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Web Technologies in the Liberal Arts

Classroom:

A Workshop atJuniata College

Barbara GanleyMiddlebury CollegeJanuary 11, 2006

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Writing Exercise

• What are your pedagogical goals?

• How does technology intersect with those goals?

• What are your questions and concerns about using Web technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasting, RSS, tagging, etc.) in this course?

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The Learning Landscape: Digital Natives, Their

Experiences & Expectations--Third-graders

podcasting --High School Journalism Class --High School Students

on a Wiki --Underground

H.S. Newspaper --H.S. Digital

Storytelling Contest --Creative Literature Project

& Oral History

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Personal Writing Academic Writing

Integrating the Selves

Purpose: Dialogue & Expression “Rip and Remix”Audience: Self and Community

Mode: Text: Instant Messenger LiveJournal

Images: “…less objects

to be saved than messages to be

disseminated, circulated.” Sontag

Purpose: Knowledge Delivery

Audience: Authoritative Other

Mode: Text: Fossilized, formulaic

formal discourseImages: Static

Powerpoint presentations

The Writing Divide

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Expectations: Balance

“College students want faculty members to use information technology, but students nevertheless hunger for the human touch in courses as well, according to a new survey of 18,039 freshmen and seniors at 63 institutions.” Chronicle of Higher Education 11/05

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Overwhelming Realities

• The speed of change• Pressures on classrooms, on pedagogical practices:

“…our educational discourse is largely stuck in a time warp, framed by issues and standards set decades before the widespread use of the personal computer, the Internet, and free trade agreements. But we can no more afford to isolate ourselves educationally than we can economically or in terms of national security.” Phi Delta Kappan 11/05

• The tools, the tools--Blogs Wikis Podcasts Skypecasts/WebcastsRSS Folksonomies Multimedia Authoring

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The First-Year Experience

Sets the tone for the college learning environment, experience, expectations

Builds sense of Engages student in Fosters

belonging to active learning transition

community process to adulthood

Our inclination to pack in the subject matter

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Blogs in the Classroom

Contemporary Ireland Through Fiction and Film

Introduction to Creative Writing Writing Across the Arts

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WHY USE BLOGS

• To create/foster/nurture learning communities

• To engage students in their learning process

• To extend learning beyond traditional time and space constraints

• To contextualize learning within the discipline and the wider world

• To initiate a portfolio for ongoing assessment

• To create a dynamic archive of materials and models

• To improve the teaching of writing and visual literacy

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Blogs and Learning Communities

“The principle that development of experience comes about through interaction means that

education is essentially a social process. This quality is realized in the degree to which

individuals form a community group.” --John DeweyHOW: --Pre-course collaborative

blogging --Pierre Levy’s reciprocal

apprenticeships

• RESULTS: -- Immediate Sense of

Belonging & Purpose--Efficacy

-- Intensifying of Classroom Experience--Deep Learning

-- Sage is Off the Stage & in the Circle--Student-Centered, Constructivist, Connectivist Learning Achieved

Blogging in a First-Year Seminar

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Extending the Teaching Moment

Online, Connected Post & Response Benefits the Writer and the Reader

The Teacher• Highlights Noteworthy

Accomplishments• Models Critical Reading &

Response Writing• Helps the Writer to Revise

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The Students Shape the Blog as It Shapes Them

Blogging pushes

considerations of effective learning

outcomes

Award-nominated final essay

Students referencing one another in essays

Students engaging in discussions with outside experts

Meta-reflective Practice

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Blogging to Engage Students Actively in their Learning Process

• HOW: Taking advantage of the

medium’s --Connectivity --Visual Qualities --Archiving

• RESULTS: --Understanding of

their own learning process --Awareness of progress -- Improvement in

critical thinking and writing

Student Page Contents

Project Pages

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Real World-Classroom Connections

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Blogging to Ground the Learning within the Wider Discipline and the World

• HOW: --Inviting Experts into

the Class via the Blog --“Publishing” of

Student Work

• RESULTS: --Authentic & Extended

Learning Enhanced --Range of Discourse

Modes, Levels and Audiences Understood

--Efficacy

Affecting the World

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Blogging to Initiate a Portfolio of Student Work

• HOW:--Individual student

blogs/pages--Linking to earlier semesters --Joining future iterations of

the Course via the blog--Ongoing reflective narrative

• RESULTS:--Unified education/integrated

self--Learning as process--Rich, ongoing record for

student and teacher--Effective revisions & growth

in deep critical thinking

A student gathers her work

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Taking the Blog Outside: Multiple Layers of Learning

I just want to point out that the Blogger's Field Trip was only very loosely defined at the outset, with no clear purpose. Usually, loosely defined assignments only involve the student and professor, but with this Blogger's Field Trip, we have the opportunity to benefit as a class from each students unique interpretation, stretching the limits of the assignment even beyond the original concept. However, we also have the opportunity for our very different interpretations to clash and create conflicts, as well as move too far beyond the original concept.

Layer One: Reacting to Another View

Layer Two: Initiating Dialogue

Layer Three: Synthesizing and Reflecting

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Blogging to Create Rich Archives and a Course Portal

• HOW:--Blog as CMT--Options for rich range of

research, group, oral, creative, multi-media and traditional assignments

• RESULTS:--Nothing lost from

original course, emergent outcomes made possible

--Enlivened, enriched collaborative projects

--Service-learning and dispersed-community collaborations possible

Student Models

Course Portal

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Student Responses to First-year Blogging

• “I feel this class is like that game where everyone tries to sit down on each other at the same time, in a circle, and if they do it correctly no one falls because the weight is evenly spread around. “

• Amanda reflects/Colleen comments

• “…we are all experts, and we are all apprentices. We all have our strengths and weaknesses—what Dan or Amanda may write really well, I struggle with, but where they struggle, maybe Caitlin and I excel. We all learn in different ways, and in this, we can all learn from each other. This brings me to Essay #3 which was truly a group learning experience. In high school I always hated working on group projects because I did all the work. Well, we’re at Middlebury, and we’re ALL those kids who did all the work. So, nothing changes, we still do all the work, but we both do, and the result is pretty astonishing. For Colleen and I, it took a few sessions before we settled into our rhythms of working together, but we learned how to work separately, but come together for feedback. “

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Challenges

• Student Unease • Stability of Server/Network• Unrealistic Expectations of Technology

• Time Involved to Ground the Tool in the Pedagogy

• Willingness to Model Good Writing and Thinking BUT not take over the discussion

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Blogging Exercises

Writing in response to a prompt

Writing after reading peer responses

Bloggers’ Field Trip

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Blogging Exercise

• Go to www.blogger.com and create a blog

• As your first post, brainstorm ideas about ways in which you might use a blog in your course.

• As your second post, ask questions, voice concerns…

• Trade blog URLs with someone and respond to one of their posts.

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Blogs Invite Multimedia

Portrait of an

Artist (excerpt)

My brother is mute. But not because he cannot speak. Not because he does not have anything to say. It is more as though he is muted—muted because most of us don’t know how to hear him…

Story Without Words

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….Podcasting/Audio Files

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…And

• Wikis• RSS--Social Bookmarking• Digital Storytelling• Keeping Your Own Blog• Independent Student Projects• Inter-institutional Projects

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Last Thoughts…

“The faculty member of the twenty-first century university could thus become more of a consultant or a coach than a teacher, less concerned with transmitting intellectual content directly than with inspiring, motivating, and managing an active learning process…That is, faculty may come to interact with undergraduates in ways that resemble how they interact with

their doctoral students today.” From The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/02

(National Academy of Sciences Report)

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Readings (Just a Start)

• Jay David Bolter Writing Spaces• Stephen Johnson Emergence• George P. Landow Hypertext 2.0• Pierre Lévy Collective Intelligence• Diana & James Oblinger Educating the Net

Generation• Howard Rheingold Smart Mobs• Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort (eds) The

New Media Reader• Dave Weinberger Small Pieces Loosely Joined