“Order emerges at the edge of chaos.” Roger Lewin and Birute Regine, The Soul at Work
… a busy, innovative, thriving classroom (or online discussion board, or boardroom) sometimes is chaotic.
The busy timetables of the school year can leave little time for extensive new units of study. As teachers, instructional designers, administrators realize the compacted time demands of each day, other options are possible.
Consider mini-lessons of 10-15 minutes to reinforce essentials concepts to enhance the invitational component of your classroom or online course.
VoiceThread is a collaborative caldron combining text, video, personalized comments, audio, and images. Participating in a VoiceThread conversation is free, with registration. Used in a classroom near you, here are 9 short and sweet steps to create your next voice thread.
Instructions for Uploading Your VoiceThread
Repost from Education Dive:
Responsiveness and individualized feedback addressing learners by name are just two of many practices that build a bridge that erases distances in distance learning. Methods to close the “transactional distance,” or the space felt between a faculty member and a student in the learning process, include opportunities for in-class dialog, peer-to-peer video, text exchange, and/or exposure to campus culture.
Carter, J. (April, 2018). Reducing ‘distance’ is key to online learner success. Education Dive blog, retrieved from: https://www.educationdive.com/news/reducing-distance-is-key-to-online-learner-success/521166/
“Isolation is the enemy of improvement.” ~Tony Wagner, author of The Global Achievement Gap
This quote is a good add for your bulletin board, letter to parents, and/or course syllabi. It encourages and hints at the necessary collaborative focus of the learning that will occur in your classroom.
Studies have indicated that the use of a conversational tone and/or including a personalized learning agent enhances learning. Also, using conversational tone and/or a personalized learning tool induces students to listen to content (Mandernach, B. 2009).
Consider the combination of evaluation and personalized video. Use your mobile phone app or laptop-resident video software to provide a quick, personalized evaluation for your students’ work. Too many students in huge classes? Consider sending a personalized message to groups of students who share a distinguishing feature (high assignment scores, by classification, etc…).
Mandernach, B. (2009). Effect of Instructor-Personalized Multimedia in the Online Classroom. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10:3 (1- 19).
Found in Southard, Sheryne M. and Young, Karen (2018) “An Exploration of Online Students’ Impressions of Contextualization, Segmentation, and Incorporation of Light Board Lectures in Multimedia Instructional Content,” The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology: Vol. 10 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/jpps/vol10/iss1/7
This is the week for InstructureCarn in Keystone, Colorado. Our team from PBS TeacherLine submitted our proposal back in February. … And it was accepted!!
We are excited about our session called, “We’ve Moodled on Over to Canvas: PBS TeacherLine Online Facilitators Share What Works.” Our session is Wednesday, June 25th at 3:25pm.
Not going to InstructureCarn? Check back to this blog for the online handouts of the session!
This week’s weekend Ed. Quote was supplied by Cynthia who is one of the dedicated teachers in the PBS TeacherLine online learning course that I facilitate. The course is “Teaching with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress”
“Curriculums must become more thought-filled in the sense of enlarging students’ capacities to think deeply and creatively.”–Costa (2008)