Blogging activities in your discipline

During this semester, we are blogging about our teaching and the role of technology. This activity is meant to encourage reflection on what we are doing in class, what we are reading, and what you are experiencing in your own classes. It is directly related to the course goal about reflection.

Is blogging an activity that you might assign to your students? Think about the goals in the courses you teach - could blogging help your students reach any of those goals?

>>Sherry

Oh, what to write?

It is sometimes difficult to pin down an idea for a blog entry. Since I don't consider myself a blogger (see previous post), I have this issue every week when I post to the CTL blog. There are several questions I ask myself to come up with ideas.

• What have I been working on?
  The things I am currently working on have my attention, so it makes sense to reflect and write about them.
• What questions have I heard recently?
  I hear all kinds of questions about teaching with technology, and I ask a number of questions, too. These questions may be good starters for blog posts.
• What is everyone else talking about?
  If there is some hot topic that I want to weigh in on, blogging is a great forum to do that.

I hope these ideas are helpful!

I am not a blogger

It's true. Keeping a blog is not fun for me, but I think it is good to reflect on what's going on regarding teaching with technology in higher education. Why not do it via a blog? It's a good forum for sharing ideas, and I would feel bad asking my students to blog without blogging myself!

So, over the next few months, I will write once or twice per week about what's catching my attention out there. You can also read a more general blog that is written by the faculty at the UGA Center for Teaching & Learning. It's called A Little Learning.

Happy blogging!

SoTL and Teaching with Technology

This week, I am attending the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning conference at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro. While I am new to the SoTL community, I feel that all I am learning is very familiar. Is it because I have been in education for so many years? Are all of us in education-related disciplines SoTL practitioners by default?

I have seen one session that was directly related to teaching with technology that addressed assessing wiki assignments. Several of you blogged about this and asked how we can assess students' contributions to wikis. There were a couple of suggestions made in the session, including:

• Instructor assessment (read wiki, assign grades)
• Peer assessment (peers are assigned wiki parts and rate using a rubric)
• Outside expert assessment (instructor's colleagues read wiki, declare "winning" pages)
  

I was particularly interested in the last of these, but the focus of the talk was peer assessment. I wonder what those of you who are considering using blogs think about these different methods, and if you would consider asking a colleague to review your students' work?

>>sac

iTunes U

Some of you may have heard that iTunes has been adopted here at UGA in the form of iTunes U. Visit itunes.uga.edu for more information and a link to podcasts developed here at UGA on all sorts of topics.

And what about bringing podcasting into the classroom? See http://www.psfk.com/2009/02/how-itunes-university-may-be-better-than-the-real-thing.html for more on that.

>>sac

When you fail to plan...

I had a call yesterday from a fellow faculty development professional who was concerned about a new online program being developed at her institution. The program is intended to provide training for an underserved population (great), was conceived of in the past couple of weeks (fine), and will start in about a month (WHAT?). The infrastructure for providing the training is not in place, the courses have not been developed, and the instructors have no training whatsoever in distance learning.

This is a recipe for disaster. While it may be possible to develop a new face-to-face course in a short amount of time, that development is based on experience regarding what works in the classroom. Teaching at a distance is different. It requires planning, planning, and more planning. That is, making certain the infrastructure is in place, faculty understand best practices for teaching online, and a support system is in place for both faculty and students. Can it all be done in a month's time? I doubt it. Will they do it anyway? Yep.

Taking the fear out of Facebook

A number of students, friends, and colleagues have shared their concerns about privacy when it seems everyone else is putting everything online. Facebook is a big topic of conversation - and rightfully so in my view. I'm all for the caution and reflection. What I don't like to hear, however is when someone is afraid of what might happen if they join a social networking site like FB. I am pretty sure the fear stems from lack of information. So, I offer a list of 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know (h/t Deb Stanley).

Feel better?
>>Sherry

If you had not seen it before, the h/t is a "hat tip" to the person who brought the article to my attention.