What Wendy Sees is What You Get

This is the world I see online and off in random sound bytes.

I am willing to adapt my teaching where I am needed!

With all due respect to Elayne Clift in her commentary. I’ll Never Do It Again, I feel compelled to share a different view.

Perhaps I am too young to appreciate the old ways, but while face-to-face teaching may be the best way to teach for many, it is no longer the only option for me. Maybe I am a techno-geek. Maybe I want to be sure there is ample opportunity for every student to participate in and shape the discussion. Maybe I want to give more ownership of learning to my students. Maybe I am just too determined to reach new students.

But this much I can say with certainty: I have 10+ years of experience successfully teaching in collegiate classrooms, in addition to the time I spent teaching in a corporate classroom, and online teaching is where I see the greatest need.

Here are five reasons why.

1. Virtual Community is the Ideal 21st Century Collaboration Tool

Most of us know that it is extremely rare to find a job where you don’t use computer-mediated communication. We must work on a global scale now. It is not cost effective, productive, or even best for the environment to bring everyone to the same location for every meeting. It is important to many jobs to carefully craft written messages that are clear, concise, persuasive, and that do not offend the reader. Effective computer mediated communication requires practice. Yes, they also need to know how to speak to each other in the same room, but they have been learning and practicing face-to-face communication since birth, or at least age 5.

Professionals need to form and join professional networks. In this century, professional networks are well maintained online.

It is not cost effective for global employers to bring employees to one location for training. Employers increasingly prefer that the employee learn new skills from a distance and to be self-directed in their lifelong learning. These skills take practice.

In my traditional classes, I found only the students who lived in our little area of Ohio. They contribute to the conversation from their narrow worldview. In my online classes, there are students from other states and if you are lucky, even other countries. They contribute to the conversation from a much larger worldview. That broader experience is, in my humble opinion, much better for the students who do live near the campus.

2. The Lack of Equal Participation in a Face-to-Face Discussion is Frustrating

Once I tried online discussion, I immediately saw the advantages. The bell does not ring, and another class is not coming through the door. The shy student can be expected to contribute. The student who ponders the question before contributing a meaningful response has enough time to contribute. One student cannot as easily dominate the conversation because of their more natural comfort with speaking.

With experience and practice, I have learned how to establish responsiveness and encourage quality contributions and true conversation in an online discussion. Never again do I have to wonder if the quiet student is really thinking about their shopping list. I know what all of my students think. In the rare case where they don’t respond, I feel comfortable assuming that student chose not to contribute.

3. The Quality of Education is Better for those who Need It!

Who is the best online student? A full-time parent who cannot afford childcare? A professional working full-time who needs to be with family from 5 to 9 pm and then attend class after that? A student who lives more than an hour or more from the nearest campus and cannot afford to move or the commute? In a face-to-face classroom, I could never tell an adult to not travel for work, lose their job, and come to class. So they missed the class. To those who say there is no significant difference, I would ask for who did you measure this? Did you ask the student who waited years for an online option because a traditional class will never be an option? Did you measure how much they learned before and after online learning was available to that student? I know without question that an online education is better than no education at all.

In my online teaching, I have learned how to make my presence and the presence of the other students obvious. I have learned how to create trust with the students and how to get to know them and let them get to know me. I have learned how to enable my students to take ownership of the class and to work together to achieve a learning goal. Once these are established, I do not encourage the students to depend on me every day. I will not be there when they leave my class. Nor will anyone else ever likely be always available at the time of their immediate question. They must learn multiple methods of finding assistance. They must learn how to cope when a project is delayed waiting for answers. And they must learn to plan enough time for delays. Those are valuable skills to learn. Once they trust me and learn what to expect, this approach works for the students and for me.

4. Show Me the Money?

Teaching in the classroom requires me to set aside the same 4 hours per week every week for an entire semester for each class! And then they want me to pack up all of my things, drive to campus, pay for parking, fight for parking, and go home afterwards. For no more money? If money were a significant motivation for teaching, then I would have kept my private sector job…. But seriously, the flexible schedule, convenient location, and never missing an important family moment are an invaluable perk to teaching online. Wearing my pajamas or sitting on my deck are just gravy.

5. Online Teaching Can Be Very Rewarding

When I imagined myself teaching, like many of us, I pictured the students who would want to be there and would appreciate my efforts. In no other venue have I found more of those students than online. They have been dreaming of an education for years. They have kids, jobs, and lives that get in the way. They desperately needed an option. I could share many examples but the message I will never delete? The student who said “Now I have hope.” So, yes, sometimes there are more challenges online. There are times when I know I could help the student with less effort in a face-to-face situation. But the tradeoff? The millions of students who might not be able to access an education any other way? For those students, I constantly seek new tools and try new ways and I am determined to meet those students where they are and help guide them in their educational venture. I hope you will join me. If you do not, I will understand. It takes a lot of work to completely rethink your teaching approach. If your heart is not in it, then your work in the classroom is just as valuable and we will always need educators there too.

Only a Test – Please ignore

Really.  This is just a test.  I apologize if you received a notice and expected a post.  I am testing something in an RSS Reader and needed to see how it would handle a new post.

Linking history, elections, and sleep deprivation

I was reading The VP Debate: Candidates, questions, and queries which analyzes the Google searching habits during the debates and I could not help remembering my experiences in most of my K12 history classes when movies were shown. Basically I slept through most of them. This might be a little more surprising to you if I mention that I was also the class valedictorian. Or it might not, if you also hated movies in history class. One teacher warned that the content would be on the test. My arrogant teenage reply was ‘Yes, but it’s in the book and I can read’. I am not particularly proud of that moment.

However, I cannot help but be jealous of the opportunities today’s classes have. Having grown up a bit in 20+ years, I can see now that seeing a movie of an event might be better than just reading about it.   Although with the lights out and the passive viewing mode, I might still fall asleep. It occurs to me though that just the chance to look up terms and content during the movie could change it for me from passive viewing to a more active experience. Students could be asked to blog about the movie while viewing, even if they are just recording questions or terms for later research. Students could be asked to report their own search terms after the movie. Teachers could then have some objective evidence that learning took place (rather than blank stares or actual closed eyes) and possibly a method for gauging the relative effectiveness of the media.

The next thought I had also makes me pause. I am going to admit that I have tried to watch the entire debates and I failed. No, it isn’t because I am not interested. It’s because they end after my bed time and I struggle to stay awake. It sounds like a theme with me but really I don’t sleep as much now as I did in my teens; it’s just that I start my day at 5 am and 10 pm is a limit that is hard to overcome. Anyway, I will also admit that I find myself not recognizing some of the references or events discussed during the debate (maybe because I slept through the movie the day it was introduced?) My approach has been to actually use paper and pencil to jot down hard copy notes. So my question is this: why did I not think to research during the debate itself?  Is that evidence of my previous conditioning to use only one media at a time? Luckily, there is another debate tomorrow so I have another opportunity to compare my experience. Although it will be just my own subjective evaluation, I will be interested to gauge whether I think I learned and absorbed more or if the computer was a distraction.

If any teachers read this post, I would love to hear if you have tried showing a movie while encouraging students to use a laptop or even a cell phone to look up content? If so, what were your experiences and do you have any data on the effectiveness as compared to the movie alone?

I am a User!

It’s Friday afternoon so I want to share a humorous thought for the day:

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?

             ~ Clifford Stoll

When Gabbing on the Phone is Work!

Do you find it awkward to post to your blog using a mic? If so, you might find Gabcast useful. Gabcast allows you to create a blog post using any phone. I found it much more natural to talk into my cell than I do when I use a mic. This will also be useful when I am not near my laptop and want to blog about something. Here is a demo:

Gabcast! demo #1

What is the Cost of a MOOC?

If I decide to participate publicly in a class with 2000 students enrolled, a “massively open online course”, what is the price? Supposedly, participation in the course is free. But I am not so sure.

In his TED talks presentation “Predicting the next 5000 days of the web,” Kevin Kelley describes the semantic web. He does not dwell on the idea but he does state that the “price is transparency”. I suspect that’s a clue to my hesitation.

After all I have participated in small online courses and did not feel any hesitation to participate. So why do I feel hesitant to participate in this one? I suspect that it may be the very connected nature of this course. We are not enrolled in a closed system with a login, a password, and a start and end date. There seems to be no rules.

We were asked to introduce ourselves and talk about why we are interested and what has to happen for this course to be a success. As an educator and a manager of learning technology development, I feel compelled to pursue any potential learning theory that may help me develop better content. However, if I am being honest, the format of the course was the biggest draw for me. I am a strong proponent of online classes mostly because I believe online classes remove barriers and make education more accessible. I was fascinated by the idea of the openness of the course and I want to experience it first hand. It’s a little ironic to me that the same openness that drew me here also may be the characteristic that prevents me from participating fully.

So let me give up a little of my opaqueness and admit that I don’t really understand yet the idea of connectivism as a learning theory. However, I do suspect that the way I learn has changed in the last 5 years and I am trying to understand that change and even to decide if I like the change. If you are also not ready to examine connectivism as a learning theory, I would like to know if you have any thoughts about the openness of the course? How do you feel about the “massiveness” of the information available? If you cannot possibly follow every thread, do you worry that someone else will have already posted every thought you have and so why should you bother? What is the CCK08 course costing you?

Scott Leslie on the Future of Online Education

In his post, Scott is talking about how PMOG has helped him visualize networked learning. To date, this quote has best helped me understand the significance of networked learning and hints at where all of this connectedness is taking us.

The web has always had this potential – what are hyperlinks other than people providing context on whatever they are linking to, and through that, paths. What’s new is that all of this context (and all of the people) can be brought back to the very thing being described, in place, enriching the experience, and tied together with a narrative thrust.

— Scott Leslie on EdTechPost

Downtime

Something to keep me out of trouble when I need to back away from the computer: 100 Best Novels.

Why Do I Exist?

Occasionally I struggle with how to answer the question: Why do we need the technology? Someone will say to me some version of “you can teach without technology” or “my students have been learning for weeks, months, decades, … without technology.” Since I have been a learner myself for several decades, I can agree with that statement. I learn every day by listening and observing using only my sense. However, when any basic technology is introduced, such as books, chalkboards, paper, writing tools, I believe I learn more.

Perhaps this study has been done? Take a teacher with two classes of students and cover one reasonably complex learning objective with no technology at all, just the teacher, the students, and their inborn abilities; speaking, listening, dancing, singing, acting; but no technologies, no paper, no writing, no books, no calculators, no microscopes, nothing invented or created with a machine. Of course, you can use any teaching approach that fits your tech-free lesson. You see where I am going? With the other class, you can use any technology you feel is appropriate for the lesson and the teaching approach you selected. What kinds of things do you need to measure in your study? How much each class learned? How quickly? Whether one class had more prior knowledge or ability or interest? Whether the instructor enjoyed one lesson more than the other? Whether students with specific disabilities learned more in one class or the other? Whether boys learned more in one environment or the other? How about girls? Like any research study, you could look at innumerable variables and reasons for differences in the results.

My gut tells me that all other things being equal, in aggregate, the class that uses some technology, not necessarily new technology, but practically any technology at all, in most subjects, will learn more in a shorter amount of time. After all, if books, paper, pens, chalkboards, overheads, videos, and calculators did not help student learn; I think we would still be using storytelling, lecture, verbal recall, and conversation to teach and most ineffective technologies would have been eliminated years ago.

For me, it’s a good first step to acknowledge that technology has been used in teaching for hundreds of years because we know it works. So, I feel better. After all, it’s my job to help instructors teach with technology and I feel good when I can justify my existence even if I keep it to myself.