Videos are another fun alternative to written assessments, and the latest technologies have made video creation remarkably easy. Video can be shot with a $200 flip camera, which provides very good sound and picture quality if a microphone is used. Even the ubiquitous smart phone provides remarkably good quality.

But production values are not the point, and poor production values can even add a layer of humor and authenticity to the project. The best advice is that if you are not Orson Wells, don’t try to be. Attempting to reach movie studio quality only highlights the differences. Be self-referentially hokey as a way to make the lack of production values itself part of the production.

That said, your students’ videos certainly will need some editing and tools such as Live Movie Maker (Windows) or iMovie (Mac) are free and relatively easy to use. Once your students are done editing and happy with the finished product, they can post it to YouTube for others to view. Vimeo and Screencast.com are other good places to post videos. There is no FERPA rule against students posting their work publically.

A good video assignment is to put students into small groups with instructions to make a video that teaches a key concept related to class. If done well, the video not only demonstrates students’ understanding of the concept, but also serves as a resource that can be used by others. Often you will find that students are proud of what they produced and want to show it to friends, family, and maybe even future employers. When was the last time a student showed a written essay to anyone?

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog post.

Yet we don’t apply this same principle to our students. We expect them to submit their work prior to any outside review as if it were the “final draft.” We then grade our students on that unreviewed work, even though we would never want a journal editor to make a decision on our work based on its early drafts.

It’s time to start applying the same principles to our students that we apply to ourselves. I have my students submit their work to “colleagues” (i.e., other students) for commentary and revision prior to submission for a grade. Not only does it improve the quality of their work (making it easier for me to grade, by the way), but it improves their writing by forcing them to correct their errors. But even more importantly, it gets them into the practice of asking others to review their writing, which they will need to do later in life when they’re in the workplace, serving on civic committees, and involved in other collaborative endeavors.

Shared Editing Software
One of the easiest tools for facilitating document review is Google Docs. Students simply create a free Google account, and then load their documents into the editors, which look and function much like any word processing software, such as Microsoft Word. The value is that the creator can give anyone else rights to view or edit the work.

I have my students give both a “Paper Partner” and me access to their work once the first draft is done. The Paper Partner, a fellow student, is then required to make comments directly onto the document. The commentary should point out simple writing errors, as well as whether the ideas are easy to follow. Once revised the student submits the paper to me for a grade. I want early access so I can ensure that all of the Paper Partners are doing their job (or more accurately, my job, as I have farmed out much of the drudgery of editing to them).

Shared editing is also great for group projects, since students can all enter edits directly to a single document, rather than deal with the version confusion that comes with passing around email attachments. I require my students to keep a running log of their group’s activity on a Google Doc so that everyone in the project is on the same page, and so that I can peek in to make sure that things are moving along.

It’s time to start practicing what we preach by requiring the same peer review from our students as we expect of one another, and replacing the archaic email attachment system with shared document editing to get it done.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

One of the easiest and most powerful tools is the regular old wiki. Wikis are simply web pages that can be edited by their users. Instead of only carrying content from the administrator, they harness the power of crowdsourcing to create a powerful communal resource.

I use a wiki as the electronic hub of my face-to-face courses. The uses are varied:

Course Information
All course information —syllabus, course schedule, assignments, handouts, etc. —is posted on the wiki. This means that students can check in to get information at any time without the multiple login steps of an LMS. I also find it much easier to update content on the wiki than the LMS. Plus, students considering taking the course can check out the syllabus before registering. It is beyond me why most colleges still only provide a name and short generic description of their courses to guide students’ decisions. Why not at least require instructors to put their syllabi into an online database?

Resource Repository
I like saving current articles that relate to course content. For instance, I am constantly running across advances in genetics that fit perfectly into my medical ethics course. I put links to these articles into my wiki. Importantly, I encourage students to do the same so that they feel a part of a knowledge community that is exploring the topics together.

One interesting section of the wiki is called “Just for Fun.” This is a place for students to load links to funny stories or videos related to course content. You would be surprised how much is out there.

Student Projects
One of the biggest mistakes we make in education is keeping the good work our students do hidden from the public. While professors are supposed to make public their research to advance understanding in their field, student work is only seen by the instructor and the student. Why not make the best work public? Not only does this encourage students to do better work, but also makes that work a resource for future students. Other students can benefit from the work, and it can serve as a model of what the instructor wants from students.

I put my students into small groups and assign each the project of developing a learning module on a topic covered in class. The resulting module is posted to the wiki along with the other class content. That module needs to have learning content, such as a voice-over PowerPoint or VoiceThread, as well as an assessment module, like an online quiz, and recommended resources.

Consider a simple wiki as an easy way to dip your toes into the online waters.

As always, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage on the blog. In particular, I’d like to hear your suggestions on other uses of a wiki in the classroom.

Resources
PB Works – Formerly PB Wiki, this is an easy to learn and fairly powerful free wiki system. They recently upgraded the capabilities in interesting ways, which I haven’t even begun to explore yet.

Glogster – Fun platform that makes a wiki into a kind of online mosaic.

NU Medical Ethics – My own very simple wiki—you can do better.

Wikis in Plain English – Still the best introduction to wikis from the good people at Common Craft.

John Locke, for instance, began his book during his first year at Oxford, and eventually developed an indexing system that organized the entries by subject. That indexing system was eventually published by John Bell, whose work influenced people such as Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin (Johnson 87). These works were even passed from generation to generation.

The importance of commonplacing was that it cultivated the “slow hunch.” Most truly groundbreaking insights began as vaguely formed hunches. These hunches take time to develop, often years. Commonplacing nurtures the hunch by preserving thoughts that become significant pieces to a puzzle years later.

The practice also allowed people to pull together seemingly disparate elements into a coherent mosaic. Robert Darnton describes it beautifully:

“Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.”

Next to this passage I wrote in giant letters “Blog!!!” A blog is the modern commonplace book. The blog fits the above description perfectly. The blog I am writing here is helping me grow my own slow hunch about the personal learning environment and technology.

The classroom does not encourage the slow hunch. An idea must be well formed in a paper or presentation by the end of the term or it gets marked down. We have done little to cultivate a student’s slow hunch that grows over many courses or years.

We should be encouraging, maybe even requiring, our students to write a blog that expresses their thoughts on the topics they encounter inside and outside of the classroom. The value of a blog is that ideas on different topics are expressed as they occur, yet the postings also can be indexed to allow the student to draw them together later. Plus, the blog makes commonplacing public, allowing others to contribute their own insights to the idea.

So let’s use blogging to bring back commonplacing in education.

As always, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage on the blog.

Resources
Robert Darnton, Extraordinary Commonplaces, New York Review of Books, no. 20 (2000), 82-87.

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, (Riverhead Books: 2010, New York).

John Orlando, Blogging to Improve Student Learning: Tips and Tools for Getting Started, Faculty Focus.

John Orlando, Personal Learning Environments Help Students Extend Learning Beyond the Classroom, Faculty Focus.

But it turns out that many of today’s true innovators developed their ideas outside of the classroom. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to create Microsoft after tinkering with ideas in his dorm room with co-founder Paul Allen, and Mark Zuckerberg was nearly thrown out of Harvard after he started Facebook as a response to getting dumped by his girlfriend.

There is science behind these examples. A study found that people in large cities are 15% more productive than those in small cities because they are more creative (Lehrer, 52). The reason is not due to the availability of education or the arts, but rather the larger number of “collisions” with others—chance meetings that give them a new perspective on what they are doing.

Can these collisions be encouraged? Yes. A good example is Google, which gives its engineers one day a week to work on anything they want. Google also has a corporate policy that no employee is ever more than 100 feet from free food. They want employees to bump into one another at the free food and share ideas. They understand that this informal sharing is far better than the formal discussion at meetings, which is regulated by power positions and the like. They want employees to form teams around ideas based on their interests, not corporate structure. They also have employees post information about their projects to a company-wide message board where everyone can comment on them. An employee from another department may lend some insights to the plan, or decide to join the working group.

Classroom discussion is not unlike the formal meetings in corporate structure, which are lauded as a means of encouraging the flow of ideas, but usually do little of that. Like corporate meetings, students in a classroom as self-conscious of how they appear to others.

So what can teachers do to foster “collisions” among students? Even online discussion within an LMS tends to be restricted by the position of the instructor and pre-set questions. But some teaching tools can cultivate structured experimentation:

• Student blogs: Giving each student a blog provides them with a voice and ownership of the discussion. Students feel more free to experiment, and other students are comfortable commenting on each other’s posts. Importantly, blogs allow students to create a “Personal Learning Environment” where they can pursue their interests with others, including those outside of the institution. A host of free systems allow students to set up blogs without any technical skills.
• VoiceThread Lectures: A VoiceThread lecture allows students who have an idea related to that day’s lesson to attach their idea directly to the lecture at the place where it comes up, rather than later in a separate discussion thread. The discussion is much more creative because it is not channeled by prestocked discussion questions in a traditional LMS.
• Digital Storytelling: Digital storytelling forces students to express a concept as a story illustrated with voice, photos, and video. It widens a student’s perspective on a topic and generates insights they would not have had with a text report. The product is also much more interesting for others, and could be posted to the student’s blog for commentary.

Foster creativity by encouraging collisions in your class.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

Resources

Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From, (Riverhead Books: 2010, New York).

Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Solves the City, New York Times Magazine, December 18, 2010.

John Orlando, Blogging to Improve Student Learning: Tips and Tools for Getting Started, Faculty Focus.

John Orlando, Pump up Your Online Discussions with VoiceThread, Faculty Focus.

John Orlando, Digital Storytelling Can Help Boost Learning, Faculty Focus.

Stories capture our imagination by reaching us on an emotional level. Mere facts out of context are hard to remember. Memory experts learn long stings of random numbers by creating a story around them (the first three digits are his mother’s birthday, the second three are the year of his first love, etc). Evolution has probably tuned our brains to remembering stories, rather than facts.

Unfortunately, education has forgotten about the power of storytelling in favor of straightforward transmission of the desired information. This method flies in the face of everything we know about learning. Without context, retention is low. Even the cave dwellers understood this, so why don’t we?

Digital storytelling returns us to the roots of education. Today, software that’s free and easy to learn allows students to develop stories that combine images, video, voice, and text. Having students create four to six minute multimedia videos forces them to reflect on what they’re learning and put it into a coherent narrative for others to understand as well. The work engages students in the higher order processes such as synthesis, analysis, and evaluation.

A research project by John Sandars and Gareth Frith at the University of Leeds compared the results of digital storytelling assignments in four very different types of classes—theater, medicine, education, and dietetics. The results were encouraging. Students felt that the projects allowed them to express “more obscure ideas that could be better understood when accompanied by image/sound.” One interesting example was a medical student who included in his story “a picture of a brick wall because I felt the patient had just put up a brick wall.” The student’s tutors also saw the value of digital storytelling by reporting that “the students involved in digital storytelling demonstrated much deeper reflection.”

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Resources
DigiTales: An excellent website on digital storytelling. Includes ideas, examples, and scoring guides.

Digital Storytelling Tools for Teachers, Silvia Tolisano. A 120 page book that can be downloaded for free, or purchased in the print version.

Stories for Change: A wonderful repository of digital stories.

A digital story I created about Buddy the bus driver.

Learn more about how to incorporate digital storytelling in your teaching, as well as other teaching tools techniques, with a copy of the online seminar How to Engage Students with Interactive Online Lectures

I was interviewed in the next issue of the newspaper and I mentioned that I don’t object to computers and cell phones in class at all. In fact, I wonder if we should be encouraging students to bring them to class. For one, students will eventually be entering the working world where these devices are ubiquitous. Look at any business meeting and you will find everyone with smart phones or laptops. The restriction on their use amounts to telling students that they need to go back to using pen and paper for notetaking, like the 60’s. We are preparing students for a world that no longer exists.

But more importantly, I’m using the devices to increase student participation. This idea occurred to me when a student asked a factual question in class that I couldn’t answer off the top of my head. A few minutes later another student volunteered the answer, which she had looked up on her smart phone.

At that point I started telling students that they could bring their digital devices to class, but if they did they must be prepared to do research on the spot. For instance, I might say “Jerry, in what year did the Tuskegee Syphilis Study end?,” requiring him to research the answer for us.

This policy makes students collaborators in the learning process. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of believing that only teachers have valuable knowledge for students. While we may be the primary experts in our classroom, there is no reason why students cannot offer up information to advance the discussion.

I’m sure that the smart phones and laptops are a distraction at times, and no doubt students are checking text messages (email is passé among today’s students, in case you haven’t heard), and Facebook. But digital devices can also make them more engaged in the material, and can be of particular benefit to shy students who are afraid of saying something dumb if they speak up. This is not a concern when they are reporting someone else’s research.

So instead of fighting the digital movement, try treating it as a collaborator in the learning process and a way to get all of your students involved in class.

As always, I encourage your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

But instead of using failure as a valuable teaching tool, education discourages it as, well, a sign of failure. A student is measured at various points along a course on how well they have mastered the material. Since each assignment is graded based on its proximity to success, and the final grade is determined by the aggregate of each individual grade, failure is preserved and carried with the student throughout the course. The result is that students become failure-adverse, demoralized by failure, and focused more on the grade than the education.

One way to reverse this trend is by using gaming in education. Students who fail in video games do not suffer the same blow to their self-esteem as those who receive a low grade on an exam or report card. They simply try it again. I’ve previously written about this topic in the article What Games Teach Us about Learning.

We must also rethink the purpose of grading itself. Too many teachers have the “apple sorting” view of grading as a process of separating the good students from the poor students. But consider the conversation that I had with a teacher many years ago. I had just started teaching at a college and was told that this particular teacher was widely considered the best in the school, as well as the toughest. Stopping at his office one day I asked him about his reputation as both the best and toughest teacher in the school. I made the comment that he must not give many A’s, but he responded by saying that everyone in his class gets an A.

I asked him how this could square with this reputation for toughness. He replied that when a student hands in a paper he is given comments and told to rewrite it, and must rewrite it over and over until it is an A-quality paper. Only then it is accepted.

This story proves wrong the view that low grades are a sign of rigor. This teacher expects great work of his students and requires them to keep working to improve the paper until it reaches that level.

We learn to write by making mistakes and correcting our mistakes. Teachers who hand back an assignment with comments and a grade only encourage students to leaf through to the grade and store it away. Expecting them to correct their failures is genuine education.

Consider how to incorporate failure into your teaching in order to generate success.

Feedback
As usual, I encourage your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage on the blog

Resources
Vocab Sushi: A vocabulary builder that provides a great example of a game for higher education. http://www.vocabsushi.com/

Parade of games in PowerPoint: Dianne Jones’ wonderful collection of free game templates that can be used by any teacher. http://facstaff.uww.edu/jonesd/games/

What is assessment?
Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, in Understanding by Design, offer this description: “By assessment we mean the act of determining the extent to which the desired results are on the way to being achieved and to what extent they have been achieved.” (p. 6)

In an education environment, the question becomes: Are students learning (or have they learned) what we want them to learn? Or, put another way, What would students be saying and doing if they truly understood what they were learning?

As educators, we need to have a clear answer to these questions in order to clarify goals and identify appropriate assessment tools. In the broadest sense, understanding is revealed through one’s ability to transfer knowledge and skills. But because understanding is complex and multifaceted, McTighe and Wiggins go further to identify six ways in which knowledge transfer can manifest itself: The Six Facets of Understanding.

Think about a time when you felt you really understood something. Perhaps it involved playing an instrument, participating in a sport, walking in another’s shoes. Now consider how your experience fits into the Six Facets Model. When you truly understood, you most likely were able to do at least one of the following:

1. Explain
2. Interpret
3. Apply
4. Have perspective
5. Empathize
6. Have self-knowledge

It should be noted that all six facets do not have to be present in order to determine whether a student has achieved understanding. It is more important that the six facets require us to shift from a teacher-centered model of teaching and assessing to a learner-centered one. By considering the actions or processes students must do to demonstrate they truly “get it” (understanding as doing), you, the instructor, will be better equipped to provide focused instruction and valid assessment.

Excerpted from How to Effectively Assess Online Learning. Learn more about this white paper »

Consider World of Warcraft. The goal is to defeat your enemies and move up to the next level. The goal is clear, as is the path to it. Moreover, the reward is immediate. When you finish a level you move up to the next level. The game tracks your status, and so players can boast about the level that they have attained.

It’s important to note that the image of video gamers as socially isolated individuals playing in the lonely darkness of their bedrooms is misleading. The most popular games require players to join teams to defeat groups of foes. It is a collaborate endeavor, and if you ever watched a gamer in action, you will be struck by the level of communication between players, who coordinate their efforts by directing others or signaling their moves in short comments. Studies have suggested that this collaboration develops teamwork and leadership skills.

Even more interestingly, gaming encourages a high level of intellectual engagement. It is not unusual for kids—again, mostly boys—to adopt the “too cool for school” persona of deliberately acting ignorant in front of the class. A boy may answer a teacher’s question with an exaggerated “what” to elicit laughter from his friends at his lack of attention to the subject. The student who jumps at providing the correct answer is labeled the nerd.

But no gamer wants to profess ignorance of gaming principles in front of his fellow gamers. In fact, the social pressure is the opposite—kids will apply a remarkable level of technical sophistication to analyzing a game on gamer forums, even going so far as to apply high level mathematical formulas (learned in school) to mine out the game’s underlying principles.

What can this teach us about education? For one, teachers too often assign only a few large works during a class, and thus put off rewards for many weeks. Instead, teachers can assign continual short pieces with a narrower focus and clearer goals to achievement.

Moreover, the A through F grading system provides only a running average of the student’s performance. The student is not moving upward in this system. Teachers might instead use a game-like scoring system in which the student accumulates points towards a final grade. While this might sound hokey, it appeals to our deep seeded interest in scoring. I was highly motivated to work through self-paced math booklets in grade school because they were numbered sequentially, with the student given the next book in the sequence after correctly finishing the last one, because I wanted to see what would happen when I finished book 99, thinking that it must be the end of the line (it turns out that it went into the hundreds).

So instead of disparaging games, let’s see if we can incorporate a few gaming principles in teaching to improve motivation and outcomes.

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Resources
7 Ways that Games Reward the Brain – Tom Chatfield discusses the appeal of games.
http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_chatfield_7_ways_games_reward_the_brain.html

Gaming Can Make a BetterWorld – Jane McGonigal talks about the value of games.
http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html

Video Gaming Principles as Applied to Education – Well-known education researcher James Gee talks about his discoveries about gaming.
http://wistechnology.com/articles/243/

Spring Revival: Alternate Reality Game Breathes New Life into Old Course – Ben Betts talks about how gaming was applied to a graduate business course.
http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/617/spring-revival-alternate-reality-game-breathes-new-life-into-old-course

One way to break the monotony is through audio or video-based discussion. The sound of a voice adds interest that is not possible in text discussion. Phil Ice (article referenced below) demonstrated the power of voice when he compared voice feedback on assignments to text feedback. He found a number of advantages to voice feedback:

• Improved Ability to Understand Nuance: Students indicated that they were better able to understand the instructor’s intent. Students also indicated that instructor encouragement and emphasis were clearer.
• Increased Involvement: Students felt less isolated in the online environment and were more motivated to participate when hearing their instructor’s voice.
• Increased Content Retention: Students reported that they retained audio feedback better than text feedback. Interestingly, they also reported that they retained the course content to which the feedback was related better than with text feedback. These self-reported findings were supported by the fact that students incorporated into their final projects three times as much audio feedback as text feedback.
• Increased Instructor Caring: Students interpreted the instructor as caring about them and their work more when they received audio feedback over text feedback. This difference was due to audio feedback coming across as more personal than text feedback.

Video takes this one step forward by providing a visual image along with the voice. A $100 webcam is all you need to start recording video and posting it to discussion.

One particularly good place to use video in the online classroom is during the instructor’s wrap-up at the end of each week. I use weekly video posts to provide thoughts on what I believe to be the most important insights to come out of week’s discussion. They are also an opportunity to give video shout-outs to students who made interesting points during the week.

Another option is to do video interviews with student on their thoughts concerning the discussion. These can be done with WeToKu, a free service that allows two people with webcams to record an online video on a split screen that shows both participants at once. Students especially like being about to see and hear another student online.

There is no need to worry about production values in creating these recordings. The lighting does not have to be perfect, and there is no need to edit out the “ums” and other comments. Just make sure to avoid the common mistake of looking at the keyboard rather than the camera. Talk to the camera like you would to a friend. Your language will naturally become more expressive than with text comments, and looking away briefly, rolling eyes, and other facial expressions go a long way towards adding interest. These are a lot of fun to make, and a benefit to all involved.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

Reference:
Ice, P., Curtis, R., Phillips, P. & Wells, J. (2007). Using Asynchronous Audio Feedback to Enhance Teaching Presence and Students’ Sense of Community. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 11(2), 3-25.

Resources:
A video discussion example from my class. Watch it here >>

Free Technology 4 Teachers, 47 Alternatives to YouTube. Go here >>

Russell L. Ackoff tells a wonderful story in the podcast for the book he wrote with Daniel Greenberg “Turning Learning Right Side Up:”

After lecturing to undergraduates at a major university, I was accosted by a student who had attended the lecture. After some complimentary remarks, he asked, “How long ago did you teach your first class?”

I responded, “In September of 1941.”

“Wow!” The student said. “You mean to say you have been teaching for more than 60 years?”

“Yes.”

“When did you last teach a course in a subject that existed when you were a student?”

This difficult question required some thought. After a pause, I said, “September of 1951.”

“Wow! You mean to say that everything you have taught in more than 50 years was not taught to you; you had to learn on your own?”

“Right.”

“You must be a pretty good learner.”

I modestly agreed.

The student then said, “What a shame you’re not that good a teacher.”

The story shows that the skill required to become a college professor is the ability to learn, not the ability to teach. But Ackoff is making the deeper point that most of our learning comes outside of formal education. Even teachers learned most of what they teach outside of formal education.

But we also learn by teaching, and so one of the best ways to teach is to turn students into teachers. Teaching produces learning by not only forcing the teacher to learn the material himself or herself, but also by forcing the teacher to, as Ackoff says, “figure out how to link their frame of reference to the worldview of the person receiving the explanation, so that the explanation can make sense to that person, too.” The explainer must circle around the topic to understand it, and its value, from different perspectives, and thus get underneath it in a way that produces a deeper understanding for themselves.

I require all of my students to produce a digital teaching module on a class topic. The students use wikis, videos, VoiceThread, narrated PowerPoint, and other tools to deliver the content. They also must incorporate an assessment such as an online quiz or game. The result is a much deeper understanding of the material themselves, as well as pride in producing a result that is public and could help others to learn as well.

Consider the ways that you can turn your students into teachers, and thus learners.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

Resources
Podcast on Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg’s book “Turning Learning Right Side Up.” Access it here »

“New Technology Supporting Informal Learning,” Stephen Downes looks at social networks as a means of fostering informal learning. Download the PDF here »

“Project Based Learning Explained” Excellent Common Craft video. Watch the video here »

“FERPA cannot be interpreted as building a total and complete wall between the school and the community. We would have really bad schools if that happened and very disengaged students. This is a good example of where the lawyers can’t get in the way of the learning. Podcasting is a fabulous learning tool. Digital storytelling, amazing. I love Voicethread, as do thousands of educators around the country. Sharing is an important part of learning and the ability to share has increased exponentially in the past couple decades. Some students right here in Kentucky are sharing with students in Brazil every day, for instance. FERPA cannot be extended to prohibit all of this sharing.” (Bathon, 2009)

FERPA was never intended to place students into the box of a physical or online classroom to prevent them from learning from the public. Rather, FERPA requires schools to maintain control over certain student records (Fryer, 2009). These records include medical information, social security numbers, and grades.

Some people think that students cannot release any personally identifiable student information, but this is also not true. There is a large category of personally identifiable student information that can be released as “directory information.” Moreover, colleges routinely post photos of sporting events, club activities, or lectures that contain personally identifiable images of students.

FERPA and Social Media
FERPA applies only to information in the possession of the institution. This is an important point if instructors require students to post to a blog, social networking site, or any other site not affiliated with the institution. In this case, “the activity may not be FERPA-protected because it has not been received and therefore is not in the custody of the university, at least until the student submission is copied or possibly just reviewed by the faculty member.” (NC State FERPA Guidelines)

Policy Suggestions
While it’s important to check with your own institution regarding FERPA policy guidelines, here are some policy suggestions culled from a variety of university sites for instructors who want to incorporate social media into their classrooms:

• When students are assigned to post information to public social media platforms outside of the university LMS, they should be informed that their material may be viewed by others.
• Students should not be required to release personal information on a public site.
• Instructor comments or grades on student material should not be made public. (Interestingly, grades given by other students on “peer-graded” work can be made public under FERPA). (ACE, 2008)
• While not clearly required by law, students under the age of 18 should get their parent’s consent to post public work.

FERPA does not forbid instructors from using social media in the classroom, but common sense guidelines should be used to ensure the protection of students.

References
American Council on Education, Letter on FERPA, May 8, 2008.

Justin Bathon, Controversial New FERPA Rules take Effect Next Week, EdJurist, December 30, 2008, (edjurist.com/blog/controversial-new-ferpa-rules-take-effect-next-week.html)

Justin Bathon, Keeping the Definition of Biometric Records Under Control, EdJurist, October 8, 2009, (edjurist.com/blog/keeping-the-definition-of-biometric-records-under-control.html)

Fryer, Unmasking the Digital Divide, (unmaskdigitaltruth.pbworks.com/w/page/7254094/ferpa)

NC State University FERPA Guidelines, (delta.ncsu.edu/teach/ferpa)

Norwich University FERPA Guidelines, (norwich.edu/academics/pdf/registrar/ferpa-compliance.pdf)

This reminded me of Michael Wesch’s comment that the young people’s anthem in the 90’s, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” contains the line “I feel stupid, and contagious, here we are now, entertain us.” Later the song has the line “Oh well, whatever, never mind.”

Wesch, an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State, was lamenting the student apathy he finds today, which is especially disconcerting from a leader in educational innovation. If Wesch can feel discouraged by student apathy, where does that leave the rest of us?

I’ve found that social media projects do not always generate the kind of enthusiasm that I had hoped for in my classes. This might be partly due to the passive mentality ingrained into the educational experience. Students have been conditioned by years of schooling to be quiet and attentive in a classroom, and are scolded if they talk to one another. We would like to think that social media will immediately overcome this conditioning, but that’s not always the case. It can take time and effort to turn around this expectation.

Social media needs to be introduced within a context that will invite participation. While I don’t have a magic formula for generating participation, I do have some observations on what can help:

• Motivate the participation: In our zeal to maximize the amount of content delivered, we tend not to spend enough time explaining the purpose of a class activity. Spending more time explaining the why of an activity will more than pay off in engagement and learning outcomes.
• Remember, students have boundaries, even online: Activities that use Facebook tend to fail because students see it as their own thing outside of the classroom. In fact, students tend to view faculty who even look at their Facebook page as invading their privacy. It’s thus best to avoid Facebook and set up a social network on a system like Ning that students are not already using for their own purposes.
• Find a student leader: Many students are hesitant to be the first to put themselves out there in an activity, but are happy to follow others. Try to get one or two students to participate first in order to set an example.

Social media can be a wonderful way to generate student engagement in learning, but still must be introduced in a way that will excite students to participate.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage, but I am especially interested in hearing your ideas on how to generate student engagement in social media activities.

Resources
Michael Wesch’s great discussion of today’s students and how they collaborate in social media settings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw

Dan Pink’s famous TED talk on motivation: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

Derek Silvers’ fun video on how to create a movement:
http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

But we now know that knowledge is not like that at all. The mind is not filled with knowledge, but rather builds it on the periphery of what it already knows by connecting it with prior knowledge. Knowledge-building is an activity, not a passivity. It turns out that Socrates got it right. Remember the Allegory of the Cave, where people in darkness (a metaphor for ignorance) come to light (knowledge) by simply being turned toward the sun. In other words, we are not filled with knowledge, but come to it on our own when pointed in the right direction.

This is important because higher education followed Aristotle rather than Socrates. Before the advent of universities, education came through an apprentice system whereby a person (usually male) learned his trade by apprenticing with a master. In other words, a person learned by doing, and in doing steadily gained the skills of his profession.

Higher education came along and pulled the student out of that hands-on experience in order to sequester him or her in a self-contained university to gain knowledge. The result, of course, is that students come into their field ill prepared for the professional environment and need of training in the real world.

Etienne Wenge points out that entering a profession requires learning the communities of practice of that profession—putting on the dressing of the practitioner in order to see the world as the practitioner sees it. He uses the example of a wine aficionado who might speak of a particular wine as having an excellent “nose.” Nobody outside of the profession knows what this means—it is a perception that is learned through years of immersion on the practices of the profession. Unfortunately, in moving from the apprentice model of learning higher education lost the element of communities of practice.

But the Open Education movement is challenging the dominant educational paradigm by re-engaging students with the world outside of the classroom. Since the Learning Management System puts the student into the same closed box as the physical classroom, the Open Education gurus use social media systems such as blogs, wikis, Voicethread, YouTube, and others to connect students to the outside world. For instance, students might post their written work to a blog in order to gather commentary from fellow students and professionals in the field.

In one interesting example, Barbara Ganley an American-born student of Indian heritage who decided to tour India and document her observations in a blog during the tour. Natives started following her blog and reacting to her comments, providing an ongoing commentary with the locals about India and how it appears to an outsider.

This is an exciting time to be a teacher, as social media revolutionizes education and provides opportunities for learning that are not possible in the closed education model. Below are some excellent resources that will give you ideas on how you can harness the power of open education in your teaching.

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

Resources
Amazing Stories of Openness: Wonderful compilation of stories documenting the benefits of openness. Barbara Ganley’s story is among the examples. Take a look »

Digital Habitats and Communities of Practice: A Social Aspect of Learning: Keynote by Etienne Wenger at the Madison Distance Learning Conference in 2010 that explains the communities of practice theory. View »

Open Education Defined: By one of the big names in the Open Education movement, Dave Cormier. Read now »

Introduction to Open and Networked Learning: Excellent slideshow introduction to the topic. View »

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

Some teachers are resistant to showing videos in their classrooms because they think of them as cheating. Teachers get paid to use up class time, and filling it with something made by someone else seems like shirking their duties.

But this is wrong. A teacher’s value is not in the information stored in their head, but rather their ability to pull together the best learning resources to produce a desired outcome. The modern teacher is (or should be) more an aggregator than a producer. Why are thousands of teachers all reinventing the wheel by creating individual lectures on the exact same topic when someone else has already produced an excellent video on it?

Think of videos as a way to bring the best learning resources to your students. One of my favorite resources is TED talks, which are wonderful 20 minute segments by famous thinkers on a variety of topics. My motto now is “If someone can say it better than you—let them.”

Below are some excellent videos on learning itself which are well worth a view. They opened my mind on what teaching really is, and what is possible.

I have also included some repositories of free lesson and video material. I hope that these will provide you with some good material and ideas for use in your classes.

But first, for your holiday enjoyment, another example of the power of social media.

Eric Whitacre is a composer who wrote “Sleep” in 2000. A young girl sent him a video of her singing it, which gave him an idea: Why not invite anyone to send in videos of themselves singing different parts of the song—Bass, Soprano, etc,—which he would then combine into a “Virtual Choir.” The video isn’t about teaching with technology, but it’s nothing short of way-cool. Take a look at the finished piece »

As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of the blog.

Videos on Teaching
Jeff Javis—This is Bull….
A discussion of how traditional education is built on a model of the transfer of knowledge from instructor to student, but that more and more people are reversing the flow by making education a collaborative experience.

Dan Meyer—Curriculum Makeover
An interesting presentation that explores the intersection of instruction, multimedia, and inquiry-based learning, and how the way we teach students isn’t preparing them for problem solving in the real world. While presented by a high school math teacher, the concept applies to most any subject in college as well.

Links to Video and Lesson Material Repositories
Open Courseware Consortium, Open Learning Initiative, OER Commons, OpenLearn, Academic Earth, Video Lectures, Einztein, Federal Resources for Educational Excellence, Apple iUniversity, Scitable, World Public Library, Video Lectures, and Lecture Fox.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

People are just starting to understand the fundamental transformation in communication that has occurred during the past five years, and some educators don’t believe in the power that social media can bring to learning. They think of social media as students sharing personal information on Facebook. But many students are well beyond that in using social media as a combination entertainment/learning device.

One example is through the new remix culture. Not only do ordinary people create videos that are viewed by millions on YouTube, but when they become popular others soon create remixed versions that interpret it in their own way. For instance, there are scores of remixed versions of “Charlie Bit My Finger” floating around YouTube. Each revises certain elements to apply the central themes to some other area, such as work, sports, etc., thus making it their own.

While fun to create, a remix also can be used as a learning activity. A group of medical students did a remix of Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” that they titled “Diagnosis Wenckebach.” Wenckebach is a cardiac arrhythmia, and the resulting video has been viewed by millions. It is now being used by medical students around the world to learn about the condition.

Creating the video was a learning activity. The students who developed it had to fully understand the condition and how it is treated in order to create a coherent and accurate narrative that fits the melody, as well as elements of the original theme.

Remixing is also a fundamentally creative process, as the creator must develop links between two different topics. The process forces the creator to see the topic from new perspectives. This gets to the very heart of creativity, and even genius. Many great scientific breakthroughs were a result of connecting seemingly dissimilar elements. For instance, Einstein came up with his General Theory of Relativity when he saw workers on a roof outside of his window and imagined what would happen if one fell off.

One simple way to use remixing in your classes is to provide extra credit to students who develop a short video that reinterprets some part of popular culture in a way related to the class subject. The original can be a song, commercial, movie, etc. Students can also remix elements of photographs or text.

Consider how remixing can foster engagement, creativity, and learning in your classes.

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Links
Remix examples:

• “Diagnosis Wenckeback” (Student video. A lot of fun. Trust me.)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVxJJ2DBPiQ
• The Class (Parody of “The Office” for a class)
  http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=254

Discussions:

• TEDxNYED—Lawrence Lessig (Great discussion of remix culture)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTUzNKpfio&feature=player_embedded
• The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity (Discussion of social media and communication forms)
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09gR6VPVrpw
• How Social Media can Create History (Discussion of the transformation brought about by social media)
  http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

But you would be wrong. Alex is actually very interested in the opposition between science and religion. He reads books about evolutionary theory and creationism, as well as scientific examinations of religious doctrine. He watches TV documentaries on religion and science, and posts videos on his Facebook page of famous scientists speaking on religion. In fact, he talks about his interest at the dinner table and even plans to write a book on it someday (he is actually a very good writer).

We all know that much of a college education happens outside of the classroom. Colleges foster an intellectual atmosphere around campus by bringing in speakers, and one of the purposes of student centers is to enable evening “bull” sessions around coffee or some stronger drink.

Until recently, students had no way to structure their learning experiences around topics that excite them. They attended talks as they came up, or pursued interests with others they happened to meet. But now social media allows institutions to provide students with a “Personal Learning Environment” (PLE) for pursuing their intellectual interests outside of the classroom.

Imagine that Alex’s university provided each student with a blog to devote to whatever interests him or her. Alex’s blog would focus on religion and science. He would post links to articles that he read, as well as his commentary on them. He would start working out his thoughts on his upcoming book, or how current events relate to his interest. But more importantly, Alex would have a forum to connect with others who share his passion. Group members could share articles or documentaries relating to the topic, and bounce ideas off of each other. Because the PLE would be public, unlike the closed Learning Management System, Alex’s group would be made up of students and non-students from around the world.

Of course, Alex would still attend classes to satisfy his degree requirements, but his PLE would be a way of extending his education through a self-structured and self-organized learning environment. Whereas some of his classes might intersect his particular interest, everything about his PLE would revolve around his interest. Maybe his passion would eventually fizzle, but until then he would be honing his communication and thinking skills through collaboration with others—which will benefit him in any future pursuits.

Is this concept really so radical? After all, students choose their major according to their interest, as well as their outside activities. So perhaps we have all been creating a Personal Learning Environment around our lives. This system is just a way that higher education could facilitate that pursuit.

A few universities and K-12 schools are experimenting with the PLE to improve learning outcomes. Consider how a PLE can work at your own institution.

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Links
“Personal Learning Networks for Education” – A YouTube video explaining the value of a PLN. Watch it now »

“7 Things you Should Know about Personal Learning Environments” – A nice, concise overview from the folks at Educause. Get the pdf »

“The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments” – An interesting article from the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. Read it here »

“Personal Learning Environments, Networks, and Knowledge – A great free course for educators exploring the PLE. Explore »

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

Now José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, challenges this assumption by asking his faculty to put their lectures online and devote face-to-face classes to discussion. His logic is impeccable. Lecturing is simply delivering delivery, and not much different from reading a textbook in this regard. If so, then why must lectures be held in class? An instructor could just as easily record his or her lectures and put them online for students to view at their leisure. Better yet, the time freed up from delivering the same lectures year after year, course after course, could be spent putting together rich multimedia content that combines narrated PowerPoints, podcasts, Prezis, videos, VoiceThreads, etc.

In fact, why should faculty create their own lectures at all? Bowen notes that our system of faculty creating their own lectures is a bit like having every instructor write his or her own textbook. If faculty wrote all of their own textbooks, most textbooks would be terrible. Why not just use the best lectures that have been posted on iTunesU, TED, etc. for content?

I tell faculty that their real value is not the information stored in their head. After all, nearly all of that information is publicly available in books or journals. A faculty member’s real value is in their interaction with students. The back and forth with students in discussion, or commentary on their assignments to improve their writing, for example, is what gives them value. Faculty should focus on this aspect of their teaching and automate as much as possible the simple content delivery part. Yet most faculty have it backwards—clinging to their lectures as their most important function.

Teachers can test the waters of Bowen’s teaching model by putting one or two of their lectures online and devoting the subsequent class to discussion of the topics in those lectures. I’ve done this with wonderful results. But the secret is to avoid the all-too-easy mistake of falling back into lecturing during class time. As faculty, we think that lecturing is our primary duty, and it is hard to break ourselves of this habit.

One option is to assign students to come to class with one question about the lecture content written on a sheet of paper that the instructor collects to initiate discussion. To avoid embarrassment, have the students crumple up their sheets at the beginning of class and throw them around the room for 30 seconds. Then have each student pick up one of the pieces and start reading them in order to guide discussion.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works.

Resources
This video features an interview with José Bowen as he explains why he removed technology from his classroom, and the resulting benefits. Watch it here »

Lecture sites

• TED—Wonderful compilation of short lectures on interesting topics. http://www.ted.com/
• Free Video Lectures—over 18,000 free lectures. http://freevideolectures.com/
• Video Lectures—Great lecture exchange site. http://videolectures.net/
• iTunesU—Must download the player to access the lectures. http://www.apple.com/education/ipodtouch-iphone/

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.

Polling provides an ideal way to both keep a class’ attention and provide a reflective activity to move information into long-term memory. Plus, it’s remarkably easy. Free websites allow you to set up polls that students take by submitting their answers via text message or on the Web. These polls are a wonderful way to engage students in the material and keep their interest. Best of all, the results appear in real time so students can see changes as they come in.

One good use of polls is to gather information about a subject before it is covered. This is especially helpful when the subject concerns information that students might not want to make public with a show of hands. For instance, a teacher could introduce a discussion of cheating on exams by asking students in a large lecture to indicate if they have every cheated on an exam. This could be used to demonstrate that cheating is more common than people think. A science instructor can ask students to guess the results of an experiment before it is conducted to generate thought and interest in the outcome. Forcing students to take a position not only creates reflection, but also commitment to results. Everyone wants their position affirmed.

Another option is to ask students for their opinions and use the results as a way of initiating a discussion on the issue. Or you could ask a simple factual question that you know most people will get wrong in order to demonstrate a widespread misconception.

Polls also can be used after content is presented as a means of generating reflection on the issue. These can be simple factual questions that demonstrate whether the students understood the material, or higher level questions that will help them to retain the material.

Using smartphones to conduct polls
While many instructors consider smartphones the bane of teaching—causing distraction and even cheating during a test—polling turns the technology into a teacher’s advantage by engaging students with the content.

In this screencast, I demonstrate how easy it is to use polling software. Watch it here »

Feedback
As usual, I welcome your comments, criticisms, and cries of outrage in the comments section of this blog.

Links
Poll Everywhere (http://www.polleverywhere.com)
Unlimited polls with up to 30 respondents on the free plan.

Flisti (http://flisti.com)
Super easy polling system. No signup required.

MicroPoll (http://www.micropoll.com)
Good for creating a poll to embed in a blog or some other website.

Vorbeo (http://vorbeo.com)
Another system for creating a poll to embed in your website.

BuzzDash (http://www.buzzdash.com)
Quite a few presentation formats.

TextTheMob (http://textthemob.com)
Free plan allows for up to three questions with 50 responses.

John Orlando, PhD, is the program director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu.