Education 2.0 & 3.0

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Students often put in a great deal of time and energy into learning course material, yet their efforts are often less than fruitful. Week after week, we witness students arriving to lecture—seemingly prepared—armed with planners, Post-its, highlighters, and tablets. With such obvious effort poured into their preparation, it can be tough to grasp why these same students are often performing poorly on exams.

A couple of weeks ago I published directions for creating and editing master slides in Google Slides. 

Individuals vary in their views of what students should be taught. How should teachers discuss the misdeeds of a nation’s founders? What is the minimum accomplishment expected of each student in mathematics? But there is no disagreement on the importance of critical thinking skills. In free societies, the ability to think critically is viewed as a cornerstone of individual civic engagement and economic success.

But is there evidence that explicitly teaching critical thinking brings any benefit? There is, and such evidence is available for different subject matters. For example, in one experiment researchers taught college students principles for evaluating evidence in psychology studies – principles like the difference between correlational research and true experiments (Bensley and Spero, 2014). These principles were incorporated into regular instruction in a psychology class, and their application was practised in that context. Compared to a control group that learned principles of memory, students who learned the critical thinking principles performed better on a test that required evaluation of psychology evidence.

Breakout Rooms is one of the most popular features of Zoom. A similar feature is now available in Microsoft Teams. Just like in Zoom you can assign your students to a specific breakout room or have them randomly assigned to a room..

Twice this week I've had people ask me if there is a search function in Google Classroom. Unless, I've been overlooking something obvious, there isn't a native search function built into Google Classroom. What I have been telling people to do is use Control+F on Windows computers or Command+F on Mac computers to search within a Google Classroom stream or classwork section. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than just scrolling through dozens of announcements or assignments to find the one that you want. 

Today’s professors are now learning community managers—and these tips can help instructors create a vibrant and engaging learning space.

Many learning providers will be welcoming new learners to their courses in September and this new Jisc guide looks in depth at how organisations can plan an inclusive induction programme. Whether you are taking a hybrid, face-to-face or blended learning approach you will find information about accessibility, wellbeing and helpful resources. You will also find many case studies to inspire you.

About a week ago I hosted a webinar for an organization that hired me this summer and in the summer of 2018. The webinar was about improving the accessibility of online resources that we share with our students. One of the things that I covered in that webinar was how to improve the accessibility of YouTube videos. In addition to customizing the captions display I showed them how to quickly create transcripts for videos. There are t wo methods for this. Both methods are explained in the videos below.

The new Google Sites is one of the best platforms where you can easily create a site for your classroom without the need for any HTM, CSS or any other coding language. Everything is pre-designed and you simply select the sections you want to add to your site, add content, and share your site with others.

We're halfway through 2020. This week I'm taking some time off from the blog to work on some other projects. The rest of this week I'm going to re-run some of the most popular posts and videos of the year so far. 

Video Puppet is a new service that launched in late March. It turns your PowerPoint slides into narrated videos. If you're a Google Slides user you can download your slides as a PowerPoint file to then use in Video Puppet.

There may be times when you see content coming up in your feed that you are just not interested in and given the choice you’d prefer not to see! It could be that your timeline is suddenly full of tweets because there is a football cup final going on, it’s Eurovision time or because a new Wordle game gets popular and people like to share their daily results. We all have different interests and that’s fine, but it doesn’t mean you have to see these tweets! If this is happening to you then muting could be the answer! 

Amanda Piekart (Director of Research and Instructional Services at Berkeley College, USA) and Jessica Kiebler (Instructional Services Librarian at Pace University, USA) have run their podcast The Librarian's Guide to Teaching since October 2019, and have now reached episode 34 (23 February 2021, Tech tools roundup "Amanda and Jessica review some tech tools that can be used by library professionals in the classroom"). Episode 33 was on Teaching about algorithms, episodes 31 & 32 covered 21 instruction tips for 2021. The website for the podcast is here https://librariansguidetoteaching.weebly.com/

Yesterday morning I published a list of my recommended tools for creating multimedia timelines. Padlet is one of the tools that I included in that list. The timeline templates are relatively new in Padlet so I decided to make a short video tutorial on how to use them. One of the things that I like about using Padlet to create multimedia timelines is that you can use any date format that you like. That gives it an advantage over some timeline creation tools that lock students into a particular date format. 

As the old saying goes “Every day’s a learning day’.  Social Media including Twitter seems to be always changing things. Whilst introducing new features in the main can be useful, they sometimes pass you by.  For me it was saving a draft of a Tweet. How did I miss that?! This post highlights some tips that I hope you will find useful. For keyboard shortcut fans there are a list of commands towards the end of the post.

Choosing something that you are passionately interested in to research is a great first step on the road to successful academic writing but it can be difficult to keep the momentum going. Deborah Lupton explains how old-fashioned whiteboards and online networking go hand-in-hand, and offers advice for when it is time to just ‘make a start’ or go for a bike ride.

As part of preparing for a workshop on academic publishing for early career academics, I jotted down some ideas and tips to share with the group which I thought I would post here. In the process of writing 12 books and over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters over a career which has mostly been part-time because of juggling the demands of motherhood with academic work, I have developed some approaches that seem to work well for me.

The perfect class discussion can feel like something of an alchemy. From the instructor’s preparation to the students’ personalities, many ingredients can enable or challenge the social construction of knowledge in a class community. As Jay Howard suggests, quality discussions require a great deal of planning and an understanding of social, emotional, and intellectual dynamics (Howard 2019). As we begin one of the most unusual semesters in the history of higher education, with institutions implementing a combination of remote, hybrid, and in-person instruction, it’s urgent to consider how we can facilitate meaningful discussions in virtual environments. In particular, if instructors used video conference software during the emergency remote teaching of the spring and summer, they may have experienced a ghost town of student reticence and awkward silences, and the occasional shuffle of video boxes like virtual tumbleweeds..

Last week I hosted a Practical Ed Tech webinar titled Ten Search Strategies Students Need to Know. Afterwards I had many requests for accessing the recording of the webinar. The webinar is now available on demand. If you missed it, the webinar is available as an on-demand webinar right here on Practical Ed Tech.

By now, we have all realized that preparing for the upcoming fall semester isn’t going to feel like any other August filled with syllabus preparations. Whether we are planning for a remote, digital or hybrid course, or a cautious, unfamiliar version of an in-person course, the entire semester has to be planned to “expect the unexpected.” This daunting pedagogical task is made more complicated if you have multiple courses to prepare, and even more difficult if you teach at more than one college.

The heritage sector has a wealth of knowledge to share with the world. It plays a vital role in enabling people of all ages to learn about and understand the UK’s fascinating and complex history. Whether visiting sites and monuments, exploring stories and exhibitions, or participating in events and activities, your visitors already experience a wealth of education opportunities. 

Online learning resources and activities can help to bring heritage to a wider audience than ever before, in new and innovative ways. 

Online learning can include: 

free digital courses that anyone can join, sometimes called Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCS 

structured activities aimed at groups of learners such as schoolchildren 

community learning and engagement, which might involve collaborative practice or ‘crowdsourcing’ resources

self-paced online learning materials

virtual tours and exhibitions

blogging and social media activities, including digital storytelling and quizzes

Online learning provides opportunities to make heritage education accessible to people from all walks of life.

You don’t need specialist expertise and expensive applications to create effective learning experiences.

In March I fielded a ton of questions from people who suddenly found themselves using Google Classroom and all other aspects of G Suite for Education a lot more than they ever had before. One of the most common questions I received revolved around the idea of using PDFs in Google Classroom.