Going 100% Digital with the iPad

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Coffee and iPadMary Boyd, Vice President of Academic Affairs at St. Edward’s University has made the commitment to go digital. As she explains on her new blog, #100percentdigital:

I’ve committed to moving to a 100% digital workflow and practice.  That decision required a lot of persuasion by colleagues, who convinced me that I could do everything I do now, but better, in a completely digital process.

To encourage Mary’s commitment and get the community involved in helping her go digital, I’m offering a little incentive. I’ll buy coffee (or an equivalent beverage) for anyone who catches Mary using paper instead of her iPad. There are a few conditions:

  • It has to be paper she provides. It doesn’t count if you bring her paper in a meeting.
  • You have to tweet your picture to the hashtag #100percentdigital and to me @frostdavis
  • I reserve the right to stop this incentive program if Mary is using too much paper (and I’m buying too much coffee)!

Faculty Guide for Collaborative Online International Learning Course Development

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In today’s session I mentioned a resource for those team teaching, the “Faculty Guide for Collaborative Online International Learning Course Development” from the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning aka SUNY-COIL. If you are interested in this resource you can get it online.  Here are directions from their homepage:

Our current v1.4 guide includes info on globally networked learning, locating a faculty partner, gathering institutional support, and negotiating course content with your partner.

Please email coilinfo@suny.edu to get a free copy of the guide.

If you are interested in this resource, I’d be happy to tell you more. I find it useful for helping you think through the steps for collaborating with a faculty partner to teach a class, and I imagine that the lessons learned apply just as much to those teaching locally as those teaching internationally.

Prep for Day 8

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To prep for Day 8, Wed, May 28

1.  Take a few moments to review the portion of your project proposal that addressed your assessment plan.

2. Consider your goals for translating your project into a scholarly presentation or publication:

  • Are you interested in developing this pedagogical experiment into an area of scholarly work?
  • Can you imagine presenting on this topic at a conference, or even writing an article about it?
  • If so, what conferences or journals might be appropriate venues for you to present or publish on this topic?
  • Are you collecting the right kind of assessment information in order to share this project publicly with others?
  • Would you consider applying for a summer presidential excellence grant to pursue work turning this project into a scholarly project?

Mid-Institute Check-In

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Brainstorm – on paper or your iPad – your thoughts about the following questions (20 minutes)

Learning:

  • What have you learned so far that may prove relevant to your project?
  • What else do you want / need to learn?  (Pedagogy, concepts, skills, resources?)

Progress & Needs

  • What progress have you made on your project?
    • “None” is an option!  If you list this, you might think about ideas you’ve gained, or ways you’ve clarified aspects of your project.  That counts as progress, too!
  • What additional progress do you want to accomplish in this final week, or what skills or support do you need to gain?

Challenges & Successes

  • Have you encountered unexpected challenges in your work so far?
  • Have you had successes / accomplishments so far?

Teach Students to Write Marginalia and to Highlight or Underline Wisely

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Rap Genius and moreOne of the recommended readings for flipping the classroom addresses strategies for getting students to do the reading:

Linda Nilson, “Getting Students To Do the Readings,” Ch. 23 in Part Five of Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for Instructors (2010), available as an e-book through the SEU library.  (You’ll need to be logged into the SEU library site for this e-book link to work.)

On p. 216 Nilson suggests the strategy, “Teach Students to Write Marginalia and to Highlight or Underline Wisely.”  There are several technology tools to support this strategy for both the individual and for groups. Continue reading →

Friday presentations!

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In this post, Jason Rosenblum shares one option you might consider for your final presentation on Friday.

As this is a short week, I wanted to share a few tips for the presentations on Friday. Because of the size of the group, we’d like to ask that everyone keep their presentations short. And, because we want to make this experience fun, I propose the following very fast presentation format.

I’m borrowing a presentation format called “pechakucha” that was first piloted in Japan in 2003 (http://www.pechakucha.org/). Continue reading →

Using Screen Capture Video to Record Lectures

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I’ll be demoing tomorrow a couple of different software options for recording instructional videos. Below is a list of software I’ll be sharing.

On an Ipad, the following two apps allow you to record audio & video on an interactive whiteboard screen:

  • Explain Everything – $2.99 in the app store – allows you to annotate documents, photos & videos or just a whitescreen. Quick & super easy to use!
  • Vittle – free in the app store – pretty similar to Explain Everything. I haven’t been able to figure out what extra features Explain Everything has, but I assume there are some extra bells and whistles in a paid app. Continue reading →

Final Presentation and Report, Due Friday, May 30

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On the final day of the Innovation Institute the following elements are due from each fellow (or team of fellows for those team-teaching).

I. Project Presentation (8 minutes)

The presentation should cover the following information:

  1. Brief description of course
  2. Brief description of pedagogical experiment
    • What is the approach, e.g., inquiry-guided learning?
    • What will you do: describe x assignment or project
    • How will this improve student learning
    • How will you test it?
    • What will be biggest challenge of this experiment?
    • What is your status? What have you accomplished? What work remains before you teach this course?
  3. What other approach or experiment have you heard about this week that you would like to try next?

II. Written Report

After your presentation please share a written report covering the same elements as your presentation as a post on this blog.  (This could be the text of your presentation.) This post is due by Monday, June 2.

Personal Learning Network

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These are my favorites but I am not brilliant because I find I never have time to set  them up properly- using Michelle Martin’s categories:

Gathering: Feedly and ZETOC; Tweetdeck; Researchgate and Academia. I listen to podcasts a lot when driving – for those of you who dont know it try www.thersa.org – they have very interesting speakers on a wide range of topical academic and world changing matters.

Processing: I used to use Diigo but I actually prefer Zotero. It is open source and very easy to use – my dilemma students used it this Spring and fell in love!  I also like OneNote for taking notes which dont get lost in a mass of paper on my desk!

Acting on Information: This is where I come unstuck. I hope to learn to be better and not think I do not have time to blog/tweet etc. I am useless at Linkedin. I think that because I have contacts across a range of working environments I am quite good at gathering and sharing  with others within my ‘network’ but I tend to do it by email. I do like working cooperatively with colleagues from different academic and work disciplines. Applying for grants with them seem to be a good way to be able to collate and act on the information.