Tools for teachers - End-of-Semester round up of my favorite teaching tools!

Hi all!

I'm doing a "tool roundup" of current favorite web teaching & collaborating tools..

As a non-tenure track professor, I often feel I don't have the time to go and investigate new teaching tools.  The reward-benefit ratio felt unbalanced - especially if I was looking for something to quickly use in class.  However, taking this instructional design course has helped push me to learn new tools - to my delight, it hasn't been that hard* and actually really *fun* (a word I don't always associate with adjunct composition teaching :/  ).   Can't wait to think about how to integrate some of these into next year's classes!

 *I also learned that for almost any purpose, there is someone out there who has put together a pros/cons or top 10 list of tools JUST for that purpose!

Here's my current faves:

1.  Google docs suite
Why'd you use it: why wouldn't you?!

Some potentially dicey political thoughts...

I just posted about my friend Katie Raddatz's amazing work with mobile technology in her writing classroom.  For any of you that aren't writing teachers, know that the kinds of creativity, engagement and collaboration that are happening in her classroom are, like, lightyears ahead of what most writing teachers are able to offer (including ME!)

I think one takeaway for me is the amount that individual teachers are pushing things forward in terms of technology in higher ed.

One thing that's really sad for me is often how invisible this is within the institution.  In some ways, yes, it's true, invisibility buys us freedom to experiment.  And Katie did receive institutional support in terms of classroom resources.

However, all of her learning - playing with the iPad, consulting with other experts, reading and experimenting, is totally outside of what she's paid for as a non-tenure track (NTT) instructor.  That's right - she did this learning and prep unpaid.

 And for all the work she did and all the cool pedagogical work that's happening in her classroom, not only will Katie not be eligible for a raise or promotion (there is no designated career path for NTT faculty), but just like me, we aren't guaranteed work from semester to semester, (often losing classes because of enrollment at the last minute) and definitely not paid a Boston-level living wage.  Neither of us know if there will be work for us in the fall, and if so, how much.   Doing this kind of development might make us more "marketable" and sure, could lead to more or different kinds of work, (and clearly Katie's been recognized for her expertise within our university) but there's no built-in way to recognize instructors for doing stuff like what Katie's doing - and a lot of us are still living paycheck to paycheck - but still innovating just because we love it so freaking much.  


 How bass-ackward is that, higher ed?

How to engage students in first-year college writing course? - with iPads, of course!

Just completed an interview with my amazing and talented co-worker Katie Raddatz.  A few years ago she took the initiative to start learning about mobile learning and using iPads in her class.

Now, she has a whole cart full of iPads that she uses with her students, and it has transformed her teaching and their engagement in the classroom.

Check out key takeaways and illustrations of how she uses some apps here, at her Prezi: https://prezi.com/uy6s_q--ycl1/ipads-in-the-critical-reading-and-writing-classroom/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

For the full conversation, where we discuss how she got started, barriers she encountered, how she dealt with roadblocks, and how it's transformed her writing pedagogy, check out this interview with Katie on my YouTube channel.

You can contact Katie at Kathleen.Raddatz@umb.edu

Update: my plan for group collaboration this semester

In an earlier post, I lamented how poorly things worked the last time I tried group assignments in my course (and got some helpful feedback in the comments section!  thanks!). In another post, I talked about new insights I've gained learning about different kinds of collaboration by being a learner myself.  

Here's how I've tweaked things for this semester!

 For one class, I've scaled WAY back on the the group aspect of their third paper.  The groups are going to be "consultancy groups" - groups of people working on the same paper topic, and most of their time together will be devoted to (somewhat structured) activities around discussing the readings or completing peer reviews.

Against Collaboration

Collaboration and group assignments are often touted as the keys to good, forward-thinking pedagogy - especially in an online environment.  However, instructors may need to think more deeply about when and how they assign group projects.  

The belief in classroom collaboration is often based off the idea that learners will need to collaborate "in the workplace" - but are instructors and instructional designers thinking clear-headedly about the differences between a classroom and collaboration in the real world?

Correcting punctuation or culture-shaming?: working with students who don't speak Standard English at home

This week I'm grading papers (ha ha, of course I am - I'm always grading papers these days!) - and one or two papers gave me pause.   These are papers written by some of the strongest students in my class - insightful, engaged & creative papers written by African American women in my class.  In their papers I see them doing the very things that I dream students will do: engage critically with the topic, deeply analyze and weave in our course readings, and, most important, make a real, clearly articulated argument that follows through their papers.  In terms of a grade, they both definitely pass and qualify to use these papers to represent them in the writing proficiency assessment at our school.  But...both of these papers are filled with grammatical issues that stand out to me like a sore thumb....and make it clear to me that a reader could easily dismiss the analytical work in their papers simply because of some non-standard English sentences.