Audio Interview

Hi there!

I am back with apologies. I forgot to post the link to my audio interview with Melia Fritch. Since I included a discussion about my interview in my last post, I neglected to post it again this week (last week?)

Anyhow, here is the link for my interview with Melia Fritch, Assistant Professor at Hale Library:

https://online.ksu.edu/Templating/courseHomePage/index.jsp?courseId=245223

During the course of the interview Melia discusses the ways in which she has utilized KSOL as a tool to assist in her teaching. Her courses are taught to colleagues in order to enhance their teaching skills. The interview was quite informative as it illuminated some of the issues with KSOL as a teaching tool.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed interviewing.

Wendy

Using Audio or Video in the Contemporary Classroom

For this week's blog I had to interview a professional about how they use an emerging technology in the development of their curriculum. Oddly enough, I do not know many instructors or professors here who actually utilize technology in their classroom beyond powerpoint. However, I do know a librarian that works with technology on a regular basis and who utilizes KSOL in interesting ways to share information with her colleagues. So, I interviewed her at her home last week and learned alot about how she used KSOL and what she felt were some of the advantages and disadvantages to using this particular technology.

Here is the link:
https://online.ksu.edu/Templating/courseHomePage/index.jsp?courseId=245223

Melia's experience is a good example of how technology can be both advantageous and disadvantageous in the adult learning environment.

That being said.....let's also consider what some of the pros and cons are of utilizing both audio and video technology in the classroom.

Having taught both online and traditional courses, I recognize the importance of engaging students. One way in which I have continued to engage them in both mediums is through the use of sound and visuals. However, over the years (I have taught at the University level for 8 years), I have found that students have a tendency to respond more positively to video than they do to audio.

Why?

This is a visual generation...Let's consider what they have at their disposal now:

• IPAD
• Cell Phone
• Computer (desktop, laptop, netbook)
• e-reader

and all of these technologies afford them to opportunity to "see" and "hear" the material they are interested in. Videos feed the need for this visual stimuli, all while adding an auditory component. The combination of the two senses helps students engage more fully with the information and ensure that the information will make the journey to long-term memory storage (Sousa, 2012).

Lone audio, however, only stimulates one sense--hearing. Students have now lost some interest because they are only listening to the material and as a result are more willing to do something else while listening. We have now lost part of their attention since they are no longer required to fully engage.

No matter which technology we choose to use (audio or video) it is important that we engage our students in a conversation about the material they have encountered. De Freitas and Conole (in Sharpe, Beetham, & De Freitas, pp. 15-30, 2010) maintained that there are four  components to successful integrating technology to aid student engagement and learning:

• thinking and reflection
• conversation and interaction
• experience and activity
• evidence and demonstration

It is important that we consider all, not just one or two, but all of these components when designing courses that contain technology.

How would you design a lesson that used video and audio components? How might you incorporate the four listed components into that lesson so as to enhance student engagement?

References
Sharpe, R., Beetham, H., & De, F. S. (2010). Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age: How Learners are Shaping their Own Experiences. Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age: Routledge.

Sousa, D. A. (2012). How the brain learns. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin Press.

Teaching Fashion Writing with Wikis.....

As I prepare to leave K-State and become a Professor elsewhere, I am working on preparing courses on fashion communication. While wikis are not really used in the industry (blogs and social media are the most commonly worked with, and taught, technological modes of communication) I decided they could be used to create a class project on different trends in fashion.

Below is a rough sketch of the lesson plan....I will need to enhance it once I truly understand how to work a wiki myself.

1)    Tracking the Trends: Examining the Evolution of Fashion

2)    Undergraduate Apparel Marketing and Design students

3)    Objectives: a) work collaboratively as part of a group to trace historical fashion trends; b) track a fashion trend from its earliest appearance to contemporary use; c) provide five web links that give the reader a textual and visual representation of the trend; d) write a paragraph describing the trend and its impact on contemporary fashion

4)    Contemporary fashion magazines, History of Fashion Textbook, www.elle.com, www.vogue.com, museumofcostume.co.uk, fashion blogs, popular magazines, historical records

5)    a) Go to www.wikispaces.com and create an account. Once you have done so please contact me so I can give you permission to join the group. This should be completed before the end of week one.

6)    Select one of the following fashion trends and add it to the wiki page (animal prints, leggings, pointy-toe shoes, spikes, chains, peplums, neon, body piercings, skinny jeans, sequins

7)    Grading Criteria: selected at least one trend and found 5 web links that provide visual and textual information about the trend; wrote a detailed paragraph describing the trend and how it has impacted contemporary society; traced trend from its earliest historical period and provided references; worked in cooperation wth the group to create a public wiki page

Wikis.....what the heck is a wiki and why would I want one!!!!

So last week we had to think about and discuss the differences between using a blog and a message board, as well as consider the pros and cons of blogs. This week it's wikis.

I must confess...I am wiki-ignorant. Of course I know what they are; after all, my job requires many hours logged on a computer, but I have never really used one and I definitely have not created one. To be honest, I've never been a fan.

I know that the research literature claims they "help groups collaborate, share, and build online content...[especially for] distance learners who are separated by time and place" (West & West, 2009, p. 3) and I do not dispute this fact. As a matter of fact I find this to be a major pro. I think that the ability to allow students to actively engage with content and one another is a boon to their educational experience, especially online.

But I cannot help but be cautious.....

I never let my students cite wikis for classes. Let's be realistic; inaccuracies exist in these things...prolifically. Sources, such as the minimal sample below:
http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/2012DiStaso.pdf
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/wikipedia/9211336/Six-out-of-10-Wikipedia-business-entries-contain-factual-errors.html
http://libguides.indstate.edu/wikipedia
(all of which are internet related) discuss the factual mishaps that occur in wikipedia. Sometimes misinformation is published and sometimes the information ends up being out-dated (this is generally not true for wikipedia since they have full-time staff now to help ensure entries are up-to-date). Unfortunately, other wikis who lack wikipedia's manpower are at risk of becoming outdated and error ridden. Ropog (2007) remarked about the Adult Literacy Education Wiki that if the site is to "grow and remain current...it must be updated and checked regularly for content and discussion additions" (p. 170) otherwise it would become outdated and full of errors if its users did not maintain it and keep up with the entries. This seems like a lot of work for something that can change from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.

While I see the value of a tool to which everyone is able to contribute, I also see the risks. I see it as something students could use to engage with as a means of building a project and using as a thinking tool to flesh out ideas, but I don't see it as more than that.

But I am always open to experimentation, especially in the classroom. The student cohort we are currently experiencing in adult education at the undergraduate level is getting younger (at least younger than me) and most of them are more technologically literate than I am, so I will not toss out the idea of using a wiki; I just want to make sure my students are aware of the great responsibility that comes with creating something that will live on long after the 16-week semester has passed.

I want to consider the questions of my own culpability.
-- What is my continued responsibility as a teacher to ensure course-created wikis stay factual and current once the semester is complete?
--How do I go about such a seemingly daunting task?
--How might I justify unpublishing work that my students worked on (I assume with a great amount of dedication) without it being a discredit to them and their time investment?

References

Ropog, M. M. (2007). Collaborating with Colleagues in Cyberspace. Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal, 1(3), 169-171.

West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Blogs or Message boards....which is better and which one should be used for education???

Well, here's to the first week of blog activity in the Adult Learners and Technology course. Blogging in general is something that I rather enjoy. Personally, outside of this blog, I have two blogs--one that I do not write on regularly and another that I try to update daily (and if that is not possible then at least two or three times per week). Those blogs, however, are much different than this one. This blog is an educational requirement, which, for me, puts it into a different realm of necessity. Santos (2011) found in his study that blogs served as an"innovative way for students to engage in reflective writing on classroom topics..." (p. 18); his results make me feel a bit more secure about using this tool as a classroom practice both in this course and in the scope of my own courses.

This week's question requires us to address how a blog differs from a message board. In my opinion, blogs are much more personal than message boards. Because of this I have never really associated them with use in my classroom. When K-State developed its wiki and blog platform I was fascinated and began thinking about ways in which I could incorporate the technology into my classroom next summer when I teach my Women and the Politics of Fashion course. I am hoping this course will show me how I might effectively use the technology and still keep blogs more personal. Witte (2007) discussed a student who felt that writing on her computer was different than writing in school. Her resultant project, the Talkback Project, reinforced the desire student's possess to make their voices heard in a more creative way than they are typically able to do in the classroom environment. Yet, Witte's project was not without flaws as she discovered when the school administrators demanded its cessation.

Technology makes us vulnerable. This is a hard lesson we often learn in inconvenient ways. I think about Dr. Kang's directive to not post identifying information in our blogs if we do not want others outside of the course to know our personal information. His advice implies that our use of the blog for educational reasons places us in a space of vulnerability outside of the classroom. While I do not see this as being an issue for many adult learners, I do see this as a major issue in classrooms with younger students who may not be quite as cognizant of, or even care about, security risks to their person if they divulge too much personal information over the internet.

Outside of vulnerability, blogs also requite access to technology, something which may not be available to everyone. However, as adult learners it is more likely that we will have access to the necessary technology than will younger students. What I do see as a potential issue for adult learners is a resistance to new technological tools, such as what I felt when first finding out that we must use a blog instead of the message board that I am used to utilizing in my coursework.

So despite how this turns out, I am interested in using the blog in the classroom. This should prove to be an exciting journey and I look forward to making my blog entries more interesting as the weeks progress.

On another note, does anyone know if we are encouraged to embed images, videos, etc...into our blog posts? And if so, what types of materials are we going to be covering?

I guess this goes to show that I am not really sure how a blog and an education can really go together in a creative way that fits each student's learning style.

Works cited

Santos, A. (2011). Blogs as a learning space: Creating text of talks. Contemporary Issues in Education          Research, 4(6), 15-19.

Wittle, S. (2007). That's online writing, not boring school writing: Writing with blogs and the Talkback          

     Project. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 51(2), 92-96.