In the comments, Janice points out this article in the NY Times also discussing the math problems people have when trying to figure out what's reasonable to save on. Mr. Geeky and I have spent hours in the past doing the back and forth of deciding whether to buy something or figuring out how to save money. For me, saving $80/mo. on school lunches isn't worth the time I'd have to spend making the lunches. But both kids have indicated they'd like me to do this. We'll see.
This is a phrase I'm sure you've heard and one my father-in-law said to us a lot when we were in grad school. There's an interesting conversation going on over at Half-Changed World about the cost of food and how low-income people are buying more Spam and other not-so-healthy options. I have written about health, food, and class twice before. Yes, it's true many of us do not have the survival skills of our grandparents. I can make my own pasta and bread, but I don't like to mostly because I lack equipment, time, and space to do so. Of course, I've been spoiled by watching food shows. My grandmother's kitchen was 2/3 the size of mine and she made everything from scratch. I think mostly it's a matter of establishing certain habits. We have a good farmer's market, but I forget to go. Many of the CSA's are $700/yr or thereabouts, which is a bargain really, but if you're poor, you don't usually have that kind of money and don't know what to do with half that food anyway. And growing my own? Well, I have a postage stamp of a yard, which I've joked about growing potatoes and cabbages in and then guarding those with a gun, but really, I don't know much about growing either. I've done it. I could do it, but could we really save a lot by doing that?
I spend on average $150/week on groceries. I buy a fair amount of produce, but I do use a lot of shortcuts--frozen veggies, pre-made dough, the occasional frozen entree or side dish--and I buy meat. But I could live without it if I had to. These days, I tend to see what's on sale and then think about what kinds of things I could make from it. Ground beef was two for one last week. That made a spaghetti meal and tacos. And it wasn't the lean meat either. And that's the thing--and what I said 3 years ago too--the good stuff is expensive. You can complain all you want about poor people not knowing how to prepare healthy meals, but when you're just looking at the bottom line, you're likely not to pay as much attention to the nutrition labels.
I spend on average $150/week on groceries. I buy a fair amount of produce, but I do use a lot of shortcuts--frozen veggies, pre-made dough, the occasional frozen entree or side dish--and I buy meat. But I could live without it if I had to. These days, I tend to see what's on sale and then think about what kinds of things I could make from it. Ground beef was two for one last week. That made a spaghetti meal and tacos. And it wasn't the lean meat either. And that's the thing--and what I said 3 years ago too--the good stuff is expensive. You can complain all you want about poor people not knowing how to prepare healthy meals, but when you're just looking at the bottom line, you're likely not to pay as much attention to the nutrition labels.
I’ve been mulling (hat tip to Gardner) this topic for a while.
It occurs to me that, frequently, when talking about how web 2.0/read-write web/pick your tired label can impact teaching and learning, we often talk about how these tools, technologies, and techniques enable students to publish. In fact, at UMW, when discussing UMW Blogs, we’re getting used to referring to it not as a blogging system but as a publication platform.
For me, there is something of tremendous and inherent value in this notion. But I wonder if that’s the case for everyone?
I freequently refer to myself as a frustrated artist (or, when being glib, a talentless artist 
). I love to create, although I have no great illusions of my talent. That’s okay. I don’t really care. It’s enough for me to know that I can create things and put them out there for others to see.
I still remember back in 1996 when I was a senior in college using the Web for the first time. I was on the debate team that year, and we had discovered Alta Vista as a tool for doing research into our cases. As I was graduating, a few of the younger members of the team started to make noise about building a site for our team. I remember feeling intensely jealous. I was dying to learn how to create Web pages — how to make to make stuf and put it out there — how to publish.
But, I’m someone who likes to be out there. As I child; I acted; I wrote; I sang; I wished I could draw. But, frankly, that’s not how everyone is wired, is it?
I’m married to someone who isn’t wired this way at all. I’ve been pushing him for years to blog about some of his teaching experiences and techniques. He’s sort of interested, but he says he doesn’t have the time. For me, I’ve discovered that I have to make the time or I don’t feel fulfilled.
As an academic, he values publication. I know he’d like to have more time to do research (and, consequently, writing), but I don’t think publication, in and of itself, is that important to him.
(It occurs to me as I write this that perhaps my obsession with putting myself out there is just a form of narcissim )
When I talk to faculty and students about this aspect of what technology enables, I usually assume I may be up against some resistance. But I assume that resistance is founded in anxiety or fear about making public mistakes, being stalked, etc. After thinking about it some more, I wonder if the resistance is more emblematic of a fundamental disinterest in publication for publications sake.
In fact, I was being glib before, but I suppose the joke that blogging is just a form of “naval-gazing” is really a suggestion that it is narcissistic.
I guess I’m wondering if most educators see public presentation of work as a requisite aspect of education? And, if they don’t, should they? I think they should, but I need to think about why and how I explain that.
In a way, I know I’ve thought about this before (I do talk to faculty and students about why public presentation is a good thing), but perhaps not as explicitly as I should — and perhaps I’m not addressing the real disconnect.
This week is about establishing some sort of routine so that I don't spend all my time eating bon-bons and watching "What Not to Wear." I still feel that I need to dig the house out from under its years of neglect, so I really do do laundry almost every day. Something always needs to be washed.
My day starts at 6:30. I wake up Geeky Boy, shove him into the shower while I go get coffee. Mr. Geeky is sometimes responsible for this task, but a) he stays up later than I do and sometimes it's just as hard to rouse him at 6:30 and b) Geeky Boy doesn't get up for him as well and c) he's not very patient with Geeky Boy's resistance to waking up (yes, pot, kettle).* At 7:00, I wake up Geeky Girl and I go downstairs and make breakfast. Right now, that's an English muffin and a half grapefruit. Sometimes it's eggs. Sometimes we skip that and Geeky Boy eats at school.
At 7:30, I drive Geeky Boy to school. We're within walking distance, but it's a really long walk. He has to leave no later than 7:10 (which means getting up at 6:00) to get there by 7:35/7:40. When it's cold, we always drive him. I'm home by 7:45.
Meanwhile, Geeky Girl has been getting ready at home. Mr. Geeky is away this week, but normally he prods her through the process. She needs less prodding than Geeky Boy, which Mr. Geeky likes immensely. He can check email, etc. and not have to be "on" as much. She leaves at 8:00 for the bus.
During my work days, I would get in the shower either right after I got home from dropping Geeky Boy off or between 8 and 8:30. Now it's 8:30 at the earliest. When Mr. Geeky is here, I usually wait for him, so it's 9 or 9:30 before I shower. This may seem irrelevant, but I generally don't start my "work" day until after I've showered, but I think delaying that until 10 is going to be problematic, so the shower may get postponed in lieu of work. The joys of working at home!
At any rate, this week, I've worked through until lunch on a couple of writing projects, splitting the time evenly between the two, so about 1.5 hours on each. This is working for now, but I have a feeling, I may end up alternating days on each project or working on one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, something like that. The main thing I want to establish is that morning (which is my best brain time) is for work of that nature, not for housework, etc.
After lunch, which lasts only 20 minutes or so, I do housework-type stuff. I'm limiting this to only an hour. Each day is devoted to a particular part of the house. Today is living room day. What I've been doing is not just general straightening, but also massive cleanouts. Today, for example, I'm going to work on the entertainment cabinets, getting rid of some things we don't need and organizing it. I'm also going to hang the blinds, blinds that we purchased at least 6 months ago (this is what I mean by neglect).
From 2-5, I putter. I've done different things. Sometimes, I just take a complete break. But mostly, I've been reading or finishing up a house project or baking. I've also tinkered around with a web site I'm working on for my future possible business, responded to various emails, etc. Geeky Boy gets home anywhere from 3-4 and Geeky Girl gets home at 4, so really, it's hard to get involved in much of anything if I'm only going to have an hour to devote to it. When they get home, I get them started on homework. I also assign them chores. Every day, as I'm puttering, I think of things for them to do. Yesterday, I had Geeky Boy gather all the trash and take it outside. Geeky Girl is still excavating her room and they both had to clean the kitchen. Today, I'll probably have Geeky Boy sort the recycling. Every day, there's work to do on their rooms. I'm trying my best to establish new habits for them. In the past, there's not really been time for chores except on the weekends and we all kind of rushed around in a vain attempt to maintain order.
This leaves evenings free. Sometimes, there's more homework to complete or a chore or two to finish up, but generally, by 7:30, we can all relax and do whatever. Yesterday, we watched the Daily Show together. We've played games, etc.
I have a feeling that the holidays are going to throw a wrench in all of this. But, I'm hopeful that by at least Christmas, we'll have a good enough foundation laid that I can really get cracking on things by January. Right now, I consider myself on sabbatical without a project.
*For the record, I think it's ridiculous that school starts for teenagers at such an ungodly hour. I really, really wish they'd change this, for all our sakes.
My day starts at 6:30. I wake up Geeky Boy, shove him into the shower while I go get coffee. Mr. Geeky is sometimes responsible for this task, but a) he stays up later than I do and sometimes it's just as hard to rouse him at 6:30 and b) Geeky Boy doesn't get up for him as well and c) he's not very patient with Geeky Boy's resistance to waking up (yes, pot, kettle).* At 7:00, I wake up Geeky Girl and I go downstairs and make breakfast. Right now, that's an English muffin and a half grapefruit. Sometimes it's eggs. Sometimes we skip that and Geeky Boy eats at school.
At 7:30, I drive Geeky Boy to school. We're within walking distance, but it's a really long walk. He has to leave no later than 7:10 (which means getting up at 6:00) to get there by 7:35/7:40. When it's cold, we always drive him. I'm home by 7:45.
Meanwhile, Geeky Girl has been getting ready at home. Mr. Geeky is away this week, but normally he prods her through the process. She needs less prodding than Geeky Boy, which Mr. Geeky likes immensely. He can check email, etc. and not have to be "on" as much. She leaves at 8:00 for the bus.
During my work days, I would get in the shower either right after I got home from dropping Geeky Boy off or between 8 and 8:30. Now it's 8:30 at the earliest. When Mr. Geeky is here, I usually wait for him, so it's 9 or 9:30 before I shower. This may seem irrelevant, but I generally don't start my "work" day until after I've showered, but I think delaying that until 10 is going to be problematic, so the shower may get postponed in lieu of work. The joys of working at home!
At any rate, this week, I've worked through until lunch on a couple of writing projects, splitting the time evenly between the two, so about 1.5 hours on each. This is working for now, but I have a feeling, I may end up alternating days on each project or working on one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, something like that. The main thing I want to establish is that morning (which is my best brain time) is for work of that nature, not for housework, etc.
After lunch, which lasts only 20 minutes or so, I do housework-type stuff. I'm limiting this to only an hour. Each day is devoted to a particular part of the house. Today is living room day. What I've been doing is not just general straightening, but also massive cleanouts. Today, for example, I'm going to work on the entertainment cabinets, getting rid of some things we don't need and organizing it. I'm also going to hang the blinds, blinds that we purchased at least 6 months ago (this is what I mean by neglect).
From 2-5, I putter. I've done different things. Sometimes, I just take a complete break. But mostly, I've been reading or finishing up a house project or baking. I've also tinkered around with a web site I'm working on for my future possible business, responded to various emails, etc. Geeky Boy gets home anywhere from 3-4 and Geeky Girl gets home at 4, so really, it's hard to get involved in much of anything if I'm only going to have an hour to devote to it. When they get home, I get them started on homework. I also assign them chores. Every day, as I'm puttering, I think of things for them to do. Yesterday, I had Geeky Boy gather all the trash and take it outside. Geeky Girl is still excavating her room and they both had to clean the kitchen. Today, I'll probably have Geeky Boy sort the recycling. Every day, there's work to do on their rooms. I'm trying my best to establish new habits for them. In the past, there's not really been time for chores except on the weekends and we all kind of rushed around in a vain attempt to maintain order.
This leaves evenings free. Sometimes, there's more homework to complete or a chore or two to finish up, but generally, by 7:30, we can all relax and do whatever. Yesterday, we watched the Daily Show together. We've played games, etc.
I have a feeling that the holidays are going to throw a wrench in all of this. But, I'm hopeful that by at least Christmas, we'll have a good enough foundation laid that I can really get cracking on things by January. Right now, I consider myself on sabbatical without a project.
*For the record, I think it's ridiculous that school starts for teenagers at such an ungodly hour. I really, really wish they'd change this, for all our sakes.
I was waiting for some comments to come in before I wrote about this article on online courses from IHE. Sure enough, the curmudgeons were first to the punch, noting that online courses vary in quality and gosh, what about cheating. Thankfully, reasonable people pointed out that F2F courses vary in quality and gosh, students cheat in those too.
The main thrust of the article is actually about how to motivate and compensate faculty for teaching and developing online courses. Course releases and monetary compensation are among the incentives already tried and have somewhat succeed. Someone in the comments suggested allowing the development of these courses to count for tenure. I think that's a step in the right direction. The subtext of the whole discussion seems to be about whether these courses are "real" courses and whether the people who teach them are "real" faculty. Although I've never taught a class solely online, I know from experience that developing good online components for a courses takes a lot of time and thought. I've seen some places move to a model that has instructional designers take content given to them by faculty, create a course (usually in a course management system), and then the faculty member steps back in to teach it. It's an efficient model, cheaper than paying a faculty member to develop the course, and it is probably effective some of the time. Likely, it depends on how well the course is run by the faculty member.
It is still my contention that faculty should be more involved than that in the development of online materials. Yes, an instructional designer/technologist can be hugely helpful in guiding faculty through the process and perhaps even developing some of the resources and tools that may be used in the course. But I think the faculty member can't facilitate the course very well if he/she doesn't participate in developing it. I can't imagine stepping in to teach a course I didn't have some knowledge of.*
Many of the colleges mentioned in the article are trying to get current faculty to teach courses online. In some cases, I suspect that might be like teaching old dogs new tricks. I'm sure there are interested and motivated faculty who want to teach courses online, but once you've tapped those out, why not consider hiring full-time faculty who teach only or mostly online and who are compensated appropriately. Teaching online *is* different from teaching face to face. Yes, much of what one knows about learning and teaching translates, but motivating students, creating good assignments, monitoring participation, etc., are all pretty different online. Why not let people specialize in that? It's already happening at all online schools, some of which don't pay their faculty well or treat them fairly. Landline schools could stand out by having quality faculty teaching their online courses.
Edward Winslow is right, the change is coming and all the grumping in the world isn't going to stop it. With the economic downturn, are students really going to be willing to shell out for tuition and room and board when they could live at home, commute for a few classes and take the rest online? And what about all those people who've been laid off and need to retrain? Can they travel 500 miles away to go back to school? I don't think so. Online education is a great option for lots of people. Traditional schools can either take advantage of the situation or risk missing out and possibly going under.
* I know some places that have standardized syllabi and textbooks even for F2F courses. I don't mind so much using the same textbook and standardizing some elements of a course. But a standard course outline would drive me batty.
The main thrust of the article is actually about how to motivate and compensate faculty for teaching and developing online courses. Course releases and monetary compensation are among the incentives already tried and have somewhat succeed. Someone in the comments suggested allowing the development of these courses to count for tenure. I think that's a step in the right direction. The subtext of the whole discussion seems to be about whether these courses are "real" courses and whether the people who teach them are "real" faculty. Although I've never taught a class solely online, I know from experience that developing good online components for a courses takes a lot of time and thought. I've seen some places move to a model that has instructional designers take content given to them by faculty, create a course (usually in a course management system), and then the faculty member steps back in to teach it. It's an efficient model, cheaper than paying a faculty member to develop the course, and it is probably effective some of the time. Likely, it depends on how well the course is run by the faculty member.
It is still my contention that faculty should be more involved than that in the development of online materials. Yes, an instructional designer/technologist can be hugely helpful in guiding faculty through the process and perhaps even developing some of the resources and tools that may be used in the course. But I think the faculty member can't facilitate the course very well if he/she doesn't participate in developing it. I can't imagine stepping in to teach a course I didn't have some knowledge of.*
Many of the colleges mentioned in the article are trying to get current faculty to teach courses online. In some cases, I suspect that might be like teaching old dogs new tricks. I'm sure there are interested and motivated faculty who want to teach courses online, but once you've tapped those out, why not consider hiring full-time faculty who teach only or mostly online and who are compensated appropriately. Teaching online *is* different from teaching face to face. Yes, much of what one knows about learning and teaching translates, but motivating students, creating good assignments, monitoring participation, etc., are all pretty different online. Why not let people specialize in that? It's already happening at all online schools, some of which don't pay their faculty well or treat them fairly. Landline schools could stand out by having quality faculty teaching their online courses.
Edward Winslow is right, the change is coming and all the grumping in the world isn't going to stop it. With the economic downturn, are students really going to be willing to shell out for tuition and room and board when they could live at home, commute for a few classes and take the rest online? And what about all those people who've been laid off and need to retrain? Can they travel 500 miles away to go back to school? I don't think so. Online education is a great option for lots of people. Traditional schools can either take advantage of the situation or risk missing out and possibly going under.
* I know some places that have standardized syllabi and textbooks even for F2F courses. I don't mind so much using the same textbook and standardizing some elements of a course. But a standard course outline would drive me batty.
One of my goals in my new role is to blog more regularly about the projects I’ll be working on. To that end, I’m going to use this post to kick off what will (hopefully) become a series about a project to revamp the DTLT Web site. I’ve wanted to tackle this initiative for several years, but I never seemed to be able to carve out the time.
Because I’ve been thinking about this site for so long, I have a pretty good idea of how I’d like it to shape up. That said, another reason why it’s taken so long to get around to doing it is that everytime the project came up around the table it seemed like we’d talk it to death — and I’ll be the first to admit to leading the charge on over-talking the issue.
This time around, I’m planning on just putting something out there that seems to make sense to me and that reflects (as much as possible) the conversations that we have had in DTLT over the years about a new Web presence for the division. I figure we’ll take our usual iterative approach and something good will emerge. Er, at least I hope so.
I have another reason for wanting to tackle this project — and wanting to blog it. For quite sometime, we’ve been speculating about the feasibility of using Wordpress as an actual content management system. We’re surely not the only folks doing this — there are quite a few more experienced Wordpress users out there who have tackled this issue. And, undoubtedly, the work that my colleague Jim Groom does in Wordpress pushes these boundaries (and inspires me) regularly.
It often seemed, however, that when push came to shove, there was always something that prevented WP from being the right CMS solution. Although I think I’ve always suspected that with the right mix of plugins and the right theme, the problems could be surmounted.
So the other thing I’m going to be trying to do in some detail is narrate the process of piecing together various WP plugins in order to strike the right CMS note, so to speak. I’ve already found a few gems that I think are answers to several of our Web site prayers.
In my research into how to piece this system together, I was surprised at how hard it was to find a comprehensive approach to WP as a CMS. There are lots of people talking CMSing WP on various forums or at various plugin sites. But I couldn’t find anyone who was tackling the problem “cradle to grave,” so to speak. (I fully realize I may have just missed some amazing resources out there — please let me know if I have!). I’m not sure why this is. In a conversation the other day, Jim speculated that a lot of the work in this area is being done for commercial purposes, and the developers may not want to share all the details of how they trick out WP. Well, I don’t care about that for my purposes — UMW’s paying me regardless. So, I’m going to narrate away (including the missteps I take), and maybe I’ll create something useful for someone else down the road.
I tend to think about Web sites in terms of content types. I’m not sure that’s the best thing, but it’s how my brain works. Right now, I’ve got five main types of content I’d like to see us include:
- (News) Posts: I’m calling them NEWS Posts just to dilineate them from the WP “posts.” Ultimately, I think I’ll be using WP Posts as the main content unit for all of these, and I want to not get muddled by the nomenclature. These are pretty self-explanatory: posts about news or announcement for our division.
- Projects: These would be brief descriptions of past or ongoing projects with screenshots, links, and a list of contributors.
- Opportunities: Any event, workshop, grant, contest, etc. that a faculty member of student might be interested in.
- Resources: These would be short write-ups of tools, technologies, software, hardware that could be used by faculty to augment the learning environment.
- People: To start, these would be write-ups of each of us in DTLT. Eventually, maybe we’d have write-ups for faculty collaborators
There are a few other features I’m intersted in:
- Subscriptions: A main goal of this site is to provide faculty with more and better news from DTLT. We can send out all-faculty emails, but I kind of hate that approach. My gut feeling is a lot of faculty just delete these unread. I’d like to create a system that allows a faculty member to opt-in to receiving our news, and, hopefully, with some granularity about what kind of news he/she gets.
- Events: I’d like a calendar of events. This is a bit tricky as there are other calendar sources that we contribute to at UMW. I’ll need to figure out if this can interoperate with them. I also need to figure out how Events and Opportunities are related.
- A Non-Bloggy Theme: I’m really aiming to push WP out of it’s blog boundaries for this project. I know it’s possible to build a perfectly good site that isn’t really a blog by using a blog theme, but I want to do something different. I’m investigating tricking out one of the more magazine-style themes.
- Cross-tagging and categories: To whatever extent possible, I’m hoping to use WP tags and categories to cross-link among all of the content typtes (that’s why it’s important to use posts and not pages as the content unit since pages don’t use categories)
I’ve probably put the cart before the horse here. Any decent Web developer would probably say I should start by outlining my goals for the site. Don’t worry, I’ve thought about those issues. But, truth be told, I’m a concrete thinker. I need to start futzing in order to solidify my own understanding of my goals. So I will expand on that, but a little later.
In the meantime, I have done some initial development and research. So if you want to play along from home:
- I’m building the experimental site at http://www.marthaburtis.net/newdtlt. Be forewarned: this site is NOT ready for primetime. I fully expect to break it and blow it up regularly.
- I’m going to post screenshots along the way in a Flickr collection. Link forthcoming.
- I’m tagging stuff I find that might be useful at http://delicious.com/mburtis/dtltsite
- Right now, the following plugins are looking very promising (particularly in concert with each other). If you know anything about them, feel free to share:
- Flutter (formerly Fresh Post) allows you to create custom Write Panels that make use of WP custom fields (I’ve always thought custom fields must be part of the key to turning WP into a CMS
- dTabs is a pretty slick plugin for creating custom tabbed navigation. It allows you to link a tab to a page, a post, a category, a URL, etc. The styling can be a bit tricky.
- Idealian Category Enhancements allows you to designate a particular template to be used for a particular category, automatically.
- AStickyPostOrderER lets you manually order posts within a category, bypassing the automatic reverse chronological ordering.
The theme I’m playing with right now is called Wordpress Magazine. It’s a pretty clean, block-style, magazine theme. I’m not sure it’s the right one long-term, but it’ll do as I experiment.
So, I have no idea if this will be useful or even interesting to anyone else. But, that’s okay. In the end, I think this will be useful narration for me as I develop a better understanding of my project and my tools.
Last night, the kids and I watched our usual roundup of Sunday night tv: King of the Hill, Simpsons, Family Guy. We started with this clever episode of King of the Hill on MySpace. I thought it captured the pros and cons of social networking quite well. A couple of my favorite moments:
Donna: You just don't get my generation!
Hank: Donna, you're my age.
Hank (typing in his blog): Donna is an idiot. Post.
Donna: I'm sure my 4000 friends will find that very interesting.
Hank: Is that supposed to scare me. Are your 4000 friends gonna come through the screen and get me.
Other worker: The people are not really in the computer, Hank.
Donna: You just don't get my generation!
Hank: Donna, you're my age.
Hank (typing in his blog): Donna is an idiot. Post.
Donna: I'm sure my 4000 friends will find that very interesting.
Hank: Is that supposed to scare me. Are your 4000 friends gonna come through the screen and get me.
Other worker: The people are not really in the computer, Hank.
Laptops to many university students today are the equivalent of the spiral notebooks of my generation - a necessary part of attending college. Yet, students find mixed reactions when they fire up their laptop in a classroom. Friday, I had the opportunity to facilitate a brown bag discussion with a group of faculty from diverse disciplines regarding student use of laptops in university courses.
To guide the discussion, I created a wiki and placed some vignettes from around the country that illustrated both the successful use of laptops and the banning of laptops in classes. I worked with Jeff Nugent to craft this wiki so that we took a neutral position going in – presenting two sides of the laptop coin without favoring either.
Interactive Class
But in some classes, students will miss out if they leave their laptop in the dorm. Christian Jernstedt, a psychology professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, relies on Internet-connected laptops to keep his lectures hopping along.
He pioneered a system – originally with hand-held computers – that uses the college’s wireless network to pose interactive questions to the entire class. Everyone answers on his or her laptop. The replies show up on an overhead display and prompt class discussion. “The goal is to engage the student,” Jernstedt says.
He asks questions that force students to think – not regurgitate memorized facts – and sometimes make a personal connection with the course material. For example, when Jernstedt starts a unit on what stress does to the brain, he asks the students how frequently they feel stress in their lives. “Most students are surprised to see how many other people feel like they do,” he says. “And so that sort of question is, in a sense, a hook to what’s coming.”
And hooked students, he adds, are not tempted to toggle over to their Facebook profile or check e-mail. “You don’t have to think at all about what else they’re doing because they’re engaged in what’s going on,” he says.
UI College Of Engineering Thrives On ‘Laptop Classroom’
Most people are familiar with the portability of laptop computers. But what does it mean to attend class in a “laptop classroom”? At the University of Iowa College of Engineering, it means that all of the students in a 72-student computer programming class have their own laptop computers. It also means that students are more focused and involved in their studies than ever before, thanks to a first-of-its kind use of technology in the classroom.
“The students are writing more computer programs in class and learning how to use the software right in class,” says Gary Christensen, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. “I hardly have anyone coming to me for help during my office hours anymore because we answer most questions in class… An exciting thing about the workshop was that there were very demanding computational, storage, networking and visualization requirements to present the material and the laptops and the new classroom networking were up to the challenge,” he says.
Christensen says the notion of the classroom was developed out of his classroom observations and in response to recommendations from his previous students.The teaching environment is far different from computer programming classrooms of the past in which students passively watched an overhead projection of a lecture. Now the students and professor actively engage in discussions of programming techniques while simultaneously writing small programs on their individual computers.
“The students were here about 15 minutes before I was today!” says Christensen at the conclusion of one recent class. “You don’t usually see that in any class.” And then he offers a clue to student enthusiasm: “I’m trying to make them think first, not just sit down and type a program.”
Why I Ban Laptops In My Classroom
Some years back, our law school, like many universities, high schools, and even grade schools around the country, wired its classrooms with Internet hookups. It’s the way of the future, I was told. Now we have a wireless campus, and incoming students are required to have laptops. So my first-year students are more than a bit surprised when I tell them that laptops are banned from my classroom.
As I explained in an editorial about this for the Washington Post last year,I ban laptops for two reasons. Note-taking on a laptop encourages verbatim transcription. The note-taker tends to go into stenographic mode and no longer processes information in a way that is conducive to the give-and-take of classroom discussion. Because taking notes the old-fashioned way, by hand is so much slower, the student actually has to listen, think and prioritize the most important themes. Of course, if one’s idea of a lecture is a process by which the notes of the teacher get transferred to the notes of the student without passing through the brain of either, then laptops may be the perfect transcribing tools. But if the goal is an interactive classroom, I find that laptops just get in the way.
Laptops also create a temptation to the many other things one can do there — surf the Web, check e-mail, shop for shoes, play solitaire, or instant-message friends. That’s not only distracting to the student who is checking baseballscores and statistics but for all those who see him and many others doing something besides being involved in class. It also takes the student out of the classroom discussion, which itself has collective costs for the learning environment as a whole. (In deference to the modern era, I permit two volunteers each class to use laptops to take notes that are then made available to all students.)
Taking the Classroom Out of the Internet Age
The University of Chicago Law School has removed Internet access in most of its classrooms because of a growing problem of students surfing the Web on laptops during lectures.
“Every teacher underestimates the amount of Internet surfing going on” in his or her classroom, U of C law Dean Saul Levmore said in an interview Thursday. “Whenever faculty would visit other faculty members’ classes, they would come to me and say, `You just won’t believe it. It’s astounding what happened.’ “But they never believe it’s going on in their own class,” he said.
In a recent e-mail message to students and faculty, Levmore wrote, “Remarkably, [Internet] usage appears to be contagious if not epidemic” during law classes. “Several observers have reported that one student will visit a gossip site or shop for shoes and within 20 minutes, an entire row is shoe shopping. “Half the time a student is called on, the question needs to be repeated,” Levmore added.
Law students’ use of laptops to surf the Web, read and write e-mail and play computer games during class has brought changes at a number of schools, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Stanford now has a posted policy that laptops and wireless Internet access may be used only for purposes relevant to the class and “not unreasonably distracting to fellow students.” And Stanford says “Harvard Law and Business [schools] have resorted to shutting down their wired connectivity in classrooms to address such problems” and Yale has considered it.
In his e-mailed announcement Wednesday, Levmore said that U of C law has removed Internet access in most classrooms “in order to ensure the value of the classroom experience.”
Faculty present represented the mixed views regarding student use of laptops in classes. Some were strong advocates and were looking for more ways to engage students. Others were concerned about the temptations laptops offer to get off message, and one math professor outright banned all technology (including calculators) from his class.
Concerns revolved around issues of focus and engagement with learning if students were also Facebooking, IM’ing, or emailing during class. Because other students can see screens, one student’s off-task viewing coiuld be disruptive to other students sitting in view of this laptop. While students have zoned out in decades past, some felt that the wireless laptop offers greater temptations to do so now. The key one faculty noted is engagement. If students are engaged in the class and are co-opted into the learning process, the laptop becomes a powerful ally for learning.
The discussion was rich as faculty reviewed opportunities associated with laptops. One faculty designates a student as a Google jockey to fact check items that come up in class. Jon Becker discussed using CoverItLive so that students can collaboratively develop class notes on sessions. (I found out later that Jon had actually been live blogging our brown bag with CoverItLive). He also noted the potential associated with backchanneling comments and questions during a session. (Ira Socol had an interesting blog post recently that discussed a similar use in his classroom.)
I doubt that any minds were changed yesterday, yet I do think each faculty left with the realization that one cannot take a laissez-faire approach to the use of laptops. One needs to consider the context under which the use of a laptop can enhance learning. One then needs to actively build that use into the curriculum and look for opportunities to model that process to students. At the same time, there are occasions in some teaching moments when laptops can become a distraction, so classroom management rules are needed to provide for “lid down” moments in the class. As in many scenarios, communicating one’s expectations can lead to improved teaching and learning involving student use of laptops.
I would be interested in your thoughts and comments. Do you have policies for your classes? Do you have innovative ways of tapping into the potential laptops afford? I would love to learn more!
{Photo Credit: Justin}
Authored by Britt. Hosted by Edublogs. addthis_url = 'http%3A%2F%2Fbwatwood.edublogs.org%2F2008%2F11%2F16%2Fstudents-and-laptops-in-the-classroom%2F'; addthis_title = 'Students+and+Laptops+in+the+Classroom'; addthis_pub = '';
From “This Date, From Henry David Thoreau’s Journal“:
This is the month of nuts and nutty thoughts, - that November whose name sounds so bleak and cheerless. Perhaps its harvest of thought is worth more than all the other crops of the year. Men are more serious now.
Some fodder to spark thinking again, more to come.
I kept meaning to blog yesterday, but it was an actual busy day. I went to see another ear doctor in the morning to find a solution to my vertigo. It's so awesome when you have a doctor listen to you and tell you what she's thinking in terms of a diagnosis and treat you like an actual grownup with a brain. I have to go for some tests at another office, but these should give us a good idea of what's going on.
I had lunch with my students that work for me in the lab I ran. They are so awesome! Most of them will be taking a class with me in the spring, so it's not goodbye. It was fun to hear what they had to say about technology (most of them don't remember not having a computer in the house) and working and having a family. I'm looking forward to next semester.
I had a meeting in SL with Barbara Ganley and Martha Burtis. It's nice hanging out in virtual worlds with people.
I spent some time cleaning. Next week the serious cleaning ends. The plan is to work in the mornings and do just a little cleaning in the afternoon before the kids get home, and then do a little more work while they're doing homework. The kids have cleaning projects this weekend to help me finish up some things I've been working on. Geeky Girl actually organized a kitchen drawer spontaneous after she saw what I'd done to a cabinet. Geeky Boy wants to work on his room now after seeing Geeky Girl's room starting to shape up.
The hard part for us is how to get rid of stuff. We have lots of toys and books (used but in good shape) that I need to find a home for. So that's a project for the weekend too.
Mr. Geeky leaves for an international trip this afternoon. We're helping him get ready for that and we think we're also going to try to go to a movie after we see him off.
Two nights this week, we played Boggle and then we all remembered Word Racer, and we have enough computers that all of us can play at the same time. I kill at Boggle, but Geeky Boy kills at Word Racer. He claims he can see patterns better. He's also a wicked-fast typist. I actually took typing classes in high school and at my best, I can type 80 words/minute. He's gotta be faster than that. We've done a lot of things this week that have been interesting and fun, but that the kids have to be learning from. Geeky Boy is playing the fantasy stock market after we spent some time looking at the market trends in the NY Times. He's made $7 so far on a biofuel company. Geeky Girl was home sick and we watched Kit Kittridge and talked about the Great Depression. It's nice to not just have the time (I could have always made the time), but the energy and brain space to have those conversations.
I had lunch with my students that work for me in the lab I ran. They are so awesome! Most of them will be taking a class with me in the spring, so it's not goodbye. It was fun to hear what they had to say about technology (most of them don't remember not having a computer in the house) and working and having a family. I'm looking forward to next semester.
I had a meeting in SL with Barbara Ganley and Martha Burtis. It's nice hanging out in virtual worlds with people.
I spent some time cleaning. Next week the serious cleaning ends. The plan is to work in the mornings and do just a little cleaning in the afternoon before the kids get home, and then do a little more work while they're doing homework. The kids have cleaning projects this weekend to help me finish up some things I've been working on. Geeky Girl actually organized a kitchen drawer spontaneous after she saw what I'd done to a cabinet. Geeky Boy wants to work on his room now after seeing Geeky Girl's room starting to shape up.
The hard part for us is how to get rid of stuff. We have lots of toys and books (used but in good shape) that I need to find a home for. So that's a project for the weekend too.
Mr. Geeky leaves for an international trip this afternoon. We're helping him get ready for that and we think we're also going to try to go to a movie after we see him off.
Two nights this week, we played Boggle and then we all remembered Word Racer, and we have enough computers that all of us can play at the same time. I kill at Boggle, but Geeky Boy kills at Word Racer. He claims he can see patterns better. He's also a wicked-fast typist. I actually took typing classes in high school and at my best, I can type 80 words/minute. He's gotta be faster than that. We've done a lot of things this week that have been interesting and fun, but that the kids have to be learning from. Geeky Boy is playing the fantasy stock market after we spent some time looking at the market trends in the NY Times. He's made $7 so far on a biofuel company. Geeky Girl was home sick and we watched Kit Kittridge and talked about the Great Depression. It's nice to not just have the time (I could have always made the time), but the energy and brain space to have those conversations.
