technologies to help achieve learning ends, and not because it was just cool to use some tool.

I like Sarah’s approach. I will discuss this with my class and see where I can assist their learning curve and their comfort level. I have a wide range of students, so I suspect that I can co-opt some of them into helping others grow in their abilities to effectively use the opportunities afforded by the web.

I would be interested in your thoughts on the balance between hand holding and expectations of self-learning.

{Photo Credits: Steve Rhodes, batega}

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I know this is not really true, but all kids grow up thinking that their father taught them to swim by throwing them into the pool/lake/river/bay. And most of us did learn to swim!

I was thinking about this as I watched (in a virtual sense) my graduate students swim for the first time in Web 2.0 waters. During their first week of their first online class, they found out that they could post material to a website, upload pictures, resize those pictures if necessary, set up accounts in GOOGLE, DELICIOUS, and WIKISPACES, and record an audio message to each other in the class using Wimba recorders.

I know that they think I simply threw them in … and some of them felt quite overwhelmed. It is hard for them to see right now that the successes of this week will translate into practices in their lives and their classrooms in the near future.

Yet I am encouraged! I took the 80 posts that the 18 students made in the discussion board and collected all the text, then placed the text in Wordle. This was the resultant wordcloud:

I had asked the students to watch Michael Wesch’s The Machine is Us(ing) Us and then reflect on how (or whether) Web 2.0 was changing how they as K-12 teachers should approach teaching and learning. It is therefore good to see that the top two words that emerged from 80 posts were “students” and “technology.” I am also seeing words such as classroom, time, internet, can, world, and new. You have to look very hard to find the word “overwhelmed”…it is there but tiny compared to other words that pop out.

I was fortunate in that my emersion into the Web 2.0 stream occurred over an 18-month period, with supporting friends locally and globally helping me out. Where I paddled, my students are now being hit with a firehose (mixed metaphors…but you know what I mean). There are some excited swimmers in the lot, and my role is to create that same sense of excitement in the rest. I think that it is going to be fun.

Photo Credit: zanzibar}

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It has been interesting (to say the least) to juxtapose the two political conventions with the start of classes. I must admit that my mind draws some strange parallels sometimes, but I am seeing some interesting parallels between the candidates and my students.

I should begin by admitting that while I consider myself an independent, I have voted Republican in every election since John Anderson in 1980, with the exception of 1996, when I voted for Bill Clinton’s Cabinet more than him. There was a statistic recently that said military officers were primarily Republican, and I fit that stereotype. So it is a shock to my family and my friends that I have been a Barack Obama supporter (in name and financially) since early in this contest.

So my viewpoint is not without bias.

My online class consists of 21 K-12 teachers in the Visiting International Faculty program, all from other countries spending three years in this country teaching in our K-12 schools across three states, while simultaneously working on their Masters in Education from VCU. My class focuses on instructional strategies for using the Internet in K-12 education. This is my second year with VIF students, and I find them delightful and engaging. Jeff Nugent and I were discussing our Fall classes today and as with most teachers, we are finding a wide range of knowledge and experiences in our students.

This is the first week in which my students post comments in the Discussion Board, and the comments are falling into two categories - despair and hope. I have to admit that I hit them right off the bat with Michael Wesch’s The Machine Is Us(ing) Us video, which overwhelmed many of them. It forced them to confront their lack of knowledge about the web. Some felt scared, others energized. Some said “Where Do We Start?” and others said “Jump In!” My role thus becomes one of reinforcing the positive vibes and rechannelling the negative vibes in a positive direction.

So far, I am seeing similar vibes in the two conventions. I came away from Barack’s acceptance speech energized and excited by his focus on the future and the positive. I have not been as energized by Sarah Palin‘s or John McCain’s speeches. They seem to spend more time highlighting the fears and negatives with little focus on issues of substance. By McCain’s own admission, he was a hell-raising junior officer until he was shot down. He should be honored for his service and sacrifice as a POW, but he spends more time looking back than looking forward.

I hope this country channels the positive and mitigates the negative as we move forward. We have survived Millard Fillmore and Jimmy Carter, we as a country will survive either candidate that wins. But my vote and my energy will be focused on the candidate that appears to thoughtfully move forward to the future rather than shooting from the hip.

Probably my only political post…I intend to reflect more on what my students are beginning to do. But I needed to get this off my chest!

For those in America reading this, what ever you do, don’t remain on the sidelines - get involved and make your voice heard!

{Image Credit: farlane}

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