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>> THERSEA: So, we have our year long seminar series
for instructors, umm, incorporating technology into the classroom
setting in various ways, which is principles and
practices of integrating teaching and technology; And we had our
first seminar yesterday, umm, titled "Building and
the Basics: What was it, Fundamentals of Incorporating Technology into
the classroom Setting."
>> CHAD: Yeah, that's right. we, We didn't even really get
into the specific technologies, we're talking about basic
principles of, of how to use technology in your
classroom. And we, If I remember correctly, We started with, as always, learning
your learning objectives and talking about planning to meet
those objectives. We talked a little bit about
training our students, about leveraging the types
of activities that we have with technology, then
we finished by talking about reflecting on what
we've done.
>> THERESA: Mhmm, exactly. So the first part, the first bullet point
that we had was, to plan your objectives and
reserve your pedagogical goals for either the class
as a day, or as a week, or as a semester. Um, maybe
your pedagogical goals as far as your teaching portfolio
is concerned. And this should be before class planning
that's happening to make sure that those are really clear
to you before going into the classroom and setting up
your lesson plan, So that anything you incorporate
with technology in, in the learning environment matches up
with that and meshes really well with those goals.
>> CHAD: Yeah, really we're talking about being purposeful
with the use of technology, not just technology for
technology's sake but having it be part of reaching your
learning goals for your class.
>> THERSEA: Right, exactly. Yeah. And then the next step would be the
actual planning, your, your course planning. And maybe that's the, you know,
overview of what your entire semester's going to look like,
or day by day, or how one week might segway into the
next week, what you want your students to be doing, and
then being, ehemm, mindful about how you're planning your lesson,
what activities coming before, ummm, maybe your activity with technology
that incorporates technology, what's coming after, are
your students clear about what they're doing with that, does everything, is
everything seemless? So it, it ties back into your teaching
goals and, and the objectives for the class.
>> CHAD: Right, and we didn't want to make it seem like
you have to have a perfect class everytime, with seemless
transitions, but the idea is to plan for the sequence.
>> THERSEA: Right, exactly. Yeah.
>> CHAD: Umm, We threw out there the myth, that all students
just know how to use technology, they've grown up with
it, they're digital natives and so they just know how
to use technology, they'll figure it out. And I call
that a myth because there was a survey EDUCAUSE did,
of all undergraduate students, last
year that found that only a third of students felt like
their instructors had prepared them well enough to do the
assignments that they have that involve technology. And so we talked
about training our students, whether that's a walk-through in
class or maybe a hand-out with step by step instructions, but
doing something to get them familiar so they, they know what it
is they're supposed to do for an assignment and for bigger
picture things; if you're using a technology piece for the
entire semester, you can have software training for students,
a resource on campus to come and do a training session with
your course, and there are online tutorials available as
well. But the point is to, to not just expect that students
will figure it out, you need to give some sort of training.
>> THERSEA: Exactly, yeah. And that feeds directly into our
fourth point which was your specific activities and leveraging
your activities. If they have, you know, a technological foundation
or not, and how that fits into your classroom, and equipping your
students so they're clear on the directions for that, they know
what they should be doing, and you're clear about what you want
to be getting out of them. So your cle- You know, maybe, what level of participation
you want from them, ummm if you're not getting that feedback from them that
you thought you were going to be with the activity, the tech, technology based activity,
is it something that's working or not, they're clear on what they're doing.
Maybe if you're showing a video, you're having an online discussion, they
understand exactly what level of participation you want from them, um,
and that you're choosing your activities to match up with your
goals and to match up with, the feel, you know, what the feel of the class
that you want. And if you
want them to be sitting there for a half and hour, then you know, creating
a blog or doing an online discussion or you know, doing an iMovie project
is not the best activity to choose for that. Then maybe, you're showing a video
and they're just simply watching it and responding afterwards.
>> CHAD: Right, but the leveraging idea is choosing activities that will help
you reach your goals. And, and it's really about doing things with technology
that you couldn't do otherwise. One example we threw out there was
in a large lecture course, it's difficult to have discussions, and so
you could have an online discussion be an element of that. Um, but leveraging
technology and doing things you couldn't do otherwise, also the other side
of that is not using technology if you don't need to. In my teaching
days, the technology that I used the most was the overheard projector
and that's not something we think of being very techy. Uh, But it worked
really well for my class so I can just come up with examples on the
fly and put them up on the projector. So that was what was easy for me.
I didn't need to create a powerpoint for every step of my course.
>> THERSEA: Uhm huh, Exactly, yeah. If something's not working, I've had plenty
of times like that where I thought I was going to be doing
something and I wasn't getting the response I wanted from my students,
or the technology failed, or I had a bad projector, something just
wasn't working. And you have to modify on the fly, and then maybe
it's just for that specific class that you're changing what
you're doing and the technology wasn't working for you, maybe
that's just not a good, you know, activity for what you want to be
doing with your students. So if you don't need it, don't use it.
>> CHAD: Yeah, and you might not always know ahead of time.
>> THERSEA: Mhmm.
>> CHAD: It's trial and error. And that's part of the reflection
is, is taking this approach that I might need to tweak things
as I go, I might not have everything figured out on Day one.
And so, you have that mind set, and you share with your
students to that you'll be trying something and you're
going to adjust it as you go. And that's part of the
reflection process.
>> THERSEA: Right, exactly, and hand in hand with that is
making sure that you're always looking back on what worked and
what didn't, holding onto what did work and then looking
ahead and modifying that for the future, how can you
enhance this, how can you improve it, how can you maybe
integrate it in other ways in that class and in different classes.
How can you fold it into your teaching portfolio, if it's
something you think you've gotten good at and is very useful
for your students. Um, so.
>> CHAD: Right. I think part of reflection can also
be not just looking back but, I don't know if you can
reflect forward, but keeping an eye out for other
possibilities, other things that you could use in
your course.
>> THERSEA: Right, yeah.
>> CHAD: So do you think that, what do you think
are some of the take-aways that you had from
our discussion yesterday?
>> THERSEA: I think my big one would be to
do some, you know, planning ahead of time, and to
be flexible with your students, to be flexible with
the technology, to be able to really operate on the
fly, but to have a plan operating either in your head
or on paper that is maybe just tenative, so that you
can control, not in a really firm way, you know, but
that you can manage the technology and the outcome of
that as best as possible. But then on the flip side
of that be able to manage the maybe not so great
outcome if that's what you're getting. And then, you know,
reinvent what you're doing, um, with that.
>> CHAD: I like that controlling technology. I'm
a control freak myself, so I like that image. But,
like you said, part of planning is also having
back-ups. So that's good. I think for me one of the
big take-aways was, is, is training your students so
that they can actually perform the assignments that
you want them to do. And that way they can focus on the ideas
and the concepts, and the material that they're learning,
that they're working with. And so the technology doesn't
get in the way of that, that the technology is just a
means to discuss ideas, not something that gets in the way.
And that comes from being familiar with it and having
the training and know what to do. Um, I think another
big take-away for me too was that all of these things
that we discussed were really just good principles of
solid teaching, uh, and we're just adding a technology
element to it. It's not rocket science, these are
special steps that we take with technology but they're just
good teaching principles in general and we're adding
technology as an element within our course.
>> THERESA: Mhmm, exactly yeah, and I think that's what we want
to do with the first one. Right? Is that we threw out sorta a lot of activities
that involved technology. We talked about Google Docs and
Learn@UW and all of that. But we didn't want to be
activity-based or, you know, talk about some of these things, things that you can, you
know the specific technologies. We want it to be
very general so that really every time you say Google Docs, you
could replace it with "Overhead Projector" and the outcome,
and you know the planning around that would be the same. With the
next one- so with the upcoming seminar, the Undiscovered Treasures
seminar, where we will be getting into specific technologies,
a lot of them computer-based or web-based and doing some
brainstorming and planning on how to incorporate that into
the classroom setting.
>> CHAD: Undiscovered Treasures?
>> THERESA: Undiscovered Treasures.
>> CHAD: What do you mean?
>> THERESA: Yeah, Undiscovered Treasures, subtitle: getting to know
UW-Madison's learning technology toolbox.
>> CHAD: Whoo. So it's getting familiar with some of what's
available to you.
>> THERESA: Exactly. Yep. yep. yep.
>> CHAD: Great. Looking forward to it.
>> THERESA: Me too.