Showing posts with label Proverb Posters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Proverb Posters. Show all posts

People Need People

You need to feel connected online, and so do your students. Give them lots of opportunities to interact with one another and with you. [next]


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I'm always surprised when people assume that online classes are somehow "impersonal" compared to face-to-face classes. For me, the experience has been just the opposite: I get to know my students so much better when teaching online, and the students often remark how much easier it is to get to know their fellow students in these online classes than in a traditional 150-minutes per week face-to-face class.

Admittedly, the standard learning management systems are pretty terrible for promoting real social interaction, which is why I rely on blogs for my classes instead, with the students creating their own personal spaces online where they can interact and get to know one another. Each blog has an Introduction post, clearly labeled as such, so that in a single click from any blog post you can get to the student's Introduction. For a sense of how that works, take a look at some of the blogs here: Blog Directory (not all of the students leave their blogs up after the class is over, but quite a few do).

The image above is another proverb poster from the Proverb Laboratory: Without people even paradise gets boring. It's a Polish proverb: Bez ludzi i raj się znudzi — and the Polish rhymes.
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Help Conversations to Happen

Help create conversations with and among your students. Blogs come alive when there are comments! [next]


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In order to promote good conversations among students in my classes, I rely on a randomizing spreadsheet in order to set up random blog groups each week. My goal is not that every post in a blog should get comments; some posts are self-reflections or note-taking, brainstorming, writing activities that can serve a purpose without conversation. For other posts though — especially the storytelling posts that students write each week — conversation is important, and it is my goal for students to get at least one, and hopefully two, comments on their storytelling posts each week.

To help make that happen, each week I put students in random groups of three, the idea being that they comment on two other people's blogs, and also receive back comments from those two people. Not all students complete the commenting assignment every week, but it works pretty well. I've been tinkering with this system for years, and I'm satisfied with the results, and also happy that it only takes me a few minutes to set up the groups each week.

Because students are giving and receiving comments from the people in that group, the weekly comments create a conversational sense of mutual back-and-forth, and because the groups are different each week, students can meet lots of other students in the class (my classes range in size from 30-60 students). In addition to reading the storytelling post, students also read and comment on the introduction post, which helps them get to know each other as well individuals. That's important: even though students write those introduction posts in the first week of class, they are meeting new people in the class all semester long — and when you meet somebody new, you need to read their introduction!

You may have heard about the Quadblogging project. My approach is sort of like Quadblogging except that there are new groups every week.

I've written up some information about the way I use a spreadsheet to randomize the blog groups here: Randomizing Blogs. I also made a screencast for that as part of the connectedlearning.tools project; the part about using spreadsheets to randomize starts at about 4:30 in the video:


The image above is another proverb poster from the Proverb Laboratory: An untouched drum does not speak.
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Tear Down the Wall

There's a lot of talk about the "walled garden" of the LMS, but I see a lot of wall and not much garden. Tear down the wall, and then you'll see a whole new world online. [next]


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I consider the standard LMS (we use D2L at my school) to be the single biggest obstacle to making real progress in online teaching. The constraints and assumptions imposed by the architecture of the LMS make it impossible to really explore the social and student-centered possibilities that online learning can offer. The LMS I use in the year 2015 is not fundamentally different in any way from the LMS I was using back in 2001, yet the social web has changed completely during that time with the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking platforms. I've written about my frustrations with the LMS here: The LMS... again.... In sum: I use the LMS for exactly what needs to be locked down and secure — the Gradebook. For everything else, I rely on the open, connected spaces provided by blogs, wikis, and social networking platforms like Twitter and Pinterest.

The image above is another item from the Proverb Laboratory: Someone who stands behind a wall can see nothing else.
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Share Freely

Because the walled-off LMS is closed by default, it's hard for you and your students to share their work. Open spaces are better for sharing! [next]


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One of the ways I've tried to promote sharing at my school is by using the hashtag #OpenTeachingOU in my Twitter and Google+ posts. Using Inoreader's great RSS/clippings service, I created a combined feed that shows my #OpenTeachingOU posts, which you can see here: #OpenTeachingOU.

Even better, I got together with two of my colleagues in Oklahoma, Stacy Zemke (who coordinates OER development in the OU Libraries) and Rob Reynolds (of NextThought), and we organized an #OpenTeachingOU Twitter chat event that took place every two weeks at the end of the Spring 2015 semester. It was a big success, and I hope we will be doing that again in the Fall. There's a blog site that supports the chat, and you can find the Storify archives for the chats we had: OpenTeachingOU Blog.

OU also have a Domain of One's Own pilot at create.ou.edu, and hopefully that will also generate some great open teaching experiments next year as well!

The image above is another proverb poster from the Proverb Laboratory: Share and share alike.

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Expand Your Reach Online

Openly sharing online is a great way to extend your reach. Even though I'm a very small person in the world of higher education, being online has allowed me to make a real impact. [next]


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In terms of networking strategies, I would recommend following the connections that lead naturally from one person to another. That happens in different ways in different online spaces, so explore whatever space you are using and see how that works.

When you are at Twitter, for example, you can check out the profiles of people that you follow to see who follows them and who they follow. In general, I don't find the Twitter automated recommendations to be very good, but when I have a few minutes to spare, I really enjoy scrolling through the follow screens of people I really like at Twitter.

At Google+, on the other hand, I find new people by following the people who comment in the same discussions that I participate in, and I also find people by joining Communities. I rarely participate in Google+ Communities (more about G+ Communities here), but I do find them really useful for exploring the network.

The image is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: A little person sometimes casts a long shadow. It's a French proverb: Un petit homme projette parfois une grande ombre.
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Creative Imitation

As you start building online content, don't try to start from scratch. Instead, imitate what is great, and then make it your own. [next]


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Creative imitation is at the heart of popular storytelling traditions, long before the advent of digital remix culture. The students in my Myth-Folklore class and my Indian Epics class retell traditional stories in their own ways, imitating the stories while providing their own creative twist. You can see the amazing results here in the Storybook projects: eStorybook Central, and I've embedded a javascript widget below that shows some of their projects at random. (The widget is built with RotateContent.com, and you can find out more about this wonderful too here: Randomization Wonderland.)

The image in the slide above is another item from the Proverb Laboratory: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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Reuse and Recycle

As you strategize content development, think about future reuse and/or about recycling something you have already created. [next]


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This whole presentation is a good example of recycle/reuse in action. The images here come from past projects: I did the LatinLOLCats years ago, back when I was still hoping to be able to teach Latin online at my school (alas, no luck with that), the GrammarCatz are something I created just for fun with my grandson a couple of summers ago when he came to visit, and the proverb posters were part of a proverb project I was working on a few years ago — the project itself didn't work out as planned, but I sure have gotten a lot of use out of those posters!

Meanwhile, the reason I created this "slideshow" as posts in a blog is that I am hoping to get some good use from this presentation separate from the conference itself; you can find out more here: About This Blog.

The image above is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: Waste not, want not.
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Get Visual

It is so much fun working with images online, and your students will have fun with that too. As you learn new strategies for working with online images, share those skills with your students. [next]


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I am living proof that you do not need special design skills in order to work with images online. To create the graphics for this presentation, I used simple, free online tools like Cheezburger.com (for the LOLcats) and Automotivator (for the proverb posters). To make the animated GrammarCatz, I created the two images at Cheezburger and then used GIMP to create the animated gif; here's how that works: Making a Simple Animated gif with GIMP. I've also used that same trick to create trilingual Latin-Greek-English proverb images like this one: You're making an elephant out of a fly.


I encourage my students to learn how to make memes, too, with optional Tech Tips that they can complete each week.

I also make sure to explain carefully at the beginning of the semester some strategies they can use to find freely licensed images online which they can use in their work for class: Finding and Using Images Online.

The image in the slide is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: A picture is worth a thousand words.

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Beware Multitasking

As you work on your online productivity, you can help your students do the same. Online courses offer lots of chances for students to practice time management and project planning skills. [next]


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The problem of information overload is closely related to the problem of multitasking. When you have too much to do, of course you will be tempted to try to do two things at once, and your students will be feeling that temptation too... probably even more strongly than you do! In an online course, students have both the freedom and responsibility to manage their class time and work on their own.

At the same time, I've been surprised at how reluctant students are to create their own work schedules, even when online courses give them the flexibility to come up with a schedule that really fits their needs. So, I'm always trying to promote good time management and study strategies with my students; you can see one of those pages here: Designing Your Own Class Schedule.

The image above is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: He that hunts two hares will catch neither. It's a French proverb: Qui court deux lièvres, n'en prendra aucun.
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Choose Tools for the Task

So, you need to keep your focus, but you also need to familiarize yourself with lots of online tools so that you can choose the best tool for each task. [next]


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If you've been reading the notes on these slides so far, you already have a sense of the tools that I use for my work: Blogger, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Docs, Inoreader, etc. There are also new kinds of web-based tools coming online all the time, and I'm always on the look-out for new tools that might be useful to me or to my students.

In terms of the core tools that my students use, they choose a blogging tool (most choose Blogger, since that is the one for which I can provide the best support) and they might also choose an additional publishing tool (most choose Google Sites, again because of the support I can provide). There are also lots of other online utilities that I recommend to them, and I encourage them to explore and try new tools with these extra credit Tech Tips.

One of the new things I am excited to do for next year is to build a series of Maker Challenges which would involve tools that are more elaborate than the simple utilities in the Tech Tips. For example, I'd like for students to see if they want to learn how to do screencasting with Google Hangouts or maybe some audio recording with Soundcloud. Going to the DML2015 Conference this year really inspired me to try to do more "maker" work with my students who are interested in that kind of thing. Although the classes I teach are writing class, the maker spirit has a lot in common with the writing spirit!

I'll be participating in the CLMOOC this summer too, and I expect I will learn about some really nice tools as part of that experience. You can find out more about that here: #CLMOOC Making Learning Connected.

The image above is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: A handsaw is a good thing, but not to shave with. It's a variation on the by now very familiar, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
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Avoid Single Points of Failure

When you use a variety of tools and spaces in your class, you avoid the danger of having a single point of failure. [next]


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Every semester there is usually some kind of problem with the services hosted by my university's IT: there might be an email outage or we might get blacklisted for spam by an email provider (often Yahoo, sometimes Google), or there could be some scheduled or unscheduled maintenance on our LMS (last semester, for example, there was going to be a 48-hour LMS outage during the semester about which there were weeks of anticipatory announcements... but then it all got postponed until summer for reasons that were never really clear). Suffice to say: it's always something every semester — we just don't know what or when.

So, I am glad about the fact that in my classes, students can survive any kind of outage by practicing a little patience and working on some other class assignment while they wait for service to be restored. If the LMS is down, no worries: the only thing they do in the LMS is record their grades, which can always wait until later. If there is an email problem, we can work around that with the class Twitter and class announcements blog, etc. By not putting all my technology eggs in one basked, I'm ready to cope with the usual kinds of outages, both planned and un-planned.

The poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

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Small is Beautiful

Don't overload your students with content, and don't overload yourself either! Even if you want to scale up later, get comfortable on a small scale first. [next]

I live content with just a little.



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Over the past few years, the public discussion about online learning has been hijacked by a misbegotten obsession with MOOCs and massive online learning.I nitially, I was curious of course about MOOCs, but my experience with MOOCs was mostly negative ("A Tale of Four MOOCs") because the course design and MOOC software systems were not able to cope with the massive enrollment that the course purveyors sought so eagerly. My worst experience was with the Coursera Fantasy and Science Fiction course, which I documented here: Coursera Fantasy. I've also been very disappointed with my own school's multimillion-dollar investment in its own MOOC platform, Janux, and related projects, like our corporate partnership with the History Channel to offer a History MOOC for university credit. You can read more about that here: Online Courses and Marketing Fluff: What is an immersive history course?

At the same time, I should add that I've participated in some great online experiences that were MOOC-like, but driven by the community of participants, cMOOCs as they are called by some. If you are interested in seeing what that kind of participant-centered scaling looks like, check out Connected Courses, CLMOOC, Rhizo15, Phonar, or the incomparable greatness that is ds106. Those group learning experiences have very much the same feeling as social networks do: they are both big and small at the same time — big because lots of people might be participating, but small because you are at the center of your own learning network, a network in which you are connected person to person with your co-learners, whoever they may be. Small enough to be real, small enough to be human. That's the kind of education I believe in. Small is beautiful.

The image above is another one of the Latin LOLCats: Contentus vivo parvo. I live content with just a little.
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Revise... Revise... Revise

At the same time, be prepared to revise... and revise... and revise! Unlike a printed book or a paper handout, online content is always a work in process. [next]


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If I could wave my magic wand three times over the world of education in order to banish three things, I would banish fear, perfectionism, and grades. These are closely related, with fear being a big part of the culture of perfectionism, and grades being the numerical expression of our misbegotten quest for perfectionism.

As a writing teacher, revision is obviously a big part of the classes that I teach. Sadly, though, in most college classes, writing is more like a quiz or exam rather than a real writing experience, and many of my students have never had a chance to revise their writing, much less to revise it repeatedly with abundant feedback from both the instructor and their peers. They often view revision as some kind of punishment, a failure to make it perfect the first time. No wonder students struggle with writing and often feel frustrated by that, or even terrified. They expect to get grades on their writing, but they rarely get the feedback that they need to improve. For more about how I do writing feedback in my classes, see this blog post: Writing - Feedback - Revision.

This poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: They wouldn’t make erasers if we didn’t make mistakes.

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Baby Steps

Another good learning strategy: start slowly and gain confidence as you go. Be patient with yourself, and with your students too. [next]


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This poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: A child must first creep and then go. In addition, it is a beautiful example of the "small world" phenomenon: when I went to do the image attribution at the post, I learned that this image (which I found using Flickr search) was shared by none other than ... Alec Couros, who is a past presenter at this conference!

I've had that same thing happen a few other times at Flickr: when I created this pajamas poster (for my foreign-words-in-English series), I discovered by doing the image attribution that the picture came from Cobalt, who is a good friend of mine at Google+, and when I went looking for a cactus flower to use as an image in my Favorite Places blog post, I ended up with a picture taken by my long-time online friend Alan Levine, whom I met in person for the first time at a conference this summer. Flickr is a gigantic space, but somehow or other I managed to cross paths there with these familiar people!

It's good to remember that all the things on the Internet are there because people, real people, took the time and made the effort to put them there. The Internet is all about connecting, and the best connections are with people — not with things.
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Small Things Grow

It's good to start small, and then if you add things bit by bit, slowly but surely you can grow something big. [next]


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This page combines ideas from previous pages: baby steps may be small ones, but one by one those baby steps take you on a journey... and writing every day, just a little bit, can add up to a lot of writing over time.

This idea of drop-by-drop is a good principle to keep in mind when you are designing your course. Instead of putting course projects off until the end of the semester, when your students will be overwhelmed by all the work required by instructors in their other courses who also put things off, it's much more productive to get your students working from the very start of the semester. If they can do a small amount of work each week, every week, then by the time you reach the final weeks of the semester, they will have already produced a big body of work that reflects their learning all semester long. The results of that steady, long-term work will always be better than the all-nighter that results in a paper which doesn't really reflect their learning very well at all.

To get a sense of how that week-by-week schedule works in my classes, you can take a look at a typical week's worth of assignments, and also this page which shows how the students projects grow week by week from the very start of the semester: Project Schedule.

The poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: Add drop to drop, and there will be an ocean. It's a Polish proverb: Kropla do kropli i będzie morze.)
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It's Never Too Late to Start

Online courses grow slowly, but trees grow even more slowly... and it's never too late to start planting trees. Make every day an Arbor Day! [next]


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Of course, just like with any long-term project, it can be frustrating to feel like you are getting a late start, but here's the trick: don't look backwards; just look forwards instead. My husband (a former pilot) often says, "You can't use the runway behind you" — but that's okay: you have the whole runaway of life in front of you. So just focus on that, and take off!

The idea of looking-forward-not-back is a great strategy to use in communicating with students also. Some students are prone to berating themselves for past mistakes or for other kinds of failure sin the class, and they need your help in order to refocus their gaze forward. Try to help them think about what they CAN do, instead of obsessing about whatever they might have failed to do in the past. That's a good strategy to keep that in mind when you write announcements for your class or when you send emails to individual students. Try to cast each sentence in a forward direction, emphasizing what the student can do right now in order to move ahead and build some forward momentum.

The poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago; the second-best time is now.

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Get Your Feet Wet

So, it's time: take the plunge, and don't be afraid to get your feet wet. You might even find out that the water feels pretty good! [next]


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Once you get people looking forwards instead of backwards (see previous post), you can then help them toconfront and overcome their fears. A good way to do that is to refocus from the fear to the goal the student wants to achieve. Cats like fish... so you need to find out just what it is that your students like, what motivates them. Hopefully, that motivation can be something intrinsic, something other than a grade. One good way to find out about what your students like is to give them choices and see what they choose!

A mantra I always keep in mind is from Dan Pink's Drive: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Teaching online, I enjoy a much greater sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose than I ever had as a classroom teacher, and I really hope that my students can feel the same about their online learning experience. For more about Drive, check out this video from RSA:


The poster is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: If you are afraid to wet your feet, you will never catch fish.

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Use Open-Ended Challenges

So, let your students follow their own paths — and if they are going to fly high, they need open-ended, creative challenges. Let them fly as high as they want to go! [next]


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In other words: not multiple choice, not quizzes, not exams, where all the right answers have been determined in advance. Instead of asking the students to discover what you already know, ask them to focus on discovering things that they do not know... which might be unknown to you too! If you can design open-ended challenges for your students based on discovery, creation, and connecting, you will be amazed and surprised at the results in a way that will never be true when you give them a test.

That has been the case for me year after years teaching my classes: even though I am teaching the "same" classes each semester, the students' creativity makes every semester a new and memorable experience, both for them and for me. To see what I mean, just take a few minutes to browse through their projects, each one so different from the others: eStorybook Central.

This is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: If the string is long, the kite will fly high.


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Come On In!

There are many doors leading into the online world, and I hope you and your students will want to come on in. We can connect and share together online, and thus keep on learning together too! [... DONE!]


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THANK YOU!

This is another one from the Proverb Laboratory: Teachers open the door; you enter by yourself.

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