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sometimes you just have to reboot: avoiding, navigating around, and riding out the perils of teaching in mediated spaces ASU Composition Conference 2012
sometimes you just
have to reboot:avoiding, navigating around, and riding out the perils
of teaching in mediated spaces
ASU Composition Conference 2012
…a love storyOk, not really, but we can get through it.
Epic FailThe truth is that technologies fail. They fail big.
They fail for everyone.
like, everyone
World Wide Developer's Conference 2010: Steve
Jobs Keynote
stuff we tell ourselves
My students are more technologically literate than I
am
Losing control of the technology is the same as
losing control of the class
When the technology fails, I look like I don’t know
what I’m doing
I’m being asked to know more than is reasonable in
my teaching with technology
It’s frustrating to put so much time into lesson plans
and have them come apart due to the tech
Rethinking our self talk
What we say to ourselves My students are more
technologically literate than I am
Losing control of the technology is the same as losing control of the class
When the technology fails, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing
I’m being asked to know more than is reasonable in my teaching with technology
It’s frustrating to put so much time into lesson plans and have them come apart due to the tech
Reality Check
That depends on the individual student.
Nope. Just no.
Again, just no. They’re laughing because it’s funny. They’re laughing with you, not at you.
Yes, we’re all doing more than is reasonable in our teaching
Absolutely. It makes me want to throw things and say words my mother doesn’t know I know
DISASTER ONE: Blackboard hates me
(and other tales from the trenches)
No matter what I do to the settings, Blackboard
sends my announcements when it feels like it
My super awesome computer randomly drops off the network and refuses to reconnect
I can’t get the volume up. I can’t get the volume
off. I can’t get the picture to project. I can’t get
the screen to mute and everyone is looking at
my email six feet tall on the wall
The person before me screwed everything up
and left it (I know it was one of you)
But it’s OK
I have a plan
Step 1: Laugh. The tech
can’t actually kill you.
Laughter gets you breathing
again
It reassures your students that
everything is fine, and then you’re
not dealing with their anxieties too
It gives you a few seconds to
regroup
Step 2: If they offer, let them try to help
Keep an eye on the clock – if
they can’t fix it in three
minutes, move on.
Three minutes.
I mean it.
Why let them help?
Any time you let them try to
solve a problem, you build
autonomy – they are less
dependent on you for
addressing issues
Any time you allow them to
walk out on a tightrope with
you as their safety net, and
you let them fall, you teach
them that they will survive it
Any time you can get them
to collaborate with each
other or with you, you are
engaged in community
building
Any time you can fail in
front of them, regroup and
get back in the game, you
teach them that errors are
recoverable and problems
are to be negotiated
Step 3: Get out “the notebook”
“If they think you’re technical,
go crude. If they think you’re
crude, go technical. I’m a very
technical boy. So I decided to
get as crude as possible.”“Johnny Mnemonic”
- William Gibson
Features of the notebook:
It’s cheap
It’s thin so you’ll carry it
It has tabs for:
Calendar
Roster
Syllabus
Emergency activities
Step 4: Do what
you need to doTake attendance, collect homework, make
announcements. Get whatever remaining admin tasks you have out of the way so you
can focus solely on the alternate lesson
Step 5: Break out the emergency activitiesThese should be:Small group focusedDiscussion centric (bonus points for encouraging crosstalk)Kinetic, if at all possibleProduce something tangible
Why small group?
The small group is where
discrete meaning is made
between people – we know
this. But, it’s the most
versatile tool we have in
getting things done.
Why discussion?
Not just any discussion – one
that gets them fired up
You’re working together to
create the learning
environment today, so pick
something robust
Kinetic activities --- go analog
moving around the room,
writing on white boards,
stepping outside to collect
information – these literally
move in opposite direction
of the tech
Embodied learning builds
social connections
You are symbolically and
literally putting the incident
behind you
Tangible Takeaways
you want to reinforce the
idea that you can
accomplish something from
a bad start
you want to emphasize that
you don’t need tech to do
stuff
you want to show them that
you’re a good teacher, and
never more so than when
there is a crisis
DISASTER TWOBlackboard is down, and
it’s time to turn in papers
Crisis Management
DON’T:
Get frustrated. You have too much to do to waste energy on it
Change your deadlines
Don’t respond to requests for contact on Facebook
And for the love of all the great books on your shelves, DO NOT ACCEPT PAPERS VIA EMAIL
DO:
Refer to the Emergency Plan
Send an email to your students reminding them of the Emergency Plan
Do accept papers via your alternate mode of receipt
Do feel free to ignore student contact outside of the plan (you can always redress it later)
The Early Groundwork Spell out the plan in a
document included in your syllabus
Become a blogger –Wordpress, Tumblr, and other sites will give you a free webpage where you can keep students in the loop
Go over the plan in class the first two or three times students have to submit a draft or final paper
Better yet, ask them to describe the plan to you
At the beginning of the semester, download your roster in a .csv file so that you have student email addresses without needing the Blackboard functionality
Learn to use DropBox, a free (or low cost) cloud computing service
Early in the semester, assign students to subscribe to your Dropbox, and give a participation grade for successful completion
EMERGENCY PLAN
1 Make a file in your DropBoxclass folder that is clearly named for submission (this must be obvious). It helps to use the words DUE TONIGHT and today’s date in the file name (this is also your verification that DropBox is up and running)
2 As soon as you realize there is an issue (this is meant to be pre-emptive), email students making them aware that you know of the outage and reminding them of the plan. Use the email addresses from your .csv(Excel)
3 Walk away from your desk and let them grapple with the plan
a few notes on over-helping
Receiving papers via email is chaos. It makes a
lot more work for you
It shifts their responsibilities to you
It allows them to move your boundaries
It disempowers them
It undermines their confidence
Being nice isn’t always a kindness
Making it work –
some suggestionsDo what techies do – create a file naming schema and stick with it:
2012Fall_Syllabus_ENG101.doc
ctek_notes_Allen_Proj1Draft1.doc
Require files to be submitted according to your schema. Students will get used to it. They’ll adopt it. And they’ll appreciate the sense of order. It makes them feel like they have a mastery over the tools.
Techies know their systems
Have a folder on your
computer for each semester
Have a folder under each semester for each class
Have a folder within each class for Master Course Documents (syllabi, prompts)
Have a folder within each class for each project
Have a folder within each project for each draft cycle
Embrace “fall through” logic Stop tracking all the things that “are,” and only track the
things that “are not”
If the default is to present, so most students regularly attend, just record the absences in Blackboard … you can do this by creating the number of text fields equal to the number of absences to fail:
Absence 1
Absence 2
Absence 3
Absence 4
Absence 5
Record the date of the student’s first absence in the first field. Their second goes in the second field. If they get to five, they’ve failed. Presto! you are no longer the attendance police, and tracking their attendance is visibly their responsibility as they can see their absences in Blackboard.
Consider alternate platforms
Weebly
Ning
P2PU
Wordpress
Ask around … your peers know more
Think about visual designYes, we privilege written text, but we know design conveys
meaning too. Stick with sans serif fonts, minimal text, lots of
white space, and gender-neutral color schemes on your
projected documents and presentations.
