Biology, Science Education, and Similar Stuff

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Community College Students and Web 2.0

After taking a class on Web 2.0 tools this past summer and as part of our final assignment, I decided to survey my classes this term on their knowledge of Web 2.0 tools. I sent out a survey to the students and had 94% response (it was required!), which was 45 students. 91% of respondents said they were not familiar with Web 2.0 tools or the term Web 2.0. 36% said they read online newspapers and magazines; 27% had followed a blog; 31% had a blog at some point. 36% had made a video and uploaded it to youtube. The following chart shows responses to a query about their knowledge and use of specific tools:

Never heard of it. Heard of it, but never used it. Used it once or twice. Use it frequently. Response
Count
Google Docs 57.8% (26) 31.1% (14) 6.7% (3) 4.4% (2) 45
Google Reader 57.8% (26) 26.7% (12) 13.3% (6) 2.2% (1) 45
Feedly 93.3% (42) 6.7% (3) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 45
Diigo 95.6% (43) 2.2% (1) 2.2% (1) 0.0% (0) 45
Delicious 97.8% (44) 2.2% (1) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 45
Twitter 0.0% (0) 60.0% (27) 26.7% (12) 13.3% (6) 45
RSS feeds 60.0% (27) 33.3% (15) 6.7% (3) 0.0% (0) 45
Facebook 0.0% (0) 6.7% (3) 15.6% (7) 77.8% (35) 45
Glogster 93.3% (42) 6.7% (3) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 45
Flickr, snapfish, etc. 20.0% (9) 46.7% (21) 24.4% (11) 8.9% (4) 45
wikis 57.8% (26) 22.2% (10) 15.6% (7) 4.4% (2) 45
Voicethread 95.6% (43) 4.4% (2) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 45
Prezi 97.8% (44) 2.2% (1) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 45
Wordle or Tagxedo 93.2% (41) 6.8% (3) 0.0% (0) 0.0% (0) 44

Hmmm, another challenge...to work on formatting and tables...never ends!

Monday, August 30, 2010

Test!

I'm testing something....embedding a link for a graph, or the graph itself in the blog and in the comments. Want to see what my students might be able to do.......ok, so putting in the image works in the blog....in the comments?

Monday, August 23, 2010

First Day of school!

Well, it's the first day of school! As a follow up (follow through?) to our summer class, I've set up my blog for my classes. I'm only having a blog that I post to and students comment to. They will be doing assignments and will put their links, etc. in their comments (or share in Google Docs--whatever works best as we go along!). I've also designed a survey to assess their exposure and experience with web 2.0 tools via survey monkey. I can't wait to see the results as I've no idea if my students use Google Docs or have ever heard of Wordle, Glogster, etc. I'll survey them at the end of the class to assess their experience with the tools in class. At some point I'd like to assess the tools I use and whether or not they helped students learn.

I'm not sure how students will take to this quite honestly. But the first student to comment is very excited about trying this out--so that's encouraging! Interesting to think that my student's may stumble upon this blog....(if you do, and you know who you are, say Hi!).

The first assignment is to comment on the use of Blogs. Next I'll introduce a little data and have them use Create a Graph. From that we'll move onto my project based on Create an Argument. I think I will give a pre-assessment--give them some data to graph, collect the result and then move forward. Very excited about this aspect of the class--I think it's such a valuable learning tool and will help the students so much.

On another note, I'm really starting to utilize Google docs myself--so great, and easy, to be able to have access to my "stuff" no matter where I am! I used it today in class to show an image. Didn't have to save it on a flash drive, email it to myself etc. Yay! Also, still using Diigo a lot. Regrettably haven't been able to organize my "Feedly" (instead of Google reader, which I still strongly dislike). Hope to continue to read what others in the class are up to!

Monday, August 2, 2010

20 years of the American Disabilities Act

Great, short article in USA Today by deaf journalist Lisa S. Goldstein regarding the continual struggle of folks with disabilities--look for her statement on being left out regarding the Internet.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-07-26-goldstein26_ST_N.htm?csp=obinsite

Accessibility is such an important issue. How much of the cool stuff we have learned about is accessible? Are we using Universal Design?

Some info and resources:

http://www.isoc.org/briefings/002/

http://trace.wisc.edu/world/web/

http://www.washington.edu/doit/Resources/technology.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_design

http://www.design.ncsu.edu/cud/

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Guiding Principles redux

Here are my original thoughts:
Work with it first on my own
Consult with others
Must find ways to measure learning
Interactive/Collaborative in a way that supports learning
Helps students with discernment of sources and information
Potential development of Open Educational Resources (OER)

I think that I still feel pretty good about these, but within the scope of this class measurement and development of OERs kind of went out the window! I definitely think these are important and are perhaps part of the second and third stages of develpment on projects and use. Now that I know a little more about how I want to use the tools I can begin to think about how to assess their efficacy in increasing student attitudes, engagement, and hopefully learning. Honestly, if the learning is about the same, but student attitudes and engagement increase I think that's a win. I know that using the Create an Argument model will definitely increase student learning on how to use and interpret data. After a couple of semesters of using the Blog and a few tools on projects I think I'll have a better idea of what kind of OERs I would like to develop. I've just found out that we have money to pay instructors to do OER development and that we have staff to do things like video, animations, etc. so that instructors don't have to spend as much time on this part and more time on the curriculum side. So I may do a couple of things this fall--some videos on techniques in our micro lab that students could watch and review with.

I also need to incorporate information on good sources and good behavior online. The latter isn't really a problem, but it is important to help students develop and cultivate their professional online persona. Since I do teach online, I sometimes have issues with students who think we are all on fb together and not in a class. I want students to understand the value of good collaboration and powerful idea exchange, not just fun, social commentary.

Finally, I think I would add some things to my list that other's have said: Have fun! Don't be afraid! Be an agent of change (when change means better!). Promote original and higher order thinking skills....I should look back at all this again after the fall semester!

Friday, July 23, 2010

Final Project--baby steps towards eportfolios

I've created a Prezi to share my final project. If you double click the links it will open to the site (my new blog, my very crude timeline prezi and some current events/data). In a nutshell I'm going to start with a classroom blog in one of my microbiology classes. I will survey the students on their web tool experience/knowledge and then will design a few assignments for them to share on the blog. I will probably do group projects to begin with and have them individually comment on each other's projects. This is really going to be a work in progress and though I have an idea of where I'm going......it will be a surprise too! I do hope to have a guest speaker or two.

In the future, I've been told that our new Learning Management System (either an update of BB or Moodlerooms joule, will have wiki and blog capabilities. So, I don't want to invest the time in building a wiki or have individual student blogs at this time. This should be a good training stage for when we transition to an updated LMS though. I would eventually like to have individual student blogs because my ultimate goal would be to have students develop individual eportfolios which would inlcude "stuff" from both lecture and lab. Some LMSs will allow students to export their portfolios and some won't--that is a bridge I will cross when we transition. All in all I'm excited to get started, and really curious as to how the students will react and perform! Good luck to us all!

Web 2.0 Final Project on Prezi