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Posts from the ‘The Maricopa Experience’ Category

22
Jan

What Do Students Learn by Using Social Bookmarking Site Diigo?

Initially students don’t care too much for Diigo when I introduce it in an assignment in Week 2 of the semester. They’re still trying to get used to all the other new technology in the online course, and Diigo is almost the stone that breaks the camel’s back. But not quite. They warm up to it as the course moves on. I’ve questioned whether having students use yet another technology tool is too much for them to deal with, but the advantages of what they learn and experience by using it out weighs any reservations I may have had.

So, what exactly are the advantages of having students use this social bookmarking tool? First, they are in the exploratory phase of their research projects. They’re still trying to figure out what good topics are, so in order to not have them wondering alone in this process, I have them sharing ideas. Diigo allows for students to share bookmarks with each other in a group area. All of the sites saved in the group show up for all to see. Screen shot 2013-01-22 at 10.59.01 PM

As shown in the image above, I teach students about taxonomy. Taxonomy is a way to group things together using tags. It makes it easier for students to find common topics within the group posts. Students are supposed to use the class theme tag: “personal+freedoms” along with 5 of their own tags based on the subject of the site bookmarked. Diigo then creates a tag list (right below) for the group so students can look at the most popular topics that emerge during the search process. Rights, laws, health and the constitution are all popular with students. Read moreRead more

22
Jan

Social Bookmarking in the Freshman Composition Research Class

I can still remember when Delicious was all the rage. Remember when you had to remember where all the periods went – del.icio.us. I’m not sure I got it right, but those were the days. Then Delicious got bought by Yahoo! and was shelved. Then Yahoo! sold it to the current owners who have, to their credit, tried to regain the hold on the social bookmarking space. But that is all for not, as Diigo took the opportunity to step in when Delicious struggled and created a more education centric service that still thrives today.

I’ve used Diigo in my Freshman Composition ENG102 courses now for about 5-6 years. It’s a research class, so I like to get students started in the research process with something easy – Googling and sharing what they find with each other. I set up the assignment to get students to explore the course theme: personal freedoms to help narrow the focus of their individual research topics. I’ve posted the meat of the assignment below.

Setting Up & Using Diigo

We will use Diigo throughout the semester to keep track of the websites we find during the research process. When you save a webpage, it’s called bookmarking. Diigo is a social bookmarking site. It’s social because it allows for all of us to share our bookmarks with each other. It’s like a big researching party!

Watch this screencast: Setting Up & Using Diigo to learn how to set-up and use Diigo.

Assignment Steps Read moreRead more

20
Jan

Catching Up on 30in30 – What is it?

If you’re a regular visitor to freshmancomp.com, you’ve probably noticed a LOT more posts recently. Well, don’t get too excited. I certainly can’t keep this up, but it has been fun trying to post everyday. I’m participating in a 30in30 self imposed competition. It’s nothing official that can be found on the internet, just a challenge for myself. The idea is to post 30 blog posts in 30 days. For the first 15 days, I did well enough to post one a day. But then school started and posting became a challenge. But I haven’t thrown in the towel yet. I just have some catching up to do.

I do a lot of reading of other blogs, and I really appreciate what others have to share with me and other teachers on the web. So I try to give back by posting about my experiences with teaching with technology. Often times I get stuck about what to write about. All my ideas seem so trivial to me. But I have to realize that what’s trivial for me, may not be so for others. So I’ll keep posting. I have to find a happy balance though. Going to bed every night and having that feeling that I’ve forgotten to do something is going to give me an ulcer, so I have set realistic goals for blogging in the future.

With 11 days left in January and 10 days left in my 30in30 challenge, I have 13 posts to meet my current goal. Piece of cake. However, when the challenge is over, I’m hoping to maintain a 2 times a week posting schedule. That should feel easy after completing this challenge. But if you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, be sure to post a comment to remind me of my goal. And if there’s anything you’d like to see here, let me know. I could use a few more blogging ideas.

 

18
Jan

Walk and Talk Wednesday at GCC

wtlogoIt’s so exciting to see some new learning opportunities coming out of our new CTLE on the GCC campus. On Wednesday we had the first Walk and Talk Wednesday. We had about 10 people meet up outside on a beautiful spring day in Phoenix to walk the 1 mile loop on campus and talk about teaching and learning. The first topic was tips on how we get students working and talking together at the beginning of the semester. At least I think that was the topic. (Oops!) I ended up talking about all kinds of things with four different people. I was certainly time well spent, especially since we made two loops and we got 2 miles in. I’ll have to remember to wear more suitable shoes next time, but other than that, I had a great time.

Here’s the description of the event in case you want to join us next Wednesday>

Where: between HT1 and Math (map)
Description: Too much to do and too little time? We wish we could have extra hours to exercise, spend time with friends, engage in professional development, or even just relax. Join us for a chance to do all of these things – Come to Walk and Talk Wednesday, an opportunity to take a break from grading and walk around campus with your colleagues discussing teaching issues. Meet @ the red umbrellas between HT1 & Math to start. If you miss the 2:00 pm start, we will be passing this point again at approximately 2:20. Join us then.
14
Jan

They’re Here! They’re Here! Finally

We’ve been talking about the so called Digital Natives and the Millennials being the tech generation for years. But I just haven’t seen them in my classes. My students have not only not shown an interest in technology, but often struggled with the technology I used in my classes. But not this semester. In the first class of the Spring 2013 semester, the Digital Natives showed up! Yippee!

First, while Cindy (Co-Teacher) was talking about critical thinking with the class, she asked what a word meant. I wasn’t paying attention (Ha!), so I missed the word, but the student sitting in front of me grabbed her phone and started “messing around” with it. I didn’t pay her any mind either until Cindy called on her. She took one last look at the phone and then apologetically said “I was looking it up,” and then recited her answer to the class. She thought she was doing something wrong, but I was secretly praising her. It wasn’t like it was a vocab word she was supposed to have learned before coming to class. It was a spur of the moment, what does that mean type of question, and she gave the answer. Nice work young lady.

ENGCRECircle

Our Learning Community Circle on Google+

During my part of the learning community class, I was teaching students how to get their Google+ accounts set up, and a student asked if she could get G+ on her phone, and if I knew how to get her school email to forward to her regular Gmail account on her phone. I think if I’d let her, she would have asked me how to do a bunch of other stuff too. We didn’t have time, but I was thrilled that she wanted to know, and thrilled that she is already thinking about managing her tech life. Read moreRead more

12
Jan

Presentation: Enhancing a Course with Audio Podcasts

On Thursday I did a face to face workshop in the CTLE at GCC on audio tools. This was a short 50 minute presentation with about 10 people in attendance. All the content is posted on my wiki, but I posted the main page below. Links should take you back to my wiki where you can learn all kinds of great stuff about teaching with technology.

Workshop Wiki: http://drcoop.pbworks.com/EnhanceAudio

Itinerary

  • Introduction – What is Podcasting? (5 min)
  • Examples of Courses Enhanced with Audio (20 min)
  • Demonstration of a few Tools (20 min)

 Google Voice

  • Use a Google Voice number with your students and you won’t have to worry about students having your phone number. They can call and text you during the times you want to permit that, and when you don’t, you have all the calls go straight to voicemail where you can read or listen to them later.
  • Google keeps a record of every call and text conversation you have with your students, and you can even record calls that you feel need to be recorded. Read moreRead more
9
Jan

Making Online Lit Classes Work – The Secret Sauce

I’ve been teaching online literature courses for four years now. My lit of choice is ENH295: Banned Books and Censorship. I’m still scarred from traditional American and British lit from college, and those courses were already in the capable hands of my colleagues who also teach literature online at GCC. So I went for Banned Books. Makes me feel like a rebel or something, but I like it and the students seem to as well.

Many often wonder how we make online literature courses work when the core element in the face to face class is discussion. We read, analyze and discuss. Well, we also have to write, so moving a course like this online is quite simple actually. We use discussion forums and blogs. This was problematic in the past with our LMS, so I moved the course over to a WordPress blog years ago. I’ve since moved the core content back to our new LMS Canvas, but the blog still remains a central part of the online course. I only moved the core content back for a secure gradebook. I was always nervous about having my grades in the cloud of a non-approved web service in past.

So let’s talk about this blog and how it works for the online lit class.

enh295web Read moreRead more

8
Jan

Apps & Browsers, Oh My!

I’ve been sharing with my students this semester that they can use apps on their smartphone to help them stay connected with their courses in Canvas. These are the links to the apps:

All you need is your MEID and password to get it set up. The course URL you need to set it up is: maricopa.instructure.com. I’ve tried it both on my iTouch and my Android phone. It works pretty good for checking in on the courses. I also shared with them the apps for Piazza since we’ll be using that too.

11-27-2012 5-07-25 PM.pngThen there are browsers. So what’s the best browser to use with Canvas? I’d say Firefox. I’ve been telling students to download and install Mozilla Firefox. I warn them if they decide to use Google Chrome, they will need to give permission to view some content, like some videos. If you only see a black box or don’t see a video that is supposed to be there, you must be using the Chrome browser. For all flash content you have to give it permission in Chrome. Just click the shield up in the address box and choose Load anyway –>

I end by telling them to please stay away from Internet Explorer, although that’s a hold over warning from when we used Blackboard. I might just have to give IE 8, or whatever number they’re up to, a try.

6
Jan

Week of Accountability is Upon Us

Random Art Photo by me

Random Art Photo by me

Tomorrow marks my 8th Week of Accountability at GCC, once every semester for four years. We all joke that it’s the only week we have to be accountable all semester, but that’s certainly not true. We’re professionals and we do our job all year round. But the college doesn’t waste time making sure we are accountable on this first week of the semester. GCC has a whole list of scheduled events and meetings all week. I get tired just looking at it.

Week of Accountability is the week before the semester starts, and it is a week for instructors to prepare for the upcoming semester. However, if you wait until this week to get work done, you’re in trouble. Most of the first day, Monday is spent in an all employee meeting (Spring Convocation). In my four years at GCC, this has been a mixed bag of activity. We’ve had everything from dancing, musical chairs, strange motivational speakers to meaningful  and sometimes meaningless information dumps. We never know what to expect, but I’d have to say it never lacks for entertainment. Read moreRead more

3
Jan

What Annoys Me Most About Canvas #30in30

I have to begin by saying that most of these annoyances are probably from user error and/or ignorance, so feel free to educate me in the comments below. Then other annoyances probably have more to do with our (MCCCD) administration of Canvas than with Canvas itself. Canvas is by far the best LMS I’ve used, BUT nothing is perfect and somethings just drive me crazy. Anyway, with that disclaimer, here we go.

First off, Canvas is making me think I’m senile. I will spend a couple of hours making little changes here and there to content pages, and sometimes when I go back the next day or a few hours later, some of the changes are gone. Cue the Twilight Zone music. This has happened on more than one occasion. “I know I changed that,” I say. “I’m not crazy!” It happens enough that I don’t even trust it or me any more, so I have to add an extra step to “check” my work later.

canvas logoI’m all for change, but sometimes I miss the “old” way things were in Canvas. You can never get too attached to anything in Canvas because it can disappear just like that. One day you have a colored yellow quiz icon and the next you don’t. Little things you never thought you’d miss are just gone. Please come back yellow quiz icon. They even changed their logo. But of course with change bring progress and growth, so I’ll never really complain about this one. Just kidding.

Another annoyance I experienced this past semester was with the surveys. Read moreRead more