Web collaboration and critical thinking: Hypothes.is and annotation 2.0

Back to report on the intersection of pedagogy & technology -fun!
Props to Bonnie Stewart for turning me on to this cool technology...

I'm not sure whether to populate this post with abundant links, videos & screenshots, or just to wax rhapsodic about collaborative annotation in general...maybe I'll start with the second and insert the down at the bottom - scroll down if at some point you want to see what some of this stuff actually looks like!

So what is collaborative annotation? Well, if you're not a writing teacher, one might ask: "what is annotation."

The answer is - many things, but in a nutshell, it is the notes that one makes on a text.   So simple - but as many of us know, can be such a powerful tool.

Productive Failure & instructional design

A few weeks ago, as part of my introduction to instructional design course, I got introduced to blogger & instructional designer Cathy Moore.   If you are deeply interested in how people learn, and what powerful, interactive e-learning can look like, you'll find her blog completely addicting.  She offers some basic, simple tools for corporate instructional design that seem so intuitive and non-painful (and heck, maybe even empowering!) for the learner that I can't believe that's not how all elearning is done.

One post, however, is one of those ideas that starts out rolling around in my brain, gathering weight and heft like a snowball as time goes on.  It's the idea of productive failure.  Check out her post about it here.

Here's the basics: the traditional idea of scaffolding education says: structure your teaching in an "I do, we do, you do" fashion -

Group work: why the humanities still matter...

I love justifications for my teaching from the business world!

For example, I heard one interview with an expert who had written a book about how business schools needed to update and change.  What's the ONE THING he said he wished business school grads had (but often don't?)...wait for it...

Writing abilities!

Oh yeah, I"m relevant, that's right, uh huh...  :)

But seriously, folks...today another article caught my eye about team work, describing interesting findings about what makes teams work.

Review of Screencast tools for teachers

I didn't write this one....but this guy spent a lot of time analyzing different screencast tools specifically for teachers.    It's nice to have all of these in one place  - I've heard of a lot of these tools, but didn't realize they all effectively did the same thing (although I feel like a bit of a tool for not figuring it out before now!).  Now I know that Camtasia and Captivate are really, really expensive screencast tools. 

Spoiler alert: if you are just starting out and looking for free tools, he recommends Screencast-O-Matic hands down.

https://andrewdouch.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-best-screencasting-software-for-teachers/

Thinking about Group Work - grappling with challenges

Partly inspired by attending workshops with instructional designers, this semester I"m launching (for the second time) a major group project to go along with their final essay in my face-to-face class at the end of the semester.  This week's readings gave me a lot of food for thought  about how to do it better (last semester I 'd say I had a 50% success rate and lots of "dissatisfied customers" - including both suckers & free riders) - and still more questions.   Wondering if y'all instructors out there had any insights?

 Here's my questions: After this week's readings in my instructional design course about group work & best practices, I'm going to implement a bunch of these

Instructional goals, critical thinking & creativity

This week our chapter in the DCC book was all about identifying instructional goals. 

When I first saw this, I was frankly a little appalled...the examples included things like performance measures and instructions on how to interact with customers in service jobs. In short, these kinds of "objectives" quickly brought back all my worst experiences with learning -

Who's doing the online teaching in higher ed? My Story

I don't know how representative my experience was, but it definitely makes me want to know more about how e-learning is happening in higher ed, and who is doing it, and how much support they have.

So context: I was in my second year of teaching.  That fall, I'd finally gotten what felt like a stable teaching job: 3 sections at my alma mater, benefitted, in the union.  I spent a lot of time that fall developing a curriculum, learning about my students & developing my teaching tools for English 101 - and learning how to grade 70+ papers in a week, six times a semester.  In December, I learned that I wouldn't be offered any course for the spring semester starting January.