I just read the book,A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown . I thought it was a provocative, extremely positive book about how learning has changed in the 21st century. The use of online groups, online games, collaboration online, access to online information has changed the way we learn and the way we absorb information. A prime example of this in the text was when the authors described a University of California professor that created an online gaming course that included several scholarly readings, including Martin Heidegger, who is quite difficult to understand, I know from firsthand experience. The course format was lecture, discussion and show and tell using the World of Warcraft as the online game. Students increasingly told the professor that they wanted the show and tell first and what often happened was that there wasn’t any time for the lecture. The professor felt defeated and thought his course was not going well. Much to his surprise, when he reviewed the final essays the students integrated their online gaming experience with all the academic readings that were assigned. Little did he know that the students were discussing these topics online in the game. There was more activity going on in the online games than what he viewed in class.
There are many similar examples in the text, and the point the authors are trying to make is that the way our students and ourselves interact and learn are different from the way we may have learned before the advent and the accessibility of the internet. It is not a cause for dismay, only a call for redesign. As I questioned in my previous post how can we harness all this peer production and online communities to benefit our students, or are they already benefiting and are we unaware of their worlds?
This thought provoking video really hit me when I watched it yesterday. Is the university really behind? How can we catch up? What do students think of this? I posted this video in my online course and I hope my students do write some interesting comments. Is school really homogenizing students? How do we make them creative, critical thinkers? The peer production concept and harnessing collective intelligence can take us to another dimension in all fields. Personally I don’t think we are harnessing our collective intelligence. I believe that as an educator I am a facilitator to share my knowledge with my students. Each of us has something to share on all topics, but the internet has given us access across geographical areas which is phenomenal but how can our students benefit from this and increase their intelligence in ways that fit their learning styles? This is still a question I ponder on and hope to fully master in time.
My position at Broome Community College for the past 3.5 years has been to prepare STEM students for the workforce. I recently read Pathways to Prosperity, a new report by the Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. The report discusses Career and Technical Education for young students beginning in middle school. There has been evidence to show that students are dropping out of school for a variety of reasons, the report cites:
“Every year, some one million students leave before earning a high school degree. Many drop out because they struggle academically. But large numbers say they dropped out because they felt their classes were not interesting, and that high school was unrelentingly boring. In other words, they didn’t believe high school was relevant, or providing a pathway to achieving their dreams. This crisis has been likened to a ‘silent epidemic’ that is undermining the very future of America.” (p.10)
I spent the past few days working on various technology projects, Adobe Lifecycle Designer for a form and videos for my course. I am working with Adobe Captivate and Camtasia. I find that creating a storyboard and script is helpful for creating the videos but I am always looking for more interactivity for my students. Read More
I am getting interested in personal branding for my students at BCC. Today I was looking at PwC’s Personal Branding 2.0 week. It is a great effort on Price Waterhouse Coopers to offer worksheets for college students on career planning and networking both on their website and on Facebook. I wish more institutions would dedicate as much time on the topic especially in this economic climate. As I was reading through the worksheets on PwC’s site I found the advice especially appealing for all college students. It is important to hear as many voices as possible with regard to their online presence and how to market themselves. As I have found in my myriad of experiences marketing yourself has changed over the past several years but the basic tenets are the same. Creativity is key and knowing yourself is essential. PwC has found that launching personal branding week last year was a great success amongst college students and college and university career offices. NACE has even distributed PwC’s personal branding e-book to its members. I have decided to add a link to this site in my course and am thinking about offering another course specifically on personal branding.
The Broome-Tioga Workforce ePortfolio course ended last week. The students who were able to come to the rescheduled class, due to the snowstorm, presented their ePortfolios. It was great! I always enjoy attending student presentation because I learn so much about the students. They were all enthusiastic about showcasing their work whether it was in WordPress or LinkedIn. These students are actively engaged in getting back into the workforce or starting their own companies and they were really excited about all the tools we discussed. I did find that they were more interested in the tools than the theoretical concepts but I think it is important to intertwine both. Some did some great reflections and we touched on the idea of personal branding. In the future I would like to have the students for 8 sessions rather than 6 sessions. We found that we didn’t have enough time to discuss both the theoretical concepts and the mechanics of the technology so we did a bit of both but not enough of each. Overall it was a great experience working with these exceptional professionals in our community!
I am a big fan of Professor Michael Wesch, a Cultural Anthropology professor at Kansas State University. He has produced some excellent faculty focused viewpoint videos that I have utilized as part of my courses, specifically Web 2.0 … The Machines is Us/ing Us. The video elicits wonderful thoughtful responses from my students in each of my courses.
I am particularly intrigued by Professor Wesch’s latest call to all students to submit videos from their viewpoint. Specifically about what students see in the media-centric environment they live in.
It is an intriguing concept and I applaud him for conducting his research in this fashion. As an instructor it will teach me a lot of what students are experiencing and expecting.
I just began a course on ePortfolios for the local Workforce development board. It is a dynamic class full of interested individuals looking for work and different ways to market themselves. They will be creating ePortfolios. We discussed LinkedIn briefly in our last class and I want to revisit this issue. I think LinkedIn is very useful but I have not tapped into the strength of LinkedIn. One of my students shared this ebook, How to Really Use LinkedIn, with me that I am reading through now to reap the benefits of LinkedIn. I have created a group in LinkedIn for this course and I think that the participants and myself will find it useful to keep our discussions going.
Networking, the author discusses, works for both people involved. Both parties need to get something from the relationship, so we need to offer something in return for a job lead to the other person. Asking indirect questions was also an excellent point. I am always struggling with how to network and do it well and the author gives some excellent examples of questions to ask when looking for work. In my brief perusal this book seems like it has a lot to offer. I will write more as I read more….
I completed a day long workshop with local high school teachers last week. It went well but I didn’t have time to make a detailed handout and that was one thing that the teachers wanted. I did complete a 21 page introductory guide on WordPress which was sent to them electronically this week so it should help them to move through the software quickly. Usually I am ambitious and this day was no exception, I planned to cover a lot of ground but we didn’t quite get there. If I could do it again I would have the teachers review the handout before the workshop and have them begin creating their portfolios before the first meeting. The workshops should be half day sessions since many teachers were overwhelmed with the all day sessions. We are planning a refresher course which I think will be helpful for the teachers and myself to get their reactions and thoughts about the software.
Creating an ePortfolio is not a one day event, it takes time, weeks, months, depending on what you find and what you want to write about. With that in mind I think it would be best to give the teachers time to create it on their own, have an initial session and then a second session a month or two later with the intention that the teachers will be working on their portfolios in the interim. I think this also gets the teachers thinking about the reflective process involved in ePortfolios for themselves and their students.
Overall the teachers were enthusiastic about the concept of eportfolios with regard to career planning and personal branding. They liked the concept of student work being online to market to employers. There were some issues discussed about privacy in WordPress but I think I figured out a work around. If WordPress is installed or hosted for the institution there are some additional privacy options that can be implemented. I have been happy with WordPress and the teachers enjoyed using it as well.
The workshop with the high school teachers went well yesterday. I should have created a detailed handout but I think showing them and having them utilize various features within WordPress was a great start. They loved the student presentations. Next time I would like to start with a student presentation and have the workshop be two half days with a two-week break in between. This will give the participants time to play with the software, read up about writing reflections, review the course syllabus, and create a working portfolio at their own pace. Overall the questions were great and the audience was really engaged. My new colleague, Bren Price did an excellent job with the library overview section and the two students, James McQueen and Theresa Hogan gave excellent presentations. I thank Ginny Amato of Career Pathways for organizing the event. I look forward to teaching the refresher course to the high school teachers soon.
