The 3 R's of Summer-Part 1

 

 

What are the 3 R's of your summer?

Relax, Refresh, Rejuvenate!

These are the 3 that I think are necessary to get ready for the next school year. But what do you do to make each of them happen? How do you relax? What do you do that refreshes you? How do you rejuvenate and get the enthusiasm and energy back after a long year of teaching? Do you have a plan to make your summer fun, worthwhile, interesting, and, hopefully, get you ready for the new school year?

Relax: to reduce or stop work, effort, application, etc., especially for the sake of rest or recreation.

How do you relax? Do you plan time to relax? What if you took 20-30 minutes a day, every day, this summer, to really unwind, relax, meditate, do "nothing"?  If 30 minutes seems too long, start with 5 or 10 minutes per day. Then reflect on what that "down" time has done for your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Do you notice any changes?

My idea of relaxing is to sit in my favorite chair with a cup of coffee and my knitting bag. Well, that is just one of the ways I like to relax. Taking time to do things I like to do, or am interested in--reading a book just for the fun of it, not because I have to; reading a "professional" book that I have been wanting to read but just haven't had time to do; taking a class to learn something new--a new knitting technique, an online course, etc. I am not usually one to just sit and do nothing. But I probably should--sitting still for 5 - 10 minutes is still doing something. There are benefits to being "still" for a few minutes every day.

Practicing relaxation exercises/ techniques on a daily basis can produce, over time, a general feeling of relaxation and increased well-being that benefits every area of your life. When you feel relaxed and at ease, you feel more in control which leads to calm, realistic responses. Deep breathing, meditation, yoga, music and art therapy are a few techniques to get yourself to a truly relaxed state. But it takes practice.

Check out these ideas for getting started at: http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/hr/hrdepts/asap/Documents/Relaxation_Techniques.pdf 

 

In the Spotlight:

Subtext--an app for Book Discussions

Subtext is a free iPad app that can be used for students and teachers to have digital book discussions.



Using Subtext you can:

•  Read ebooks
• Annotate ebooks
• Create quizzes about ebooks
• Write blog posts about the ebooks read

There are options for private and public book discussion groups and you can build bookshelves for groups.
More resources on using this in your classroom 

• Social Reading on the iPad: Subtext X Custom ePub
• Infusing Technology to Empower All Learners...written by Martha Lackey
• Using Subtext in the Classroom to Promote Collaboration and Communication

Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.

Fun in an Online Course

     

How do you create "fun" in an online course? This is a discussion that the students in one of my online courses have been discussing--the original question was more about characteristics of effective online instructors. Several students mentioned that an effective online instructor makes the learning "fun". Does that mean an online instructor who has a great sense of humor and it shows up in the online environment? Or, does it mean that the learning activities are engaging and "fun"?

Yes--probably both ideas are "correct". I think I can be funny--sometimes (don't ask my personal kids, because they just groan when I think I am being funny), but my sense of humor may not appear in an online course. So, in my case, I just hope my personality shows through in other ways.

What else can an instructor do to make it "fun"? Is the course for a student in grades K-12 or for an adult learner, like teachers taking online courses for professional development? Does that make a difference?

Think about how you learn. Is learning easier for you if you are having fun doing it and so the time just flies? Can all learning be fun or does some of it just have to be boring? How much does the attitude of the learner play into this? As you can see, I have a lot of questions but not many answers.

Ideas? I would love to hear from you!

 

In the Spotlight: Formative

This is a program that is described as

"A superb assessment resource which allows you to gain real-time feed back through tests, quizzes and even allowing students to annotate a document that you upload. Set up your quiz/test using true/false statements, longer text answers or students can draw the answer. You can setup a marking key meaning that the site will mark the answers for you and give instant data on who is correct. Your students can either have their own free account or they can access the material using a link." 

Also advertised as: Any grade, any subject, any devise. Have you used it with your students? If so, how did it work for you?

Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.

AEA PD Online Instructional Designer

www.aeapdonline.org 

Friday Feature: Visual Design

The"Eyes" Have It!

No doubt you have heard that we are now in the digital age, are constantly being bombarded by a barrage of visual images, and that the learning style of the new generation of students is more visual than many of those in previous generations. So, what does that mean when creating online content for our students?  Do we just add a bunch of images, slideshows, videos, etc., to our courses? Not quite.

Adding images to learning is vital. Allowing learners to absorb content using more than one cognitive channel, in addition to the text, is one way images can enhance the learners experience. But of course, we don't want to add images just to add images. We can utilize images to help with the navigational structure of a course. Different fonts and typeface can be used to separate elements when a lot of text is necessary. Appropriately sized graphics and color can also be used to draw the eye to a certain place.

A blog post, by Neha Goel (Nov. 14, 2014), highlights 4 questions to ask yourself before using visuals in your course:

1.     Do visuals decrease the content overload?

2.     Do visuals make the content comprehensible?

3.     Do visuals help keep learners connected to the course?

4.     Do visuals convey what you wish to tell the learner?

Read Goel’s complete blog post here:

http://blog.commlabindia.com/elearning-design/role-of-visuals-in-elearning

What kinds of projects can you do with your students to help them sort through the barrage of information? I just learned a new word—“infopics”. An infopic is a photo with text layered on top that is designed to communicate a message. To learn more about it, watch this video:

 




I hope you got some ideas from watching the video that you want to use with your students. AEA PD Online would love to hear how you incorporated infopics into your classroom. 

Please share with us!

In the Spotlight

Class Responder is a service that teachers can use to distribute quizzes to students and gather results as soon as students answer the quiz questions. ClassResponder can be used through your web browser or through their free iPad apps. There is an app for teachers and an app for students. Students don't have to create accounts to participate. Students simply enter your classroom code to join your ClassResponder activities.

It also offers pre-made quizzes. Like other student response systems, Class Responder is a way to deliver short review quizzes to your students. You can use the service to make quizzes to use at the end of a lesson to quickly check for your students' understanding of your lesson's main points. You can turn on ClassResponder's instant feedback option for your students so that they don't have to wait until everyone is done before they see their own scores.



Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.

AEA PD Online Instructional Designer

www.aeapdonline.org 

Expectations

I spent some time with a group of science teachers in a local district this week. We were exploring various ways to make the online environment a natural part of their teaching. There were questions posed that may not have straightforward answers—at least not “one right way to do it” type answers.

There are so many ways to connect in an online setting, but how do you, as the teacher, make it fun and engaging while moving student learning forward? Is it “required”? Does it only get assigned as “homework”? How does the teacher get students to “want to do it”? What if the student(s) don’t do it? And, since there is so much out there on the web, how do teachers sort through it all in an efficient manner?

I don’t have any specific, “one-right answer” to these questions, but discussion among the teachers, along with district administrators may move them closer to finding some answers. I know that when teaching adults in an online environment, they, as students, have certain expectations from the course content as well as from the online instructor. Meeting those expectations can make or break an online course. So what do they expect? (Remember, this is from my personal experiences—you may have a different view based on your own experiences.)

They expect:

• Frequent communication from the instructor (known as instructor presence)

• Clear directions about assignments, grading criteria, course expectations, etc.

• Flexibility—with due dates, late assignment policies, etc.—life happens

• An instructor who shows their “human” side by letting their personality show through (which means students feel they know the instructor personally)

• Guidance: on how much time weekly readings, activities, and assignments take, the objectives of course, how and when to submit assignments, etc.

• Some technological skills—able to troubleshoot technological issues a student may have in navigating the course, submitting assignments, seeing grades, and viewing feedback from the instructor

I am sure there are other things that could go on this list. Sometimes it seems like a tall order for an online instructor. But it is what good instructors do—both in the face-to-face and the online classroom environment.

How do you, or online instructors you have had in an online course, set the tone for the course? How can you live up to the expectations of online students? I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

In the Spotlight: eduCanon

“eduCanon is an online learning environment to build and share interactive video lessons. Teachers begin with any YouTube, Vimeo, or TeacherTube video content (screencasts, Khan Academy, Minute Physics, TED, NOVA, etc.) and transform what is traditionally passive content into an active experience for students. By time-linking activities that students engage with as the video progresses the content is segmented into digestible components - increasing student engagement and, through our real-time monitoring, informing the next day’s lesson planning” (from the EduCanon website). 

And it is free. It can be embedded into an LMS, like Moodle, or in a lesson builder application like Softchalk . An eduCanon lesson can also be shared with colleagues and they don’t even have to log in to view it. It can also be made public without being attached to a course—a new feature of the software.

Watch the following video to see and hear what it is all about:

Video doesn’t have to be a “sit and get” activity. Add some interactivity to how your students watch videos. It is easy and free—try it.

Let me know how it works for you and your students.


 

 Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.

AEA PD Online Instructional Designer

www.aeapdonline.org 

Games and Learning

I received an email newsletter from Merlot (a curated collection of free and open online teaching, learning, and faculty development services contributed and used by an international education community.) and in reading it, one link lead to another, to another link, and so on...

I arrived at a website with a very intriguing presentation made with Prezi. It was about games and learning--video type games and learning. It is worth taking a look, although it takes a few minutes to get through it--especially if you click on all the links and watch the embedded videos. But of course that is what made it so intriguing.

Playing to Learn by Maria Andersen.

What do you think? I think learning should have more fun in it. Research is telling us that learning happens when students are engaged and having fun. How can we do that without making the content seem trivial? How can it be done with authentic activities--so it doesn't seem contrived?

Want more on this topic? Then check out this article from THE Journal: Five Skills That Games Teach Better Than Textbooks, by Dian Schaffhauser, 11.05.2014 .

In the Spotlight

Have you seen Osmo? It is used with an iPad and lets you "play outside the iPad"--so to speak. The Osmo website describes how Osmo works:

"Osmo has a magical ability to turn physical objects and interactions into digital game elements. The technology that makes this possible is called Reflective Artificial Intelligence (AI), a phrase we created to describe the process that allows the iPad to make sense of what it sees. There are two main components of Reflective AI: the red Osmo reflector (a mirror), and the computer vision algorithms that process the data. Working together, the reflector and our computer vision software give the iPad the ability to integrate physical objects into our games in real time." (from http://blog.playosmo.com/)

Sounds complicated to me. But watch how kids interact with it:

Pretty awesome! I think it will go on my Christmas list this year. I hope my grandkids let me play it with them. :)

 Peggy Steinbronn, Ed.D.

AEA PD Online Instructional Designer

www.aeapdonline.org