Category: Reflections
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Can We Make Online (Graduate School) Discussions Suck Less?
As many of you know, and have probably experienced, discussions in online classes can be notoriously bad. At best, many online courses feign discussion as a pseudo-cooperative (and not a collaborative, generative) task, and students engage because they are required to connect with the content and with one another. At worst, the tasks are perfunctory and just…
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Updates from Our Book: Argument in the Real World
As a writer — both in the sense that I am a blogger and the author of texts for teachers — I am well aware of the fact that writing is never really “done,” it is just “due.” I am thankful that I have the opportunity to keep writing, keep sharing, keep updating. It is…
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Reflections on the Digital Literacy and Higher Education Winter Symposium
My first draft, unfiltered thinking from the end of our day reflections: Of course, the opportunity to meet and greet is wonderful. As we have noted, it is easy to fall into “silos” in our academic roles, and being able to talk with librarians, media literacy scholars, education scholars, doc students, and others is always…
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Analyzing Our Own Social Scholarship Profiles
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in Academic Life, Books, CMU, Collaboration, Connected Learning, Crafting Digital Writing, Digital Writing Workshop, Educational Research, Hybrid Learning, Misc. Debris, Mobile Learning, MSU, New Literacies, New Media, News and Notes, Online Learning, Professional Development, Reflections, Teaching, WritingDuring our workgroup meeting this morning, Maria Ranieri has asked us to engage in an analysis of our own social profile(s), and to reflect on our decision to engage in social scholarship. For me, the choice to engage in social media began over a decade ago, while still in graduate school at MSU. The first…
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Rethinking a Wiki vs LMS for Course Design
Last year, when I first taught EDU 807, “Learning Tools in Education Technology,” one of my goals was to employ a wiki as a learning management system (LMS) so the doctoral students involved in the course could participate in a more open, collaborative form of social scholarship. I have long been an advocate of using…
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Posting, Probing, and Reflecting on Conversations with NowComment
So, I know I’m a little bit late to the web, image, and video annotation phenomenon that’s taken place over the last few years. I’ve talked a little bit about it in some of the pieces that I’ve written on Connected Reading, but I haven’t really been an avid user simply because it couldn’t quite…
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Digital Writing, Digital Teaching 2.0
After another few weeks of trials and tribulations, the kind support team at LunarPages has helped me wipe my server clean and reinstall my original blog. I am reposting the “new” welcome that I posted in mid-October and, now, hope to be back up and blogging again. Nearly 10 years ago, Professor Michael Wesch created…
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Rethinking Scientific Argument with StoryMaps JS
This past week, I was able to cap off a summer whirlwind of PD at CMU’s Biological Station, facilitating what we are calling our first Beaver Island Institute. The six-day event brought together middle school science and ELA teachers for an opportunity to engage in scientific inquiry, explore argument writing in science, and understand aspects…
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Thinking Through a Digital Deliberation, Part 4: Handwriting, Typing, and Fluency
Today, I head to Rhode Island for the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy, and next Thursday I lead a “Digital Deliberation” session on “typing vs. handwriting.” In my first post for this series, I shared an overview of the debate. Then, in the second post, I look at handwriting curricula and typing tools. The third post explored the rhetorical approaches that…
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Thinking Through a Digital Deliberation, Part 3: What is Gained, What is Lost
In less than two weeks, I head to Rhode Island for the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy. One main item on my agenda is to lead a “Digital Deliberation” session on “typing vs. handwriting.” So far, I’ve shared some initial thoughts on the debate, as well as a look at some particular concerns with curricula and web-based tools.…