Update: Facebook deletes historic profiles

Remember that neat project where librarian Donnelyn Curtis made up Facebook profiles for two Nebraska students who lived 100 years ago?  (if not, see this article). Wired Campus posted an update the other day – Facebook Deletes University’s History Project.

Presentations as storytelling

Nancy Duarte is the owner of an award-winning presentation design firm. She is also the author of the  book Resonate, which incorporates insights from literature and cinema to show how you can incorporate storytelling principles into a presentation. One central idea is that great talks move back and forth between telling what is and what could be. Duarte’s message is aimed at business presenters, but it can easily be applied to classroom presentations. See what you think.

John Knox, an award-winning atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia, also thinks storytelling is a good idea. Knox has written about his experiences weaving stories into lectures, citing research that indicates use of stories helps students better understand and remember the material. Have you ever tried to incorporate stories into class presentations? How did it go?

More: If you want to see more from Nancy Duarte, then try her TED talk, The secret structure of great talks. It includes including a fascinating analysis of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.

The one-point raise on a Google Form

In her wonderful book, Teaching What You Don’t Know, Therese Huston describes a technique she calls the “One-Point Raise.” Huston directs the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University, and she writes about a clinical psychologist who first has patients rate an experience on a scale of 1 to 10, then asks what would need to happen for them to raise that score by one point.

2012 Horizon Report released

Educause and the New Media Consortium released the 2012 Horizon Report last Thursday, highlighting emerging technologies likely to impact teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. The six technologies in the ninth edition of this annual report are:

1. Mobile Apps
2. Tablet Computing
3. Game-Based Learning
4. Learning Analytics
5. Gesture-Based Computing
6. Internet of Things

Over the coming weeks, this blog will dedicate space to the various technologies covered in the report. Also, on March 2, the University of Notre Dame will host an internal Horizon Report Event for ND faculty, staff, and graduate students.

Fully wireless scanning

A big hit at the Consumer Electronics Show last month was the Xerox Mobile, a battery-powered scanner that transfers documents wirelessly to a computer or tablet. I’ve been hankering for an unobtrusive scanner to use at my desk and in the field, so I decided to look into this one.

I soon discovered that there was an alternative. The Visioneer Mobility is the same as the Xerox Mobile minus wifi*. Right now the street price on a Visioneer MobilIty scanner plus an Eye-Fi Connect X2 4GB is about $40 less than the Xerox Mobile ($245). Being cheap, I went with the Visioneer.

Caveat – Apple book authoring tool

Amid much hoopla, Apple made a series of education-related announcements a couple of weeks ago. None received more attention than iBooks Author, a free tool for publishing e-textbooks in Apple’s online bookstore. I was pretty excited myself.

The more things change

People like to say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I’m not sure I believe that, unless staying the same means changing all the time. Am I giving you a headache?

A dozen graphic organizers and mind maps

Venn Diagram

I received a lovely email today from Barbara Hayes at After Skoolkids who found the Concept Mapping page at my lab website useful. Being a helpful teacher, she returned the favor by sharing an excellent resource from an ERIC website. Educational Study Tools: Mind Maps & Graphic Organizers features a great list of visualization strategies. Directions and examples are provided for each one.

Graphic Organizers

These are visual representations of concepts or ideas. The techniques below are used widely in K-12 education, but not so much in higher ed.

• Decision Making Model – from top to bottom: problem, possible solutions, advantages and disadvantages for each solution, final solution
• Main Idea Pyramid – apex contains the basic idea, subsequent levels deal with sub-concepts and other aspects
• Question/Answer Chart – approach study material from different angles based on questions
• Venn Diagram – shows shared elements among several objects or ideas
• Sequence Chain – describes a series of events or ideas in a linear fashion
• Flow Chart – also follows a sequence but tends to be simpler and smaller

Mind Maps

I have written about concept maps several times in this blog. They graphically represent relationships among concepts. I didn’t realize there were so many different variations!

• Character Map – analyze character traits or relationships in a story
• Story Map – explore themes and events as well as characters
• Spider Map – follows diagonal lines, giving the appearance of a spider with legs sticking out
• Cloud Map – (a.k.a. cluster map) helps students brainstorm a central idea
• Fish-bone Map – at the head, students jot down the main theme or idea, then fill in details along the bone segments
• Continuum Map – a linear scale for sequential events

Creating one of these visualizations can be an excellent strategy in a variety of situations. Before beginning a unit, students could diagram the way they understand a concept. After reading a short story in a foreign language, students could create a character map. You can purchase specific programs designed for creating concept maps, but you probably already have PowerPoint. It’s great for creating visuals, it’s not too complicated, and most students already know how to use it.

Don’t ask when software will improve learning

A recent article on Wired Campus is titled, Technology Is at Least 3 Years Away From Improving Student Success, and includes the following quote from the Higher Ed Tech Summit in Las Vegas:

We’re beginning to get lots of data on things like time of task, but we don’t have the outcomes yet to say what leads to a true learning moment. I think we are three to five years away from being about to do that. (Troy Williams, Macmillan New Ventures)

No technology per se improves learning. You’ve heard that from me before. There are tools that can help make processes more efficient, and some technologies are easier than others to use well. But a technology can’t inherently improve learning; it’s the way technology is used. Our goal should be to develop systems that incorporate the best strategies. When we talk about these things, we should emphasize the strategies that are being used and downplay the technology.

Technologies CAN help us incorporate strategies that we know improve learning, but a tool is not responsible for the learning. In the same way, it’s not the television that excites us during the Super Bowl, it’s the players … and the commercials. Here’s a quote I love:

Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn. (Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate)

In this case, we might alter the second sentence: “Technology can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn.”

Facebook profiles bring history to life

Donnelyn Curtis, a librarian at the University of Nevada at Reno, has used social media to give students a glimpse of what life was like for their peers 100 years ago. She created Facebook profiles for Joe McDonald (class of 1913) and Leola Lewis. On behalf of the now-deceased couple, Curtis has posted updates that talk about stressing over tests and being excited about football games – as well as period photos.

What a creative way to use this medium! By placing the profiles on Facebook, Curtis has situated this clever historical narrative in a space that engages many students. You may remember a previous post about innovative use of social media – Romeo tweets Juliet. readers, are you aware of other neat applications? Please share them in a comment.

Read more: On Facebook, Librarian Brings 2 Students From the Early 1900s to Life (Wired Campus)