Do you know who the Funk Brothers were? They were the greatest band of unknowns who made the Motown sound what it was. This varied collection of musicians was the house band for those great songs of the 60’s and 70’s with that heavy bass and pounding beat. James Jamerson, Benny Benjamin, Earl Van Dyke, Uriel Jones, Pistol Allen and the rest of The Funk Brothers.
What about our back-up band? When was the last time you told any of our IT, bookstore, financial services, student services, training, Help Desk, Design Team or our office staff that you appreciated them and their hard work? Our front sound is pretty good but we can’t play in harmony without our Funk Brothers playing the groove behind us.
Why not "Reach Out" and tell them you "Heard it Through the Grapevine" that it's not "Just My Imagination" you appreciate "The Way You Do the Things You Do." I know I sure appreciate each one of those folks! And our lead singers are pretty good too!
I’ll bet your digging through your CDs and LPs right now for the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Four Tops, Stevie Wonder, Supremes and Smokey Robinson! Check out the Motown Historical Museum http://www.motownmuseum.com/mtmpages/index.html and Classic Motown http://classic.motown.com/.
You can make an online playlist at http://listen.grooveshark.com/ and take the tunes with you.
Showing posts with label instructor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label instructor. Show all posts
Friday, April 9, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Through the eyes of a child
They say that nothing makes you look at the same old things differently like having kids. Our daughters are grown and now we have little grandchildren, one boy and one girl. We get to spend a lot of time with both of them and I have revisited a lot of the books, toys and activities my daughters enjoyed. I’m back to playing with Little People; reading Cinderella, Snow White, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty over and over; making tents; zooming trucks around the kitchen and building castles with Duplo blocks. When our daughters were young, these activities became old and I lost my enthusiasm for them. Now that we have new little people, the excitement is back.
The same can be said about teaching the same class over and over. Have you lost the excitement or enthusiasm for the subject matter? Are the assignments, discussions and assessments the same as when you first started teaching this class so that you can teach it in your sleep? (I’ve heard that from fellow instructors!) It’s time to inject something new into your class!
The question now becomes “what can I do?” A quick spark would be a new discussion topic or two. I have some “canned” discussion topics that always seem to work and that I recycle in my classes, but I also incorporate new and more current topics every semester. I hide the upcoming topics from student view so that if I want to change the topic, the students have not already seen it. (Click the Edit pencil next to the topic name, scroll down a bit and you’ll see a checkbox for “Hide this topic”. Remember to “Make the topic visible” when you’re ready to open it to students.)
Or go bigger and incorporate new technologies that enhance student learning or offer students the opportunity to present their knowledge acquisition in different ways. In one of my classes, we include a student wiki project where the students choose the topics and build the content rather than having the textbook or instructor give them the content. This took some planning and it is still a work in progress but overall, it’s been successful.
Go ahead…look at your class through the eyes of a child and add some new excitement for you and your students.
The same can be said about teaching the same class over and over. Have you lost the excitement or enthusiasm for the subject matter? Are the assignments, discussions and assessments the same as when you first started teaching this class so that you can teach it in your sleep? (I’ve heard that from fellow instructors!) It’s time to inject something new into your class!
The question now becomes “what can I do?” A quick spark would be a new discussion topic or two. I have some “canned” discussion topics that always seem to work and that I recycle in my classes, but I also incorporate new and more current topics every semester. I hide the upcoming topics from student view so that if I want to change the topic, the students have not already seen it. (Click the Edit pencil next to the topic name, scroll down a bit and you’ll see a checkbox for “Hide this topic”. Remember to “Make the topic visible” when you’re ready to open it to students.)
Or go bigger and incorporate new technologies that enhance student learning or offer students the opportunity to present their knowledge acquisition in different ways. In one of my classes, we include a student wiki project where the students choose the topics and build the content rather than having the textbook or instructor give them the content. This took some planning and it is still a work in progress but overall, it’s been successful.
Go ahead…look at your class through the eyes of a child and add some new excitement for you and your students.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
I am so bugged.....
When my daughters were little, they enjoyed the Little Critter books. The main character of these stories is a little guy who gets into all sorts of trouble and expresses his feelings in various ways (sometimes in not the best manner). Now that my granddaughter is 2, I'm back to reading Little Critter books to her. So here's my D2L salute to Mercer Mayer and his Little Critter.
- Why are there two different font styles between student view and instructor view? And the student view looks pretty ugly. I am so bugged.
- Why is there no “you forgot” message when you forget to enter a grade on the dropbox feedback page? This really bugs me.
- Why do some links in my class work just fine one day and then blow up the next day? Ahhhh!
- Why don’t the same files display correctly in one class and not display at all in a different section (same class)? I was so bugged.
- Why does D2L pick up junky code when I copy and paste from a Word document? It makes a messy document. Very buggy...
- Why do students leave assignments to the last minute and then complain they didn’t understand it? Drives me buggy!
Monday, February 15, 2010
My Groups -- Not very successful
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php has identified several skill areas which students (K-12 but this can be useful for college students as well) should have to be successful in today’s world. The Learning and Innovation Skills area, (skills which should prepare students for a complex work environment), lists “creativity and innovation; critical thinking and problem solving; communication and collaboration” skills.
With that in mind, I occasionally attempt simple group project in one or more of my classes. This time my attempt was less than successful with only one out of four groups actually collaborating and communicating with each other.
For my group project, I created four discussion groups where students peer reviewed each other’s database design, asked questions, posted suggestions and basically helped each other come up with a good design for their Case Study. It has worked nicely in the past and I receive much better assignments when students have peer reviewed each other’s work prior to submitting their files. They receive 10 points for posting their design and helping each other.
It takes a little bit of work on your part to set up the groups and the group activities. D2L considers a group discussion as a place for students to discuss a problem and not really a gradeable item for the gradebook. When you try to grade that discussion by attaching the groups to a grade column, D2L creates a grade column for every group. For the groups where the individual student does not participate, they are graded with a zero which makes it very confusing for students. My work-around for this gradebook issue was to include the participation points in the rubric for their individual database design assignment. That way there was no extra gradebook column.
My students had over a week to work in their groups. Their individual assignments were not based on contributions from any other group member. They just had to help each other. According to 21st century skills, collaboration is a skill which should be incorporated in academic work to help prepare students for the workforce. And technically, no person really works in a vacuum without anyone else. So why the poor response? I have no answer for this question but I will try it again.
With that in mind, I occasionally attempt simple group project in one or more of my classes. This time my attempt was less than successful with only one out of four groups actually collaborating and communicating with each other.
For my group project, I created four discussion groups where students peer reviewed each other’s database design, asked questions, posted suggestions and basically helped each other come up with a good design for their Case Study. It has worked nicely in the past and I receive much better assignments when students have peer reviewed each other’s work prior to submitting their files. They receive 10 points for posting their design and helping each other.
It takes a little bit of work on your part to set up the groups and the group activities. D2L considers a group discussion as a place for students to discuss a problem and not really a gradeable item for the gradebook. When you try to grade that discussion by attaching the groups to a grade column, D2L creates a grade column for every group. For the groups where the individual student does not participate, they are graded with a zero which makes it very confusing for students. My work-around for this gradebook issue was to include the participation points in the rubric for their individual database design assignment. That way there was no extra gradebook column.
My students had over a week to work in their groups. Their individual assignments were not based on contributions from any other group member. They just had to help each other. According to 21st century skills, collaboration is a skill which should be incorporated in academic work to help prepare students for the workforce. And technically, no person really works in a vacuum without anyone else. So why the poor response? I have no answer for this question but I will try it again.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Adding a Human Touch
As I was checking the D2L courses in my program group getting ready to make my Spring 2 dupe list, I noticed that a few of my faculty didn’t put a picture in their Instructor Widget.
This got me thinking “Why?” Online instructors have reported that they feel they “know” their students better through online learning than in a “regular” class. We make a connection with every student through discussions, email and comments on assignments. If you’ve taught in a f2f classroom, there are always quiet students who never contribute to a class discussion. We never seem to get to know this student as a person. But through our discussions, our online students seem to reveal more about themselves than they would in class, maybe too much in some cases. Is the opposite true? Do our online students feel they know us?
One simple way to add a little human touch is to post a picture of yourself. Why wouldn’t we? I can think of a couple excuses, but no good reason why not.
- Excuse 1:” I don’t have a picture of myself. I’m always the picture taker.” Just about everyone has a camera on their cell phone. Turn that cell phone around and snap yourself.
- Excuse 2: “I don’t have a good picture of myself.” Heard of PhotoShop or some of the other photo editing programs?
- Excuse 3: “I don’t know how.” This is where your favorite D2L mentor comes in handy. Ask them for tech assistance.
The purpose of our job as instructors is to make a connection with our students and facilitate and encourage knowledge acquisition and development. Reminds me of that great Bruce Springsteen song, “Human Touch”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cNRQo1m3AI just want someone to talk to
And a little of that human touch
Just a little of that human touch
Add a little human touch to your online class!
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