Google Offers An Online Digital Citizen Curriculum via YouTube

I recently discovered a Google/YouTube collaboration for teaching digital citizenship practices. The curriculum is for teachers to use to teach students what digital citizenship means and how it impacts their online and offline lives.

The interactive curriculum is on YouTube. There was a time in the early days of the Internet when I would hear that teachers felt an obligation to educate students on how to be safe, engaged and confident model "Netizens." It has been awhile since I heard that term used, and I'm not sure if this is still a topic that is taught. Perhaps, we are assuming that students are born into Net citizenship.

This initiative is aimed at students aged 13 to 17, but elements could certainly be used with older and younger students with some adaptations. For example, the lesson on Copyright, which includes a Teacher's Guide and Slides, could be used with an introductory college group.



Google is using their own YouTube community as the content for the lessons provided. They cover YouTube’s policies, how to report content, how to protect their own privacy, and how to be responsible YouTube community members. Teachers would hopefully lead students to see the wider implications of being part of an online community and how this applies to places like Facebook.

Each lesson comes with guidelines for teachers and ready-made slides for presentation. There’s also a YouTube Curriculum channel where videos related to the project will be posted.

http://www.google.com/edu/teachers/youtube/curric/

http://www.youtube.com/user/YouTubeCurriculum

Video Lectures for the Flipped Classroom

As a follow up to yesterday's post about the flipped classroom, here are "Lessons Worth Sharing" - TED-Ed’s idea of sharing presentations (lectures? sort of) on great ideas. Probably some of you already use a TED talk with your students. The example mentioned in the video promo below is "Just How Small is an Atom?" By Jon Bergmann. More videos that were flipped by teachers are being posted all the time.

I have used videos online as short, flipped lectures. One I like to use is from a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson about "Changing Education Paradigms." Though I had education majors in my class this semester, the class was on critical thinking. Students watched, enjoyed and remembered the video throughout the semester and the discussion was lively.

One thing I liked about this particular version of his talk is that the video portion of Robinson actually speaking is replaced by an animated version of someone drawing (very well) on a white board to illustrate Robinson's points.

I asked them to answer some questions based on their viewing at home the 12 minute video.

1. Robinson assumes you know this - What is a paradigm?
2. Why does he believe that we need to change public education today?
3. What is his opinion about ADHD?
4. How would he group students in classes?
5. How would he compare divergent thinking versus creativity?
6. Explain his example of geniuses in kindergarten.
7. How would Robinson compare/contrast cheating versus collaboration?
8. Summarize what you feel are his 3 main arguments.
9. How does having the visualization of his talk change the way we hear/see his talk?  Is this visual thinking?

Writing Workshops for January-February

The Writing Center is beginning its writing workshop series for the Spring semester. The following workshops are being offered in January and February 2011.

 Intro to the CWE

This workshop provides a basic overview of the College Writing Exam. It discusses what is involved in the exam, frequently asked questions by students, and gives sample questions and papers.

Location:

PCCC Writing Center

(Paterson campus--in the Library)

 Date/Time:

Mon., January 31, 2:30
Thurs., Feb. 3, 5:30

Preparing for the CWE and Other Essay Exams

This workshop will focus on helping students manage their time when taking a timed essay exam.  It offers strategies for planning the essay and writing within a time constraint so that you maximize abilities and chances of passing the exam.  This is especially helpful for students who have never taken the CWE or who have problems with running out of time or going off topic.  Materials needed:  pen and paper.

Location:

PCCC Writing Center

(Paterson campus--in the Library)

Date/Time:
Mon., Feb. 7, 5:30
Tues., Feb 8, 2:00

Attacking the Question

Ever sit down to write a paper only to realize you don't even know where to start? The place to begin an essay is with the question. What is being asked of you? What is required in the answer? This workshop will teach you how to attack an essay starting with the question. You'll learn to decode "professor speak" and figure out what's really being asked of you. From there, you'll learn how to formulate and organize an answer.  This workshop will help students taking the CWE to figure out exactly what a question is asking and how to go about answering it.

The focus of this workshop will be topics on the November CWE theme: Consumerism.

If you have a paper that you're struggling with, feel free to bring the topic to the workshop to get some examples of how to get started. Materials needed: pen and paper.

Location:

PCCC Writing Center

(Paterson campus--in the Library)

Date/Time:

Tues., Feb.15, 5:30
Wed., Feb. 16, 1:00

Proofreading Strategies for Essay Exams

This workshop will help students overcome some of the problems with editing of writing an essay in a timed setting.  This workshop will give you some strategies geared specifically toward timed exams and allow you to notice more of your errors before you turn in the test!  It will be especially helpful for students who are not confident in their writing abilities, haven’t written in a while, or have problems with grammar and editing.

Location:

PCCC Writing Center

(Paterson campus--in the Library)

Date/Time:

Thurs., Feb. 24, 1:10
Fri., Feb. 25, 5:30

Studying for Exams

This workshop aims to help students prepare for lengthy exams.  It will help students figure out how to organize the information in their notes and readings, understand the broad themes in the course and discover the best study strategies.  If your instructor has handed out a study sheet, please bring it to the workshop.  You can also bring in your lecture notes, textbook and any exams and/or quizzes taken during the semester.

Location:

PCCC Writing Center

(Paterson campus--in the Library)

Date/Time:

Mon., Feb., 28, 1:10
Tues., March 1, 5:30

For full descriptions of the workshops and a schedule of upcoming workshops for the summer, go to http://pccc.libguides.com/writingcenter and click on the "Student Workshops" tab.

If you have any questions about upcoming workshops or the Writing Center, please contact Elizabeth Nesius at enesius@pccc.edu.

Documenting Teaching Effectiveness

We often have a sense in education that something is working (or not working) but it's difficult for us to produce the evidence that some practice or piece of technology is the reason.

The Writing Initiative at PCCC is a five-year federal Title V grant and we have numerous requirements to assess our success at improving writing and the teaching of writing at the college. Producing evidence of effectiveness beyond the anecdotal information from teachers, students and our writing consultants one of our biggest challenges.

Right now, the Initiative team is working on our year 3 report for the outside evaluators who review the grant each October.

The Seeking Evidence of Impact Initiative that is part of the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) is an ambitious new initiative intended to bring the teaching and learning community into a collective discussion about ways of gathering evidence of the impact of innovations and current practices.

They are trying to bring the latest research and commentary in the area of learning technology effectiveness together. This includes white papers, articles, websites, reports, and other resources.



I have been looking back into books on assessment that I used in the past. One of those is Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo and Cross) which is a general handbook that offers teachers at all levels how-to advice on classroom assessment, including what classroom assessment entails and how it works, and also how to plan, implement, and analyze assessment projects.

If you are new to formal assessment, the case studies that detail the real-life classroom experiences of teachers carrying out successful classroom assessment projects are useful. Although the book focuses on K-12 settings, the information often applies to higher levels too.



For higher education, Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press, 2004) is also an interesting book to look to for some possible answers to what makes a great teacher great. The book was the result of a 15-year study of nearly a hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities.

One finding was that it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. In general, lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the way those teachers comprehend their subject and how much they value the learning process itself.

Think back on your own best teachers - especially those in high school and college - and they probably impressed you with how well they knew their subject but also with the way they engaged you and challenged their students.

For me, that always included interaction beyond the classroom Q&A. I knew that the best teachers felt that teaching really matters and that students can learn.

Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching is a text more likely to be used by college faculty members in groups and in workshops. It covers topics like problem-based discussion and integrating teachers' experience with recent research and theory on learning. It also provides assessment and research projects that can be used in classes.

If you want or need to get more into the quantitative part of assessment, practitioners, Assessing Performance: Designing, Scoring, and Validating Performance Tasks has step-by-step guidance for developing, administering, scoring, and validating a range of performance tasks. Though I find developing scoring tools, training raters, reducing rater bias, reviewing scores and report results less interesting, it is a necessary part of the job for some people in any educational setting.

Part of our Writing Initiative at PCCC is to introduce students and faculty to technology. ePortfolios, eTutoring, lecture-capture technology, and supporting courses with Web materials like LibGuides are all part of our day-to-day work. Using Technology Evaluation to Enhance Student Learning, (Teachers College Press, 2004) is a look at the technologies that have real, long-term payoffs for student learning so that you can make research-based decisions concerning the use of educational technology.

Tech Tips for Teachers

The Learning Network at The New York Times published a good article on "Tech Tips For Teachers: Free, Easy and Useful Creation Tools."

These tools can help students visualize texts with tools like Wordle, Tagxedo or The New York Times Visualization Lab, create timelines using  Xtimeline, Time Glider or Timetoast and design presentations that go beyond PowerPoint using things like Glogster.edu and Museum Box.

For prewriting, mind maps on paper, and now electronically, are popular idea-processing tools. Their use was popularized by the British IQ specialist Tony Buzan starting in the 1960s.

Bubbl.us, CoSketch.com and Cacoo are good starting places that also allow collaboration by student pairs or groups.

Of course, students can also use The Times for generating ideas on many topics across disciplines from math to fine arts.

• Student-Powered Podcasting 
• English Language Arts Units for Grades 9-12 (National Educational Technology Standards for Students Curriculum Series) 
• A Teacher's Guide to Using Technology in the Classroom 

 

ECHO 360 for Capturing WI Moments

This past summer, Passaic County Community College, in collaboration with the Title V Writing Initiative, purchased an ECHO360 system. Traditionally known as a “lecture capture” system, ECHO 360 consists of a camera, computer podium and overhead projector. It allows presenters to capture voice, projection onto the screen, and views of the classroom, or any combination thereof.

Multiple units were purchased for the main campus, including a portable unit and one for the Writing Center Annex. In addition, each satellite campus has one classroom equipped with the technology.

The college has great plans for the use of the technology. While some instructors plan to “capture” their classes and make them available to students, others plan to make videos or podcasts to supplement their in-class lectures. In addition, the Center for Student Success and Admissions departments have plans for instructional videos on everything from registering for classes to logging into Blackboard.

The Writing Center intends to use this technology to help support distance students and others who may have difficulty coming to the on-campus Center. There are plans to capture writing workshops as well as create instructional videos for using the different technological supports available to students in the Writing Initiative. ECHO 360 videos and podcasts can be made by faculty and staff at PCCC by contacting Tom Tierney at ttierney@pccc.edu. WI faculty can contact writingcenter@pccc.edu to schedule use of the system in the Writing Center.

Writing Resources Now Available Online

There has been a flurry of summer activity by the Initiative staff posting materials online.

We now have 22 LibGuides available including ones for you to incorporate into your own courses and LibGuides, such as eTutoring, information on WI courses, the CWE, Library Resources, Online Learning and even LibGuides itself has a PCCC support Guide.

The three fall 2008 WI courses each have a LibGuide developed in collaboration by the instructor, a librarian and the Initiative team.

The LibGuide for Writing at PCCC also has a Summer Institute tab with downloadable documents such as the rubrics discussed in the June sessions.