Principles of Teaching in a Digital Age Panel at Vanderbilt

Warning:this video is an hour and a half long…I have summarized some of the salient points + a great deal is direct quotes.

What does the panel cover? Vanderbilt points out:

Teaching in a Digital Age: How Should Technologies Shape Our Learning Space and Pedagogical Practices?

According to a recent YouTube video, a student today will read 2,300 Web pages and 1,281 Facebook profiles this year, and 8 books. He or she will write 42 pages for class assignments this semester, and more than 500 pages of e-mail.

Having grown up immersed in technologies such as the Internet, iPods, PDAs and cell phones, most of today’s undergraduates are “digital natives” and so enter our classrooms with different experiences, expectations and learning styles than previous generations of students.

This workshop will explore some of the challenges and opportunities provided by technology and the students who use it.

Here are some of my notes:

• Focus on engagement and community of learning. Don’t let the technology (be it a computer or chalk) overshadow

• Powerpoint, Blackboard, photo posting (better than photocopying), and an online video of a play.

• Facebook group, Youtube, debates based on entries in Google docs for peer review and collaboration, Microsoft live spaces (free gig of storage) for a ready reference of classroom materials because laptops were always on, and WordPress. Many free tools like these used. Also iTunes university–every lecture captured and placed on YouTube and in iTunes university. (13 to 2 favor the technology) Digital natives still have many tech hurdles in the context of class. Use them judicially. Make sure you have some acumen with the tools. It is time consuming. Two students unsolicited made blog entries about the efficacy of the course. “This isn’t education 1.0–This is going to be education 2.0 and you’re going to participate”

• Most fun I’d had teaching in 20 years. Best time ever teaching. Pleasure of discovery–not just how the tech works. Which tech works–which has drawbacks. “New things about literature that I had never seen before because of the way we were teaching it.” I was learning–my most interactive class. Creation + dissemination + learning of knowledge. Not just verbally. Visually. Defining….re-mediation and student reaction. Mark Walger. “Peer review, audience, and revision all more effectively done via digital technologies.” 10 blog entries in addition to other assignments. Almost weekly–started it 3rd week of class. First month this freshman blog had 2000 hits. New ways to think about narrative. Games about sword and sorcery. Fundamental building blocks of narrative theory. (point of view, character, space, and time–they came ALIVE. author vs. filmmaker vs. virtual reality where you are the center of point of view). Lord of the Rings selection–read it in print, watched it via movie, and them simulated it via game. 360 degrees and look around. You can play Spencer’s Fairy Queen. Its a collaborative virtual world through time. (Spencers Fairy Queen–its notoriusly difficult to get Freshmen into this literature–but they were + quoting it) No map…until today. They mapped the action of it on the smart earth. A teacher anywhere in the world can play through 3 scences. Its available on Source Forge (it was all male) Wii has broken down age + gender. For my daughter her gaming is Facebook and my sons are glued. They have to be engaged in real world (interfaced)
(42:51)

Meeting at point of need–not filling them like a fount of knowledge–10 minutes topic. Keep them engaged in the dialouge along the way.

We tend to view the world in pieces (Rwanda, Female Genital Mutilation, slavery). How can we look at things more holistically.

Vs. episodic engagement. On the last day–name one concept they learned. Retrospective of entire term. We had created a complex understanding of concepts (you can do this with other concepts). I also used this on the exam. From my perspective–the learning was not at the level of details but was at the level of concepts–thats where expertise comes in a field. (habit of mind–knowledge construction or re-construction)

Too many channels? Credibility? Editorial cycles…not the students. Blog entries grow a million a day. Puts pressure to be more immediate. The Wire on HBO. Can re-structure presentation to meet 10 minute segments. New York Times 42 minutes. Pew Internet Life talks about these issues.

Does visual stifle imagination? Spencer is a great test case. (we made them visualize…they were forced to use their imagination…it was just “the plain” “expansively create it out of their own imagination”)

(1:00 or so) ?????? Scholarly research???? med school ????? Huh?????? How do we get attitudes of introspective thinking? what message did you get? what did you learn? what are scholarly projects you might develop? 2nd year….opted to….Write a blog on what you have learned…was incredibly successful (likely wrote more than if face to face–the complexity) Reflective…

Course at Yale. Daily Themes. The volume we were achieveing compares. You have to supplment with normal (need evidence + argument of formal).

MU. Multi-user dungeon in German class. Created virtual world + personas…and communicate in German. She print it out–to show them how much they had written. A lot less self-conciously. MU eliminated self-conciousness. They had a REASON to be writing.

Simulation + visualization is something we didn’t do. Army and flight sims. Competency based outcomes. Protein structures + DNA strands. One of the games we use is Dark Age of Camelot (brought some stuff in from Google to take a virtual tour) Overhead, administration. Check out…..Narrative forms in the digital classroom (40,000+ hits).

50 meg a day. 2 lectures. You’re almost at a gigabite. Online storage can be an issue. ($150 olympus for audio recording device)

Blackboard vs. Facebook. They never check blackboard.

Best mode by trial and error. For instance its the same for assignments and exam questions. Tech may create greater start up cost. Cost benefit analysis.

Blog grading techniques. How to create your expectation about the technology. Let me give you an example of how not to write a blog. (here is their blogging grading criteria)

They said no to Facebook…because they thought you would friend them. It works like a charm.

We need extra funds to experiment. We need technological expertise.

Part of the cost benefit analysis is your enjoyment of it. Be mindful of your own self. Don’t be somebody else.

(i missed an anecdote around 1:19)
Goto a networked computer…don’t use your dorm room (for speed of streaming)

Distributed network. Gave the baseball team the streaming technology. Departments should be in charge (primarily) of editing their own videos)