Web Technologies in the Liberal Arts Classroom: A Workshop at Juniata College Barbara Ganley Middleb

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Web Technologies in the Liberal Arts
ClassroomA Workshop atJuniata
CollegeBarbara 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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The Writing Divide

Integrating the Selves
Personal Writing Academic
Writing
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 discourse Images Static
Powerpoint presentations
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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/Webcasts
• RSS 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
Writing Across the Arts
Introduction to Creative Writing
Contemporary Ireland Through Fiction and Film
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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 CommunitiesThe 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 Dewey

• HOW
• --Pre-course collaborative blogging
• --Pierre Levys 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
Students engaging in discussions with outside
experts
Award-nominated final essay
Students referencing one another in essays
Meta-reflective Practice
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Blogging to Engage Students Actively in their
Learning Process

• HOW
• Taking advantage of the mediums
• --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
Layer Three Synthesizing and Reflecting
Layer One Reacting to Another View

• 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 Two Initiating Dialogue
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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 weaknesseswhat 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, were at Middlebury, and were
  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
Story Without Words
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
  mutedmuted because most of us dont know how to
  hear him

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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 processThat 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