Craig Wright
Responding to Isolation
(Run time 10:03-posted 2/3/21)
There is an awareness of a spreading feeling of a disconnect or isolation between faculty, students and staff. Prof Wright shared his suggestions, the first of which was to consider is not putting so much pressure on yourself. It seems that students are far more used to the online environment than many of the rest of us. In fact, more and more of us are turning to online interaction for both entertainment and information. It’s also important to understand we are all doing the best we can and making great progress. Step in and take a deep breath. You got this.
Jacki Strenio
Using Hypothes.is to Boost Collaboration
(Run time 16:09-posted 1/7/21)
“My students are already using this. The first day of class... they are replying to one another, validating, questioning. I hear ‘Oh yeah, this is confusing,’ so I can address concerns right away. That is really helpful to me with the limited time we have on Zoom.”
Jacki took part in testing the Hypothes.is social annotation tool in her Economics class last term. She was kind enough on the first day of class to share helpful suggestions on establishing collaboration and connections between students, more important than ever in Covid times. With Hypothes.is, she is able to go beyond the text of her syllabus and journal articles to shared inquiry. Join us for insights into using the program for textbooks and beyond.
Margaret Perrow
Building Community with Video Forum Posts
(Run time 10:16–posted 1/6/21)
Sometimes simple ideas provide an excellent return. Margaret Perrow demonstrates this by asking her new students to create a self introduction using the Moodle video recording option in a discussion forum. Not only was the goal to meet her students prior to class, but to help establish a learning community within the class. The videos were not only successful initially, but proved valuable later in the term as well. When combined with a strong prompt, video posts can even lead to useful self evaluation skills for students. Sample Prompt and Student Instructions
Teresa Coker
Building Community with a Class Collage Activity
(Run time–6:17–posted 12/9/20)
It is exciting to see a basic idea take off and begin to develop in new directions. Here, the gathering of objects to bring to class and present is turned into both a collection of student photos, and a writing opportunity to dig deeper into those pictures and share stories. In several cases these stories were very rich and honest. This led to building a strong community and very collaborative educational environment. Please join us and see how this may be adapted to your class.
Maggie Vanderberg
Using Google Docs for Note Taking
(Run time 9:24–posted 11/10/20)
By adding a shared team-based Google doc to the Zoom activity, Maggie discovered that her students worked more collaboratively in their breakout rooms. By encouraging and following students' comments in their docs, she could watch the learning process in real time, observing and helping as needed. This also allowed for examples of student work to be highlighted and shared with the class for positive feedback and recognition of good teamwork.
Using Google Slides for Note Taking
(Run time 5:54–posted 11/10/20)
While conducting her own summer institute with a number of local K-12 teachers, Maggie used an adaptation of “Chalk Talk.” Participants worked on a task in breakout rooms using Google slides to organize their notes. The slides included built-in guidelines for their task along with a tutorial and copy-and-paste elements like post-its. The goal is to help students organize and present their work collaboratively with more visual options than Google docs offer. (Plus she has a suggestion to help you speed up applications while screen sharing in Zoom.)
Music: Individual License, Commercial, SOCAN. Funk that Rock, Rob Reid
