I would like to share this brief email from Ginna Babcock. Any input from you would be much appreciated.
Hi Kathleen,
You sure know a lot about Blogging! Your advice and supportive comments were perfect! I’ve already asked Michelle to set up a visit for my summer BEHS 210 and 343 classes. I hope you will be available! I mentioned in my note to EWC that you, Anna, and Kevin have all given the workshop. Is it possible for you three to get together to debrief as it were? David made up great materials for the workshop, but I wonder if the same kinds of questions are coming up in the two classes and if so, if there are answers we can provide within the structure of the workshop?
The Critical Insight Blog is very popular with the students and I think they learn the material better in this way than in the traditional library paper. It also gives them skills to make their own family blog, which I think is important for this population. Anyway, I plan to continue to use the assignment in future, so any further materials from EWC would be well used! Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks again for your visit,
Ginna
I sent Ginna the following email with ideas about additional technology she could employ:
ReplyDelete--
Ginna:
Thank you again for your successful work with blogs in your classes and allowing the EWC
to be a part of that work.
In addition to blogs, there two other tools that can work well as a multimedia discussion
board and, perhaps, as a multimedia substitute for the traditional research paper.
Voicethread is an amazing way to conduct threaded discussions in a class. The folks at
PennState have pioneered some powerful applications of it. Penn State have developed a
web site that provides all the resources needed to implement Voicethread in our teaching.
The link for VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/
The Penn State VoicThread training web site: http://voicethread.psu.edu/
Also Glogster is primarily associated with K-12 education, I think it can be appropriate
for the university level when presented in the right way:
http://edu.glogster.com/
Voki--Here you can make your own avatar with your voice and embed it in your classroom.
I've had good success with it.
http://www.voki.com/
These were my first two blogging workshops so I'm not sure which questions tend to come up time and again. However, I did note these two questions were asked several times by students:
ReplyDelete- Are there video tutorials for blogspot/blogger?
My answer was to direct them to the Blogger Help channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/BloggerHelp where several tutorials are available.
- How should I organize my project? Should I organize all my materials first and then get my blog set up, or should I slowly add materials to my blog as I get them?
My answer was that different people find various methods that are easiest for them, and that with some practice they would find a method that suits them. I did offer a few suggestions, however. Though I'm not sure if there are other suggestions to offer students since I am not a big blogger myself.
Any input on these questions would be great.
Well I should probably think a little longer on this, but my innitial impression after having done the blogging workshop a few times is that a lot of what I've done in them is provide encouragement.
ReplyDeleteI think a lot of adult learners are innitially intimidated by the idea of blogging and think it's going to be a much more technical experience than it really turns out to be. So in the past it's been about providing familiar examples of SPD in thier everyday lives and how they should emulate it while formatting blog posts.
One question that came up this time that I know has come up before is "How do I credit/obtain permission for images and videos that I want to use on my blog." I'm not sure if I've answered this questions as thoroughly as I could. But I basically tell them that they want to credit legitimate sources (like newssites and newsblogs) as they would any other source for a paper, and that when in doubt: ask permission.
Could be a good idea to create a brief thread about the proper ins and outs of obtaining permission to use the "stuff" around the web. I myself find it to be an increasingly gray area as the internet age continues to unfold.
Thanks for all the input, guys! Kevin: You are right...it would be beneficial to have a thread on copyright issues. We might also want to steer students towards websites like istockphoto.com, which allow you to purchase your own images for blogging and other projects. It is a general rule of thumb that we must ask permission if we are to use an image that is not ours in a video or any other source we are essentially publishing for the world to see.It is always best to also give credit to any source we use.
ReplyDeleteYou also make a good point about students initially believing blogging is very technical.
Kathleen: I have had to construct a few blogs for a few different classes now in grad school and of course I manage this one. There are a few things that have taken me a while to figure out, but all in all, it truly isn't as technical as people initially believe. It's actually fun :)
David: As always, great resources! I can't wait to try Voicethread. I have also used Audioboo for a grad class. It's so much simpler than Audacity.
Nice to hear from you all! Let's do this more often! :)
Michelle
Regarding how to cite and reference, Robert Miller created a wonderful 3-day workshop for us (I am thinking ahead to the 8-week courses in the fall). Here is the link:
ReplyDeletehttp://libguides.umuc.edu/BEHS210_CIB