Online all the time (presentation)

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

SW TX Popular Culture Friday

The first thing I thought of in this panel was that next time I come to a conference, I want to tweet the whole thing. 140 characters at a time I could micro-blog the conference. Using that approach, however, would take away from thoughtful approaches to the talks.

Scaffolding 2.0: Students Making Sense of Web 2.0
Phil Tietjen, University of New Mexico

Teaching Technical Communication with Wikis
Jennifer Bracken, New Mexico State University

Online Time versus Face to Face Time: Time Commitment for Instructors
Shelley Thomas, Weber State University

Web 2.0 and Scaffolding appealed to me a lot. I liked the presentation of what is 2.0, especially since lots of us are unclear. I was.

He showed the video “A Vision of Students Today.” His talk is what caused me to go post those two videos on my blog.

He applied Vygotsky (as a theorist) with his concept of social learning and the zone of proximal development.

  • Here’s what you can do on your own.
  • Here’s what you can do with someone else’s help.

His most useful points for me (besides pointing to Vygotsky) were:
1. Give the students low barrier orientation activities.
2. When you structure group activities, think about how they can ask different questions.

Obviously, I do the low barrier orientation activities. Sign up for an account. Write a blog post. Write comments. Write another blog post. Write more comments.

I was wondering if as a class we could come up with a list of questions that our blog could help answer. How can they use our blog to help each other? I think this would be a useful discussion. Maybe it would increase the credibility of the blog by making it more theirs… If they come up with uses for it, does it belong to them more?

Using Wikis to Teach

I have wanting to begin using wikis, but have been really stumped with this.

I hate to admit this, because of what I am going to point out that she said, but on my first page of notes for her presentation I wrote, “Get Ron to help me with this if I can use it for school. We’ll see.”

On the second page of notes, I quoted her. “Students need to learn to learn technology.”

Ouch. What a rap on the knuckles! I haven’t had that sharp a ruler there since second grade.

She gave a lot of good information in bunches.

Reasons to teach with wikis:
1. expands student learning experience and makes them more comfortable publishing online
2. addresses pedagogical goals
3. facilitates instructor feedback

Theorists useful to the discussion:

  • Garza and Hern= create paths vs. filling voids
  • Wilson= develop multiple right answers to a communication problem
  • Kitalong-Will= writing and interacting with info in a digital environment (students need experience dealing with academic and professional information)

Suggested assignments:  (YEAH!  This is what I most wanted.)

Collaboratively select and revise an article from Wikipedia (Kitalong-Will).

Write a wiki for the whole class and create separate pages like Wikipedia (Collier).

Use individually composed essays and create collaboratively written intros and conclusions (Carr, et al).

Students present on interests and strengths.  Based on those presentations they form groups of three or four.  Then they come up with a site map, conduct research, and collaborate on a wiki site (Bracken).

Online v. F2F teaching

Thomas introduced with Sorin Gudea’s book Expectations and Demands of Online Teachers.

Then she discussed some work she’s done on her own, studying to see which classes she spends more time on.  Subjectively, she said, it feels as if she spends more time on the online courses because she is “always on.”

But, what she found was that her times were very different.

  • For online preparation: 939 minutes
  • For f2f prep: 862 minutes
  • For online discussions: 558 minutes
  • For f2f discussions: 4050 minutes
  • For online class email: 921 minutes
  • For f2f class email: ~840 minutes
  • For online administration: 534 minutes
  • For f2f admin: 40 minutes

Minutes per student

  • discussions online 17
  • discussions f2f 225
  • grading online 141
  • grading f2f 75
  • total for online: 234
  • total for f2f: 441

She spends more time with f2f students and she finds f2f students are more successful.  Are these related?

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Emails that won’t go through.

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

I have been trying to contact people whose presentations at SWTX PCA I found particularly intriguing. The back of the program guide has email addresses. However, of the five people I have written so far, two of the emails have bounced. One with the “no such person” and one with the “rejection by recipient domain.”

I wonder if people are uninterested in getting emails. Oh well.

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Is the machine using us?

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

Another Michael Wesch video for your perusal:

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What our students may be like

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

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A good question

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

Do we need proof of efficacy of writing with computers if everyone is writing with computers?

Often, perhaps more often than we realize, we change what we do in the humanities because of our enthusiasms, not because somebody has proved something. It is the ideas we experience as truth in our own minds, in our own convictions, that transforms our lives as teachers, not necessarily the proofs assembled under specific rules of evidence. As Thomas Kuhn has made clear, by specifying a single valid method of inquiry, a science excludes as much as it includes within its scope of inquiry.

I think that at the very least computers are helpful for writing. They allow extensive revising opportunities with much less physical effort than writing by hand requires. They allow significant research and search capabilities.

Just today I was working on a paper and though I had just yesterday read the entire book and marked important pages, I could not find the quote I needed. So I went to Amazon and searched through the “Look in this book” feature and found the page I needed for my quote. Whoo hoo for the computer!

Let me state clearly that I do not think computer use in the classroom is a fad. I took my doctoral prelims on a computer, the first to do so at my college, in 1989 I believe. I found it much easier to write, to revise, and to read what was written with a computer. (Though I did manage to lose my entire work about an hour before the test ended. Thankfully I found it again.)

I just thought it was a good question.

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PCA: Panel Notes

by Dr Davis on February 27, 2009

Because academe is so tolerant and diverse. (Sarcasm.) These notes were taken during 2009′s PCA conference. However, I did not feel I should publish them here immediately.  They show a very clear example of the “everyone thinks like me” political left-leaning bias in academia.

<blockquote>I looked at “the leading candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama” … Frances, first speaker

Sarah Palyen- Stephanie, second speaker (pay lee en)

“I don’t want to hurt anyone’s sensibilities,” said the third speaker Muree. “You don’t have to worry about that. I think you will find we are all open minded here.” Panel director.

“the past eight years were so bad” Muree

“constitutional lawyer versus a president who spent eight years ignoring the constitution” audience questioner

For why Europe likes Obama: “Bush was the anti-American cowboy” rugged, drawl, cowboy boots –audience member</blockquote>

The panel was on political rhetoric, so the comments weren’t off topic. They were just significantly biased.

It’s almost time for this year’s PCA, so I think it has been long enough.

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