tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45597161921961696262024-03-12T21:13:29.707-04:00OU Digital TeachingThoughts about teaching online from an online instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Quick URL: Teaching.LauraGibbs.netLaura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-25673140074317689272015-03-12T11:03:00.001-04:002015-03-12T12:05:43.526-04:00OpenTeachingOU: An Open Friday Twitter chat!I'm creating this post today, Thursday, to brainstorm some ideas and strategies for a Twitter chat fest that <b><a href="https://twitter.com/xplanarob">Rob Reynolds</a></b>, <b><a href="https://twitter.com/slzemke">Stacy Zemke</a></b> and I will be enjoying on Friday morning, March 13, at 9AM Oklahoma time (and that's 10AM for me in NC)... hopefully with the participation of others also. Rob's got a <b><a href="https://plus.google.com/+RobReynolds314/posts/Lqz6SQqiNZU">Google+ post here</a></b> to get the ball rolling! We'll be talking about open education in general, and specifically our experiences with open education efforts at the University of Oklahoma.<br />
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Yes, I know it is Friday the 13th!!! But we won't let that get us down! :-)<br />
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I've volunteered to Storify the event afterwards, and we'll be using the <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/openteachingou?f=realtime&src=hash">#OpenTeachingOU hashtag</a></b>, along with whatever hashtags emerge. We were prompted to do this in honor of Open Education Week, and that hashtag is <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/openeducationwk?f=realtime&src=hash">#OpenEducationWk</a> </b>with the related <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/allaboutopen?f=realtime&src=hash">#AllAboutOpen tag</a></b>. And the <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/oer?f=realtime&src=hash">#OER hashtag</a></b> is always hopping!<br />
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In addition, I've set up a publicly editable GoogleDoc where we can use to store and share stuff that doesn't fit in a tweet: <b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/15nKuUUeSdqyefPMiiPVgU45lyIfDJnJxgNYyATOt_ek/edit?usp=sharing">OpenTeachingOU Google Doc</a></b>. If this turns into a recurring Twitter event (I hope it will!), we can use this document, or a series of such documents, as an ongoing repository across multiple events.<br />
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I'm not sure if we want to run this like an organized type of Twitter chat with Q1 Q2 and so on, with people responding A1 A2, etc., but it might be good to give that a try just so that we behave! If we swap questions out every 10 minutes, that gives us time for a half-dozen questions. (<b><a href="http://cybraryman.com/howtochat.html">More ideas and tips for Twitter chats</a></b>.)<br />
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Here are some I would suggest, and hopefully both Stacy and Rob will chime in with ideas about that. I'll be glad to watch the clock and tweet out the questions at 10-minute intervals if we decide to try to be that well behaved, ha ha. How do these questions sound?<br />
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<i>Q1 How is "open" important in your work as an educator today?</i><br />
<i>Q2 Who are some of your open heroes and heroines?</i><br />
<i>Q3 How has your own open presence online evolved over time?</i><br />
<i>Q4 What specific problems can the open approach help us to solve?</i><br />
<i>Q5 What can we do to promote open education at the Univ. of Oklahoma?</i><br />
<i>Q6 Do we want to keep using Twitter chat for more open-fests?</i><br />
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Later today, I'll make up a new Twitter list of people doing open-related work at OU; I've got a huge Twitter list for <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/ou-faculty-staff/members">OU faculty/staff</a></b> and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/ou/members">OU programs</a></b>, so I'll run through those looking for people who are using blogs, websites, Twitter, etc. to share their teaching and learning, and I'll let them know about this chat. Meanwhile, if you have people to suggest for that list now, let me know! Just tweet me (<b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady">@OnlineCrsLady</a></b>) with their names and Twitter handles. That will be great!<br />
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Okay, here is first run at a Twitter list: <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/openteachingou/members">OpenTeachingOU Twitter list</a></b>. I'm sure there are lots of people I have forgotten... let me know! :-)<br />
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SEE YOU FRIDAY AT THE TWITTERS :-)<br />
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Leave comments here at the blog, at the <b><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/15nKuUUeSdqyefPMiiPVgU45lyIfDJnJxgNYyATOt_ek/edit?usp=sharing">Google Doc</a></b>, or over at Google+. Here's the Google+ post embedded:<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-44587685200220324812015-03-08T15:18:00.001-04:002015-03-08T17:29:31.451-04:00Be Prepared! Online Courses on AutopilotI've been out of the loop for the past three weeks as you can see and, sadly, it is because of a family emergency: my mother, who was on hospice care, died last week. I've started a separate blog about that, both to work through the hard times of the past few weeks and also to share with others what I learn about death-with-dignity legislation: <b><i><a href="http://moriturisomnibus.blogspot.com/">Morituris Omnibus</a></i></b>. I've always felt strongly about each person's right to choose the manner and time of their dying, especially when facing medical calamities like my mother was facing; now that cause is much more urgent and personal, and I will be using that blog to share my involvement in this movement for change in our medical and legal systems.<br />
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Meanwhile, in this blog post for #OpenTeachingOU, I want to share what I learned about my online course design and how in some ways it was flexible enough to accommodate my sudden and unexpected absence, although I now know that I should also make some improvements for the future.<br />
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<b><i>Communication</i></b>. By relying on the <b><a href="http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/">class announcements blog</a></b> along with emails, I was able to keep all the students informed about what was happening. That felt very solid; I don't think I need to make any changes there, and I was incredibly grateful to the students for their patience and understanding during this hard time. Of course, if I were really out of action completely, I would need the director of the online course program to communicate about that to my students; see note below about planning for a really serious emergency like that.<br />
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<b><i>Assignment Readiness</i></b>. This was the main problem I need to fix. In the past, I used to have all the assignments 100% ready to go before the semester started, but over the past two years I have been tinkering with my classes a lot, which means I have been writing up some assignment instructions and declarations during the course of the semester so that I could be really responsive to student suggestions and feedback. To accommodate emergencies like this in the future, I need to be more careful. Before the semester starts I need to have every assignment ready to go; that doesn't mean I cannot tinker with them and improve them. Instead, it just means that in case of an emergency like what I faced this semester, I would not have any doubts about the students being able to carry on in my absence. Because I did have some Internet access during this crisis, I was able to get the assignments ready this time — but in a different kind of emergency (if I were in the hospital or something myself), the students would have been missing some of the assignments that they needed.<br />
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<b><i>Project Feedback</i></b>. The bulk of my time each week (appx. 30 hours) is spent giving feedback to students, and the week by week assignments are structured such that the students have my feedback from the previous week in time to do their work on the next week's assignment. Over these two weeks, however, I was not able to keep that up given my limited Internet access. Out of the appx. 160 projects students turned in while I was gone, there were 25 where I could not write my reply in time, so I gave those students an extra free pass for that assignment. This strategy assumes, of course, that I have Internet access. If I were completely out of the loop, I would need a different strategy so that the students could keep on working ahead to develop their project, while postponing all the revision work until my return. So, I need to write up a kind of "emergency plan" which will explain to the students how to carry on doing the work for their Projects in my absence, catching up on the revision process later.<br />
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<b><i>Administrative Coordination</i></b>. I contacted the director of our online course office when I had to leave town to let her know what was happening, and because I did have some Internet access, there was really nothing that she needed to do or worry about. If, however, this had been an emergency where I was incapacitated, it would have been very hard for her to figure out what needed to be done in my classes, especially if the emergency were to occur at the end of the semester when grades are due. So, at the beginning of each semester, I need to write up an "emergency plan" not just for my students but also for the online course director so that she would be able to easily manage any emergency that might come up at any time during the semester. Besides the Projects, everything in the course is ready to run on its own, student-driven, in my absence. Even in a really dire emergency (if I were kidnapped by space aliens in Week 2 of the semester, for example), the courses would still be viable. Not optimal — but viable!<br />
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Overall, I am really pleased about how my classes are very much the result of the students' own work and their interactions with each other. So, while I am definitely a hands-on instructor, heavily involved with my students' work every week, my classes really can survive a disruption like this — and what a big relief that was over the past two weeks! I am very grateful about that: it meant that I could hang up the phone with hospice and immediately go online to get a plane ticket without a moment's hesitation, knowing that my students would be fine without me. At the same time, this is the first ever emergency I've faced in 10+ years of teaching online that meant I had to be "absent" from class for more than a just a day. So, I learned a lot from the experience, and I will be sure to do a better job in future of making my classes emergency-proof.<br />
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Yes, we can all use the help of <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Airplane-Otto-Is-Co-Pilot-T-Shirt/dp/B00HSNZN2C">Otto the Auto-Pilot</a> </b>in case of an emergency!<br />
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And here's an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQbj9uvYL8I"><b><i>Airplane </i></b>click featuring Otto at work</a>:<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-741337486070508812015-02-15T14:56:00.005-05:002015-02-15T15:09:47.446-05:00February 15: OpenTeachingOU News UpdateSo, for the #OpenTeachingOU round-up this week, there is some FABULOUS stuff to report. What a great week! And for more, check out the <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">#OpenTeachingOU Omnifeed</a></b> (thank you, Inoreader!), and also <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/News%20Round-Up">previous news round-ups</a></b>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">OU Folks
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/7GK5PTzj92f">Rob Reynolds, NextThought CPO</a></strong>. Given OU's ginormous investment in NextThought, I thought this should count as "OU Folks," especially since I am so happy about it: <b>Rob Reynolds</b> is now Chief Product Officer at NextThought, and we can see his work already taking effect. They have a real website now, and a real blog!
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<strong><a href="http://create.ou.edu/support/faculty-learning-community/start">Faculty Learning Community: Online Presence and Digital Identity</a></strong>. I was THRILLED to see that the upcoming FLC from <b>Adam Croom</b> already has a web presence of its own! I hope to join in even if I cannot participate in the face-to-face.<br />
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<strong><a href="http://adamcroom.com/2015/02/domains-do-disney/">Domains Do Disney</a></strong>. Adam was also at ELI this week and shared this fantastic blog post with an update on create.ou.edu. There are some faculty blogs here I have to explore, so expect more goodness here in the OU section next week!<br />
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<strong><a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/teaching-in-a-digital-space-registration-15575499739?ref=ebtnebregn">Faculty Learning Community: Teaching in a Digital Space</a></strong>. Another great FLC, and one that I hope will leave a digital trail also. <b>Kevin Buck</b> says he will blog it! Yes!!!!!! We need some good Kevin energy for D2L... the <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/D8tmuJ2rym7">John Baker webinar</a> was not exactly a toe-tapper this week (maybe others got something out of it; I listened attentively but had nothing to take away).<br />
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<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/President_Boren">President Boren on Twitter</a></strong>. Yes, <b>President Boren</b> has a Twitter account now... so, thanks to the power of the Twitter widget in D2L, President Boren was there to greet my students when they logged in!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Beyond OU
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<strong><a href="http://www.hastac.org/blogs/miazamoraphd/2015/02/13/striving-pedagogy-empowerment-taking-leap-faith">Striving for a Pedagogy of Empowerment: Taking a Leap of Faith</a></strong>. Beautiful piece from <b>Mia Zamora</b>: "A truly wise person learns from every person he or she connects with in the most unforeseen moments. This is of course the soul of co-learning. And, perhaps it is also the seed of equity and justice."
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<strong><a href="https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/educators-as-lead-learners/">Educators as Lead Learners</a></strong>. More on colearning and making learning visible, this time about our learning as instructors, from <b>Jackie Gerstein</b>, with a great graphic as always!
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/hrJeRm2RCa7">U.S. Postsecondary Faculty in 2015</a></strong>. This Gates Foundation report has some very discouraging numbers re: faculty and technology but the report itself had some glimmers of hope compared to the short write-up I read in the <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/AQJgB3tvZqg">Chronicle of Higher Ed</a>. (Thanks to <b>Phil Hill</b> for alerting me to check out the actual report.)<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/VhjZjmapJLy">NMC Horizon Report</a></strong>. Great comments from <b>Stephen Downes</b>: "So what does it tell us about the methodology? Mostly, that it sways in the breeze. It's strongly influenced by the popular press and marketing campaigns. It's not based on a deep knowledge significant technology developments, but rather focuses on surface-level chatter and opinion. And that is why I think NMC should be obligated to re-examine its methodology."
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/Jc3izSs5wCz">Before You Assign That Homework — What Students Wish You Knew</a></strong>. Great post from <b>Pernille Ripp </b>with much for higher ed here too. I am esp. a fan of the strategy that we should be doing our own homework.
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<strong><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/jessestommel/critical-digital-pedagogy">Critical Digital Pedagogy</a></strong>. Beautiful and very thought-provoking slides from <b>Jesse Stommel</b>.
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="355" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/44656740" style="border-width: 1px; border: 1px solid #CCC; margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 100%;" width="425"> </iframe> </div>
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<strong> <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/jessestommel/critical-digital-pedagogy" target="_blank" title="Critical Digital Pedagogy">Critical Digital Pedagogy</a> </strong> from <strong><a href="https://www.slideshare.net/jessestommel" target="_blank">Jesse Stommel</a></strong> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My Stuff</span><br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/bPzt2hTTTFs">Ugh: That Grading Article in Chronicle Vitae</a></strong>. Terrible and depressing article, but at least it led to a good conversation re: very important topic of grading.<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/jfc7uQ8DqmK">Data Schmata: Midterm Grade Reports</a></strong>. Yep, no comments. Again. It's big data deja vu all over again!<br />
<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/dRzMoNfXHsJ"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Making Learning Visible: Power of Past Student Work</a></strong>. Preliminary report on the way availability of Portfolios from last semester is changing things BIG TIME in my classes this semester; I'll have more on this next week.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIDvPyMRnnA4NfdLc2q_J20EE9TC7Ks9Tv8jUHZdUzA0rs1Yx9uMqeFTa9njPjOCziZVGyM7H2TnO_dqJ0ybvY37joZxRInM4s_DAaGe7U12WdF2b1B4lglicSTH6zcABcDFf1REQBLJQC/s1600/pinb.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIDvPyMRnnA4NfdLc2q_J20EE9TC7Ks9Tv8jUHZdUzA0rs1Yx9uMqeFTa9njPjOCziZVGyM7H2TnO_dqJ0ybvY37joZxRInM4s_DAaGe7U12WdF2b1B4lglicSTH6zcABcDFf1REQBLJQC/s1600/pinb.png" height="230" width="400" /></a></div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/N9k6iGS29pB">Pinterest Project Boards</a></strong>. Excited to have Pinterest Project Boards running now, and I embedded them in the Project Directories for both classes!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JxSUDmijNJw3HjeIBCJsnlUAnz6EKuU8syB_sPNmawBBllTPhWiQHsmGAbfX7E-yQBQY8eI5grshdF3_k7g5LfTPgEuI2ArCrR1gqRyiuGQ09Dclr3isxTIR7zKQZ2dx_RIzXJw0uT1f/s1600/ppboard.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-JxSUDmijNJw3HjeIBCJsnlUAnz6EKuU8syB_sPNmawBBllTPhWiQHsmGAbfX7E-yQBQY8eI5grshdF3_k7g5LfTPgEuI2ArCrR1gqRyiuGQ09Dclr3isxTIR7zKQZ2dx_RIzXJw0uT1f/s1600/ppboard.png" height="212" width="400" /></a></div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/5NA4mt3rrnZ">Student Project Comments</a></strong>. Exciting week coming up: students begin commenting on each other's projects. I've revamped that assignment and am hoping for even better things than in past!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wpdtQdKfcWntqhlhVoqNij663fRJEGEwsBOMB-tezNqv3Tt3JxCD3HOSKfWs6Bcv1aL6NZ6Ntb7G61e7iMFpdjlnAKuUlxbuJfvVZY8327Pw1rPKoR04z-xxn-SOuUSZZz0NDXldEKLz/s1600/unusduo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2wpdtQdKfcWntqhlhVoqNij663fRJEGEwsBOMB-tezNqv3Tt3JxCD3HOSKfWs6Bcv1aL6NZ6Ntb7G61e7iMFpdjlnAKuUlxbuJfvVZY8327Pw1rPKoR04z-xxn-SOuUSZZz0NDXldEKLz/s1600/unusduo.jpg" height="297" width="400" /></a></div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/CLqSSkpQjBE">Student Schedule Update</a></strong>. I'm continuing my "small data" project for the semester, seeing what more I can do to get students to develop their own schedules instead of doing work based on my (arbitrary) deadlines.<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/T2TJ2rNyfyk">Inoreader Dashboard</a></strong>. I am so happy with my new strategy for using Inoreader's Dashboard options!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho9G6IxgOOchOGcuXoTc3HiBpnabTr0QteH5LIDi_5Dv2ozlzncNLeoW5goQ1dR9cmrMQrveBjj__mt2nHWtmaB6OmRrShWmuX1I6KUtdeOUVlS9oE43GUyAhd1hlmB-uezJsv7-YBNKL1/s1600/dashboard.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho9G6IxgOOchOGcuXoTc3HiBpnabTr0QteH5LIDi_5Dv2ozlzncNLeoW5goQ1dR9cmrMQrveBjj__mt2nHWtmaB6OmRrShWmuX1I6KUtdeOUVlS9oE43GUyAhd1hlmB-uezJsv7-YBNKL1/s1600/dashboard.png" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/eK7aJx7U5R4">Comment Walls</a></strong>. Some students come up with fun graphics for their Comment Walls (they are setting up those Comment Walls this week, getting ready for comments to come). Here's one that is very fun indeed:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIwgceS5rzhEh7aDSq-2TtNQa74i5jqjMm7sw0659LQUbX5UzQk7z1ImNRYAWtp9scXfReEfvVWJmW3EeL9YM52RPCoOdyrsN_cOltdeO6wmdCi-NMXUxOCXlXhcbrIGh7V8JUL19nhV-9/s1600/bess.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIwgceS5rzhEh7aDSq-2TtNQa74i5jqjMm7sw0659LQUbX5UzQk7z1ImNRYAWtp9scXfReEfvVWJmW3EeL9YM52RPCoOdyrsN_cOltdeO6wmdCi-NMXUxOCXlXhcbrIGh7V8JUL19nhV-9/s1600/bess.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-37610336297149930672015-02-08T13:14:00.004-05:002015-02-08T13:24:17.469-05:00February 8: OpenTeachingOU News UpdateSo, I feel all the more strongly about my <b>#OpenTeachingOU</b> experiment after reading the Babson report this week. If the majority of people in higher ed still believe that online courses are not "legitimate," then those of us who KNOW otherwise need to share what we know as openly and as widely as possible. So, I will carry on with <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/openteachingou?f=realtime&src=hash">#OpenTeachingOU</a></b> as my hashtag at Twitter,while also collecting #OpenTeachingOU from Google+ and my blogs over at the <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">#OpenTeachingOU Omnifeed</a></b>. (Thanks, as always, to Inoreader for that fabulous tool!)<br />
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Below is my #OpenTeachingOU round-up for this week, and you can find <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/News%20Round-Up">previous round-ups here too</a></b>. I am really pleased that I managed to tag at least one item every day this week, and the beginning-of-semester rush has settled down, so I can hopefully start reading more widely. I am badly behind on people's blogs, but blogs are patient: in the coming week, I will try to catch up on some of my favorites.<br />
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2vB_zPcNwsCGH07F0gleRbXnUTaO1fJBtAXa76AD7paAJIBN1ELYTtzVM84_-B5sYnWaqSVDrwAl98CgX_4_4cDMYG-uN1UPsWn7XuFubG65sitVXF1k8DE8SxfYg7t9Kp1AQ_BkIb6dH/s1600/Screen+Shot+2015-01-10+at+2.43.57+PM.png" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; color: #0b5394; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 24.6399993896484px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" /></div>
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<b><a href="http://crhinesmith.com/community-informatics/youth-community-informatics-studio/">Youth Community Informatics Studio</a></b>. Wonderful, very informative blog post from <b>Colin Rhinesmith</b> about his new community-engagement course, "Leadership in Information Organizations" where they are working with the Moore Public Library. It sounds exciting!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkIbewhlSSYjta09Wt24cd145ihNmPQDPFf55zZyaWhi75A2OtQVxBN5s-PBK9MblSUlDZYPcjAeqei8HZXs_tSMMk7hfjSK49B8JcfUjhc4ZjzwTRHhYFcve9Qm3niPqCKk5el7Ui4OCC/s1600/youthstudio_flyer_large-791x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkIbewhlSSYjta09Wt24cd145ihNmPQDPFf55zZyaWhi75A2OtQVxBN5s-PBK9MblSUlDZYPcjAeqei8HZXs_tSMMk7hfjSK49B8JcfUjhc4ZjzwTRHhYFcve9Qm3niPqCKk5el7Ui4OCC/s1600/youthstudio_flyer_large-791x1024.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://digitalhumanitiesintro.net/"><b>Adentures in Digital Humanities</b></a>. The open set-up that <b>Katherine Pandora</b> is using for this "dream course" means there are new things we can all see and learn about every week. The <a href="http://digitalhumanitiesintro.net/group-blogs/">group blogs</a>, for example, are up and running!<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/UrDrg6m57Bx">What is Your Motivation for Learning?</a></strong> Very useful post from <b>College of Liberal Studies</b> about students and motivation. I like the idea of thinking about motivation from different angles... because it's true: different students are differently motivated, as are teachers too of course!
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<strong><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/563929557632155648">PRPubs Pinterest</a></strong>. At Twitter <b>Adam Croom</b> shared a Pinterest project that is part of his PRPubs class.
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I would be glad to know of other examples of open teaching going on at OU this semester!<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/LAmKs1dEocH">Bad News for Online Learning in Annual Report & “Unsustainable” MOOCS are Full Steam Ahead</a></strong>. You will find lots of write-ups of the Babson report data, but the one that got to the issues that most concern me is this post from <b>Debbie Morrison</b>.<br />
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<strong><a href="http://www.teachingwithoutwalls.com/2015/02/online-teaching-new-beginning.html">Online Teaching: A New Beginning</a></strong>. And here's a nice counter-point to the Babson report: a guest post at <b>Michelle Pacansky-Brock</b>'s blog about an online instructor's explorations and discoveries.<br />
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<strong><a href="http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/what-are-your-favorite-faculty-development-blogs/59083">What Are Your Favorite Faculty Development Blogs?</a></strong> I was so glad to see Debbie Morrison and Michelle Pacansky-Brock on this list from the Chronicle's ProfHacker blog, and I look forward to exploring and finding more!<br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong><a href="http://www.tonybates.ca/2015/02/06/desperately-seeking-the-unique-pedagogical-characteristics-of-face-to-face-teaching/">Desperately Seeking the Unique Pedagogical Characteristics of Face to Face Teaching</a></strong>. Excellent post from </span><b>Tony Bates</b> turns the Babson report upside down: instead of asking online to prove itself, he is asking defenders of face-to-face to please explain just what exclusive claims they have to teaching efficacy. </div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/7dRJyGM1vSL">Coursera Sets Sights on Universities</a></strong>. Yes, the megalomania at Coursera never stops: they still want us to believe that their courses are so good that universities can use them <em>instead of</em> teachers. I kid you not. No need for in-house expertise. Just buy Coursera. Ka-ching.<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/b8zWeUVYXTD">Instructure Releases 4th Security Audit</a></strong>. This is not about teaching but it is a nice write-up from <b>Phil Hill</b> about the importance of transparency, and I think it is no accident that Instructure is being transparent about its security audits, just as Instructure built an LMS that allows instructors to decide whether their content is open or not.<br />
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/PH48WmNV2Zt">Ford Foundation, Open Access and Really Sharing Knowledge</a></strong>. Excellent post from <b>Nancy White</b> about openness, something to read together with Phil's Instructure post above. As I see it, the closed design of D2L, where instructors cannot share their teaching or their teaching materials even if they want to do so, is probably the single biggest barrier to our pedagogical progress. So, again: another reason for #OpenTeachingOU. We've got to get out of the D2L lockdown and start sharing more online!</div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/4hHyWFKaJsY">Does It Matter Whether Students Recognize What We Do As Teachers?</a></strong> This post from <b>Pernille Ripp</b> also reinforces my sense of why OpenTeaching is so important: it matters to our students too, perhaps more than any other audience! </div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/EPn7TND2TsD">What if Contentment is the Answer?</a></strong> Beautiful post from <b>John Spencer</b> about how contentment can lead to more and better risk-taking: confidence, not complacency.</div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/GZRoJspxY6g">How Medium Is Building a New Kind of Company with No Managers</a></strong>. Lots of good analogies for education here: this reaction against dehumanizing styles of business management would also work very well as a reaction against dehumanizing education styles as well.</div>
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<strong><a href="http://rhetcompnow.com/responding/530/">Engagement: I Do Not Think It Memes What You Think It Memes</a></strong>. Very thought-provoking post from <b>Terry Elliott</b> about engagement as something that must be reciprocal and not just stimulus-response (a bit like <a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/interaction-entre-nous-not-machines.html">my post about interaction</a> from last week... but with better memes, ha ha).
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-7qxB8W6E8p9c11ByPe3RJuSiC4m2AcppFvq1N2d4DR9UzwhUY3k1fZenGV-P10TvmlvvhvnRqtX5yAuSuXMVAIKGntVrjRSSUpKSNXpkvJ_WsDBqGEUs9pIqSFKdxTGC8eXtnBBdhNz/s1600/INIGOI-dont-think.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib-7qxB8W6E8p9c11ByPe3RJuSiC4m2AcppFvq1N2d4DR9UzwhUY3k1fZenGV-P10TvmlvvhvnRqtX5yAuSuXMVAIKGntVrjRSSUpKSNXpkvJ_WsDBqGEUs9pIqSFKdxTGC8eXtnBBdhNz/s1600/INIGOI-dont-think.jpg" height="345" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">My Stuff</span></div>
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<strong><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/1sTaA9K67be">Storytelling Posts</a></strong>. I really like being able to share the student blog posts in a dedicated stream; this week I shared the stories coming in from the Myth-Folklore class. I also shared their <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/ScADj5oLYZo">reading diaries</a>, and it is the stories in those diaries that provide the raw materials for their storytelling later in the week. Coming soon: the Storybook websites are taking shape for this semester, as are the Portfolios!<br />
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<strong><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2015/02/spring-2015-grace-period-reminder.html">Spring 2015: Grace Period Reminder Tracking</a></strong>. This is the blog post where I'll be providing an overview of my "little data" experiment for this semester, trying different interventions with students who are chronically late with work for class. The post is updated now for Weeks 3 and 4.<br />
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<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigUDgSyAkpt1Sy-iUmIff8_pxutZzKC8gAf_coIx4etQJvT9TxIiNdaZI9giaGsQ_gng8ffxds6VbeRMzGd0EdjqTNNnYgM3Yyl8x9D5hQ8Q2lmKaK2t3WQz6UwXjxrHAxj-ILR5kK-yqm/s200/Screen+Shot+2015-02-08+at+10.33.37+AM.png" height="149" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 1px solid rgb(255, 255, 255); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 1px 1px 5px; color: #007cbb; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.6000003814697px; line-height: 24.6399993896484px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="200" /></div>
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And as an image this week, I wanted to share this great painting of a "colporteur" (<a href="http://www.ecoles.cfwb.be/argattidegamond/Contes/Chaperon/Colportage.htm">17th-century France</a>). It showed up in one of the book-oriented Twitter feeds I follow, and I thought it was beautiful: I feel like a colporteur for my students, singing the praises of the books... but the books I offer are free! Whoo-hoo! Long live the public domain and the open Internet!
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-50826642042927667922015-02-01T17:09:00.002-05:002015-02-01T17:56:18.205-05:00February 1: OpenTeachingOU News UpdateSo, as last week, I'm using <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">my #OpenTeachingOU omnifeed</a></b> to pull together my teaching/learning highlights for the week! It would be so great if more people at OU started using this hashtag to share their teaching practices in an online conversation, but even just as a tag that I use for myself to put tweets and posts into a <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">dedicated stream</a></b>, it's very useful! (And here are my <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/News%20Round-Up">previous news round-ups</a></b>.)<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">OU Folks</span></b><br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/pandorakat">Katherine Pandora</a></b>. The big open teaching news this week at OU was all the great sharing that happened via Twitter because of Katherine Pandora's dream course and the visit by Michael Peter Edson from the Smithsonian. You can <b><a href="http://interaction%20entre%20nous...%20not%20machines.%20my%20thoughts%20on%20the%20word%20%22interaction%22%20as%20prompted%20by%20a%20thought-provoking%20back-and-forth%20with%20someone%20in%20my%20campus%27s%20it%20department.%20%20new%20%22comment%20training%22%20strategy.%20i%20am%20so%20happy%20with%20how%20this%20%22comment%20training%22%20experiment%20is%20going%20so%20far.%20it%27s%20something%20i%20wish%20i%20had%20done%20years%20ago%20in%20my%20courses%21/">follow Katherine at Twitter</a></b> for more goodness to come, and, even better, you can visit the open class site: <b><a href="http://digitalhumanitiesintro.net/">adventures in digital humanities</a></b>.<br />
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Stacy Zemke shared this photo of the event via <b><a href="https://twitter.com/slzemke/status/560202410010755072">Twitter</a></b>:</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Beyond OU
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/iW6bp2nyA7j">Are Schools Failing Extroverts?</a></b> Great post from <b>John Spencer </b>on extroverted students. As an "ambivert" (ha ha), I really appreciate how the online environment can be GREAT both for extroverts and also for introverts!
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<b><a href="http://pernillesripp.com/2015/02/01/the-one-thing-we-forget-to-plan-for/">FUN: The One Thing We Forget to Plan For</a></b>. Wonderful post from <b>Pernille Ripp </b>about fun. Sadly, so much of college teaching proclaims its rigor. I vote for fun! "<i>Learning should be fun. Curiosity should have a place in our classrooms. Laughter should happen on a regular basis. Smiling should be a classroom rule. Fun should be one of the many pillars that supports all of the learning that we do. It should be embraced, discussed, worked on and celebrated. Schools should be filled with fun</i>."
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<b><a href="https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/questions-to-ask-oneself-while-designing-learning-activities/">Questions to Ask Oneself While Designing Learning Activities</a></b>. Such a great post from <b>Jackie Gerstein</b> and, yes, fun is one of the questions!
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/CqwZtKxmB8J">Helping a Perfectionist Child Worry Less and Do More</a></b>. From <b>Jessica Lahey</b> at New York Times - I would guess that perfectionism is probably the single biggest barrier to changing how we teach... and it's also the biggest barrier to Open Teaching I suspect. A lot of academics don't want to share things openly that are less than perfect. That's not a problem for me, ha ha — I'm a recovering perfectionist, and my recovery is going very well.<br />
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<b><a href="https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/a-new-twist-to-teaching-online-considering-learners-emotions/">A New Twist to Teaching Online: Considering Learners’ Emotions</a></b>. Great post from <b>Debbie Morrison</b>. The emotional factor is HUGE in my opinion, which is why I find the idea of teaching machines laughable (and computers don't get the joke either). Debbies includes this very nice graphic from Rienties and Rivers:
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<b><a href="https://chroniclevitae.com/news/882-10-things-the-best-digital-teachers-do">10 Things the Best Digital Teachers Do</a></b>. From <b>Jesse Stommel</b> over at Chronicle Vitae (which does NOT have RSS, alas)... a very good list! I esp. endorse this one: GRADE LESS. Or, even better, not at all; here are <b><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2014/09/grading.html">my thoughts on grading</a></b>.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/high-impact-online">High Impact Online</a></b>. Although I was dismayed by the idea that someone as savvy as <b>Matt Reed </b>had no idea what would be a high impact practice online, people chimed in with lots of ideas. I even left a couple comments there because this is such an important topic. As a result of a follow-up convo at Twitter with Debbie Morrison, I learned this great acronym: HIP, high-impact practice. I want to be an<b><i> online hippie</i></b>, ha ha, a "high-impact practitioner."<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">My Stuff
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/Fz2i4r84Mue">What Professors Actually Do</a></b>. My response to Scott Walker of Wisconsin: if we practice OPEN TEACHING, then people would have a much better idea of what professors actually do. Especially those of us (instructors, not professors) who teach full-time!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/gqPKBpvT9mS">The Potential of Online Education</a></b>. Thoughts on face-to-face workshops. I just don't see how we will become confident and skilled at helping students to learn online if we continue to do all our learning in small, face-to-face groups. At my school, we are well into the second year of a big "Digital Initiative," but I have yet to see anything like a community of practice or learning network emerging for those of us who are committed online educators, eager and ready to share ideas, experiences, etc. The learning opportunities we offer faculty are all face-to-face, not online. For why this matters, see next item:<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/LDKZSwRVrDE">Course Evaluation Data: We're Skewing Low, Not High</a></b>. And here are some numbers that demonstrate WHY those of us who are teaching online need to be sharing our ideas and experience: the course evaluations for online courses in my college skew low rather than high. In my opinion, the incredible potential of online education would mean the numbers should skew high, not low... but that is not going to happen until online instructors themselves start sharing and learning together online IMO.
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<a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/interaction-entre-nous-not-machines.html"><b><u>Interaction Entre Nous... NOT Machines</u></b></a>. My thoughts on the word "interaction" as prompted by a thought-provoking back-and-forth with someone in my campus's IT department.<br />
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<b><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2015/01/new-comment-training-strategy.html">New "Comment Training" Strategy</a></b>. I am SO HAPPY with how this "Comment Training" experiment is going so far. It's something I wish I had done years ago in my courses!<br />
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And to close... here's a wonderful graphic making the rounds on Google+:<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/AoFm6Jp6mJz">Change</a></b>. <i><b>If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.</b></i><br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-37054702823627602302015-01-31T18:51:00.001-05:002015-01-31T19:03:48.318-05:00Interaction Entre Nous... NOT MachinesThis blog post is prompted by a back-and-forth I had via email with a really nice person in my campus IT who wrote to ask me what I thought about a particular elearning authoring vendor. I wrote back to say that I didn't think much about the vendor (<a href="https://versal.com/c/ngttdz">Versal</a>) one way or another because authoring content was not something that interests me. Instead, I am much more interested in my STUDENTS as authors and designing classes in which the goal is to enable and encourage the students to be creating new, original content as part of the class. As a result, I think my time is better spent helping the students to create content, as opposed to creating content myself.<br />
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And here's what prompted this blog post: the very nice IT guy wrote back and said, "I think your focus on the student is correct although I've had at least a few faculty approach me with an interest in making their lessons more interactive."<br />
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<b>ALARM BELLS RING</b>: Interactive... do we all agree on what that word means? Clearly not.<br />
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To me, interactive means human beings interacting with each other. Inter-action. You do something, I do something that is somehow connected to your action: we are inter-acting. It is something that humans do together, and it requires humans to do that. Or, okay, cats. My cats are definitely interactive; they interact with me, they interact with each other (not nicely, alas).<br />
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But I do not believe that computers can interact with humans. We can <i>use</i> computers for all kinds of purposes, and one purpose of a computer can be to facilitate interactions with other human beings . . . like right now: I write something in a blog, and if you are prompted to comment here, and I comment back, glory hallelujah: we will have interacted, even if we have never met face to face.<br />
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But I am not prepared to use the term "interaction" for a computer's action in response to something that I have done. There is NO ONE THERE to interact with. If you say a computer is interactive because it makes a happy bleep when I answer a quiz question correctly would be like saying that Rice Krispies cereal is interactive because it goes "snap, crackle, pop" when I pour milk on it. Or like saying that the door to my house is interactive because it opens when I turn the key. And so on, <i> ad infinitum ... </i>and <i>ad absurdum</i>.<br />
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So, yes, it is essential that learning be interactive: we need human feedback of all kinds to keep our learning process moving forward. Making my online classes highly interactive is a primary goal for me. Just today, I wrote up notes on an important new strategy I am trying to improve the student-to-student interactions in my classes: <b><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2015/01/new-comment-training-strategy.html">New "Comment Training" Strategy</a></b>.<br />
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But that does not mean I need an elearning vendor to sell me some product to create so-called "interactive" quizzes, etc. (scare quotes intended). Instead, I am interested in products that facilitate person-to-person communication online. Right now, for my classes that means mostly blogs and Twitter, along with that vintage standby: email. (I far prefer blogs and Twitter.)<br />
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So, what say ye, people? Has the word interactive become so empty of meaning that online quizzes now qualify as an "interactive" component of a class? Was the word "dynamic" not good enough? If so, heaven help us. It means I will have to find a new word to use for what I consider <i>real</i> interaction, if that word has indeed been kidnapped and emptied of meaning by the elearning vendors.<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-80506320379513147732015-01-25T12:07:00.004-05:002015-01-25T12:16:20.639-05:00January 25: OpenTeachingOU News UpdateOkay, it is always a colossal effort to get a new class up and running every semester. I keep making changes to the course materials (the students keep giving me so many good ideas to try!), and then there's the real effort: connecting with and getting to know all the new students, helping them to get online and start blogging, etc. I'm amazed and happy at what we have accomplished in the past two weeks, and I think the students are also very pleased — as usual, for almost all the students, it is the first time they have had a blog, and that really can be exciting... I still get excited when I make a new blog after all those years!<br />
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All that work, though, really wrecks the rest of my online life: reading, writing, keeping track of things. Luckily, though, I put a new content development plan in place that has kept me more-or-less on track, so I am REALLY happy about that. Even in the midst of all this work, I've made huge <b><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2015/01/indian-epics-untextbook-table-of.html">progress on the Indian Epics UnTextbook</a></b>, and I've kept on publishing stories at <b><a href="http://theoceanofstories.blogspot.com/">Ocean of Stories</a></b> (I finally got started on the jataka part of that project just yesterday), and I've managed to carry on with the <b><a href="http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/">Bestiaria Latina</a></b> faithfully. At Twitter, I'm being really diligent about keeping up with <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/ou-faculty-staff">following OU people</a></b> (but I have not really kept up with anything else), and I've done a good job with the <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineMythIndia">class Twitter stream</a></b> too. In the blogosphere, I am hopelessly behind, and I have barely been keeping up even with what people are sharing at Google+. Luckily, though, both Twitter and Google+ are very forgiving and starting this week I should be able to get back into the swing of things!<br />
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What may save me, though, is this use of the<b> #OpenTeachingOU</b> hashtag. I'm not able to write up a news round-up today (I'm too far behind!), but I can do an #OpenTeachingOU round-up... which is better than nothing ha ha. Meanwhile, you can watch the #OpenTeachingOU feed over here on its own page, thanks to the power of the Inoreader omnifeed: <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">Laura Gibbs - #OpenTeachingOU</a></b>.<br />
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So, in order to write this OpenTeachingOU round-up, all I have to do is scroll through that HTML clippings feed, grab the best items, and add a little context. Even in the midst of chaos, that is something I can manage to do, and I think I've had #OpenTeachingOU stuff every day. I really didn't intend the use of this hashtag for my own housekeeping, but it has sure proved very useful for that. And, thanks to Cody Taylor this weekend, I am hoping that maybe ... maybe ... other OU folks will start using it as well!<br />
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Meanwhile, the notes below go back to my very first use of the hashtag. Maybe I'll be able to do bigger/better news round-ups as the semester settles down, but if I can manage to do this in the midst of chaos thanks to the hashtag, that's good enough for now. :-)<br />
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<b>OU News:</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/559076482224783360">Thank you, Cody!</a></b> I was so excited that <b>Cody Taylor</b> used the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag for a post, and very appropriately since it was re: the very generous way in which Katherine Pandora and the DH crew are putting course materials online! (see next item)<br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/558694307952361472">Katherine Pandora Digital Humanities Intro</a></b>. At Twitter, I learned about <b><a href="http://digitalhumanitiesintro.net/">Katherine Pandora's DH class</a></b>. Very exciting: course materials, group blogs, student blogs... such a fantastic use of create.ou.edu!<br />
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<b><a href="http://adamcroom.com/2015/01/pr-pubs-goes-online/">PR Pubs Goes Online!</a></b> Another other great create.ou.edu experiment I learned about via Twitter is <b>Adam Croom</b>'s PR Pubs course. You can read details here in his blog.<br />
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<b><a href="http://david.vishanoff.com/">David Vishanoff</a></b>. And via Twitter I learned about <b>David Vishanoff </b>blogging and teaching in the open: yes!!!<br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/outechexpo?f=realtime">OUTechExpo</a></b>. This is a link to the Twitter stream for OUTechExpo... not much Twitter, but something is better than nothing. Will the <b>Jim Groom </b>magic last? Will it have pulled some people into the world of open? It was Jim's visit to campus that prompted me to start using #OpenTeachingOU...!<br />
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<b>Beyond OU:</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/558359205837811712">Dealing with the Blog Flow</a></b>. Fantastic post from <b>Alan Levine</b> about blog flow management. So fascinating to hear how other people work with this! A note about my <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/A9Jat8pEG8X">blog workflow here</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/83Mf7cL1enX">here</a>.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/HQA2KoJGX1r"> How Interactive is Your Online Course? Self-Assess with this Rubric</a></b>. Very helpful post from <b>Debbie Morrison.</b><br />
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<b><a href="http://opensource.com/education/15/1/interview-stephen-oconnor-ny-state-education-department"> A shift in education: Teachers who create content, not consume</a></b>. I learned about this great blog post (interview with <b>Stephen O'Connor</b>) via Twitter.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/AWbiqtrdh3e">New Feature at Wikimedia</a></b>. Helping to raise people's awareness of image sources, licenses, and citations.<br />
<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/NsA5f1eHydy"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />21st Century Skills and Attributes</a></b>. A nifty self-assessment from <b>Jackie Gerstein.</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/d27GcPC6EaD">9 Barriers to Personalized Learning And How We May Work Around Them</a></b>. Very powerful and useful post from <b>Pernille Ripp.</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/langwitches/status/553989722997923840/photo/1">Modern Learning Routines</a></b>. Great graphic from <b>Silvia Tolisano</b> via Twitter:<br />
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<b><a href="https://twitter.com/Jessifer/status/553920906339180545">Teaching and Scholarship</a></b>. I loved this quote from<b> Jesse Stommel </b>at Twitter: <i>The scholarship OF teaching should not be limited to scholarship ABOUT teaching. Teaching is itself scholarly and a product of research.</i><br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/3AQGw9eFiyx">Teach While You're At It</a></b>. And on that subject, <b>Stephen Landry </b>has a very nice piece about teaching and research in the Chronicle.</div>
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<b>My Blog Posts:</b><br />
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<b><a href="http://anatomy.lauragibbs.net/2015/01/indian-epics-untextbook-table-of.html">Indian Epics UnTextbook: Table of Contents Emerging</a></b>. I am going to try to do a better job of documenting the UnTextbook this time around, esp. since I learned a lot from my mistakes with Myth-Folklore UnTextbook last time! :-)<br />
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<b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/hashtags-for-curation-saved-by.html">Hashtags for curation: Saved by #OpenTeachingOU</a></b>. More about this hashtag thing is working for me.<br />
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<b><a href="http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/2014/01/martin-luther-king-day-edition.html">Martin Luther King Day Edition</a></b>. I spent most of the day on Sunday learning more about Martin Luther King in honor of Martin Luther King Day on Monday... and making quote posters — and I ended up with about 50 of them! My favorite quote:<i> We must always maintain a kind of divine discontent.</i> — Martin Luther King, Jr. <br />
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<b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/ten-reasons-for-week-zero-aka-soft-start.html">Ten Reasons for Week Zero (a.k.a. Soft Start)</a></b>. Wow, Week Zero seems like forever ago! But here is a blog post about how important it is.<br />
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<b>My Google+ Quasi-Blog:</b><br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/E6aWZKVnWCX">Siren Song of the Deadline</a></b>. Thoughts on student autonomy, and lack thereof. The ringing of the bell: Pavlov warned us about that, didn't he???! <br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/CAeEtDwqrz9">Indian Epics Overview</a></b>. I am super-happy with the changes I made to this Overview activity in Indian Epics; results so much better than last semester!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/1BCjMxEMv7w">Writing Assessment: Spring 2015</a></b>. The ritual update from yours truly about how the proofreading assessment went this semester. Very consistent with past semesters and, as always, I am glad to have engaged with the students re: this dimension of the class already in Week 1. <br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/Lpxob5WvJD5">Peer Comments</a></b>. I'm trying out a new series of assignments to help students develop better commenting skills. So far, so good with the first assignment!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/QEaTcT9iyqn">Reading Diaries: Happy Update</a></b>. I'm really pleased with tweaks to reading diary instructions. Overall, diaries definitely better this time already starting in the first week of reading: more reflection, less plot summary.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/JPhTFZv2WCU">UnTextbook Reporting</a></b>. And the Google Form with student feedback on the UnTextbook is filling up... with the new extra reading option, I should get feedback on a lot more units this semester!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/PBzQyJNfkhw">Why I Love My Job</a></b>. Just one of many great moments thanks to student blog posts... and also <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/BPRk8Wswbbg">here</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/cpwH8BQzGkj">here</a>.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/ZTZuMZ3jE8h">Helping Students with Blog Post Images</a></b>. Yes, it is worth getting into the nitty-gritty of details like this students, esp. when they run into problems with broken images as a result of remote linking.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/bRZyeoyyhig">Inoreader Update</a></b>. I am SO PLEASED with the way Inoreader now updates items. That is a huge help with my students, esp. as they are revising blogs early in the semester in process of learning ins-and-outs of blogging.<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/QbviYEWrwXA">Pinterest Experiment</a></b>. Update on Pinterest experiment: going great!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/7WdvpJNU2em">Reading a Powerpoint Aloud</a></b>. Extended and very lively discussion erupted at G+ from <b>Stacy Zemke</b>'s share of this meme!<br />
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<b>Notes from the Twitterverse:</b><br />
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Tweets about <b>Pinterest experiment</b>: <a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/558357220619190273">here</a>, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/xxx">here</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/553209725517832192">here</a>, etc.<br />
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Tweets about <b>D2L Twitter widget integration</b>: <a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/559079803723456512">here</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/557623544910462977">here</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/status/556113239516655616">here</a>, etc.<br />
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<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-39153606783434502652015-01-20T18:28:00.002-05:002015-01-20T18:35:23.663-05:00Hashtags for curation: Saved by #OpenTeachingOUWell, it is time to pause and say: WOW!!!!!!!!! The semester has gotten off to a fantastic start for me. I am seriously overenrolled in my classes (usually about 10% of people who are enrolled drop, and I plan on that... but, yikes, that has not happened this semester, so I am still at over 90 students right now)... but thanks to Inoreader and other improvements in my work flow, I think I should be able to cope. And it is going to be so exciting having all these people blogging, writing stories, sharing ideas. So many great students as always.<br />
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But........ BUSY. That overenrollment is definitely going to eat into the time I might normally have available for blogging and stuff.<br />
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Which is why I am so glad that I started using the <b>#OpenTeachingOU hashtag</b>.<br />
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In honor of <b><a href="http://academictech.ou.edu/ate-keynote-jim-groom/">Jim Groom and the Academic Tech Expo</a></b> we had here earlier this month, I started using an #OpenTeachingOU hashtag at Twitter, at Google+, and also at my blogs, hoping that might be a way for those of us who are into open teaching to connect up with one another. That has not happened yet (although there was a seriously <b><a href="http://adamcroom.com/2015/01/pr-pubs-goes-online/">awesome post from Adam Croom</a></b> in that spirit!) ... but even just using the hashtag for MY OWN CURATION has proved really useful. I haven't had any time to do any posting at this blog for the past week or so, but the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag does provide a glimpse into what I am thinking about and how things are going this semester so far!<br />
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I've created an <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.net/openteachingou.html">#OpenTeachingOU OmniFeed page</a></b> which shows all my posts with the tag (Google+, Twitter, blogs... and Pinterest too... although I don't think I've pinned anything for open teaching yet), and you can also see a standard Twitter hashtag widget in the sidebar of this blog. Isn't that cool? I love the way I can create these "omnifeeds" with Inoreader thanks to their Google+ and Twitter integration!<br />
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So, for those of you who are not interested in my Latin LOLCats and stories from India and random blah-blah-blah-whatever that shows up in my feed, the #OpenTeachingOU Omnifeed is for you, ha ha. It is a glimpse into my teaching eurekas... and a promise of blog posts to come.<br />
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Hashtags: they are powerful!<br />
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And I saw this <b><a href="http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2015/01/a-good-visual-timeline-on-history-of.html?m=1">infographic about history of hashtags</a></b> thanks to Ian O'Byrne over at Google+ today. To be honest, hashtags kind of suck at Google+ (even if I am one of Google+'s biggest fans)... but I do use #OpenTeachingOU there too, in hopes that Google+ hashtag culture might improve.<br />
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And someday........ someday.......... I will get up on all the posts I am behind at this blog, ha ha.<br />
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<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-36090592468743256952015-01-10T15:48:00.002-05:002015-01-10T15:48:39.792-05:00 Ten Reasons for Week Zero (a.k.a. Soft Start)So I just had such a nice week!!! It was "Week Zero" of the semester; in other words, classes start officially on Monday (Jan. 12), but I opened up my classes a week early (on Jan. 5) so that people who wanted to get a head start could do so. This is something I have always done from teaching online, from the very first semester back in 2002. I recently posted here a list of <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/ten-reasons-for-orientation-week.html">Ten Reasons for Orientation Week</a></b>, so I thought it would be good to do a list of<b> Ten Reasons for Week Zero (a.k.a. Soft Start)</b>.<br />
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<b>1. Helping students get ahead. </b>Working ahead is one of the best strategies for any class, and that is especially true for online classes. It is consistently the top advice that students recommend to future students, as you can see here: <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90544412/peeradvice#time">Peer Advice - Time Management</a></b>. Having the classes open in Week Zero is all about getting ahead!<br />
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<b>2. Taking advantage of slack time. </b>Once students' other classes start, I am competing for their attention. Because I teach Gen. Ed., my class is understandably not a high priority for many students; classes for their majors must come first. So, if I really do want these students to get ahead (see reason #1), then taking advantage of the slack time before the official start of the semester is really important!<br />
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<b>3. Making sure students know what they are getting into.</b> Not all classes are a good fit for all students. My classes, for example, are writing-intensive, which is not something students expect from a Gen. Ed. class. By opening up the class early and encouraging students to give it a try or at least to see the course materials/assignments, they can see what they think. If they decide to drop, they will obviously have a better chance of finding another class to add instead if they are looking in Week Zero as opposed to looking for an open class in Week One or, worst of all, in Week Two, when you can only add with instructor permission.<br />
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<b>4. Checking to see if the courses really are ready. </b>I am so grateful to the students who alert me to broken links, instructions that are not clear, etc. The more I tinker with the courses (and over this winter break, I tinkered way more than I usually do over winter break — there were just so many good ideas from students last semester that I wanted to try out!), the more likely that there will be typos, broken links, etc., that I need to fix. I really depend on the pioneer students during Week Zero to help me find the things I need to fix!<br />
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<b>5. Refining Inoreader folders, rules, and labels.</b> By having incoming blog posts from the students, I am able to make sure my Inoreader folders, rules, and labels are going to do what I need them to do. Last semester, I found Inoreader too late to do a really efficient job with the rules, but I learned a lot from my mistakes in order to set things up more efficiently this time. Of course, I thought I had it all figured out... but when actual student blog posts started coming in this week, I realized lots of little tweaks that would help make my folders, rules, and labels work even better. I need actual student blog posts in order to match the workflow to reality!<br />
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<b>6. Bringing the class blogosphere to life. </b>Not only do the live blogs help me in configuring Inoreader, it is also a big boost for the students who who will be starting the class next week: they can see the posts that students wrote in Week Zero, and seeing actual examples of the assignments is just as important as the instructions I provide. Indeed, for some students, it's even more important because they might just skim the instructions, getting their real sense of how to do the assignment by looking at the work of others. Thanks to Inoreader's rules and feeds, I can automatically share those assignments; here, for example, is the first blog post assignment: <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/84219592/favplacesposts">Favorite Place(s)</a></b>. I love the way it updates 24/7 automatically as the blog posts come in!<br />
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<b>7. Getting to know the students. </b>I love the way I have time to read and respond to all, or almost all, of the blog posts during Week Zero. That is less true in Week One, and then in following weeks, it's the students replying to each other mostly, with the blogs being more "their" space in the class while I focus on their projects. During the soft start, though, I have a chance to really get to know the students who start early, reading all their work, getting a sense of who they are, their goals for the class, etc. It is always such a pleasure: my students are a fascinating bunch, and I really like having time just to get to them know them in a more leisurely way during Week Zero. This week during Week Zero, appx. 40 students set up their blogs (but not all of them have started posting in their blogs), and I made 87 comments on actual blog posts.<br />
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<b>8. Setting up lines of communication. </b>When I release the classes to the students, I start using the different channels of communication that we will be using all semester long, so the students can begin getting used to that, even if they aren't doing work for the class. So, I start posting in the <b><a href="http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/">Announcements blog</a></b>, I revive my <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineMythIndia">class Twitter feed</a></b>, I start pinning regularly to my class <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/83821195/pinterestdirectory">Pinterest Boards</a></b>, etc. In most of the classes at my school, the focus is 100% on D2L BS (our course management system), but for my classes, D2L BS is not important at all for the content or communication in the class, and I want the students to be aware of our Class Announcements blog, the different websites I use the class, etc. So, the emails I send them about the soft start are not lengthy emails. Instead, they are just a few key links to get them started — link to the Class Announcements blog, link to the class websites, etc. Not D2L.<br />
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<b>9. ENTHUSING.</b> One of the most important ingredients for success in my classes is enthusiasm: the students' enthusiasm and my own enthusiasm combined. By starting the classes early, I can demonstrate and share my own enthusiasm with the students, hoping to be a catalyst for some enthusiasm on their part — and my enthusiasm for these classes is ENORMOUS... even though I have fun during the school break, I am always so excited to get back to work and make sure the classes are ready to go.<br />
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<b>10. Getting myself into school mode.</b> I love my job, but I also love the holiday vacation. I stay up too late, watch too much Netflix, read mountains of stuff, start new projects, indulge my own obsessions without restraint. Luckily for me, some of those projects and obsessions are school-related, but there's still a HUGE difference between my daily routine when school is in session and when it's not. Having the soft start is a way for me to make that transition so that when the craziness of Week One arrives, I am ready for it! Well, sort of, ha ha. <br />
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... yes, I do get up early when school is in session! Here is a rhyming Latin proverb on that subject.<br />
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<a href="http://goproverbs.blogspot.com/2013/07/proverb-early-riser.html">It is a very healthy thing to rise early in the morning.</a></div>
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#OpenTeachingOU </div>
Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-64734740712027688142015-01-10T14:38:00.003-05:002015-01-10T14:46:13.051-05:00Update on #OpenTeachingOU Hashtag: Happy!So, just a quick post here to say that I am really happy with this hashtag I have started using, #OpenTeachingOU. Given the hectic time at the beginning of the semester, with all the work I'm doing to get ready for classes, I haven't had time to be keeping up with my news rounds-ups, etc., but the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag is a way that I can label tweets and posts and items at Google+ so that they don't get lost in my online space which is full of teaching stuff, yes, but also full of LOLCats and Indian images etc. etc. So, the hashtag is proving to be a really good way for me to <b><i>think about open teaching</i></b> as I participate in these online spaces each day, and that is a good thing to be thinking about!<br />
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I'm also REALLY grateful to know about the <b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/cgZcShdA7xp">ClassicRetweet extension</a></b> for both Chrome and Firefox since that allows me to add the hashtag when I retweet. :-)<br />
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Of course, most of all I am hoping...<b><i> especially after <a href="http://jimgroom.net/">Jim Groom</a> came and worked his magic at the Tech Expo on Friday</i></b>... that the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag might catch on! There are all kinds of people and programs at OU that are moving, slowly or quickly, in the direction of open teaching and connected learning, so in addition to just using it for my own curation purposes, I'll also keep hoping that the hashtag will serve a more social purpose too.<br />
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Below is the HTML clippings feed for the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag via Inoreader (<b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU/view/html?t=0xOpenTeachingOU&n=50&w=400">see it on a page of its own</a> </b>... and <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU">here's the RSS</a></b>). That's a bit different than the widget in the sidebar of this blog: in the sidebar, you are just seeing the Twitter stream for the hashtag, but Inoreader is pulling anything with #OpenTeachingOU, which means all the blogs I am subscribed to, plus my Google+ stream, along with Twitter. Inoreader searches through all that stuff with a rule I created, and then it combines the matching results into a new consolidated RSS feed. Plus, I can add that label manually to items I find in Inoreader myself if I want to pull them into the RSS feed for OpenTeachingOU. So powerful! I am really enjoying the different uses I find for Inoreader, and this is a good one. :-)<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-13164122553425724032015-01-06T12:55:00.002-05:002015-01-06T13:39:17.232-05:00A fun first day with #OpenTeachingOU hashtagHashtags are one of my favorite things about Twitter. They are great for indexing AND great for connecting. I'm not sure if it will be possible to get #OpenTeachingOU to really work for connecting people at OU (there are just not that many OU faculty using social media, alas...), but even if it is not something that takes off in a social sense, I realized yesterday how useful this can be for me simply as an indexing strategy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>#OpenTeaching<span style="color: #990000;">OU</span></b></span></div>
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Here's what I mean by that: as I tagged my own content yesterday and also used #OpenTeachingOU when I retweeted and shared at <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady">Twitter</a></b> and at <b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts">Google+</a></b>, I was able to focus more clearly on what part of my content stream is about open teaching. Open teaching is something I care about very much, and it can go in so many different directions: open syllabuses, open educational resources, sharing narratives about our work as teachers, sharing our students' work, and on and on. Connected Courses really affirmed my commitment to open sharing online, so I will be hoping good things for open everything in 2015!<br />
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In particular, I'll keep hoping good things for online conversations about teaching at OU in the new year (more about that here in my <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2015/01/openteachingou-hashtag-in-high-hopes.html">previous OpenTeachingOU post</a></b>), and I'll also enjoy having the #OpenTeachingOU hashtag as a way to index my own blogs and tweets and posts.<br />
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So, after Day One, here's how it is looking at <b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/openteachingou?f=realtime&src=hash">Twitter: #OpenTeachingOU</a></b> ... and thanks to the power of Inoreader to turn all kinds of things into a feed, you can see even more via the <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU">Inoreader RSS</a></b> or the <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU/view/html?t=0xOpenTeachingOU&n=100">HTML display</a></b> for the tag! I've embedded that HTML view below. Just click on the title of any item, and away you go!<br />
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Next: I need to add a Twitter widget for this hashtag to this blog's sidebar. Hashtags! Widgets! RSS! Connect and share everywhere! Yes!!! :-)<br />
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(<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neon_Internet_Cafe_open_24_hours.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>)</div>
Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-8890201603464610922015-01-04T18:47:00.001-05:002015-01-04T18:52:45.957-05:00#OpenTeachingOU hashtag ... high hopes for 2015<b><a href="http://connectedcourses.net/">Connected Courses</a></b> was an experience that really helped me to re-commit to open: open courses, open teaching, open learning materials... open everything! In the spirit of open, I'm going to start using an <b>#OpenTeachingOU</b> hashtag at Twitter in the hopes that I can connect with other people who are also interested in sharing their teaching knowledge and experience with others. Will that maybe take off...? I'm thinking that would be pretty cool!<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>#OpenTeaching<span style="color: #990000;">OU</span></b></span></div>
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It seems like this would be something easy to promote via <b><a href="http://www.ou.edu/cte.html">OU CTE</a></b> (Center for Teaching Excellence) and maybe the <b><a href="http://academictech.ou.edu/">Academic Technology blog</a></b>, too. It could also be something to bring people together in <b><a href="http://www.ou.edu/content/cas/online.html">online course program</a></b> in my college (since open teaching is of special importance to online instructors, making things up as we go along, pioneers in a new world), along with people in other online course programs at OU, like <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OU_CLS">Liberal Studies</a></b>. It could even be of interest to the <b><a href="http://www.ou.edu/writingcenter.html">OU Writing Center</a></b> (those of us who really work on the teaching of writing can help each other in so many ways), and of course it connects with the great work that is happening in the <b><a href="http://ouopened.org/">OER initiative through OU Libraries</a></b>.<br />
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In all the years I have been at OU, there really has not been much conversation about teaching that has happened in the open; instead, those conversations about teaching happen in departmental spaces, person to person, and also in face-to-face workshops which are the only kind of faculty development that I've seen at OU over the years. Face-to-face has its advantages to be sure, but it also has some serious limitations also. If we want to promote long-lasting, wide-ranging conversations about teaching, especially conversations that reach across departments and colleges at OU, and which can also involve our colleagues at other schools, well, we really need some online conversation, too!<br />
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So, I'll be using that hashtag at Twitter, and thanks to the magic of the "Classic Retweet" extension, I'll try to remember to retweet with that tag when I find posts from OU folks that are about open teaching. I'm doing my best to keep up a list of <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/ou-faculty-staff/members">OU faculty at Twitter</a></b>. Who am I missing? Let me know! I also have a list of <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineCrsLady/lists/ou">OU programs, departments, etc. at Twitter</a></b>: again, please let me know what I'm missing here!<br />
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In addition, I'll try to maintain a steady #OpenTeachingOU outgoing feed with the magic of Inoreader; you can see the <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU/view/html?n=100&w=700">HTML clippings view</a></b>, and you can also subscribe with <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OpenTeachingOU">RSS</a></b> (Inoreader: it's magic!). With Inoreader-Twitter integration, that means I can pick up the Twitter items there too by creating a rule for that. In fact, I'll go grab some open teaching tweets and blog posts from OU folks and tag them in Inoreader! (pause) Success: it was fun grabbing items in Inoreader to add to that feed!<br />
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I really enjoy all the conversations I get to have about teaching in virtual spaces with colleagues at other schools, but it sure would be nice to have more OU conversations too. Twitter has been a great way to connect with OU people, and I hope I can make good use of #OpenTeachingOU as a hashtag to help us connect and share even more in the new year to come. We all have so much stuff to share! <b><i>Open the doors, everybody! </i></b><br />
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<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-60491613337096973762015-01-04T16:09:00.000-05:002015-01-04T16:43:49.112-05:00Ten Reasons for Orientation WeekI've just put the finishing touches on my Orientation Week, so I think it is all ready to go, and I'll be sending a note around to the students tomorrow, Monday, to let them know they can get a head start if they want. I've always opened up my classes a week early to encourage people to get ahead in this class before they have anything going on in their other classes, and there are always quite a few students who take advantage of this option. It's great for me, too, because it helps me find any snags to fix and gaps to fill before the rest of the students show up when classes start officially on Monday, January 12. There were actually a couple of students who started today (Sunday), which was really excellent: it gave me a chance to test out some things about the blog feeds with real student blogs... and so far, so good! Whoo-hoo!<br />
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In this post, I want to explain some of the advantages to having an Orientation Week... and there are SO MANY advantages that I'll just limit myself to ten. So, this will be a list: <b>Ten Reasons for Orientation Week</b>! I'm pretty sure that every online class can benefit from an Orientation Week (see reason #1 below), but my guess is that all classes could really benefit from an Orientation Week approach. Do you use an Orientation Week or something like it in your class, online or blended or f2f...? Let me know in the comments here or over at Twitter! Here are my <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763866/orientation">Orientation Week activities</a></b>.<br />
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This is such a fundamental part of my classes that it is kind of hard to tease out the reasons WHY I do this; it's just something that seems natural to me at this point — I can't imagine doing otherwise! (In fact, I've been doing it since the very first semester I taught online back in 2002.) But anyway, here's a best guess at my <b>Ten Reasons for Orientation Week</b>:<br />
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<b>1. I make class procedures explicit.</b> In an online class, this is essential. If you are teaching a classroom-based class, the fundamental class procedure — go to class at the scheduled time — is something you can count on. For an online class, though, there is really no class procedure that you can take for granted. For many of my students, this is the first-ever online class they have taken. In addition, online classes are so different from one another (much more so than classroom-based classes) that you cannot count on the procedures in one online class being applicable to another class. So, a key feature of Orientation Week is to make sure students are aware of class procedures: class schedule and deadlines, class "location" (i.e. what they will find at the LMS, what they will find at the class website, etc.), class announcements, etc. etc. etc.<br />
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<b>2. I help the students start building their online presence.</b> Another key element of the Orientation Week is building presence so that the students can get to know me and I can get to know them and they can get to know each other. Again, presence in a classroom is easy: you show up, you are "present," and that's your presence — although students don't really get to say/do much just by being "present" in a classroom; there's simply not enough time. Online, though, there is more time for everyone to build their own presence and interact with one another that way, getting to know each other already in the first week. In my classes, the students' blogs are the essential space for creating presence, so for their first assignments, students set up their blogs and start posting. By putting the blog assignments first and foremost, I hope to convey to the students how important that will be! During the Orientation Week, they complete several blog posts: <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/83660953/favoriteplace">Favorite Places</a></b>, a <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763863/week1storytelling">Storytelling post</a></b>, an <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763857/introduction">Introduction</a></b>, a <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763811/favorites">Storybook Favorites post</a></b>, and a <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90844869/mfoverview">Course Overview post</a></b>. That's a lot of posts... which results in a lot of online presence. By the end of the first week, everybody has shared a lot about themselves, their interests, and their plans/hopes for the class. It's so exciting for me to watch that happen, and those blog posts also provide a really strong foundation for connection and sharing during the rest of the semester.<br />
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<b>3. I want everybody to have fun! </b>It is really important to me that the students should have fun in this first week of class. Of course, everybody has a different idea of what fun is... I try to make sure that all these assignments are ones that seem like fun to me, and then each semester I watch to see how things go. If I've guessed wrong and some assignment is not fun and engaging, then I tinker with it, or I remove it and replace it with something else. I am really lucky that for many of the students this is the first time they have used a blog or played with Pinterest, etc., so the sheer novelty of things can add to that sense of fun. The one assignment that is least likely to be fun is the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/44024314/proofreading">Proofreading Practice</a></b> that comes at the end of the week, but even that assignment is one I have tinkered with over the years so that it has an element of fun: originally I did a kind of quiz (ugh, totally not fun), then I switched to having the students work on a folktale instead (I picked a really fun one: the Mouse-Bride story from the Panchatantra), and then I went to the current assignment: instead of one long folktale, there are now six short tales, and each student chooses two of them. The stories themselves are fun ones, and the process of choosing adds an element of fun, too. Proofreading is still proofreading, yes... but even this is an assignment is one I want to make fun!<br />
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<b>4. I need everybody to work hard! </b>I also make sure that the workload for the Orientation Week is comparable to the workload for the rest of the semester: about six to eight hours of work. It's important for students to know that this is a writing-intensive (but no midterm, no final, lots of options to work ahead, finish early, etc.). Students have complete add-drop freedom during the first week of classes, so that means any student who is unhappy about the workload can drop this class and find a more compatible class. For students who "have" to take the class (i.e. they need a Gen. Ed. class, they can't find another one that fits their schedule), at least they will have a clear picture of what awaits them, even if they are not able to switch to another class.<br />
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<b>5. I try to provoke curiosity about the class. </b>I am convinced that curiosity is the single most important factor in learning, so I try to excite the students' curiosity during this first week. One good way to do that is by having them look at past student projects (<b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763811/favorites">Storybook Favorites</a></b>); seeing the great work that students had completed by the end of the class in past semesters is a great way to get people to start thinking about what they want to achieve. I also have a "Course Overview" assignment (<b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90844869/mfoverview">MythFolklore</a></b> - <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90845685/ieoverview">Indian Epics</a></b>) which is meant to provoke the students' curiosity about what the coming weeks will bring and also to get them to start thinking about the choices they will be making; both of my classes involve lots of student choice in terms of the reading, the class project, etc.<br />
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<b>6. I explain the "why" of the class.</b> The first week is a great opportunity for me to not only set out class procedures, but also to explain just why these procedures are important for the overall learning experience: why it's important to have a blog, for example, and why the focus of the class is on creative storytelling, etc. I want students to realize that this class is not just an arbitrary set of hoops for them to jump through, but instead a chance for them to grow and learn in all kinds of ways.<br />
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<b>7. I give the students things to DO, not just reading/listening. </b>One of the biggest problems in school as I see it is the way that it is often very passive: in some classes, the main thing the students do is either read (often without taking notes) or sit and listen (maybe taking notes, maybe not). In my classes, I really want the students to DO things, both so that they will be actively engaged and also so that they will have something to show for it when they are done. By the end of the week, they have a lively blog (with comments too), along with a Pinterest Board of their own that is starting to fill with pins. By making learning visible in this way, I hope to get the students to focus on the evidence of their own learning, rather than focusing on the grade.<br />
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<b>8. I do explain in detail how the grading works.</b> I really dislike grading, but I have to give grades. So, I give the students information about <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763838/grading">how the grading works</a></b>, and I also explain <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/44133629/learning">why I grade the way that I do</a></b>. As the week progresses, they see their points accumulate in the Gradebook, and thus they see that the grade is totally up to them: I actually do not do any "grading" per se in this class at all. By the time the week is over, I hope to have completely removed any anxiety that the students feel about grading. At first, they are anxious because my grading system is different from most other classes, but by the end of the week I hope they can see it for what it is: a totally no-stress system designed to encourage them to work hard, get ahead, and do well.<br />
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<b>9. I provide tool tutorials.</b> I ask my students to use several different online tools, and these are tools that they will be using every week for class, so it's important that they know how to use them well: Blogger, GoogleDocs, Google Image Search, and Pinterest. I make sure to provide a good introduction to each tool with opportunities to practice those tools during the Orientation Week. Then, as the semester progresses, I introduce one more important tool (Google Sites; it's too confusing to introduce that the same week as Blogger), while also providing tips on making good use of the other class tools. Some of the students get really excited about the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763893/techtips">extra credit Tech Tips</a></b> and do a bunch of them in the first week, which I think is just great. The Tech Tips are a way for me to give the students who are interested in the digital world some fun things to explore, without putting any pressure on the students who are tech averse.<br />
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<b>10. I emphasize writing.</b> Overall, I'm in despair about college writing; writing takes TIME, which is something that is in short supply for both students and instructors. In most college classes, written papers (if there are any written papers) are often just exam-proxies where students demonstrate their mastery of content and/or of research skills; they do not get detailed feedback on the writing itself, and they rarely (or never) revise their writing in order to practice their writing skills and work on their writing deficits. Although I do not ask students to do any revising in the Orientation Week, I ask them to write A LOT (including some creative writing), and I also ask them to proofread carefully (and I am not shy to include in my comments on their blogs a suggestion that they spend more time on the proofreading). Then, I can build on that Orientation Week foundation in future weeks as I ask the students to learn how to revise their work, how to provided detailed feedback on other's writing, etc.<br />
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So, it's a lot of work for me to make sure this all goes well, but I have such a good time during the first week of the semester as I meet all the students and start to learn about them. Just reading the first "<b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/84219592/favplacesposts">favorite places</a></b>" posts from the students who started today was so exciting for me. In addition to making sure the students have fun during the Orientation Week, I make sure that I have fun too... so: let the fun begin!!! Happy New year and Happy New Semester, everybody!<br />
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(<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wish_You_Happy_New_Year_(YS).JPG">Wish You Happy New Year muggu</a> - more about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangoli">muggu, a.k.a. rangoli</a>)</div>
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So, I'm tagging this for #ccourses (because it's #notover...), and also for #OUCTE in the hopes that something will come of Adam's blog hub, and also with #OpenTeachingOU in the hopes that more people will share about their teaching in the open in 2015. I'll have more to say about that in my next post here. :-)</div>
Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-68527969988043403032015-01-02T18:40:00.005-05:002015-01-02T18:45:41.508-05:00Quotes of the Week: January 2I've gotten behind on doing my <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/quotes">quote posts</a></b>, but I have some great quotes and graphics and such to share, so I'll start getting caught up now! Luckily, Inoreader comes to my rescue here, letting me tag the quotes and graphics that I want to share, and then when I do finally get around to doing the post, the material is there waiting for me. :-)<br />
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I'm labeling this for Connected Courses since that experience is what reinvigorated this blog and got me started doing these posts, and also OU CTE (Center for Teaching Excellence - <a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/OUCTE">here's the RSS</a>) because I keep hoping something might come of Adam's plan to run a kind of blog hub to get a bigger, better online conversation going at OU in the coming year!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Presumably Connected Courses will not be over until the last connected course is over. That is, never.</b> </span>(<a href="https://twitter.com/S_J_Lancaster/status/539486867163717633">source</a>)<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>You can describe it forever but it’s the doing that will convince people.</b> </span>(<a href="https://twitter.com/dmlresearchhub/status/540579380188045312">source</a>)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Isn't part of the "problem" with fostering change the fact that most institutions put faculty development resources towards face-to-face workshops?</span></b> (<a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts/ZUiXJvyiU3s">source</a>)</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.</b> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/Libroantiguo/status/539052758285185024">(source)</a><br />
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(<a href="http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/work_in_progress/2014/11/no_one_said_shifting_a_mindset.html">source</a>)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The academic definition of research is far too narrow. Research is also what we don't yet understand — what we don't yet have language for.</span></b> (<a href="https://twitter.com/Jessifer/status/539479345132503040">source</a>)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Grades are good at measuring levels of task completion and bad at measuring the impact those tasks have on meaningful & sustained learning.</span> </b>(<a href="https://twitter.com/mcleodda/status/539594397965627392">source</a>)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I remained convinced that it is absolutely impossible to create a useful cheap standardized test for writing. The repeated attempts to do so are a destructive expression of a nearly nihilistic impulse, the thinking of people who believe a picture of a bear rug is as good as a bear.</span> </b>(<a href="http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/12/meaning-and-standardized-writing.html">source</a>)</div>
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(<a href="http://internetnoseraotratv.net/en">source</a>)</div>
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-70574152637219385132014-12-29T13:42:00.004-05:002014-12-29T13:54:06.241-05:00Thoughts on Content Development and Curation for the New Year!The past couple of years have been a BIG transition for me in terms of my content/curation habits, so before 2015 is upon us, I wanted to share some thoughts about that.<br />
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<b>Latin Days Officially Over.</b> For about 10 years, I spent most of my content development time on Latin. That was partly because I had some projects related to fables and proverbs that were really important to me personally, but it was also because I hoped that I could persuade my school to let me develop an online Latin course. Those hopes led nowhere, unfortunately; the Classics department really has stuck to the vow made by the department chair back in 2001 that "Laura Gibbs will never teach Latin in this department again!" (after I resigned my job as a professor there); the departmental resentment has not lessened over the years, even though that department chair is long since retired. Over the course of those years, I wrote five books for Latin students and teachers: one book I did for a traditional publisher, but the other four books I self-published so that I could <b><a href="http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/2013/01/special-edition-pdftribute-to-aaron.html">give them away for free</a></b>.<br />
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You can read about my book-writing process here; it was very much a combination of content development and curation interwoven: <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2013/11/blogging-websites-blogs-and-books.html">Websites, Blogs, and Books</a></b>. I also created a long-running blog and built up a big readership there: <b><a href="http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/">Bestiaria Latina</a></b>. The blog is the one Latin project that I have kept up with, but I'm no longer doing any new Latn content development (just the occasional new Latin LOLCat) — instead, I recycle the thousands of proverbs and fables that I worked on in those years, reusing them there at the blog.<br />
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It was a really hard decision to give up the Latin but finally, two years ago, I did give it up. I was a bit adrift for a while, doing some work on English proverbs, but not really sure which way to go. Then, I came up with the idea of redoing my Myth-Folklore class with the <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/">UnTextbook</a></b>, and that has led to a fabulous new phase of content development that should easily last as long as my Latin phase... or even longer! Plus, I learned a lot from all the Latin work that I did which has let me make really fast progress, learning from old mistakes as I start these new projects.<br />
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<b>New Projects, New Tools</b>. Another thing that has happened over the past decade is the explosion of new tools to help me do a better job with all my content development and curation. When I did my first Latin proverb book back in 2005, I had GoogleDocs to help me (spreadsheets rule my world!), and I had just started blogging, but I did not have the amazing digital libraries online that I do now; all my current projects are powered by online libraries like Internet Archive and Hathi Trust. Most important of all, I am now involved in some great social networks online, so that I no longer feel like I am working all alone. It's ironic: when I lived in Norman (where the University of Oklahoma is located) I actually felt far more alone and isolated than I do now, when I am living over a thousand miles away from Oklahoma in very rural North Carolina, but connected to so many inspiring and helpful colleagues online at Google+ and other social networking sites.<br />
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<b>Re-Use and Wider Audiences</b>. Luckily for me, it is very easy to repurpose the kinds of content I create (fables, proverbs, etc.) because the content comes in such small pieces! By re-using that content in different spaces (Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, etc.), I am able to reach more people. In addition, that process enables me to curate the content at the same time, correcting errors, adding links, and so on. Over the years, I've learned some really good tricks for keeping track of what content I've used and where I've used it. The main way I do that is with Blogger blog post labels, since Blogger has turned out to be my main content hub. Blogger is where I create new content and then, as time goes by, I update and republish that content while also sharing it again in whatever social networking spaces I am participating in. For 2015, it looks like those spaces are going to be <b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts">Google+</a></b>, <b><a href="https://twitter.com/OnlineMythIndia">Twitter</a></b>, and <b><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/laurakgibbs/">Pinterest</a></b>. I like the fact that I can use these different spaces to reach different audiences. Google+ is where I reach my own colleagues online, while Pinterest and Twitter are good ways to reach my students, connect with my school (that's why I started using Twitter), and also encounter complete strangers — Pinterest is really a new world for me that way!<br />
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<b>Plans for 2015</b>. My main content development project for 2015 is the upcoming <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2014/12/students-as-co-creators-of-next.html">Indian Epics UnTextbook</a></b>, which will occupy the summer. By having decided on my summer project already, I can get my students this spring to help me find the right materials to focus on. So, I am busily seeking out new India-related books for the students to browse and comment on (<b><a href="http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/search/label/biblio">growing list of books here</a></b>), and I am also starting to post some Indian stories at a new blog: <b><a href="http://theoceanofstories.blogspot.com/">Ocean of Stories</a></b>. Plus, just for fun, I am also doing a Doctor Who project: <b><a href="http://thedoctorsquotes.blogspot.com/2014/12/quote-were-falling-through-space.html">Doctor Who Quotes</a></b>.<br />
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In terms of content re-use for the coming year, I will be republishing one of my LatinLOLCats every day at the <b><a href="http://goproverbs.blogspot.com/">Proverb Laboratory blog</a></b>. I'm also trying to make better use of the images at my <b><a href="http://ouocblog.blogspot.com/">Indian Epics Resources blog</a></b> by republishing those images and sharing them via both <b><a href="http://www.pinterest.com/laurakgibbs/indian-epics-images/">Pinterest</a></b> and the <b><a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=ou4993&src=typd">Twitter stream for Indian Epics</a></b>. Another re-use project is revisiting the <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/search/label/Free%20Kindle%20eBooks">free Kindle books</a></b> that I originally collected to use in my <b><a href="http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/">Class Announcements</a></b> two years ago; now I'm updating those Kindle book listings with additional bibliographical information based on the availability of the books at digital libraries like Internet Archive and Hathi Trust. These public domain online books are the engine that will be driving all my content development in future years, so I'm excited about revisiting these free Kindle books as a way to refocus and then expand my digital bibliography efforts.<br />
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<b>The Evils of the LMS</b>. As you can see, I have not even mentioned the LMS that I am supposed to be using for sharing content with my students (we use D2L BS at my school). From my perspective, the LMS is the worst possible content repository that I can think of: to put content in D2L would be like nailing it inside a coffin and then burying that coffin deep in the digital ground. Ugh. Sadly, as long as my school keeps promoting the LMS while failing to promote other kinds of tools for content development, sharing, and re-use, we are — in my opinion anyway — failing in our mission as a PUBLIC university.<br />
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So, I'm expecting great things for my own content efforts in 2015, but will we see any change at my school in terms of faculty and students breaking out of the LMS and taking advantage of the open Internet for connecting and sharing...? Sadly, I doubt it. But Jim Groom is coming to give a keynote address at the University of Oklahoma's <b><a href="http://academictech.ou.edu/ate-keynote-jim-groom/">January Academic Tech conference</a></b> — and that's something I wish I were in Norman to see! If anybody can shake things up, it would be Jim Groom... so maybe he will manage to shake loose some of the cobwebs and help us break out of the darkness into the light. What a great 2015 that would be!<br />
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I'll include here the video of my favorite session from Connected Courses which features Jim Groom, along with other folks who have great ideas and energy to share about using the web as our shared educational space: <b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzq64Yatt7I">Connecting to the IndieWeb Movement</a></b>.<br />
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Happy reading and watching in the New Year, everybody! :-)<br />
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<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-33683543414798453912014-12-26T17:09:00.003-05:002014-12-26T17:34:06.759-05:00Pinterest: Curiosity, Collecting, Connecting!<b><i>Pinterest for Spring 2015! </i></b>Because I am a total teacher nerd, I wanted to spend this lovely holiday Friday by playing with Pinterest, learning more about how to use it well, and then figuring out how to help my students play and learn with Pinterest this Spring. The result: I just finished writing up the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90627905/startpinterest">Pinterest assignment</a></b> for Orientation week in my class, along with some <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763893/techtips#pinterest">extra Tech Tips</a></b> to help students make good use of Pinterest. I am really excited to see what will happen with Pinterest next semester. For Fall, I had encouraged students to use Twitter or Pinterest, and Pinterest was by far the preferred option. So, I will get things off to a good start in Spring by having every student create a Pinterest Board. Then, for the rest of the semester, students can continue to use their Board for extra credit... and I really hope that they will. It is a great tool for pursuing anything you are curious about, collecting the results, and then sharing what you found with others!<br />
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<b>Pinterest Expertise</b>. The Tech Tips I wrote up are meant to help people make really good use of Pinterest. Luckily for me, Pinterest is a really simple tool that does not have a lot of options — which is good! Someone can become a true Pinterest expert with just a tiny investment of time. Here are the tips I wrote up for my students today:<br />
<ul>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90725003/pinterestdiscovery">Pinterest for Discovery and Learning</a></b>. This is absolutely the most important of the tips. I really hope I can show people who powerful Pinterest is for SOCIAL discovery and learning.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90726107/pinteresturls">Pinning Blog Posts</a></b>. This is actually two tips in one: I really need to help my students understand what it means to link to a blog post, as opposed to a blog homepage, archive page, label page, etc.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90726743/pinterestbutton">Pinterest Buttons and Bookmarklets</a></b>. This is a productivity tip: for me, having a browser button is a big part of making sure that I use Pinterest multiple times every day... it's right there in the browser bar.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90726914/pinterestedit">Editing Pinterest Pins</a></b>. This is another two tips in one item: it's about editing pin descriptions but it is also about Pinterest search, which really depends on good descriptions.</li>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90727115/pinteresttwitter">Share Pinterest Pins on Twitter</a></b>. I cannot believe I did not have this integration turned on already: DOH! This is something actually way more useful for me than for my students, but for the students who are active Twitter users, this could be a useful tip indeed. </li>
<li><b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/75149963/boardpost">Pinterest Board Widget</a></b>. It was the popularity of this tip last semester which made me focus on Pinterest this semester. Hardly any students added a Twitter widget to their own blog, but lots of them did a Pinterest widget!</li>
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I really enjoy writing up these tips because my goal is not so much a do-this-then-that type of tutorial. Instead, my goal is to relate the tool to the kinds of learning activities that will be really rewarding in the context of my classes. So, the tips are partly about using Pinterest, but they really are about LEARNING with Pinterest, i.e. using the tool to further learning goals of the class overall.<br />
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<b>It's Personal.</b> I mean this in two senses... two good senses! Pinterest is a "personal" tool that I use every single day, so my motivation in sharing this tool with my students is really to share the fun and excitement that I experience from using Pinterest; Pinterest really IS fun in a way that other bookmarking tools like Diigo are not. Pinterest is also "personal" in the sense that it is a tool for meeting people and for connecting with other people who share your interests. That's why writing up the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/90725003/pinterestdiscovery">Pinterest for Discovery and Learning</a></b> tip was the most fun of all, showing students how they can follow a pin to a person and then see what interests they might share with that person. For the kinds of topics that we study in my classes, there are some really passionate people out there who are using Pinterest as a way to share what they love. I hope that this tool can become a new way for students to connect and share with one another, and also to connect and share with other Pinterest users.<br />
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<b>Inoreader and Pinterest</b>. Using Pinterest is also a part of my increased use of Inoreader in my classes, but the RSS that Pinterest supplies is dodgy at best, so I have not told my students anything about Pinterest RSS. It's VERY weird: there really and truly is Pinterest RSS for any given Board, and Inoreader has made it super-easy to subscribe to a Board — just paste the Board address into the Inoreader add box, and Inoreader will then discover the RSS for you (Inoreader is so fabulous that way!). What's weird, though, is that at least once a week, and sometimes more often, I get pin-bombed, with the RSS feed for a Board I am subscribed to suddenly having a couple dozen new pins from some OTHER Board. The pins are NOT at my Board (thank goodness!), but they do show up in the RSS for the Board.This is pretty distressing because the pins are totally random (there's truly no rhyme or reason to where they come from, although they do all come from the same Board; thank goodness I have not had anything actually porn-like... yet). Worse, once they are there in Inoreader, there is no way to remove them since Inoreader assumes (rightly so) that a feed is a feed and users should be marking things as read/unread, not actually removing items.<br />
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My efforts to get Pinterest customer service to acknowledge this problem went nowhere because... they deny even offering RSS at all! How weird is that?! I should note that the guys at Inoreader were great about helping me to troubleshoot this problem, but in the end all they could say was that there is something wrong with the Pinterest feeds, and apparently they have seen similar problems with eBay feeds.<br />
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So, I will be subscribing to my students' Pinterest Boards, and I will probably be resharing pins in a class Pinterest feed which will be really fun to make... but that will have to be manual. Because of the pin-bombing, I cannot afford the risk of automatically resharing my students' pins since the pins might not be from my students at all! I am really curious, in fact, to see how intense the pin-bombing will be when I am subscribed to 100 Pinterest Boards in Inoreader as opposed to the 10 or so Boards I am subscribed to now.<br />
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<b>My Pinterest Routine.</b> One thing I definitely need to ponder before the semester starts is my own Pinterest routine. In the Fall, I got in the habit of pinning every new Storybook to a board dedicated to that purpose, and I also pinned a lot class-related resources that I found as I was doing research related to the students' projects. Those were good routines, and I will carry on with both of them for sure. Now, though, with the Pinterest-Twitter integration (I just started using that today!), I think I will be doing a lot more with Pinterest, creating some more substantial overlap between Pinterest and Twitter. Last semester, I used Pinterest to archive a lot of content from Twitter, but next semester I need to think about how I can use Pinterest to generate an even more rich and stimulating Twitter feed for my classes. Plus, of course, I will be using Inoreader to watch my students' Pinterest Boards, and that is going to be really cool!<br />
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<b>Commercial Services</b>. One more note: I learned some great things about the Indie Web movement from Connected Courses, and that is definitely something I want to learn more about in the coming year. At the same time, I just cannot let myself pass up this great opportunity to help my students learn how to use Pinterest as a really fun and surprisingly powerful research tool. The reason that the Pinterest discovery process is so great is because there are billions of pins. The sheer quantity of data there is what allows Pinterest to make really good guesses about other websites I might want to look at. There are all kinds of people out there using Pinterest, pinning all kinds of webpages. Pinterest apparently has about <b><a href="http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats/">70 millions users now</a></b> in 2014, and they have pinned 30 billion items at 750 million boards. Wow.<br />
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So, lots to ponder, lots to do: all good stuff! I'll label this for Connected Courses (because it's #notover)... and also for OU CTE (Center for Teaching Excellence), hoping that maybe 2015 will be the year that CTE creates a blog hub where those of us who are really keen on technology and teaching can start sharing ideas online at last!<br />
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And to those of you who are Pinteresting, happy pinning, everybody! :-)<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-77024512023758608932014-12-24T12:44:00.002-05:002014-12-24T12:48:59.766-05:00More on the Power of Random: Random StorybooksBecause of the crazy school calendar (spring semesters starts sooooo early: too early!), I am actually doing a little schoolwork this morning to get ready for the new semester... but I saved my favorite of all new-semester tasks for today: updating the random Storybook widgets that automatically display Storybooks at random in my different class blogs and websites. You can see the updated widgets in action all over the place:<br />
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<li>on the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763819/Online%20Course%20Lady" target="_blank">Online Course Lady homepage</a></b></li>
<li>in the first week <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/12763811/favorites" target="_blank">Storybook Favorites</a></b> assignment</li>
<li>on the <b><a href="http://estorybook.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">eStorybook Central homepage</a></b> </li>
<li>in the sidebar of <b><a href="http://estorybook.blogspot.com/2010/12/middle-eastern-ebooks.html" target="_blank"><span id="goog_356369367"></span>eStorybook Central<span id="goog_356369368"></span></a></b> blog posts</li>
<li>at the complete <b><a href="http://estorybook.blogspot.com/2010/12/past-storybooks.html" target="_blank">Myth-Folklore Storybook</a></b> list</li>
<li>at the complete <b><a href="http://estorybook.blogspot.com/2010/12/indian-epic-storybooks.html" target="_blank">Indian Epics Storybook</a></b> list</li>
<li>in the sidebar of the daily <b><a href="http://ouclassannouncements.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Class Announcements</a></b> blog</li>
<li>in the sidebar of the <b><a href="http://writingwithaesop.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Writing Laboratory</a></b> blog</li>
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There might even be some other places where the widgets are on display, places I don't even remember... and that is the power of distributed widgets: I don't have to go update the individual places where the widget is embedded. I just update the widget script in one place, and it is automatically updated everywhere.</div>
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So, for example, here's the 400-pixel version of the script that features Storybooks from both classes:</div>
<hr /><script type="text/javascript"> var display = "random" </script><script src="http://widgets.bestmoodle.net/scripts/showcase400.js" type="text/javascript"></script><hr />
I create these scripts using an amazing tool built years ago by Randy Hoyt, a former student: <b><a href="http://rotatecontent.com/" target="_blank">RotateContent.com</a></b>. This free tool takes any HTML table and converts it to a javascript that either displays the table cells at random (as I've done with these scripts) or based on a calendar (either a perpetual calendar or a fixed-year calendar, as you prefer). When Randy created this tool years ago, I never suspected I would still be using it eight years later: javascript was definitely a good choice because it is still going strong! You can also choose to create PHP versions of the scripts if you want instead.<br />
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In terms of the nitty-gritty, I have one giant HTML table that lists the Storybooks for both classes, Myth-Folklore on top and Indian Epics down below. There is a title linked to the Storybook online, plus a quick little blurb written by me, along with a screenshot of the coverpage, 400 pixels wide. I then cut that table in two, creating a separate script for each class. Then I copy those scripts and manually replace the 400 pixel widths for the 200-pixel version I use in the blog sidebars, giving me two different versions of each script. I publish those new javascripts, and then everything runs automatically, with class-specific widgets or with the meta-widgets that randomizes the already randomized widgets as above. The actual creation of the scripts takes just a few minutes; the part of the task that takes some time is making the screenshots and writing the blurbs for each semester's Storybooks as I add them to the HTML table. But it's fun, as I said: I'm always so proud of the new Storybooks that go into the script every semester!<br />
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As I've mentioned in previous posts, I think randomization is the most powerful tool we have for scaling in online classes, whether small or medium or massive. So, for example, I use <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2014/12/some-thoughts-on-blog-hubs-what-are.html" target="_blank">random blog groups and random project groups</a></b> to make sure that there is good student-to-student interaction in class every week, and I built some <b><a href="http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2013/07/crystal-ball-week-2-classical.html" target="_blank">magic crystal balls</a></b> to help students as they choose items each week from the Myth-Folklore UnTextbook. Random also works for the archive of student Storybooks. I really want each semester's new students to be aware of past student projects, but just showing them long lists of projects is not effective. So, instead of expecting the students to come to the Storybooks, I bring the Storybooks to the students: the random widgets display a new Storybook each time they visit the class homepage or look at the class announcements, along with each time they visit the class support sites, etc. It's non-stop Storybooks ... one at a time, randomly.<br />
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Of course, I never know just what Storybooks will capture their attention, and that's fine: the power of random means they see all kinds of Storybooks and, sooner or later, they are bound to be intrigued enough to click on a link and learn more. That's my hope anyway... and the power of random means that 24 hours a day on all those webpages and all those blog posts, there are wonderful Storybooks waiting to appear by magic, bringing their stories with them.<br />
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<b>Random</b>: it really is a superpower! I continue to be baffled that MOOC platforms and LMS software (like the D2L BS used at my school, or our MOOC wannabe platform, Janux) do not make good use of the power of random in order to scale course content and interactions. Random is great: it means we can all get to know each other and we can see all kinds of content all the time ... but just one person or thing at a time, not all at once! Massive stuff, but on a human scale. It works! :-)<br />
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(Cartoon by <a href="http://www.mybangalore.com/article/0510/cartooning-can-be-used-to-develop-scientific-temper-in-the-common-man-sumanta-baruah.html" target="_blank">Sumanta Baruah</a>)</div>
Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-76690075727775769502014-12-20T13:11:00.005-05:002014-12-20T13:25:54.607-05:00Some Thoughts on Blog Hubs: What are they for anyway?Adam Croom was kind enough to do a <a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2014/12/post-for-adam-croom-with-oucte-label.html"><b>quick hangout video</b></a> that provides a walkthrough of how the FeedWordPress plugin is integrated into the <a href="http://create.ou.edu/"><b>create.ou.edu</b></a> network<b> </b>(Domain of One's Own pilot) that we are running at my school. Although I was not invited to use create.ou.edu for my classes (only a few faculty were included in the original invitation), I do have an individual account there now, and I am going to play around with FeedWordPress this spring to see how I can use it for my classes. So, even though my students are not using WordPress at create.ou.edu, I can still go ahead and set up my own WordPress blog as a syndication hub and subscribe to my students' blogs (hopefully via an OPML file, since that sure will be easier than subscribing one by one). I'd definitely like to learn more about how this WordPress approach to syndication works. In fact, seeing Adam's demo got me to thinking about how a WordPress hub could complement Inoreader since they really are very different. Just as a broad generalization, the WordPress hub looks like it will be great for design and presentation, while Inoreader is more of a data management tool, admittedly not so strong on presentation and design.<br />
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<b>Hubs and goals. </b>For my classes, the data management side is what is really essential, so let me explain how that works in terms of the goals for my classes. Overall, I have two big goals: one goal is for me to interact with my students via their blogs and the other goal is for the students to interact with each other via their blogs. Obviously, those goals are very similar, but there is one factor that makes them very different: <b>scale</b>. Each student interacts with just a few other students each week... but I like to interact with everybody!<br />
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<b>Random for students. </b>Here's how that works for students: each week the students interact with other students in class via randomly assigned blog groups and randomly assigned Project groups (three people in each group, all totally random). It's really simple to do this: I have a list of the students' blog addresses and also a list of their Project Comment Wall addresses (raw HTML with clickable links), and I use an <b><a href="http://alphabetizer.flap.tv/">online randomizer</a> </b>to randomize those lists each week. I then divide the randomized list up into sets of three and, presto, groups! It takes me about 10 minutes each week to set up the blog groups and the Project groups for both classes: easy-peasy. Thanks to the power of random, every student gets comments every week, while slowly but surely they all get to know each other, even in my big class (Myth-Folklore has around 50-60 while Indian Epics is around 30). They also have some free choices in the blog commenting and Project commenting, so as they make friends in the class, they can also follow the same person's work from week to week too.<br />
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For all that interaction to happen, I don't use a blog hub; the list of links and the randomizer is all I need. The power of random is the essential factor here: I don't want expect the students to be monitoring ALL the blogs (that's my job; see below). Instead, I just want the students to read blogs at random, and that way I can feel confident that the overall level of interaction in the class is really high AND well distributed. Also, since the students do such a great job of customizing their blogs (choosing a design, adding content to the sidebar), I really want them to interact in those individual blog spaces, not in the generic sameness of a syndicated hub.<br />
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<b>Systematic for me. </b>My situation, though, is completely different. I cannot afford to just interact with the students at random... because I really am a very hands-on teacher. And yes, I am pretty obsessive, ha ha. I want to see EVERYTHING that is happening in my classes, partly because I want to make sure everything is going well and also because I totally enjoy all of it — I love seeing what my students are creating every day! So, that means I am watching 80-90 blogs (and that may actually be close to 100 this semester since I am seriously overenrolled), with about 5 posts per student per week. I don't comment on all those posts of course, but I do like to glance at them, and I comment as needed and as time allows (my main way of interacting with students is through their Projects, though - which are separate from the blogs). In particular, I need to comment when there might be a problem with a blog post (for example, some students try remote linking to Pixabay images, etc. - little technical glitches like that). I also like to keep an eye on the comments, and there are hundreds of comments every week — very fun to watch: the students are so positive and helpful with all that. Here's what that<b> <a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/OU+MF+comments/view/html?n=100">comment stream</a></b> looked like last semester for example.<br />
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So, when I say that Inoreader provides the blog hub for my class, it is the blog hub for my use mostly, not so much a blog hub that the students use (instead, the students are just using the random groups to visit blogs, and also finding their friends in the <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/84150409/classdirectory">blog directory</a></b>).<br />
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<b>Inoreader for assignments. </b>There is one way, however, in which Inoreader really is important for my students, and that is in the way that it can push out SPECIFIC assignments based on the assignment-specific tags that are automatically assigned to incoming posts. Every folder and every tag in Inoreader becomes an RSS feed of its own with an HTML clippings view. That means I can share the HTML view of a given assignment back with the students. In terms of helping students to get an idea of how each assignment works, this is so valuable! Some students are good at reading instructions, but other students do so much better when they can see concrete examples of an assignment... and Inoreader lets me share a stream of examples back with the students for every assignment.<br />
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You can see how that works here in the very first blog post assignment for the class: <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/83660953/favoriteplace">Favorite Places instructions</a></b>. As always, I provide detailed instructions (yes, insanely detailed instructions...), but I also provide a link to student posts. Right now the link is going to student posts from last semester, but as soon as I get a few of these favorite places posts from Spring semester, I'll change the HTML clipping stream that is embedded here, and that way students will see the latest posts from their fellow students in the class: <b><a href="http://onlinecourselady.pbworks.com/w/page/84219592/favplacesposts">Favorite Places posts</a></b>. Being able to see those posts from other students is a great supplement to the actual instructions and, even more importantly, it shows how everybody's post is just <i>different</i> from all the other posts. There's no right/wrong and no sameness about this experience... instead, it's just a fun and friendly way to start getting to know each other as the semester begins.<br />
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So, I love how tags and folders let me re-use specific assignments this way in Inoreader. One of the things I want to explore with FeedWordPress is whether I can get that same assignment-level specificity without having to do a lot of manual work. Right now with Inoreader, there are automatic rules that tag the individual assignments as they come in, and that tagging process is about 99% accurate; every once in a while I had to manually add a tag because a student used a very funky post title that my Inoreader rule did not recognize.<br />
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<b>With assignment streams on the fly! </b>I can also go through on the fly and add specific tags to instantly create a content stream as needed. For example, <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/storytellingweek1/view/html?n=100">in the first storytelling post of the semester</a></b>, students choose whether to do an Aesop's fable of their own, a nursery rhyme, or an urban legend type of story. The nursery rhyme is probably the most unusual since nursery rhymes do not always have a story plot in the traditional sense. So, right now at this very moment I am going to go through and quickly tag all the first week storytelling posts that used nursery rhymes last Fall (I didn't use that tag originally; I'm adding it now), and that tag-stream will be a resource for students this Spring who want to try a nursery rhyme story ... (pause for about five minutes where I quickly go through last semester's first week storytelling posts, which is easy to do thanks to the tag in Inoreader) ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lvMuKjWrqgcVYOcxbJWnorRl2N06zxU7oqYT-n17pR0wlApf1TQzrEqVXy7Z6YOsZU3casiVMpy94VOExMBnOqvGQF12ZK2g0oyhoH1SZlHGg0-C8xky7Ji6k2NvOG3ZeuBJYSECEB0K/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.49.13+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1lvMuKjWrqgcVYOcxbJWnorRl2N06zxU7oqYT-n17pR0wlApf1TQzrEqVXy7Z6YOsZU3casiVMpy94VOExMBnOqvGQF12ZK2g0oyhoH1SZlHGg0-C8xky7Ji6k2NvOG3ZeuBJYSECEB0K/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.49.13+PM.png" height="105" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here it is: the Inoreader tag "<b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/rhymeF14/view/html?n=100">rhymeF14</a></b>" that I can now share with my students. Click on that link and see the stories! That's the HTML clippings view for that tag.<br />
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Pretty nifty, isn't it? You can see what wonderful stuff the students are doing, already in the first week of the semester. Some students, of course, are hesitant in the first week of class since they might not have done any creative writing since back in elementary school. All they need, though, is just a little encouragement — and seeing other students' work is the single best form of encouragement there is, IMO. Just look at <b><a href="http://cirdantheshipwright.blogspot.com/2014/08/week-1-storytelling-sir-eyes-egg-newton.html">Sir Eyes-Egg Newton</a></b>, for example: wow! It makes me want to go play with some nursery rhymes right now myself! Here is Sir Eyes-Egg in the Inoreader stream:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdo1S4haJB4rNj4N5AdXIA-exT08CMQFS0y5hHFMPRuXtBvhBnkuwtwnH4VnK-Wsf44gMwjqo9uVgyK2_AASssWg5ih_4Z8LR4y5aytnQvFdX8yt-U-Q-mpH7kFjOjPfBapl5PP7q6Sn_7/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.44.49+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdo1S4haJB4rNj4N5AdXIA-exT08CMQFS0y5hHFMPRuXtBvhBnkuwtwnH4VnK-Wsf44gMwjqo9uVgyK2_AASssWg5ih_4Z8LR4y5aytnQvFdX8yt-U-Q-mpH7kFjOjPfBapl5PP7q6Sn_7/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.44.49+PM.png" height="380" width="400" /></a></div>
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And here is Sir Eyes-Egg in a blog of his own (the titles of the posts are links to the original blog posting, so you can see the blog context any time you are curious):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-I0-H6GZ2q-g2LoepAbfEsHfuRV_5Ix7ijf4ozdUVksqUt1YCzxS0cnrlO-SY4nfh3-Bl0LDKwYCycYLfi2xtZds-zA5pd-1741DIC4WmTt0q95FYdbOT3kTjl14-hx32vEdzSr6EMfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.45.31+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy-I0-H6GZ2q-g2LoepAbfEsHfuRV_5Ix7ijf4ozdUVksqUt1YCzxS0cnrlO-SY4nfh3-Bl0LDKwYCycYLfi2xtZds-zA5pd-1741DIC4WmTt0q95FYdbOT3kTjl14-hx32vEdzSr6EMfc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-12-20+at+12.45.31+PM.png" height="320" width="274" /></a></div>
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<b>Very happy! </b>So, that's a take on how I use Inoreader: it is great for managing the day-to-day and week-to-week blog posts as they come in... while also being flexible enough for me to do little projects on the fly like this, collecting a specific content stream to reshare for some ad hoc purpose, all in just a few minutes. I could not have dreamed up a better tool for the things I like to do in creating these online classes. And I promise more to come as I get ready for Spring and, even better, when the students themselves start blogging!<br />
<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-48476566528693941392014-12-20T11:33:00.000-05:002014-12-20T12:12:49.846-05:00How to follow my Spring 2015 Inoreader adventuresFor people who are interested in following my Inoreader process for managing the student blog network in my two classes, I'm going to try to document that in EXCRUCIATING detail this semester ha ha. Last semester, I found Inoreader just in the nick of time for class but too late for any real documentation. This time around, though, I want to do a good job with this for all kinds of reasons:<br />
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<b>* documenting for myself</b>: I know I made some strategic mistakes in Fall semester, so I want to do better in Spring, and I also want to leave a trail so that I can do even better next year too!<br />
<b>* documenting for others</b>: I am sure that Inoreader is a very powerful tool for any teacher who wants to engage with students using blogs, but it's not necessarily obvious just how to do that - I'm still figuring it out as I go along!<br />
<b>* documenting for Inoreader</b>: I am so impressed by the support I've received from the nice people at Inoreader, and I hope that by sharing with them exactly how I am using this amazing tool, it can add to their understanding of the user experience.<br />
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So, here is how I will do that:<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/111474406259561102151/posts">Google+ posts</a></b>. Google+ is the quickest, easiest place for me to post during the workday, and it's also my favorite place for dialogue/sharing online. It's my "thinking out loud" space, so it will be the main place I post these observations for now.<br />
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<b>Twitter</b> #<b><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/inoreaders15?f=realtime&src=hash">InoreaderS15</a></b>. When I post at Google+ or post here at my blog, I'll use the #InoreaderS15 hashtag.<br />
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<b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/InoreaderS15">OUDigitools</a></b>. When I post here at this blog, I'll use the InoreaderS15 label too.<br />
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<b><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/inoreadered/home">Teaching with Inoreader</a></b>. Slowly but surely, I'll add more material to my Teaching with Inoreader site, although in the hectic days of getting ready for class, I may be slower to write things up there.<br />
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<b>Inoreader</b>. And, of course, Inoreader will let me tag all these items and push them back on in a single stream which you can <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/InoreaderS15">subscribe to by RSS</a></b> — a stream that will combine my blog posts, tweets, and Google+ posts all in one place (yes, Inoreader really is amazing!). Here's how that RSS feed looks in Firefox; I wish all browsers rendered RSS in such a pretty way:<br />
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In addition to the RSS feed from Inoreader, you can also see it as an <b><a href="http://www.inoreader.com/stream/user/1005987531/tag/InoreaderS15/view/html?n=100">HTML clipping page</a></b>: whoo-hoo! I've set that up to display 100 items on the clipping page, so it really should give you the whole thing at a single glance, all in once place (this way of compiling related content on a single page is another one of my favorite things about Inoreader).<br />
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Is anybody else having an Inoreader adventure this spring? If you want to use that hashtag to share your documentation also at Twitter, that would be super, and if you are blogging somewhere, let me know and I'll snag your blog posts and pop them into my InoreaderS15 stream from Inoreader.<br />
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RSS: it really IS a superpower! :-)<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-24166776155532329542014-12-19T18:42:00.003-05:002014-12-19T18:42:34.242-05:00Post for Adam Croom with OUCTE label! :-)Perhaps a first post in a CTE blog hub...!!!<br />
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Thanks for this, Adam! I watched your <b><a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c6jtviungin1hr2a2ijg7puncco?authkey=CJzKsbuUhNv5Ow">presentation</a></b>, and it was cool to see how the FeedWordPress plugin is working there at create.ou.edu. I'm guessing that before they get into the nitty-gritty, faculty probably need to think about just why they are aggregating and syndicating, having some specific goals for their classes in mind as they get started.<br />
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For example, faculty who have blogged but who don't use an aggregator (Feedly, etc.), would need some help understanding different aggregation strategies, and faculty who don't already blog a lot themselves might not even understand the idea of syndication to begin with. Especially since we have not had a good blogging tool in our LMS at OU (D2L is terrible), I'm guessing many faculty might be embarking on this venture without a lot of experience, yes? Building a class around student blogs and a blog hub is something that would be new, so before they get into the technical, I can imagine they might want/need some guidance and also some examples of the courses, the types of course assignments, how blog content gets used and re-used, how students interact with one another via their blogs, how faculty interact with students via the blogs, and on and on. Even if my classes were not included in the create.ou.edu pilot, I am glad to share my documentation of them as example of classes where student-created content forms of the core of the class, with blogs as the main focus for interaction.<br />
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Last week I <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/2014/12/happy-thoughts-about-inoreader-and-blog.html">wrote up this post</a></b> to show how I am using Inoreader and you'll see that it is definitely different from FeedWordPress (Inoreader is a really high-powered aggregator like GoogleReader was, but with lots of syndication options also). Seeing your demo here makes me think I might be able to make good use of BOTH FeedWordPress AND Inoreader. Is it possible to add a bunch of feeds to the WordPress syndication blog via an OPML file? If I could do that, I might indeed experiment with that WordPress plug-in, since I could add all my students' feeds quickly and easily even though they are not at create.ou.edu (Inoreader gives me a nice OPML-export option that would allow me to quickly port all my students' blogs over).<br />
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Also, I'm still not sure what you want to do about creating a syndication hub for people to share ideas about teaching... it would be AWESOME to have a space that was pulling in content like that, esp. if we could recruit people to participate. Is this something that can be done to the CTE blog to bring it back to life? Or is this a new project we should start? I would be glad to use OUCTE as a tag at my blog so that this feed would pull in the relevant posts:<br />
<a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/OUCTE">http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/OUCTE</a><br />
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In fact, I'll post this over at the blog now with the OUCTE label so that the feed address will be valid if you want to give it a try! Just let me know! Is there anybody besides Stacy who would be up for participating? I'm guessing if we could get even just five or six people to start, blogging once a week or so, then we would have something that would be worth visiting!<br />
<br />Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4559716192196169626.post-21736314688552287072014-12-17T12:56:00.006-05:002014-12-19T18:45:13.436-05:00News Round-Up: December 17Warning: This is OLD NEWS since my schedule is still out of whack from being out of town (and offline!) all last week; the news items below are from before I went out of town. But even old news can be good news, so here it is: better late than never! Click here for <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/News%20Round-Up">more news round-ups</a> </b>and there are some <b><a href="http://oudigitools.blogspot.com/search/label/quotes">quotes and graphics round-ups</a></b> too. :-)<br />
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For those of you who are curious, I do use the magic of Inoreader to manage this whole process. Here's how: <b><a href="https://sites.google.com/site/inoreadered/archiving">Archiving the Ephemeral</a></b>.<br />
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And now, the (not so new) news...<br />
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<b><a href="http://hackeducation.com/">Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2014</a></b>. Audrey's always-fabulous year-end blog posts are now appearing; so much goodness — The Indie Web, Data and Privacy, CCSS, Competencies and Certificates, MOOCs (of course), School and Skills, The Business of Ed-Tech, Buzzwords...and more to come! And don't forget THE BOOK: <a href="http://hackeducation.com/2014/12/01/the-monsters-of-education-technology/">The Monsters of Education Technology</a>... and you can see Audrey plus Kin Lane and Martha Burtis here in a video from D'Arcy Norman: <a href="http://darcynorman.net/2014/12/01/reclaiming-educational-technology-the-business-and-politics-of-edtech/">The Business and Politics of EdTech</a>.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/books/detail/11/battle-for-open/">The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory by Martin Weller</a></b>. Another book I really want to read... free download: thank you, Martin Weller!<br />
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<b><a href="http://splot.ca/writer/2014/67">Reclaim Innovation</a></b>. This brilliant piece by Jim Groom and Brian Lamb is making the rounds again; you may have seen it at Educause back in the spring. <b>READ IT AGAIN</b>.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.richard-hall.org/2014/07/10/notes-on-the-university-as-anxiety-machine/">Notes on the University as Anxiety Machine</a></b>. And if you're wondering why innovation is so slow to come to higher education, Richard Hall's notes here about the university "anxiety machine" are very much worth reading.<br />
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<b><a href="http://cogdogblog.com/2014/11/30/us-n-machines/">Us ‘n Machines</a></b>. And here are some powerful thoughts here from Alan Levine on technology tools and the complexity of our online spaces and relationships.<br />
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<b><a href="http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles">Connected Learning Principles</a></b>. Connected Courses has turned out to be a hugely important part of my fall semester, and this piece on "Connected Learning Principles" is a great summing up: interest-powered, peer-supported, academically-oriented, productive-centered, openly networked, with a shared purpose!<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.advanc-ed.org/source/learning-connects">Learning that Connects</a></b>. For more on those principles, this is a great piece by Mimi Ito on connected learning which develops those principles in compelling detail.<br />
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... And here is my favorite video of the Connected Courses series: so much good stuff here! <a href="http://bavatuesdays.com/connecting-to-the-indieweb-movement/">Connecting to the IndieWeb Movement</a>:<br />
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<b><a href="https://gigaom.com/2014/09/11/indieweb-advocates-launch-known-so-bloggers-can-be-social-and-still-control-their-content/">IndieWeb Advocates Launch Known</a></b>. This GigaOm article about Known makes a good follow-up to the video!<br />
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<b><a href="http://davecormier.com/edblog/2014/12/05/rhizomatic-learning-a-big-forking-course/">Rhizomatic Learning – A Big Forking Course</a></b>. After my great experience with Connected Courses this fall, I am hoping to join in on rhizo15... whatever shape that takes. Dave says the discussions will begin in February/March, and there's a mailing list here you can sign up for. I signed up!<br />
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<b><a href="http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/how-not-to-design-a-mooc-course-design-scenarios-from-four-xmoocs/">How (Not) to Design a MOOC: Course Design Scenarios From Four xMOOCs</a></b>. Great thoughts here from Debbie Morrison. Much of it boils down to this: courses worked when "the learner was a viewed as a contributor, not a recipient."<br />
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<b><a href="http://alwayslearning-maha.blogspot.com/2014/12/potcert-week-13-personal-learning.html">POTCert Week 13: Personal Learning Networks</a></b>. And for a great take on course design, I really enjoyed following Maha Abdelmoneim's blog for the POTCert event this semester!<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.brilliant-insane.com/2014/12/teachers-dip-your-toes-into-the-shallow-end-of-the-pool.html?utm_content=buffer1b0ae&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">Dip Your Toes into the Shallow End of the Pool</a></b>. Here's a great New Year challenge from Mark Barnes, making just ONE small change in your classes to see what happens. I especially like this one: Throw out traditional grades for one assignment.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/reflecting-on-reflection-habit-of-mind-terry-heick">Reflecting on Reflection: A Habit of Mind</a></b>. Very nice piece by Terry Heick. I would guess that we can never create too many opportunities for reflecting on our work as teachers, students, learners, makers, etc.<br />
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<b><a href="http://shift-magazine.org/magazine/top-10-community-building-cheat-sheet/"> Community-Building Cheat Sheet</a></b>. And from reflecting to connecting: lots of good ideas here for classes-as-communities.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.edutopia.org/blog/rules-to-break-deeper-learning-monica-martinez?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=blog-rules-to-break-deeper-learning-image">6 Rules to Break for Better, Deeper Learning Outcomes</a></b>. The emphasis here is very much on independent learning, e.g. "Don't quietly wait to be told what to do."<br />
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<b><a href="http://connectedlearning.tv/personal-stories/veronica-valenzuela-experimenting-code-open-learning-pathways">Veronica Valenzuela: Experimenting With Code to Open Up Learning Pathways</a></b>. And here's a learner story compiled by Howard Rheingold about how Veronica Valenzuela is indeed breaking all the rules to achieve some in-depth learning!<br />
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<b><a href="https://plus.google.com/+RobertTalbert/posts">Specifications Grading</a></b>. Robert Talbert is retooling his classes with specifications grading, so I've linked here to his G+ stream where he is sharing lots of information about the process! See also his resource wiki for flipped classrooms here: <a href="http://invertedclassroom.wikispaces.com/">InvertedClassroom</a>.<br />
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<b><a href="http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/12/common-core-testing-ignores-common-core.html">Common Core Testing Ignores Common Core</a></b>. I'm almost as exhausted by CCSS as I am by MOOCs, but this is a rousing article about the absurdity of CCSS from "Curmudgucation" ("A grumpy old teacher trying to keep up the good classroom fight in the new age of reformy stuff").<br />
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<b><a href="http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/12/meaning-and-standardized-writing.html">Meaning and Standardized Writing</a></b>. Another great piece from Curmudgucation: "One of the most unsuccessful initiatives of the Great Education Makeover is the attempt to reduce writing to a skill set that can be assessed by a standardized test."<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.digitalwritingmonth.com/2014/11/30/make-noise-voicing-written-words/">Make Some Noise: Voicing Our Written Words</a></b>. Great thoughts from Chris Friend here on writing and audio.<br />
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<b><a href="http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/uniform-behaviour.html">Uniform Behavior</a></b>. And on standardization, here's a post from Steve Wheeler with a fantastic video: Deindividuation and Conformity in the Classroom.<br />
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<b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141205134331-20331736-a-scaffolded-approach-to-personalised-student-ppdp">A scaffolded approach to PERSONALised student PPDP</a></b>. Very nifty item here from Sue Beckingham about reflective blogs, professional portfolios, etc. <br />
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<b><a href="http://langwitches.org/blog/2014/11/23/blogging-for-learning-mulling-it-over/">Blogging for Learning: Mulling it Over</a></b>. And a wonderful post from Silvia Tolisano about blogging for documenting, reflecting, sharing, and connecting!<br />
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<b><a href="http://morethanjustcontent.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/why-digital-assessment-will-kill-the-percentage-grade/">Why Digital Assessment Will Kill the Percentage Grade</a></b>. I wish I could share Joseph Gliddon's optimism here. Sadly, it's all grades grades grades at my school... even when there are so many great alternatives, as this post documents!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpvIia0XUkmNT-0p5TF-9YPvfacrqoOwRB9HmHxEetmHj92o7Uc6fLySrK4-N0X9rOM7xURpXS_pWOK66RAEsJX_WcU1NsGjdtVL6T9IAx_X8uAtjiQTgx3Nv0jJ2MmAJTp091G5vWJ13/s1600/gradeit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpvIia0XUkmNT-0p5TF-9YPvfacrqoOwRB9HmHxEetmHj92o7Uc6fLySrK4-N0X9rOM7xURpXS_pWOK66RAEsJX_WcU1NsGjdtVL6T9IAx_X8uAtjiQTgx3Nv0jJ2MmAJTp091G5vWJ13/s1600/gradeit.jpg" height="308" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b><a href="http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/experiences-in-self-determined-learning-moving-from-education-1-0-through-education-2-0-towards-education-3-0/">Experiences in Self-Determined Learning: Moving from Education 1.0 Through Education 2.0 Towards Education 3.0</a></b>. And here is a great series of reflections by Jackie Gerstein about self-determined learning!<br />
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<b><a href="http://dailygenius.com/google-tools-in-project-based-learning/">How to Use Google tools in Project-Based Learning</a></b>. And as infographics go, this is a pretty good one!<br />
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Laura Gibbshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04994025992373244815noreply@blogger.com