CAT recently hosted a panel discussion titled “Web Logs and Scholarship.” I recorded the audio live, so for those who couldn’t make it, here’s a slidecast of the entire discussion — just under an hour.
...continue reading "Web Logs and Scholarship"
Author: Bart Everson
Creative Generalist in the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development at Xavier University of Louisiana
Social Bookmarking Presentation
Last week I offered a workshop titled "Social Bookmarking: Using Delicious." I recorded the audio live, so for those who couldn't make it, here's a slidecast of the entire 55 minute presentation.
...continue reading "Social Bookmarking Presentation"
Conversation #11: Humor in the Classroom
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A conversation with Dr. Regina Barreca of University of Connecticut on teaching, learning, and humor.
You can't use humor to be liked. You have to use it to make a point. Especially for women, too often our sense of self-esteem or even, in a professional setting, our sense of accomplishment comes from, you know, do they like me? And it can't work that way. Teaching certainly can't function that way. It has to be: did I make this point effectively? Did they get it? And that's very different than being liked.
Links for this episode:
Remix
Attentive readers may have noticed some changes to this space recently. We started this blog to promote our podcast, Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else. We used the blog as a handy way to index episodes and provide additional content such as pictures and links, but the main focus remained on the audio conversations.
Then, in the fall semester of 2009, we decided that we here at the Center for the Advancement of Teaching might have more to say on a variety of subjects, and that a blog might be the best way to do it. Thus was born CAT Food (for thought). We could have established it as an entirely separate creature from the podcast, but I thought it made more sense to simply expand the scope of our existing blog rather than maintain two different blogs going forward.
So, essentially, our podcast blog got bigger and changed its name. Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else is still chugging along, but now it's a topic which will be presented alongside such other topics as Blackboard Bits, Bytes, and Nibbles and Sociable Feast. It's my hope that this model best serves our primary readership, namely faculty in higher education. In particular we are dedicated to our faculty here at Xavier, but we believe much of this content may be of general interest to teachers everywhere.
If you were subscribing to the podcast in a feed reader, you probably didn't notice anything different except that the name of the feed may have changed. Now you know why. If you'd like to continue to focus on the podcast only, you needn't do anything. We now are publishing to separate feeds: one for just the podcast, and another that encompasses all the blog topics, including the podcast.
You'll find all the feed options listed in the sidebar from our main page. And if you don't have any idea what a "feed reader" is, don't worry. There's also an option to subscribe by e-mail.
Doing the Wave
It was some fun watching the Saints dismantle the Patriots last night. And now I'm doing the wave. No, not the audience wave — I'm not that big of a sports fan and I do still have my basic sense of human dignity. I'm talking about Google Wave.
Google describes Wave as "a personal communication and collaboration tool," and at first glance it seems to be highly flexible and powerful. Whether it will also be useful and successful is another question entirely.
It's a little hard for me to describe Wave, mainly because I haven't had much chance to play around with it yet. It's invitation-only at this point, and I only got mine a couple days ago. (Props to Nola Cherié King for hooking me up.) I hope to spend some time poking around at it and exploring its possibilities, seeing what potential it might have. This is just what I do, who I am, plus it's my job. In particular I'm wondering what application Wave might have in higher education.
Anyhow, I've now got a handful of invites (eight, to be specific) which I can pass on to any interested parties, and we can check this thing out together. I'm reserving at least half of them for people who are here at the University. So if you'd like an invite, use the comment form below, and make sure to put your e-mail address in the appropriate field (no one will see it but me) so I can send you the invitation. Google says the invites may be delayed but I got mine pretty much instantly. I'll send invites on a first-come basis, but you have to promise to do the wave with me at least once.
Cross-posted from b.rox
Global Immediacy: Presentation Follow-up
Yesterday I presented a workshop which I called "Global Immediacy: Using Video Telephony to Bring Distant Guests into Your Classroom." It was designed to get faculty thinking about how they might use applications such as Skype in their teaching. I had a little help from George "Loki" Williams of SocialGumbo, we had a good attendance, and I was pretty happy with the outcome.
I was especially happy that I had a chance to work this fine photo into my presentation:
Taxi Face by NYCArthur / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
After every workshop, I hear from people who wanted to attend but couldn't. Is there a handout they can have? Is there some online content they can look at? I continue to search for the best way to document and share these sessions. I find my slideshows don't stand on their own very well without my voice providing the narrative. However, this time I remembered to make an audio recording, and so I can offer my first slidecast. Enjoy.
Notes: I'm using SlideShare, which allows me to embed the slideshow here, but I don't like the way it automatically loads the audio. In my opinion it should embed like YouTube, with a poster image only, and require a click before loading the entire media. The audio in this case is a large file (probably higher fidelity than it needs to be) so instead I decided just to link. Also, the hands-on portion of the workshop didn't work as well in this context so I cut it out.
Post scriptum: I did give a handout, but that material is online so I'll just provide a couple more links:
- UNO professor Kim Bondy uses Internet videoconferencing -- and her personal connections -- to bring journalism stars to the classroom (Times-Picayune)
- The 10 that Established VoIP (Part 8: Skype) (iLocus)
Cross-posted to b.rox
Social Media and Working Memory
There's a story that's been making the rounds lately. I think the Telegraph might have been the first major media venue to give it coverage: Facebook 'enhances intelligence' but Twitter 'diminishes it', claims psychologist.
- Psychologist: Facebook Makes You Smarter, Twitter Makes You Dumber
- Facebook makes you sharper but Twitter makes you thicker
- Twitter turns you into a twit but Facebook makes you clever, says expert
- How Facebook and Twitter warp your brain
But what's the science behind the hype? After scrounging though these articles for data (without success) I went to the presumed source, Tracy Alloway's personal website. Unfortunately the only reference there to either Twitter or Facebook seems to be a collection of links, which point to the articles cited above.
At this point I'm beginning to feel like I'm running in circles.
Conversation #10: Stereotype Threat
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A conversation with Dr. Josh Aronson of New York University on teaching, learning, and stereotype threat.
People perform better when they don't feel their intelligence is being evaluated. So in a very broad way, if you can create an environment that takes the heat off of intelligence — and I think different teachers do this in a variety of ways — so if they say, look, I'm here to evaluate not how smart you are, but what I have been able to teach you... Now the onus is on me. Now the bell curve isn't about you. I am being put on a bell curve as your teacher. So you can sort of shift the emphasis from evaluation of your intelligence to evaluation of my ability to teach you. I've had teachers come to me and tell me that when they [do this] the kids do much better, and they aren't vomiting on their exam pages anymore.
Links referenced in this episode:
- "Stereotypes and the Fragility of Academic Competence, Motivation, and Self-Concept" by Joshua Aronson and Claude M. Steele. From Handbook of Competence and Motivation, 2005. [PDF courtesy of the author]
Conversation #9: The Controlling Syllabus
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A conversation with Dr. Mano Singham of Case Western Reserve University on teaching, learning, and the authoritarian syllabus.
That element of choice and trust between the teacher and the student I think are important aspects of creating a good learning environment, and I think the authoritarian syllabus tends to work against it. Authoritarian syllabuses can achieve certain things. You can get people to do things. But you can't get them to want to learn. That was my epiphany, if you like.
Links referenced in this episode:
- Death to the Syllabus! by Mano Singham in Liberal Education, Fall 2007
- "Moving away from the authoritarian classroom" by Mano Singham. Change, May/June 2005, pp. 51–57. [PDF courtesy of the author]
- "How my course syllabus is created" by Mano Singham. [PDF courtesy of the author]
- Mano Singham's Web Journal: Thoughts on science, history and philosophy of science, religion, politics, the media, education, learning, books, and films.
We're proud to announce this podcast is a finalist for a POD Network innovation award. We hope to see you at the conference.
Conversation #8: Contemplative Inquiry
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A conversation with Dr. Arthur Zajonc of Amherst College on teaching, learning, and contemplative inquiry.
While we may begin with the "pause that refreshes," if we leave it only at that then it's seen only as a break from learning. I'm really keen on it being seen also as a means of learning. That is to say, we school our attention — that's long been a part of the contemplative traditions, the deepening and stabilizing of attention — then, if we can bring that deepened and stabilized attention to the work at hand, it's going to be far more productive. And in addition, if one can take up a practice such as this contemplative inquiry practice, we add to that an enhanced learning capacity. So not only attention is schooled but also a new modality of inquiry is also offered to the student.
Links referenced in this episode:
- Arthur Zajonc's personal website
- Meditation as Contemplative Inquiry by Arthur Zajonc on SteinerBooks
- Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
- The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education
A tip of the hat to the good folks at TalkShoe who helped us with some technical problems.
...continue reading "Conversation #8: Contemplative Inquiry"