Preventing late work in online courses

A colleague asked a question on our listserve and my response was robust. I decided it needed wider circulation. She asked how to prevent students from turning in late work of shoddy quality in her online courses.

• First of all, make sure you have your late policy clearly stated and make sure they know the consequences of late work.
• Make sure you have good rubrics for the work so you can accurately grade the poor quality so they know why they are getting the scored they earned, late or not.
• Make sure they are aware of the course calendar and remind them of upcoming due dates especially for big assignments.
• If the student has a legitimate emergency they should let you know as soon as possible. The definition of an emergency in my courses is something which cannot be written on the calendar in advance (so... not weddings, and family vacations). I tend to be pretty lenient with emergencies and I think I am pretty good at telling which are the real emergencies. Our students lives are so chaotic that they really could not make up the excuses I see. Real life is crazier than they would dare make up and try to pass off as a fake excuse. My experience is if I give them a little leeway on a real emergency they usually do a great job.
• That said there are always some procrastinators and just lazy folks who want to do the minimum. Then you are back to the first two points about late policies and solid rubrics. 
• In many of my classes students are told that if their work does not meet my standards they will be expected to re-do it. I provide them with support so they know what needs to be fixed and how to fix it, but they don't earn a score until their work is re-done. This is very important if the assignments throughout the course are building to something bigger, like a research paper. I have learned to state a date and time when the re-do must be submitted.
• I am a big believer in positive reinforcement so I also will post Thank you's to everyone who has already completed something such as a survey. This one is tricky, you have to make sure your record-keeping is accurate so you thank everyone who has done whatever it is. I find that usually I immediately get a few others completing the task.
• If they have to post something publicly for peer review by mid-week you are more likely to get the final version on time at the end of the week. I use a lot of peer review.
• I am also finding that making connections with students makes a big difference. If I reach out to those who are chronically late and just have a conversation and make that connection we can often discuss what is happening and why things are coming in late. They sometimes don't know where to find due dates or the calendar and that is an easy thing to fix.
• Finally, I email students first thing after the due date i.e. Monday morning and let them know I did not find their work in the Dropbox. These quick friendly reminders are very helpful if they put it in Draft but did not Submit, or just plain forgot to submit it after their peer review. I usually have at least a couple more pieces of work after such an email.

Sir Ken Robinson gets it right again!

Sir Ken once again uses wit and intelligence to explain why our educational system is not working and how to fix it! Please take note of the need to invest in teachers, how children are suffering from a condition called childhood (not ADHD), how alternative education programs get it right, and why testing should not be the main focus of education. Bring back creativity, inspiration, diversity, expansive curriculums and more because our teachers and students are dying on the vine! I speak as an education professional who predicted all the failings of the testing movement which have come to pass including the horrendous drop-out rate and the bored minds of our students! Sir Ken gets it right! This should be mandatory viewing for everyone from legislators who think they know best about education, to administrators who think they must control schools, to parents who don't understand the underlying issues, and to teachers, who are tired of being deprofessionalized!

Class is cancelled... Not online!

A student in my Collaborative Communities class who teaches online, and is obviously, an online student wrote this in her weekly reflections... 

"As an instructor, I want to structure my class so that the students still have a life. As a student, I want to have a life. What is the best balance between discussion (and requiring students to participate throughout the week) and allowing students the flexibility they need and want from an online class?"
 
Here was my response with some added thoughts which came to me after I sent her the original response...

You have pointed out one of the difficulties of teaching online. We cannot just put a note on the door and say "Class is cancelled today." And I do understand that everyone needs a life.

This class (Collaborative Communities) is a little different in terms of expectations because we are trying to build the habits needed to be a successful online instructor after this course most of you will be doing the practicum. The instructor habits we want to instill in this course have everyone online and visible more than the students have to be in a regular class.

I have taught online for 11 years. I have been through a separation, then later a divorce. My mother died unexpectedly two years ago and my father has advanced Alzheimer's. Even though he is in a care facility it takes a lot of my time. So... how do I keep up with my duties and have a life (or a crisis). First of all in a worst case scenario I would first contact my incredible boss and friend Joan Vandervelde at UW-Stout for my courses there. She would post a note in my courses and then she would cover my discussions or ask another instructor to do so. A good choice for that coverage would be my co-author Lisa Chamberlin. I haven't ever had to ask either of them to do that but I know it is possible. I would handle other institutions for whom I work in a similar way.

At a crisis time, I would try to use my online time very judiciously, read the Q&A's to check for issues if I don't have time for anything else. I would read at least Q&A forums in every class every day. No matter what else is going on I stay current on email because I use my phone for emails.  Even in a crisis I would look at my email. Emails requiring a response I don't have time for right away get marked as Unread.

Sometimes I tell students by email or announcement about an issue, and sometimes I don't. I will say though that even in very serious times I have found that finding a quiet spot for just 30 minutes and checking the discussion boards gives me some peace and normality.

As a student all you need to do is tell the instructor the issue and I think all/most of them would waive deadlines or participation requirements. As an instructor you do what you can, or what you really have to do, and let the rest wait. There does come a time when you have to get caught up though. The longer you let it wait the more challenging it becomes to get caught up.

There is another discussion to be had about participation requirements in general and offering alternatives, that will be another posting.

Letter from the past

Cleaning out my parents' home for an estate sale this letter was found. Wow is all I can say!

Envelope image

Lt. Wm B. Johnson
Box 13
Columbus AFB, Miss.

Mr. & Mrs. Henry L. Vincent
1438 Modoc
Walla Walla, Washington
In my Grandmother's handwriting it says: Very Special

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23 January 1954
Dear Mom and Dad:
I know you will probably have some sort of stroke after receiving a letter from me, but I wanted to start the New Year off right by writing my yearly letter early. Just kidding, of course, but it really has been almost a year and a half since I've written a letter to you. It doesn't seem possible, but it is pretty damn close. I have always meant to write many times before, but Marj does very well in doing the correspondence -- just as she does everything else. She is really doing an exceptional job in her duties as vice-president of the wives club and as chairman for the March of Dimes. I am really proud of heer and I know you are also.

Both of us are anxious to get home and start farming and, of course, settle down in our own house. I really hope that you didn't receive the impression that we were not interested in the house, because we really are looking forward to 

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the time when we will be home. Not that I do not like the Air Force life, because that is wrong. I am interested in my job and am getting to appreciate the Air Force more all the time, but I still do no want to be in the AF longer than the two years.

Unfortunately the regulation mentioned in your last letter concerning Bud Roffler is strictly  a army regulation and still worse would not apply to me if the Air Force had one. Since by law we (ROTC officers) have to serve a minimum of 2 years.

Well time is drawing short and I had better sign off. But before I do there is one more thing I have to say. I hope you notice the first words of this letter, "Dear Mom and Dad," because I have really considered both of you to be the wonderful people that I would like to have for a mother and father. I am truly sorry for being so reticent when it comes to calling both of you by Mom & Dad, but those words have never been used by me that I can remember, so it has been

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something that I have been unduly slow about starting. I hope you understand what I mean because it is what I should have called you long ago. Both of you have been so wonderful and generous and I am very appreciative of all the things you have done for me.

All my love,
Bill

Separating your personal from professional online lives

I read an article today about an interesting topic, the writer was articulate and knowledgeable about online education. I decided this is someone worth following on Twitter (a decision I don't make lightly as you are about to see). As soon as Twitter pulled up her info I clicked Follow, before the feed even finished loading. Twitter shows you the most current postings by someone when you pull up their profile but my system was slow in loading the stream.

As I scrolled down I quickly saw this was not someone I wanted showing up in my professional Twitter stream. The messages went something like this:

• Article about online learning and MOOC's at ...
• Oh, honey I miss you so much, hurry back.
• So sad you are leaving on your trip.
• Article about math education and parent involvement at ...
• Kissy, kissy what a nice morning we had, and we only fight about the little things.

All the personal messages to this person's significant other were mixed in with professional messages. The professional tweets were things I really might have found interesting but the ratio of personal to professional was much too high. In fact it was more personal than professional from what I could see, maybe 2:1 personal kissy, kissy messages.

My Twitter feed is my professional face, my brand, my forum to the eLearning and education worlds. Colleagues and students can count on mostly professional tweets with the occasional personal commentary. The ratio of my personal to professional messages is about 1:100. I think my followers can handle scrolling past the very occasional sports comment or shared recipe.

I have separate Facebook accounts for personal and professional uses as well, not so much because what I share on the personal side needs to be secret. I just don't think my professional colleagues care about my grandchildrens' antics. Those colleagues who are also friends of mine have been invited to both accounts. Students and most colleagues are only invited to the professional account. I also have separate blogs. There is this blog for professional writing (which needs to happen more often) and a personal blog for recipes, hobbies, and sharing personal angst.

What it really comes down to is respect for other peoples' time. My students and general colleagues don't have time to scroll through all my personal thoughts and shared images to find the gems about eLearning. I respect their time, and I respect my time enough to divest myself of folks on Twitter who don't understand the need to separate personal from professional streams. Needless to say, I unfollowed the person within minutes of following her.

Deeper conversations online than face-to-face

Today I expressed the opinion on Twitter that conversations and connections made in online classes are deeper and more layered than those which occur in face-to-face classes. Not only do I believe this strongly based on my experiences in online education as a student, designer, and instructor over the last 13 years but I have comments from many, many students to back this assertion up. I think a discussion of how and why this occurs may require more than one blog post so consider this the start of a conversation. Conducted online... hmmm

Let me start with that hmmm. Whomever is reading this post is now part of a conversation which I very likely never would have had in person. In fact this morning's Twitter exchange with two other educators would never have happened face-to-face, I have never been to the institutions represented by those in the conversation. Online you can connect with people you never would meet IRL (in real life). Online classes bring together a more diverse population than happens in most face-to-face settings. My student population in any particular class might inhabit 3, 4, or more countries all around the globe. Their ages, backgrounds, and culture are usually very diverse. The only thing they have in common is an interest in the topic being studied and an Internet connection.

Deeper conversations occur because of the tools we use in online courses. First picture a traditional classroom. The instructor has a set amount of time for the instructional activities and student questions before students set off for the next class. If Student A asks a question which takes 15 minutes of the discussion time then other members of the class may not get to ask their question at all. Or perhaps they ask it after class where they may get a hurried response other students do not hear and do not benefit from as part of the learning environment.

In an online asynchronous discussion every student can ask questions and get answers from the instructor. Other students can be a part of the discussion of all of those questions. The discussion occurs over a long period of time, such as a week, which allows time for further thought, research, and formulation of well-considered answers and responses. This deepening of the response is something I rarely experienced in face-to-face classes but it is a very regular part of discussions in my online classes. 

I am going to post this and start the conversation. In the meantime I am going to mull the other points rattling around in my brain. I am also going to gather quotes from students about how connected they feel to other students and instructors in online courses. This conversation is likely going to take some time. No bell is going to ring to stop the conversation at the end of a class session. That's not the way conversations happen online.

Up to All of Us - collecting the knowledge

My daughter @meganbowe helped the brilliant Aaron Silvers organize the Up To All of Us "unconference" which was held this past weekend. It was by invitation only. Just a small brain trust of very smart people were invited.

Here are some of the writing and resources which came out of the #utaou meetings. I followed along all weekend via the Twitter hashtag. Anything which includes meeting locations such as "at the firepit" or "by the creek" had to have been an awesome experience! I am envious!

Most of the people have something to do with instructional design but I will let Jay Cross explain this in the blog posting which is the first link

Great explanation of what they learned/how/worked on/why from @jaycross http://www.jaycross.com/wp/2012/02/the-designers-toolkit/

Storify - collection of tweets from #utaou from @chambo_online http://storify.com/chambo_online/the-unconference-of-uptoallof-us

Backchannel resources curated by the wonderful @LnDDave http://davidkelly.me/2012/02/up-to-all-of-us-backchannel-collected-resources-utaou/

Did students cheat from the encyclopedia in decades past?

Think back to 4th grade state reports of decades past (oh I hope they are in the past!)... did students "cheat" on those? Did they plagiarize from the encyclopedia? Of course they did! Why? Because the state report was a terrible assignment. It was poorly planned. There was no real thinking about/with the information in order to meet the goals of the assignment. Regurgitate state flower, state motto, population...

Where the information comes from has changed, the need for excellence in lesson planning has not. If we don't want students to cheat and plagiarize we have to do our part as teachers.

We have to plan assignments which require students to Evaluate the information they come across, Analyze it's usefulness in completing the assignment and Synthesize into something uniquely their own. Note that the three verbs are from Bloom's taxonomy but they are slightly rearranged. My co-author and friend Lisa Chamberlin and I call this EASy. See this presentation... Critical Thinking is EASy

What does an EASy lesson look like... I used to teach ancient ancient history to 8th graders. Not an easy task, but it taught me to teach! Students used to do "live" news reports from ancient Rome, they created advertising campaigns for Mesopotamia, etc. etc. Websites aren't written like live news reports, students had to use the information in new ways to create their live reports (and I filmed them to make them even more authentic). No one is creating advertising for Mesopotamia or Babylonia, students had to use the information and make it into ads. These are just a few examples of EASy from my teaching days.

Students aren't "learning" to cheat because the Internet has information. We need to stop thinking this way and instead, do a better job of lesson planning and teaching.

Evolution of learning... Moving towards informal

One of the conversations I had at #DevLearn's DemoFest last week was indicative of the evolution we are starting to see in #eLearning towards more informal learning... but first let me try to describe DemoFest to set the scene.

Picture a ballroom with about 80 small tables with 4 chairs around each one. At each table a presenter has a +/- 6 min. presentation to share with whomever stops by to listen. The ideas were incredible, so was the noise level! LOL!

One of the presenters discussed his attempts to use more social media and collaboration in the trainings he conducts for his organization. He was talking about a recent incident where a colleague came to his desk and he videotaped her explaining how she had used a learned skill and then taken it further. He wanted to encourage more such sharing and said "but then I will be out of a job" meaning they won't need a training department anymore. I replied, "No you won't be out of a job, but your job will evolve. Your job will be in each of the departments rather than being a separate training department."

This was an idea I heard many times at DevLearn. We need to evolve training and make it more job-embedded, more collaborative, more just-in-time. The piece which may still be holding that back from happening is the fear expressed in the statement, "but then I will be out of a job."

How do we help people understand there will always be a need for training/trainers/educators as we move towards more informal learning? What does this evolution look like?

There was another piece to my discussion with that same presenter. He wanted to encourage more sharing and collaboration so I asked how he validated people who did share. I pointed out that he validated the person when he videotaped her and shared her idea. One of points made in Lisa Chamberlin's (AKA @chambo_online) presentation about the MarshU blogger development program "If you build it will they blog" was how much adults in the workplace still want to be recognized. At MarshU badges for completion of the program were highly prized. I was thinking of these badges when I asked the DemoFest presenter how he validated people in his organization. Such a simple idea but people want to be recognized!

I am also thinking about how informal learning relates to eLearning in general whether it is K-12, higher ed, or enterprise. I have no huge Aha answers to share, just lots of questions! These are not the last musings on this topic by this still ignorant author!

Shhh An Academic Went to #DevLearn

Don't tell any of the attendees at #DevLearn2011 but there was an academic in their midst this week! In fact, I was warned in advance not to "act like an academic." Since I profess right from the title of this blog to be ignorant, I decided that this was yet another area of my ignorance.

Truth be told though I wasn't the only academic at #DevLearn! We were however a minority population and we shouldn't be. This is one of my big takeaways from a wonderful conference! I have a whole series of takeaways and Aha's to share.

For those who are not aware #DevLearn is one of a series of conferences put on by @eLearningGuild #DevLearn has the well-deserved reputation of being the foremost, and the edgiest, conference on eLearning.

The underground definition of eLearning is corporate eLearning, aka The Training Department. One of the major buzzes throughout the conference was how to make training more informal, social, just-in-time, experiential, collaborative...

Hmm! Wait a minute, I hear a lot of these terms when talking about how to make K-12 and higher education better. I am sure though there is some big difference between the corporate and the academic versions of eLearning.

So I kept my mouth pretty much shut and continued to listen. In one of my first conversations a gentleman was talking about the conversion of his face-to-face (f2f) two day 8 hours/day training into an online format.

Those who know me well know that the term conversion is a hot button. I firmly believe eLearning cannot be "converted" from f2f. Courses, training, whatever you call the learning events, must be engineered completely differently than f2f trainings if they are going to be effective.

This gentleman went on to say that converting the trainings into 8 hour online sessions wasn't effective for the facilitators or the learners. He was looking to chunk the content more, stretch out the training, give people time to absorb the information and practice the skills.

Sounds a lot like teaching best practices in general. In fact his f2f sessions would probably be a candidate for chunking the content and giving folks time to practice the skills. But once again, I was thinking like an academic. I nodded in agreement but didn't once mention pedagogy or learning theory or brain research but he sure could have used some of that knowledge about how people learn.

There were many such times throughout the conference experience. I left Las Vegas yesterday thinking...

1. K-12 and higher education are doing a LOT of eLearning. They should be at this table in eLearning Guild, and at #DevLearn talking about and thinking about how people best learn online.
   
2. Corporate eLearning and instructional designers could learn a lot from "academics" and academics can learn a lot from corporate folks. We should be encouraging this conversation, not discouraging it.
   
3. eLearning whether it is corporate or academic is still, despite all the talk about informal learning, organized around training events. Call them courses which are a semester long, or an 8 hour 2 day training (both are training events), there is very little true informal learning happening.

And shhhh I am told that a certain Russian educational theorist... by name Vygotsky, was mentioned in a Friday morning presentation. I saw it on the Tweet stream! I guess I am not the only one who needs to not "act like an academic!" Vygotsky... Vygotsky! Still laughing!

This ignorant academic has more insights about #DevLearn, informal learning, how people learn. Stay tuned!

The essential nature of 8th graders

I was responding to another teacher who asked about my teaching awards and about working with 8th graders. By the time I was done writing my message, I realized it was a blog posting...

I taught in Walla Walla, WA and won the state Excellence in Education award and then won the national Milken Award. That was a life-changing time in many, many ways. But... the way I won the awards was using the following philosophies, maybe they will help you. First of all, even Socrates complained about 14 year olds and how they wouldn't listen etc. I realized if they hadn't changed in a couple thousand years then I wasn't going to change the essential nature of 14 year olds. So instead of trying to change who they were, I changed the way I taught to match their personalities. At 14 they

• can't do anything alone. Everything, even going for a drink of water, requires at least one buddy.
• need to sprawl. Their bodies are growing so fast and the hormones are going up and down constantly they just really cannot sit in a desk for extended periods.
• know everything and adults know nothing. When my daughter informed me that I was brushing my teeth wrong (according to her, not according to the dentist) I really got a lesson in knowing "nothing."
• believe they are adults. Period. They do.
• have to know why they need to know something.
  

So I created a whole curriculum which required them to work in partners or groups for nearly everything. We did stuff big, like poster paper on the floor instead of notebook paper on a desk. I played dumb (because I am an adult and I know nothing) and let them teach me everything. Everything!

And for the last two points keep in mind that I taught the most ancient of ancient history. To be honest I don't think I ever learned about Babylonia or Mesopotamia so I really had to sit in their seats and think how this could be relevant. I used to sit in their seats metaphorically a lot and think why should I care about... If I couldn't picture the teacher convincing me I should care then I knew they would be lost.

So my curriculum was Lehmann Enterprises. I "hired" them as unpaid interns (remember they think they are adults) the first day of school and all of the content was taught through work-based products. They created advertising, did live news shoots (which they had to script), made travel brochures, ran an election in which the whole school voted about Sparta or Athens... The content was embedded in what was being advertised, or being shown on the news, or what was in the travel brochures etc.

When your history students are sneaking out of other peoples classes to advertise for Sparta so the 6th graders would vote for Sparta and not Athens; when 8th graders are hurrying down the hall and saying "Can we start before the bell rings?" when they still as adults talk about Sparta vs. Athens, or false Buddha images, or their Century 21 BC ad... You know you created something compelling for them. And talk about learning, and unintended lessons Wow!

They learned the history and didn't even know they were learning it... Which is why the whole "teach to the test" movement of the last 10 years has made me crazy. If you make learning really interesting and compelling they will learn everything they need for the dumb test and a lot, lot more. Instead we are making school so incredibly boring that they hate learning. And... they do worse on the tests! Makes me crazy, crazy, crazy!!

Whew! That's a lot! But you asked so I got on my soapbox. The main thing to remember is you are not going to change the essential nature of 14 year olds. They are who they are.

Begging for communication

Can I just say... I hate to beg. Does anyone really like to beg someone for communications? Probably not, but it is becoming a real pet peeve with me.

Several business people I have been dealing with... Well let's just say I believe if they want my business they will provide some service and will communicate with me. I shouldn't have to keep asking and begging for the information I want/need to move forward with a business arrangement. Grrr

And as an online instructor I shouldn't have to beg students to communicate with me. A couple of recent instances have me really perplexed. I wasn't sure one student was getting my messages. In my emails I said, please let me know if you are getting my messages. Can I be more clear than that? I expect you to reply. I shouldn't have to tell you to reply, as a matter of courtesy a student should say "Thank you I got your message about blah and I understand/will do the following..." I am very prompt at returning student emails... they should promptly let me know they got my message.

In another case a student let me know after a multi-week disappearance from an online class that they had a medical issue. Unless you are in a coma, please ask someone to open your email and send a quick message to the instructor letting them know there is a medical emergency. In this case the medical issue wasn't an emergency at all and the student could have advised me about the need for an extension of due dates. However since the student did not contact me in advance or at any time during the several weeks of absence nor were there replies to my messages asking if there was a problem, I had no choice but to apply the late policy.

Communication is a two-way street. Students have a responsibility to communicate with instructors. And instructors have a responsibility to reply in a prompt, informative manner. Making me beg repeatedly to find out if the student is getting my messages offering technical assistance so I know if the help worked just ticks me off. And I end up writing a blog posting! In this case I guess the ignorance lies with the online student population. Hopefully the following plainly stated message helps dispel that ignorance: Students... you have a responsibility to communicate with the online instructor!

You have now heard of sexting - talk to your teen

Thanks to Congressman Weiner many adults are now less ignorant about the phenomenon known as "sexting." Your teenager, likely snickering in the background at your reaction to the recent nhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifews, has known about sexting for quite a while. And now is the time to talk to your teenager.

Start with a discussion but don't lead the discussion. Tell them you are just becoming aware of this and want to know what sexting experiences they might have "observed." If your child believes you are about to attack them you won't learn anything and the point is to first and foremost learn what your teenager has experienced to date. So ask what they have observed then listen. Dispassionately! If you react and start lecturing you won't learn anything. Just listen!

After they tell you the sexting involving their "friends" ask if they have had any such experiences. If you have been quietly listening and taking it all in, this might be when you really hear some revelations. Keep listening! Even if you are shocked, or upset, keep listening!

Ask your teenager what they think about the current news - an adult man contacting young women having racy conversations and sharing inappropriate pictures. Keep listening. Now is when you will learn something about the underlying moral values you have already instilled in your child. You will also learn how their point of view about sharing things online may be different from yours. Later you will have a conversation about these things but right now you are still eliminating your own ignorance and gathering information.

Ask your teenager if there is anything on their computer or their phone which they wouldn't want a family member to see. Their facial expression will relate volumes and may not match the answer they give. Your goal is to have this be open communication so if you jump into discipline mode now this conversation wilhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifl be over. And you will have ruined the chance to have conversations about deep and important topics later.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

End the conversation now. Period! You need time to process what your child has told you and they need to see this was a safe conversation. You will have opened the door to further talks if you end the conversation without reacting. Thank them for helping you understand this phenomenon and invite further conversation.

At a later time, if discipline and parental oversight are needed, move into that role. When you do here are a few resources. I will share further resources as I find them, and I will share parental oversight suggestions and tips in a future posting. Today's message was to start a conversation and then LISTEN!

Connect Safely: Tips to Prevent Sexting
Talking about Sexting

Global education or spatulas and prison cells

A teacher in my Computers for Educators Level II course posted his thoughts about using technology to help our students make global connections. His message was so eloquent I asked to share it. Thank you Jeff Meis!

It was in the “Did You Know?” video from module 2 that stated China will soon be the number one English speaking country in the world. From The English Blog, a review of an Irish Times article about learning English in China states that, “in China, English allows you to travel and to gain social advancement, and English-language teachers have become minor celebrities.” This is a commentary on China’s goal of becoming an industrial leader in a global economy. They recognize that the international language of business is English and their top export markets are the European Union and The United States of America. China recognizes that in order to compete globally they must learn about and adapt to their most viable trade partners.

The United States of America’s top export market is Canada. Some might not think Canada’s culture is too different from the United States’. Have you ever been to Canada? Quebec is far different than southern California. But still, most of Canada is English speaking which requires little language and cultural training on the part of Americans. However, the next top export markets are China and Mexico. Most would consider these countries as having cultures quite different the United States. As a country, if we are to continue to trade globally, to succeed globally, and maintain a high quality of life in the United States, we must maintain, expand, and create economic partnerships. We can’t do that with the expectations other countries will always adapt to the United States’ cultures. If we are educating our students in preparation for higher education which in turn is preparing them to work in a global economy then we must educate them on and provide experiences with other cultures.

For example, did you know that when conducting business in China it is proper etiquette to accept business cards with both hands and you should not discuss business at meals. Or when conducting business with Dubai via email a common way to end a message is “Aa,” which is slang for the Arab greeting “Assalamu alaikum.”

Sites and tools like the Global Education Collaborative, ePals, iEarn, Skype, Voicethread, Ning, The Flashmeeting Project, and Education Beyond Borders are examples of ways students, teachers, and others can communicate and collaborate internationally. If we can create these experiences for students, virtual or otherwise, then we are preparing them for success in the 21st century.

If we don’t create these experiences and, instead, we keep education stagnant then we might as well give our students spatulas and/or build more prisons.

Young teacher asked - How do I get more training...

A young teacher in my technology for teachers course said, "I am going to be a math teacher in the future. Where can I get more training about how to use technology in the classroom?"

I encouraged other students to add to the list below. Please comment on this post and add your own ideas, I will share them with my class.

* Use the professional organizations to which you belong such as NCTM. They have a website with tons of support for teachers, they have conferences and publications. * * Join other related organizations such as ISTE.
* Get on email mailing lists for these organizations so you are alerted to new books, publications, articles, webinars etc.
* Search online for tutorials including YouTube and TeacherTube videos, Common Craft videos etc.
* Look at the resource lists from the math book publisher. Most of them have websites along with tutorials and virtual manipulatives.
* Use social media to build your professional learning network (we will discuss PLN's later in this course by the way). I use Twitter for this purpose, I know the minute a new article/blog post/news item etc. is published that I might be interested in. In addition my professional learning network will answer questions such as the one you asked here and will send me to new resources I might never have found...

Social media... Not just social or for socializing - News from Joplin

Thank you to Kristin Lineberry a student in my University of San Diego Technology for Teachers Level II course for this incredible and moving insight.

Kristin said:

I will be the first to admit that I am a facebook "lurker." I have had an account for about 3 years now, and at first it was fun and amazing to reconnect with all my college and high school friends. I rarely post a status update, but I log on to facebook almost daily to read the interesting and sometimes amusing anecdotes that my facebook "friends" post. I have totally avoided twitter... not only do I not really "get it," but I just don't understand constantly sending out "tweets" about myself to an invisible audience, many of whom I don't even know! I became an avid texter only about a year ago, and I have never used skype.

If you are a high school or middle school teacher, you are aware that the majority of our students get all of this. They not only post on facebook, they "tweet", they text, they IM, they email, they skype.... and on it goes. In the "Did You Know?" video we watched this week we learned that it took TV 13 years to reach a target audience of 50 million, but that it took facebook only 2 years to reach the same. Like it or not, social media is our future and we need to learn to embrace it.

This week, Joplin, MO was hit by a horrific tornado. My husband is from a small town about 10 miles from Joplin, and my in-laws still live there. We didn't hear about the tornado on the news, we heard about it first on facebook only minutes after it happened. Within minutes, many of my husbands high school friends were posting all kinds of information on their facebook pages. We learned that phone lines were down, power was out, most cell lines were tied up, but facebook was the best way to communicate. The principal of destroyed Joplin high school even stated in a newspaper article that all communication about the school would come through facebook. And this is when I realized: social media is not just for socializing. People were looking for loved ones- others would repost the information on twitter. Many facebook sites shot up instantly with information about how to help: everything from naming missing people to helping reunite lost pets with owners.

Kay mentioned a post by a previous student in which she discussed her son and friends using facebook as a forum to discuss coursework. I thought that was pretty amazing. Social Media sites like facebook are obviously here to stay. But what place do they have in education? I know facebook is blocked at many school sites now. Should it be? I ask your opinion on this because I am really not sure.

In the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, they mention Life and Career Skills as an important component of education. Under this heading are subtopics like: flexibility and adaptability, and social and cross-cultural skills. Critical thinking is also mentioned with communication and collaboration being an integral part of the learning process. Students can obviously communicate and collaborate in a discussion group on a page like facebook. Does this have a valid place in education today? I believe that it does. As we saw in videos and read in readings this week, the job market has changed immensely. People now do business over computer screens with partners on the other side of the globe. Technology and social media especially, has made us all closer and given us all more information. I believe that we need to start incorporating some of this into education so that students are better prepared... and they learn that social media can be for more than just socializing.

Teaching comes before Technology even in the dictionary

I have had a long email conversation with a student who is creating online technology integration training for teachers. I realized this is a conversation which should be shared...

The conversation began when I put this comment on a recent assignment.

Teaching comes before technology even in the dictionary (quoted from Making the Move to eLearning). I would propose that you teach teachers how students can learn more effectively when using technology and not teach them about specific tools. If you look at the NETS-T standards from ISTE you will see the emphasis is not on tools and technology tips/tricks but on what technology can bring to learning. My little soapbox, I will get off it now but I couldn’t let this pass without asking for the focus to be curricular, not on tools.

My student replied... Whoa! Thank you. That expression is closer to what I was hoping to accomplish with Technology training for teachers. If teachers can use various multimedia to excite, peak interest and curiosity then the end result is more internalization of knowledge and skills for the students.

This has been my quandary since I started thinking about technology training for teachers a couple of years ago - do I present information on the 'how to' side of technology tools so teachers can become proficient using them? The expectation is once they know how to use technology, they will incorporate it in their lessons because they will understand its impact on their students. The other side is do I present the information of technology tools and their impact and leave teachers to their own devices on acquiring the 'how to' skills?

What I proposed in an earlier class was combining them by teaching the 'how to' side and requiring that the teachers use reality (project based) lessons to demonstrate an understanding of technology's use in the classroom. Am I on the right track with this?

Quite honestly, if I had my way in the classroom, those that have smart phones or notebooks would be able to use them in the class to do research. After Japan's tsunami, I used my iphone and document reader to show YouTube' videos on tsunamis and earthquakes to answer questions from a group of very nervous 5th graders who thought Alameda was going to be underwater - I had to use my iphone because the district's filter prevents access to YouTube and social sites but that's a whole other issue.

And I responded... The biggest fallacy is that if teachers know how to use a tool they will know how to integrate it into the curriculum. Really forward thinking creative teachers might, maybe. The vast majority need to see examples. If they see some examples they then can make the leap into new ways of using the tech in their curriculum area.

The way I was taught in the most intense but most valuable educational experience of my life was to be given a curricular task (just like we would give the students) be shown a few just-in-time tech skills to use with one or two tool choices, provided with or reminded of resources for figuring out other things with the tools (remember to use the Help menu... for example) and then given time and opportunity to struggle. Adults do not like to struggle but they learn from it.

Children tolerate struggling a little better, they seem more used to having to figure things out. We slowly train them out of that ability to figure things out on their own. By the time they are in high school they just wait for us to give them the answer because they know we will. If we let them create, let them find more than one answer, and if we accepted multiple forms of the answer, and we refused to step in and help them, they would keep that characteristic, but we don't. Think of how a child figures out a video game. They try, they lose, they try again and learn a new trick and make it a little farther. They share tips with friends and get a little farther. There is no manual, no help menu, they struggle and they love it. Schools train all this out of them, we teach them there is one right answer, the teachers knows the right answer, and if you wait long enough the teacher will help you get the answer they wanted all along. We might say we do something different in education, a few of us do, but the majority of education is exactly that for students... no wonder they prefer video games.

Bottom line is all the teachers are used to a world where there is one right way to do something, someone knows what that right way to do it is, and if you wait they will help you get it... Making them do something with multiple avenues to be right and letting them struggle on their own somewhat is good for them but uncomfortable.

The intermediate step is to give them the curricular task, give them a few skills to get them going, provide them with scaffolded resources in case they need them and a support network of other learners, and then help them before the frustration level is so great that they quit. The real trick in online ed is knowing when their frustration level is getting too high and it really is an art in online ed and I freely admit I have screwed up more than once and let someone get too frustrated.

This is a really long answer to tell you that I would suggest you design curricular tasks and projects and embed the necessary skill-building and resources into the support for the tasks. And keep the lines of communication open between them and other students, and between them and you.

Names on your "papers"

The following is from a class I recently taught which had a small number of enrolled students. This is important for all of us to remember as we set up technology projects so it is shared here for all to see.

As I gathered all the Final Project documents so that I could email comments to all of you I realized that 4 of the 5 had no name in the document or in the file name. This was something we did not cover in the course protocols or the course materials but is something to consider as you work with technology and your students.

Imagine if you had 20 students and they all turned in ProjectX.doc to you? First of all, your computer might overwrite each item if they have the same name meaning you will end up with only one document in your folder. Or... it will change the file name for you to ProjectX1.doc ProjectX2.doc but you still have no idea whose work you have in your folder until you open the document. Even then, you will only know whose work you have if students have put their name inside their document. If the ratio from this course 1 of 5 with a name continued on for 20 students you would have 4 documents with names inside and 16 without names.

I don't bring this up to embarrass anyone, but instead this is something to really think about before doing tech projects. Usually I teach my students a file naming protocol and I prescribe it for each assignment. Usually it is last name first initial and the name of the project. So for this assignment in our course my final project would have been named

LehmannKFinalProject.doc

This is my fault for not prescribing a file naming protocol. Telling teachers to put their name inside their document, in other words, "put their name on their paper" is something I don't think I should have to say. However, I know I do. I had a professor in my Master's studies who really took me to task when I did this same thing. He told me it was "inexcusable at the graduate level to submit an assignment with no name in it." I don't think I have forgotten to do it since then.

As you all move forward, think about file naming protocols and title page/slide/name on your project protocols. Think through the methods for students showing you which work is theirs. Put those procedures in your directions for your technology projects and reiterate them during the creation and submission phases.

Teaching and learning come first

Just a quick post... I have had a lot of big projects on my to-do list and #CCK11 took a big time backseat. I have some thoughts on why my first MOOC experience turned out this way and will share them in a day or two but first, a fun visual.

I do a lot of work with the fine folks at ISTE as a project reviewer. Of late I have been steeped in the refreshed NETS-T (National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers). I also have been rewriting my teaching with technology course for the University of San Diego. I decided I need to show the power of visualization to the teachers who will take my course and I copy/pasted the language of the NETS-T into Wordle. Here is the result



Frankly it is not a surprise to me that learning is the main term in the standards. As I said in the book I co-authored with Lisa Chamberlin "Teaching comes before technology, even in the dictionary." And learning comes from good teaching! That's all for now! Just a quick post of my visual with explanation!

Familiar ground

Put someone in a stressful work environment and they will retreat to the things they know well and things which worked in the past. We know student teachers often turn to "stand and deliver" teaching methods after a few weeks of student teaching because they are overwhelmed, anxious, becoming exhausted etc. If Vygotsky were observing them he would likely say they were beyond their zone of proximal development. Others might say they returned to their security blanket. I'll call it... familiar ground.

I only mention the V-man because I have been beyond my zone of proximal development (ZPD) in CCK11 so far. ZPD is a fancy way of describing the area between being too comfortable (and bored) and being pushed too far (and therefore too stressed to learn). Inside the zone between bored and stressed is the edge of chaos (or educhaos as my friend Lisa Chamberlin calls it) where we learn. I believe in this because I have a) experienced, b) seen it, and c) utilized this knowledge to adjust the learning environment for bored/stressed students.

Image by Greg Westfall

Trying to understand connectivism sent me outside my ZPD and down the rabbit hole. To climb back out I returned to familiar ground, searching for resources. Work and life continually have me looking for information, research, people, etc. who can help me. I see now that I make connections to get answers and further my understandings. And I can only do this inside my ZPD.

Today's searching brought me to the blog role for CCK11 where I selected about 10 new blogs to follow. My choices included people new to blogging and connectivism, those who seem to 'get it', people outside the USA and people in fields related to but different from my higher education role. Again, these are connections, or potential connections, to grow my understanding.

I also returned to two videos which make me laugh and make me think -- two of my favorite things!! Both are TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson. With my newfound interest in connectivism I heard his messages just a little differently this time. I made different connections with his themes. Schools kill creativity video --> The follow-up Bring on the Learning Revolution video

My ignorance and confusion about connectivism are still in abundance but returning to familiar ground has allowed me to learn a little, just a little, more today.