The Enemy is Powerpoint?

2 Replies

Article: “We have met the enemy and he is powerpoint” by Elizabeth Bumiller.

WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. [Click on link above to read the whole article.]

Predicting the Future is a Risky Business

1 Reply

Part of my day job involves following trends and predicting what might happen in the future of online education.  Pretty risky business – I remember ten years ago when one article predicted that all colleges would one day have at least one class delivered online through AOL.  A-O-Who? Do they still exist?

But despite the potential for immense embarrassment, I still find looking to possible futures fascinating (can you guess what my favorite genre of entertainment is?).  I enjoy it so much that I wrote an article on what education could look like in 10 years, based on predictions of where technology is heading. The article is called “When the Future Finally Arrives: Web 2.0 Becomes Web 3.0” and it will be a chapter in a book called Web 2.0-based E-learning: Applying Social Informatics for Tertiary Teaching

The great news is that chapter will be published next month. The bad news is that it took two years to get published, so a lot of what I say about Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 sounds pretty dated.  This situation in itself exposes the weakness of publishing in traditional media. All of your cool, hip terms will become over-used cliches before your article gets printed.

I wish that I could just post the whole article here – I just proof-read it and I got pretty excited thinking about what the future could be like.  Some of the topics covered are:

  • Affordable media centers that have wide-screen, high definition, holographic, three-dimensional, multi-touch screen monitors, with cameras that can follow your movement to manipulate the display (like Minority Report) or respond to voice commands
  • Classes that easily transfer back and forth from synchronous to asynchronous.
  • Integrated systems – virtual worlds integrated with the web and each other, smart-phones integrated with desktops, etc.
  • Greater use of tags to organize information with more accuracy.
  • Better interaction between students and between the student and instructors.
  • And finally, of course, really cool technology like three dimensional printers and scanners.

Much of what I wrote on is technology-focused.  I realize that good pedagogy needs to come first in all educational situations… but if you think enough when you read it, you will see how I snuck a bunch of good pedagogy in there. If you do get to read it, I would recommend just skipping down to the section called “An Example of Online Learning 10 Years in the Future.” The rest of the stuff before that was just my attempt to sound scholarly and all that 🙂

That is to say – if you get to read it.  This is the other problem with traditional media: this booked is pretty darn expensive.  And I had to sign all my rights away to get it published, so I can put it on my blogs.  I can always let people that live near me read the “draft” version that I printed up for proof-reading.  Maybe the library will get a copy? Or maybe we should talk Pete into hosting a symposium on the future of online learning?

(Pete is probably getting tired of all my suggestions for symposiums and conferences and gatherings that I think he needs to host 🙂

Teaching the Controversy in a Web Class

Leave a reply

I think we can agree that live classes are not mirrors of web classes, or vice versa. But there are some fundamentals that transcend the medium in which a class is taught. On the positive side, engaged professors make a difference, whether it be in a live class or a web class. Also, unleashing student’s creativity rather than squashing it makes a big difference in class morale, regardless of the class being online or live. I won’t list the lousy things in course design and instruction that plague live and web classes equally. We can leave that for another day.

I just had a great experience in my web class that I’d like to share.

The students in my web class have been emoting a lot lately in the message boards because they have been learning about the Dirty War in Argentina in the 1970’s, in which some thirty thousand people were disappeared (detained, tortured and murdered, without having their bodies returned). Students have been surprised to learn about this episode in Argentine history, and have responded very emotionally, with sadness, and [justified] self-righteous anger. How can this have happened? Why is it we never knew about it? Why is it more people don’t know about this? These are the questions that keep on coming up on the message board.

One student, however, has offered a dissenting voice on the message board. She intervened to say that while she shares people outrage and sadness, she is concerned about the fact that no one is talking about how, in recent years, the U.S. has ‘illegally’ detained people suspected of terrorism and even exported them to CIA “Black Sites” where they are interrogated with “enhanced” techniques (often a euphemism for torture.) Rather than bemoan the past, asks the student, why not engage with the problems of the present?

It’s pretty provocative, and it’s pretty brave. They say that “teaching the controversy” is always a good technique for fostering engagement. But what’s making me happy today is that it was a student who is trying to teach the controversy. Regardless of where you fall on the issue of the detention of terror suspects and the issues surrounding the War on Terror, this is a debate worth having. The generals responsible for the Dirty War in Argentina committed their crimes in the name of the fight against Communism, at the height of the Cold War. Is it possible to compare this to the U.S. Government’s extreme and unorthodox measures to combat terrorism? At its bluntest, do the ends justify the means? It will be interesting to see if students reply and how. As I said, there’s no single answer to this question, but there are different positions to be articulated, defended and argued.

I’ll come back and keep you posted.

Online Translators

Leave a reply

Online translation is quite different from traditional translation. I note the tools I am using: Google Translator Toolkit (you need a gmail account to get on), Google Translator in two forms, Leo, the online dictionary containing a grammar site, dictionary definitions, and a corpus that I am using, and http://www.google.de (to see how certain words and phrases are used when embedded in text). Searches also take me to synonym dictionaries and even images on German and English websites. I could even envision using German Youtube. So, unlike a translator in the past, I have much more than my knowledge and my dictionaries of various kinds and my thesaurus at hand. I have those, as well as all these other tools. (And I know that there are even more tools available to which I’ve been exposed, but which I do not yet use.)

But what am I learning? I am learning what Google, for example, offers when one types a word into the search engine: more words, more phrases, depending on how you enter it. Take the word ‘Hospiz,’ for example (‘hospice’). I type the word in Google, and I get phrases (Hospizbewegung, Hospizarbeit, Hospize, Hospiz Stuttgart), but I note if I type in Hospizd,’ I get words like ‘Hospizdienst’ (‘hospice service’), whereas if I type ‘Hospiz d’ I get phrases like ‘Hospiz Detmold’ (‘hospice in the city Detmold’).

I note when I’m translating my short story from English into German, that I’m changing it as I go. I feel very free, since I am the original author of the English version. But I also think of things that never occurred to me when writing the English original, things like the fact that Germans would not easily say ‘I love you’ to their doctor as they were dying, but at the same time I can imagine that they might, if they were in the state that many patients seem to arrive at, if they are not on machines: an unusual state of bliss that transcends some cultural customs. Even in the U.S. people don’t normally tell their doctors “I love you,” but in the German culture, I would think that norms of respectful distance would even more strongly come into play here.

So when I’m translating, I actually address that, and thus I translate it to say: “I love you, Dr. Gomez. One wouldn’t normally say that. But that didn’t matter. She could. She did, because a deep feeling of well-being flooded her soul.” (I notice that even as I’m translating back into English I’m changing the English to accommodate the slight differences in the German from the original! It can become a never-ending loop of meaning making!) The other issue is the title, not ‘Dr. Gomez,’ as in the U.S., but ‘Herr Doktor Gomez’ (‘Mr. Dr. Gomez’), which has an even more formal feel, a feeling of distance, rank, and respect, which would make saying “I love you” even more profound.

I notice when I’m translating that I’m thinking of sentence length (probably partly because of Pete Smith’s words in his localization/translation course I’m a part of). In the original the sentences are often short. There are many sentence fragments. And I’m reminded that standard formal German sentences can tend to be quite long. And yet this is a short story. And sometimes short stories contain shorter sentences, but often to obtain a certain effect. It got me to thinking about whether formatting my translation like a prose poem might more successfully convey the tone I’m trying to effect.

Anyway, these are some of the thoughts I’m having as I’m translating. The tools are wonderful. They really help non-native speakers, maybe even native speakers, easily get beyond the starting point and save a lot of time looking up words that one has in one’s passive repertoire (so one knows it’s appropriate), and words that one thinks might work and that get one looking in the right direction for the appropriate word. After that it does take some time rewriting what the machine translator has written, but time has been tremendously saved on the first go round. I find not only am I thinking about syntax and vocabulary on the sentence level, but I’m thinking about tone, about cultural meanings of words, syntax, length, and I’m thinking about impact on the reader.

I also realize how my knowledge and background in German are helping me out. It goes more slowly when I’m working on French, for I have to question more.

As we go into the future, I think we will begin changing our minds about translation tools on the internet. Right now, as educators we’re afraid of their abuse by students as tools for cheating. As we become more knowledgeable about them ourselves, I foresee teaching students how to use them effectively and productively from the beginning. If they know how to use these tools, they will be able to access information and ideas from around the world in many languages. If they know the limitations as well as the freeing aspects of these online tools, they will be better able to navigate ideas and information in other languages. Just as we teach students how to “read” language in literary texts, in oral discourse, in prose discourse of various non-literary kinds, we will, I believe, in the future teach students how to critically “read” machine translation.

We are still at the point that calculators were a few decades ago: we do not allow them in the classroom. But as we finally realized with calculators, they can be a very useful tool and serve our needs. I use one every time I want to know how much money I have left in the bank! Our goal: to keep every single student, even the one who takes one semester of foreign language, connected not only to cultures of the language we are teaching, but, even more, to the world’s cultures.

This reminds me, once again, of Father Guido Sarducci’s “Five Minute University,” and that is, essentially, what we are combating. (It’s wonderful, while sobering, because that is the mindset of many folks in our country, and I understand that mindset fully.) The “Five Minute University” was a comedy skit about university learning, first airing on “Saturday Night Live,” and it is an important comedy skit for me as an educator, for it reminds to take the long view, to remember all the students with whom I interact, and to ask myself: How can even one semester of a foreign language really and truly have a major beneficial impact on each and every student? How can we get beyond what people still say when we say we teach a language at the university: “Oh, I had Language X, and I don’t remember a thing”?

Wrapping back around to online translators: In the future this will be one way in which we will encourage students to stay connected to the non-native-language world. We will teach them not only how to applied their “critical reading” of literature to the web, but also how to use these translation tools to critically read the world and its cultures.

And my translation in the end? I left it in prose format. It just seemed to have longer sentences, too, that made it more like prose. And I thought of the short stories again and realized that the short sentences, the sentence fragments, as well as the longer fragments, created an acceptable tone and feel in prose format.

(You can access both versions of the story/vignette, the English and the German, at this blog.)

Broadcasting comes to Modern Languages

1 Reply

Broadcasting major Patrick Modrovsky, who happens to be minoring in German, asked if he could create a video news item about German at UT Arlington for utanews, a website showcasing broadcasting students’ work. Of course, I said yes, and he did an excellent job of showing how we are trying to incorporate technology and active learning into upper level German classes here at UTA. We liked the video clip so much that it is now on the German homepage under

UTANews Interview with Dr. Lana Rings.

(The original is located under March 11, 2010 at http://utanews.com/page/2/.)

Thanks, Patrick, for believing German needs to be publicized more at UT Arlington!

I continued down the blog tonight and this was the result …

Well, after reading Ivan Illich off of Jim Groom’s blog, a bit of Stephen Downes, also off of Jim Groom’s blog, and finding Clark Adrich’s blog from somewhere I was reading, I am overwhelmed and back to my original question that I asked in graduate school: why are we here? And I think we cannot ask that question in a blanket way about the curriculum, but rather we have to ask it about each individual course (even about each individual student), because there are some students who will take only that course and not our whole curriculum. What, of value, will the student really take away? I am reminded, daily, of Father Guido Carducci’s Five Minute University, asking myself how I am or am not replicating the professors who people that university. To my mind, these are the questions I want to affirm, to remember, to center myself when I get sidetracked by this or that, these or those, others’ ideas of what it is we are doing, that are not my core values about our enterprise.

A Brave New World Free of PowerPoints

Leave a reply

TxDLA was a great event this year. Harriet and I did our usual rebel-rousing there. Creating a session PowerPoint is usually difficult for us, since we usually don’t prepare any preset material.  We like to discuss, interact, and have some interesting conversations. But since most educators have to have something to look at, we usually put up a PowerPoint with pretty pictures (here is our old set of purty pics).

This year, Harriet created a Prezi presentation.  Prezi is pretty cool in that it can be very non-linear.  You can click and scroll around on the presentation as you like. This gives me hope for a future of conference presentations that are free of PowerPoint overkill.  Here is what I am thinking:

Someday, someone will come up with an iPad competitor that doesn’t have all of Steve Job’s weird hang-ups about Flash.  Prezi is built in Flash, so this is key. Oh, and it will run a real operating system instead of iPhoneOS.  Then they will create a cheap adapter that hooks this superior iPad product to projectors. Then the fun will begin.

Image if you could just create a map of all the concepts you want to discuss in a presentations in Prezi.  Then use this better iPad model to run the presentation.  Using the touch screen, you can scroll around and zoom in on concepts as they come up in the discussion. Non-linear, interactive presentations, controlled by a light, portable touchscreen pad.  That would make any session much more active and connected.

Also consider how this could change your classes. Or maybe this already exists and I am just not buying the right products?

Anyways, here is the Prezi from our TxDLA session (which is still linear – we didn’t want to blow too many gaskets in one session):

Outside the Box: Changing the Mindsets of Educational Zombies on Prezi

Next time I hope to go in to some thoughts about some of the discussions and feedback we had at the conference – it was some great stuff.

(this post was cross-posted at EduGeek Journal)

Getting Started? Part Two

3 Replies

As promised, below are the rest of the tips for getting started with technology:

  • Do not assume all students are tech whizbangs.

    Many have discussed the juxtaposition of “digital natives,” aka, students, and “digital immigrants,” aka, many instructors.  Consequently, the general perception is that students are tech-savvy, multi-tasking individuals who can do anything and everything technological without blinking an eye.

    However, plenty of case studies will point out that many students can be surprisingly tentative, nervous, and tech-averse.  Even if students are adept with texting or downloading MP3s, they do not come to your class automatically ready to blog about course topics or eager to create a digital story based on their analysis of War and Peace.

    Be honest and open with your students.  Even if you are comfortable with the technology, you may need some time to adjust to the new approach, and your students may need even more time and guidance to adjust.  Everyone can benefit from a “we’re in this together” approach.

    Additionally, you might consider asking students about their previous experiences with technology-enhanced learning.  Unfavorable past experiences can predispose students to be resistant to future encounters with technology in their courses.

    •  

  • Be prepared for things to deviate from expectations.

    Using a tech tool for the first time is like using any other tool for the first time: Unpredictable things can happen.

    We all know technical difficulties can occur at any time.  Planning ahead and testing help ward off major snafus, but some glitches may not be discoverable until a course goes live.

    Try to remain calm and go with the flow.

    Adopt the attitude that if some aspect does not go quite as planned, then it is a learning experience.

    Instructors are always evaluating their teaching by assessing what works and what does not work. Stir the use of technology tools into your usual reflections upon your teaching.  If something technology-oriented does not work as anticipated, learn from it, and do it differently next time.

    •  

  • Consider re-thinking some approaches.

    • Technology often requests that you re-think some established ideas.

    For example, how do you define cheating on an online quiz?  Classic deterrents to cheating on auto-graded quizzes are the use of pools to randomize questions and the application of time limits.  Despite such tactics, motivated, determined students can find ways to look up or share answers.

    Maybe you could re-think this kind of cheating.  Maybe the goal is for students to spend maximal time with the content–no  matter what form that might take.  Maybe referencing books and notes is not all bad. It depends on the content and the learning goals.

    Yes, technology can facilitate some kinds of cheating. Nonetheless, students who prefer cheating to studying will always find ways to cheat, even if they are in the room with the instructor.

     

  • Think of technology as just another family of teaching tools.

    • Try to think of technology as just another tool or method in your established portfolio of teaching tools and methods.  In and of itself, technology is neither good nor bad, magical nor toxic.  The way technology is used is the key.

    Ever since technology burst upon education, it has been examined in isolation, perhaps because of its newness, its novelty, its steep learning curve, its variety, and its constant change.

    However, by separating technology from established instructional methods, we risk making it seem bigger, scarier, and more difficult to incorporate into teaching and learning than anything other tool or approach.

    For those who are new to teaching with technology, using such new tools may still feel that way.  The good news is that they are learning and experimenting despite it all!

    Going forward, technology would, ideally, be examined and studied alongside other teaching tools and methods.

     

  • Be open to growth and change.

    • Technology is constantly changing. New possibilities present themselves before we feel comfortable with what was “new” five minutes ago.

    Teaching is similarly dynamic.  Instructors are continually reflecting upon their teaching and striving to make it more effective.

    Combining these two active and productive fields means growth and change are always on the horizon. The more you work with technology, the more comfortable you will become with the changes and the more adept you will be at identifying which tech tools can effectively help you and your students achieve your teaching and learning goals.

Gardner Campbell’s ideas on Web 2.0 and Assessment

Leave a reply
Lana Rings

Lana Rings

Since my comment to Matt’s post of March 15, as well as his comment regarding Moodle, is awaiting moderation, I’ll just go ahead and make it a post:

Wow. If Moodle can facilitate all that interaction, then that really connects to what Gardner Campbell was saying in his podcast (see below). I remember years ago when my California friend Peter Bach, who already had a doctorate in Ed, and was getting a second one in German, was talking about having students involved in their own grading… But back to this idea — I think that Matt and Gardner are sending out similar ideas….

Here’s what I wrote to the Modern Languages and the Active Learning Committee listservs:

W. Gardner Campbell from Baylor (Gardner’s research interests: English Literature, Science Fiction, Technology, Literature and Music, Renaissance Literature, Technology, Critical Theory, …) is Director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, where he also serves as Assoc. Prof. of Literature, Media, and Learning in the Honors College. His ideas are highly thought-provoking. I’m quoting here from his podcast. (He was at one point at Mary Washington, where Jim Groom, who visited UTA recently, is Technology Specialist.)

These comments below are from my notes made upon hearing the podcast:

A one-kind fits-all curriculum is likely to take children away from the objects that compel them. A one-kind fits all mode of assessment is going to ensure that we miss the richest opportunities for bonding for the deepest kind of learning.

Web 2.0, learning, and assessment: thoughts by Gardner. If any of this intrigues you, here is the audio:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/podcast/assessment.mp3
and here is the blog post:
http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=1231

1. User-generated content makes the web richly interactive and helps us co-create the web. … Interesting comment: Wikipedia, a “thing that will never work in theory; it will only work in practice.” Look at it carefully. Look at the way the community presents itself. Look at the discussion page. Look at the user page where the people who have contributed to the discussion have accumulated a lot of interaction on their own. … Think what that would be like if we had pages for our best teachers, … testimonials. Appreciative inquiry in a collection of rich layered narratives of outstanding teaching? … How inspiring would it be to read that stuff, to find out over many decades how these teachers have made a difference in students’ lives. … A startling demonstration to the world of the magic that happens.
2. Idea of network effects: can scale at the point of the reader, at the point of the student. The more you have in the mix, the richer the experiences. … Lifelong learning online environment.
3. The idea of the long tale. Much value emerges slowly over time.
4. Perpetual beta, … meaning subject to improvement at any time. Not a contract, but a starting place. Idea of syllabus as contract anathema to the idea of a learning experience. … Students come up with their own learning objectives; that’s their assignment at the beginning of the semester. (a la Barbara Sawhill!) Frightening, because it means that “all the targets are moving. Of course they are. Anybody ever been in a relationship before? The relationship changes the people in the relationship. Oh, dear. What if you adjust to your spouse, and your spouse adjusts to you, and now you have to adjust to the adjustment? You work at it.

Course Contracts in Web Classes

Leave a reply

A few years ago I read an article about how professors were using course contracts in their live classes. The argument is that having students sign a course contract outlining course policies and expectations helps to avert discipline problems in class, and provides faculty with a firm ground from which to react when problems arise with students. (I wish I could find the original article to link here, but I can’t, sorry!). The kinds of items that can go on a class contract are: attendance rules, policies regarding tardiness and plagiarism, classroom comportment, etc. I’ve experimented with such contracts over the years and did not like them that much. They really do set an unfriendly tone, and if they make a difference maybe it’s because they scare students. Plus, no one wants to be treated like a criminal, and course contracts can send the wrong message to an entire class when there are only a handful of prospective flakes in it. Be this as it may, the point is that course contracts are a way of making students stop to read the fine print and gain awareness of what is expected of them. By having students sign a document, you ensure they pay attention to your ground rules.

What I have really been enthusiastic about over the past few years is using contracts in my web classes. My favorite version of this is to require students to fill out a course clearance form before being cleared for registration. This is only possible if you have a supportive department chair and office staff willing to work with you on implementing this extra bureacracy. (Below I will speak about an alternative approach to the same concept, one not requiring office staff to manage contracts for the faculty member.)

My course clearance form, which varies from semester to semester depending on my needs, course to be taught and experiences, requires students to initial and acknowledge that:

  • They understand where to go for information about the class (my course announcement page, or bulletin board).
  • They understand that I will send them instructions on when and how to begin in the class to their UTA email address.
  • They understand important requirements.
  • They understand that it is their responsibility to start their web class on time.

The reason I began implementing this is because I was having problems with students not logging on to their web classes until 3 weeks after the start of classes and then pleading ignorance about where to go to begin. Also, students would get anxious and start calling me and our office staff for information about the class, creating extra stress and pressure for everyone involved. Another problem I had was that student expectations of what would be entailed in a web class did not track with mine. The course clearance was a way to make students aware that what they were getting themselves into was a class that would be appropriately challenging. Finally, there are also students who claim ignorance about the importance of having and checking their university email accounts, and the course clearance form helped me avoid the whole “I never check my UTA email, please email me at wackycentipede@coffeebeansEmporium.com”.

I quickly noted a difference after I began using a course clearance form. My students were better across the board and many students who inquired about the class did not end up registering. I had succeeded in doing some weeding out and streamlining my own work flow during the semester.

Here is a copy of one of my course clearance forms.

OK, so what if a course clearance form is not an option for you because asking this of your local department staff is out of the question? The same principles behind my course clearance form can be incorporated into a quiz or assignment that requires students to acknowledge elements of the class and your policies. For example, you can quiz students on your own syllabus, and make it worth 5% of the final grade. The point is, you want your students to know how your class functions and what your expectations are from the outset. This enables you skirt all subsequent discussions of “I did not know that I had to do X” or “Can you please accomodate me with this?” etc. etc. Save your negotiations with students for things that really matter, and take the annoying, piddly stuff out of the equation. Help students internalize your expectations right at the outset, it will make your life easier.

–Christopher Conway

Mobility initiative?

3 Replies

Does anyone know if there is a mobility initiative at UTA? Or does OIT have plans for a mobility initiative?

I’m torn between buying a class set of the iTouch or the iPhone for my Computers and Fiction Writing class and would welcome advice. Might OIT support either? Any sign of daLite lecterns or other kinds of support?

I will talk to the folks at UTD who made such a splash at SXSW to see how they are handling things. (Was anyone there for the presentation?) Their locative media works and initiatives are making waves.

cg