Category: Hot Topics – Prior Weeks

“So, what’s all the hype about Baby George?” I wondered as I left GEDI training (aka Contemporary Pedagogy) on Wednesday night.  Our professor had sounded so disappointed that we couldn’t watch a TED talk titled “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning.”  Intrigued, I watched it after I got home from class:

I really enjoyed this TED talk, especially when he highlights how we should see the different strengths that students have.  He points out that we often hear people saying “well, some kids just aren’t cut out for school,”  and yet what that basically means is “well, some kids just aren’t cut out for learning.”  Isn’t that a bit of a ridiculous claim?  Everyone can learn, but not everyone learns in the same way.

During my own experiences in teaching, I have often wondered how to reach a large class of students with a wide variety of learning styles, concerns, challenges at home, and goals for life.  I desperately want to inspire and mentor students through their educational experiences, but how am I supposed to do that when I am given a room full of strangers to get to know in just a few weeks?  How am I supposed to do that within current academic restrictions (e.g. grades, strict policies, departmental cultures)?

I hope that during this semester I will be able to find creative ways to meet the challenges of teaching in university settings.  Perhaps I will even learn how to better use technology in the classroom and Networked Learning to improve the educational atmosphere of my future classrooms.

No matter how far-out or inventive or mundane the solutions I come up with during this semester, I hope to remember this phrase from the Baby George video: our educational journey is less about learning “how to make a living” and more about learning “how to build a life worth living.”

Reading the article by Tim Hitchcock, he talks about using blogging as a way to publicize your research and not to be afraid of others using this as a way to steal your work/research. He mentions that the most successful academics are the ones who are so passionate about their work that they are basically quick to publicize on every outlet.

Now as someone who does not care for blogging and will typically only blog when required for a class, I do actually see the benefit of using this platform as an outlet to present your ideas and opinions on certain topics in a classroom setting and even on published and peer reviewed topics. However, I personally would not go to a blog site to look up works for my own research, because I simply would not think that it would be credible. If I end up seeing the same research on an accredited site, then I’d be happily proven wrong and use it if it is of use to what I am working on at the time for sure.

Hitchcock also mentions two rules on participating in this “academic sphere”, I’d like to highlight the second rule he mentions where he says “remember that everything from Academia.edu, to Twitter, to Facebook and Flickr, is a form of publication, and should be taken seriously as such”. I use my social media for my own personal use and I see people’s posts on different topics of discussion. I will read articles that come across my timeline if I find the title interesting, but rarely would I say that I take them seriously unless I’ve seen a related topic in the news or on other sites that I trust to be a proven site.

Again, I see blogging as useful to vent and give your own personal thoughts and opinions on certain topics, but I would be skeptical about using any publications within my own work/research.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/07/28/twitter-and-blogs-academic-public-sphere/

The timing of everything is too perfect to not include this short bootlegged video. Basically sums up blogging for me. Maybe I will also change like Luke did in the movie.  Anyway, the real thought provoking content begins below. Please push play on the video though, it might give you a good chuckle.

A post shared by Annie Palladino (@anniepalladino) on Dec 13, 2017 at 2:09pm PST

 

If you are curious as to what Kuh’s high-impact practices are, please follow this link. I like the ideas presented. It seems like it would make for an undergraduate experience that would actually feel like you did something, rather than simply getting a degree to check a box on applications. The one idea I want to focus on is collaborative assignments/projects. The class I TA for, ecological agriculture, could benefit greatly if we practiced that more. There are many writing prompts to be completed, but everyone does them on their own. Then when we have class discussions about them, it is the few strong voices in the room that continue to dominate discussions. By having a collaborative writing environment, it could be possible to get more people to participate in classroom discussions since they have had to express their ideas to at least one other person.

Likewise, the hypothes.is tool seems like a good way to get ideas flowing for the papers that are assigned to the class. We read a lot of science literature in the class, and not everyone is familiar with those types of articles. It could be helpful in creating a better understanding. While it isn’t anonymous, it might be easier to ask questions when one isn’t in front of the class. Maybe that provides an opportunity for a student to answer a question rather than wait for the instructor.  I know it is about building the network and sharing ideas and experiences, but I also see it as a way off accountability for actually doing the readings that doesn’t involve the instructor threatening to take off points for not doing an assignment. I see myself incorporating this into the class and it seems to be a worthwhile use of technology.