todaysmeet.com/eco2014

Jeopardy Game!

Hello to all,

After multiple and more hours of first creating in EE and in Powtoons, and then attempting to get EE, Powtoons, and QuickTime to collaborate (my computer trashcan is overflowing with mistaken files) I believe I finally have a draft of my project to present tomorrow.

No sooner was I drawing a sigh of relief when WordPress told me that it would not upload my project because it exceeded 50MB….. 🙁

do the challenges never end?!?!?!?!

frustrated judy

For years cognitive apprenticeship has been the foundation for the development of technique and repertoire in music. Jazz is certainly no exception to this approach. In fact, we celebrate the “jazz masters” for their contributions to the art form and its various genres. Aspiring practitioners, if fortunate enough, often study with a master in a effort to glean greater understanding and insight into their chosen interest. This method has been proven to be effective and has never been questioned-until now. With the advent of social media and other sophisticated methods for the delivery of information, questions about how these these technological achievements could be used as a part of the educational process are being raised.

As we assess the overall skill level of the average incoming college freshmen, we are finding that they are technologically far superior to the same student twenty years ago. This does not come as any surprise when we look at the technology achievements of recent years. However, we failed to predict the impact of these achievements on our young digital natives. Having been raised in a digital environment, they have enjoyed the benefits of the immediate availability of information. However this has come at the expense of a significant reduction in their ability to retain information, which is the foundation of cognitive apprenticeship.

Some educators are now proposing that collaborative learning be considered as a way to further engage an motivate young musicians. Naturally there is some resistance to incorporating a new approach to a tried and proven method. However, we are now faced with the challenge of how to disseminate information to students who have been conditioned to receive and process information in a “non-traditional” manner.

Our mission (Jazz Studies) is to use today’s technology practices as a means of engaging students while providing them with the fundamental information and skills essential to the understanding and performance of jazz. This is a new and exciting journey for both the master and the apprentice.

“ I don’t use Blackboard. The students don’t like it.” How many times have I heard faculty say that?

That refrain was on my mind as I spent some time with the online course design rubrics and gained insight into my own teaching. I focused particularly on the rubric by Blackboard because I am most familiar with that tool. Blackboard use provides flexibility because the semester schedule often shifts in journalism courses. But only in thinking about Blackboard as the centerpiece for an online course have I started to view it as more than a syllabus device. Why don’t students like Blackboard? They complain that it is disjointed and annoying to use. Part of the blame lies with me, since I feel my courses have lacked clarity and I have failed to see Blackboard as a means to develop a learning community.

The online rubrics highlight a holistic approach that fuses content and presentation, learner interaction and engagement, technology use, and measurable assessment and outcomes. This week we have gained tools to start building our courses toward the goal of an online course community. We may go only part of the way through selective use of blended learning techniques. But I can see how these techniques can add clarity to my courses and help the students feel more invested in the environment and effort. I always tell my students that writing is the purest form of thinking because one needs to discern the main points to write succinctly. The same is true for writing courses. Clarity is essential to learning. Course design sets out the road ahead so students can pursue it with understanding and purpose.

The first two days of ECO 2014 have been packed with so many useful tools that my head is spinning with new ideas for the Human Health Program.  It has been inspiring to see real life examples of how they have been used by other faculty and staff at Emory. The tools that stick out as being particularly suited to engaging the Health 100 freshmen are Explain Everything and Screencast-o-matic.  The students work in small groups on a class project and both of these apps look promising to use for this purpose.  Also, I am interested in exploring Zaption for the Health 300 class as an option to  weekly hard copy quizzes or quizzes in Blackboard for the pre-work they are assigned for each class.

Looking over the several pages of notes I have taken already, it struck me how many of my notes were on ideas, comments and concerns mentioned by others in the class.  The sharing and connection in the physical classroom is very helpful and important to my own learning and understanding of what is possible.  I find it interesting to this dawned on me in a class about online learning!

My big question at this point in the week:  How best can this in-person interaction be replicated in a virtual classroom with a large (100-200 students) enrollment?

FACOE

Hi Everyone!

Given the change in schedule this morning, I thought it might be useful if we follow up on Lee’s conversation tomorrow morning, In preparation, let me suggest viewing my post above. It contains the links and information I was going to share today. So let’s “flip” and let me ask that you view/read the materials at home tonight.

One note concerning two sites:

1) DAvos Economic Summit – I was only going to share Daphne Koeller (founder of Coursera) who speaks about about minute 10. However, I would suggest listening to the whole presentation

2) Institute of the Future homepage – listen to the 3 minute video which is in the middle of the page.

Let me know if this is unclear, thanks

judy