From Lynn Nielsen at UNI - How to teach effectively with computers in higher ed

Lynn Nielsen at University of Northern Iowa wrote the following message and gave me his permission to post it here.

I teach at a university in the Midwest in the graduate and undergraduate programs in elementary social studies education. A friend recently sent me an online article titled Laptops vs. Lectures: Let's Ban Lectures! found at http://link.social.com/c/twitter/1349941/1268664428/b/cTEW0S/b8E8RD

In this article the author, Mike Elgan asserts, "Lecturing professors nowadays face a room full of students paying full attention -- to their laptops. One science professor achieved minor YouTube fame recently when a video surfaced showing him freezing a student's laptop in liquid nitrogen, then smashing it on the floor. The professor commanded: "Don't bring laptops and work on them in class!" (I wonder how many university students watched that video during class.) A lecture, by definition, is a method of teaching whereby a person talks and an audience pays attention. But a laptop is an interruption machine that fragments attention. Lectures and laptops are incompatible activities.........."

I teach all of my graduate courses online and my undergrad courses in a computer lab. My response to Elgan is summarized in the following paragraphs:

I don't think teaching is either/or--either computers or lectures. There will always be the place for a really good lecturer. Most professors however (me included), are not all that good at lecturing. I'm fine as long as I am giving directions about procedures or explaining concepts. But delivering a powerful and breathtaking monologue on the importance of the American Revolution, isn't my forte.

So..........teaching in a computer lab I start class with an announcement--"two-minute warning to close down your personal email, Facebook, MySpace, etc." Then I ask students to find the syllabus and the web page that supports the topic for the day. While I'm introducing the topic I ask them use their little Google search box several times to keep them doing something while I'm talking. The questions all depend on the topic.

For example, we were addressing teaching and learning history the other day. I had them Google "American history timeline". The first link up was a long convoluted timeline that isn't a story at all but rather an index of dates drawn from American history. So I asked my students to look over the timeline to find a story. They couldn't find one. They found pictures of presidents and dates and events. Then I talked about the Declaration of Independence. Who wrote it? We Googled it to confirm Jefferson as the author. I told them the story of Thomas Jefferson going to his grave angry at Congress for excising text from his original draft of the Declaration. We Googled images of the original draft and found lines crossed out, etc. I asked them how they might use this document from history with their students when teaching writing. Then I told them a couple stories about Jefferson in Paris and how Abigail Adams kept a running correspondence with him. More Googling........and giggling. She and TJ didn't always agree on everything. I asked the students to find the name of the woman who was TJ's mistress for a brief time while living in Paris--not Sally Hemings. That led to discussion about history and story. I keep a thread of continuity moving through the class period while at the same time following a few rabbit trails here and there, partly because it's the nature of the WWW. One idea links to another.

To demonstrate the connectedness of history I send my students in pairs to the Yahoo homepage. They are to identify a news issue for the day--important or trivial--to see if they can make six or more leaps of free association traveling through history and geography--TIME and SPACE.. Example: Yahoo--1) Lindsay Lohan's house in Los Angeles is burglarized; 2) Movie stars were the object of the McCarthy investigations in the 1950s; 3) McCarthyism was an artifact of the Cold War era where the US and the USSR were competitors for world dominance; 4) The Soviet Union started in 1917; 5) the Russian Revolution of 1917 was led by Lenin; 6) John Lennon (homophone) was part of a different kind of revolution, a cultural revolution of the 60s and 70 in the West that eventually spread to the entire world..........etc. Students use Internet resources to confirm information they believe to be true or to complete partial understandings about historical facts. This activity takes about 5 minutes but uses the power of the Internet to rapidly access information to connect one fact with another, one location to another. History is fundamentally about connections over time and space. Unfortunately history teaching is usually reduced to the study of an historical indexing system (dates) with little if any story. My students get the picture.

I am very clear with them regarding my expectations. While in class, they are not to be on unrelated sites such as Facebook or their personal email. But if I maintain enough interactive work with the computers, there's no problem. I also grovel a bit telling them that I have a very fragile ego and if I even suspect they are not finding my class to be the pinnacle of academic inspiration, I go sleepless that night. So I ask them to pleeeeeeeeeease help me sleep by paying attention in class and not doing Facebook while I'm talking or giving directions.

I give a lot of spontaneous "let's find out....." questions during class. Almost any topic can be connected to another about which we may want to find more information. If I see students begin to look tired, I crank up the searches. I don't ever want to teach F2F without computers again. One of my classes this semester is scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays but only with computers on Thursdays. I've substituted a lot of F2F Tuesday classes with online independent activities because I can do very little of value in a room where I'm talking in front of a screen. It's a paradigm shift I don't think I can undo. It's hard to put the toothpaste back into the tube.

"Just remember.........If we're not having fun (online), it must not be social studies."

The unwired experiment - What have we really taught them?

Today a couple of people I respect highly passed along an article called Toughest college test: No cell phones, no Facebook. Such articles always make me wonder though, what the professors true purpose was and whether it was achieved? What was the educational objective?

I truly hope the professor issued the unwired challenge AND THEN passed along some interesting and challenging activities for the students to do during their hiatus from the wired world. I hope students were involved in exciting learning opportunities they might have otherwise overlooked. Because if all the professor did was say, you cannot use wired devices period, leaving the students with nothing more than that challenge I can guess the true results. Undoubtedly today's college students became even more convinced that the non-wired world is a boring wasteland and those who live in a non-wired world are antiquarians.

If there are valid reasons to unplug from the wired world make clear what those reasons are and engage the learners. If all you want to do is show them you can unplug and they cannot you have just shown them once again that you do not understand their world and you never will, and you therefore are really not worth their time.

The Power of Networking Tools like LinkedIn

Yesterday I saw a message requesting proposals for book chapters posted in a discussion group on LinkedIn. I belong to several groups on LinkedIn, the particular one where I saw the message was Technology-Using Professors. The message was actually 10 days old and the deadline for proposals had passed but I went ahead and made contact with the gentleman anyway.

Between yesterday and today a flurry of emails went back and forth between the gentleman Charles Wankel, my co-author (and partner in all things non-criminal) Lisa Chamberlin and I. As of this afternoon we will be writing a chapter for a book entitled Higher Education and Social Media. Our chapter will be about the use of Twitter in higher education. I also got a minor teaching job off one of the job boards on LinkedIn a couple months ago.

My point is... There is great value in spending a few minutes a week maintaining your professional networks. I actually had not been on LinkedIn in a few weeks and nearly missed this opportunity. If you are not on LinkedIn, you really should be. This is not the only professional networking site to which I belong but LinkedIn is a highly varied collection of people and widely used by business folks. LinkedIn is definitely not just for educators.

http://www.linkedin.com

Frustrated with YouTube, Here are Alternatives

I was in a conversation with some teachers the other day who expressed their frustrations with trying to use videos in their classrooms. YouTube is blocked by district filters but it seems to be the go-to resource for everyone. It shouldn't be. YouTube is blocked by nearly all educational filters. And for very good reasons.

Here is what I just sent to the teachers, now sharing with everyone!

Here are a few resources of video sites which may not hit the filters like YouTube does. I have tons and tons of resources in all sorts of areas and a lot of experience incorporating technology effectively into education. Draw on me whenever you like for ideas and resources. Many of my Twitter messages are education technology related. If you are a Twitter user follow me as kay_lehmann and watch for messages marked #edtech

http://www.teachertube.com/ (Definitely a go-to resource for every teacher who wants to use video in their lessons)
http://www.nibipedia.com/index.html (This is new to me, I haven't used it yet so check it out carefully)
http://www.ted.com/ (This is a resource I keep meaning to dive deeper into and haven't, great talks by great people)
http://www.teachers.tv/
http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

OK, this is one of my fav blogs because it starts with my fav word, free! Free Technology for Teachers by Richard Byrne is a great resource. Here is his list of 30+ alternatives to YouTube

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/06/30-alternatives-to-youtube.html

Building your network

I was just giving some advice to teachers in a Computers for Educators course and thought I should pass this along.

I do a lot of learning these days because I am a regular user of Twitter follow me as @kay_lehmann and as the moderator for a weekly Twitter-based chat about eLearning as @distedchat

I really only use Twitter for professional connections and only follow people who are interested in education (except for two cooking folks). I believe strongly that we all need to have a personal learning network. However I realize many of you don't know where to start. First, let me share my Delicious links with you, you can view my links at: http://delicious.com/onlineteach The links are searchable by keyword and do search because otherwise you will be lost in an incredible maze of diverse links.

I suggest you also read this article http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/2637a8ed#/2637a8ed/12
and find the ways to build your social learning environment which work for you. What works for you won't work for others and vice-versa.

As a wise teacher (follow him on Twitter as @budtheteacher AKA Bud Hunt) said in a webinar last night, "If it feels icky, Stop!" meaning, if you don't want to be on Facebook, Twitter or other sites, don't. That is your choice!

However there are so many ways to learn now, and so many ways to stay up-to-date and connected that I advise you to try a few and then, if they feel icky, Stop! But give some of them a try first! I resisted Twitter for years and am sorry that I missed out on so many great articles and insights!