In school I’d sometimes get scolded for “doodling' during class. The charge was that because I was drawing, I couldn’t possibly have been paying attention. Since then I’ve learned that for me, and for lots of people like me, drawing and attention are linked, the former often improving the latter.
Not everyone accesses online content in the same ways. This is true across various media including text, images, audio, and video. Planning your online course content to be accessible to as many people as possible ensures that more student can benefit from the information you share. Thinking proactively about the accessibility of your course content can also make the process of working with Disability Services faster and easier when a student in your class requests accommodation.
Have you been thinking about 3D printing something for your classroom, lab, or just for fun but don’t know how to get started? There are a plethora of easy to use and inexpensive online services to help with that! Here are some we have found to help send you on your way to 3D printing bliss.
It’s been out for 2 years, and I’ve only just discovered it. And yet: Valve’s Source Filmmaker has blown my mind. Check it out. See what’s possible for you, and your students, with this free […]
Google Forms have so many great uses, both inside of the classroom and as a productive administration tool. The power of Google Forms comes in the collection of responses into a Google Sheet which has similar basic evaluation capabilities as Microsoft Excel.
Last week we talked about how designing some tension into discussions can yield a more engaging student experience. This is often my first suggestion when I hear from faculty that student discussions seem lacking. This week the inquiry centers around timing. Just like hosting a dinner party, timing the various course elements is critical when designing student interactions.
Designing quality discussion prompts can be a challenge whether building an online discussion forum or trying to better engage the classroom learner. As instructors, we’ve all asked questions of our students that failed to lead them to our verdant garden, blossoming with student ideas. Instead, at one time or another, we’ve led students to deserts of superficial or pat answers that lay shriveled in darkness with only the chirping of crickets as adulation.
Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization and according to its mission statement, Creative Commons “develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.' What does that mean? Let’s say one day you notice someone reading a magazine and the back cover has an advertisement that features a picture of a duck that you yourself took over a year ago and posted to your flickr account.
When we think about the accepted content in our disciplines, we know that established theories, processes, or standards don’t start out as the perfectly polished final products that we often use as examples for our students. Theories and processes evolve, are reviewed and refined, through trial, error and peer review. Great ideas come from taking risks and accepting that the result may not be what we anticipated or even be successful on the first pass.
Explicit roleplay has a rich history in education. Law students use mock-trials to hone their craft; counselors roleplay client contact sessions, and many disciplines require students give presentations or perform project work while acting in the role of the professional they hope to become. In fact, the dialectical method of Socrates is a form of roleplay, wherein participants adopt an aspect for an argument not necessarily their own.
In our last teaching tip we talked about the power of play and how celebrating successes, while minimizing the consequences of failure, can foster an environment of experimentation and discovery. In short, these are key elements that help make learning more fun. This week, we’re going to look at a practical examples of this principle applied in classrooms here at UAF.
From our earliest stages of cognitive development, we have learned from play. Play urges the player to try over and over again even as she repeatedly fails; play generates its own persistence, encouraging the player to continue caring even after her obligation to do so has ended; play is an active celebration of deeper understanding, such that the great players in any field, from baseball to physics, are remembered and celebrated for how well they played.
