Like many, I have been thinking a lot about freedom of speech lately. My purpose in this post is not to comment on that freedom. I have always been a strong advocate for free speech, but speech and actions are not the same. These events have brought me back to my high school days. I know how faulty Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
Naming Chunks and Items: Thinking About High-Quality Virtual Classrooms #4
The names given to chunks can contribute to the ease of navigating your online classroom. By giving chunks meaningful and descriptive names, instructors both make it easier to find materials and introduce organizing themes to the course. Consider these names that could be applied to a course in which students are learning to use various Read More
Aligning Chunks: Thinking About High-Quality Virtual Classrooms #3
Backwards design is intended to both support the organization of course chunks and also to ensure the chunks are aligned. Alignment refers to the connection between the goals, the assignments by which students will demonstrate new learning, and the lessons by which they will learn what they are expected. The fundamental assumption of education is Read More
Ease of Use: Thinking About High-Quality Virtual Classrooms #2
Ease of use refers to the effort participants must expand to navigate your course, see and hear the materials, and complete the work you assign. Students are more likely to learn the curriculum if the classroom is easy to use. A related idea, which further supports the importance of easy to use classrooms, is cognitive Read More
Your Feedback Practices Matter
Storytime… About 20 years ago, I was looking to refocus my career. I had an interest in library science, so I found an online program and singed up for two courses with the intent of matriculating in the master’s program before the deadline during which I was to study. The two courses were interesting. I Read More
Even When They “Know” the Best Approach, Effective Teachers Develop, Use, and Refine Many Strategies
Your experiences in the field will serve you well as you teach. Your examples and stories will help your students understand the context of the ideas they study, see connections, and they will make your class more engaging and effective. Your experiences will limit you, also. We all adapt to the culture in which we Read More
Effective Teachers are Perpetually Learning about Teaching
Each instructor’s experience with teachers and learning has been unique to you. The strategies your teachers used and the approaches you brought to your own learning worked for you; you would not be in this position otherwise. Do not be fooled into thinking your path to becoming educated is the path that will work for Read More
What Roszak Wrote About Curriculum
Historian and philosopher Theodore Roszak (1994) minimizes the role of information in human cognition, and he even observes “humans think with ideas, not with information” [emphasis in the original] and affords ideas a central place in the human cognition by continuing, “Information may helpfully illustrate or decorate an idea; it may, where it works under the guidance of a contrasting idea, help to call other Read More
Thinking About Digital Reference Tools
Watching some children in my life (from a distance) grow to through into adolescence has led me to think about reference tools in emerging students’ lives. Specifically, I’m thinking about dictionaries, encyclopedias, and maps and I am led to the conclusion that the digital versions we have are better for two of these, but worse Read More
Leveraging ICT
Computers, networks and digital media are changing the types of tasks educators assign as students access, manipulate, and create information using previously unavailable technologies. Williams (2004) defined fundamental characteristics of tasks which influence how individuals understand the tasks they undertake: the perceived importance of the task; the frequency with which it is done; the time Read More