Cool Tools Review #3 - Splice is Nice!

This week I reviewed Splice, which is a video editing app for iPhone and iPad made by GoPro. Finally, I managed to choose a truly free app, and it's frankly pretty sweet. I used it on my phone and was able to add both music and voiceovers to a video of me braiding my daughter's hair. It was relatively easy to pick up and has some handy features, like a library of songs that are free to use or the ability to pull music from an iTunes library (assuming that one obeys the dictates of copyright and fair use). I found the Help section of the app particularly detailed and, well, helpful.

I could see this being a really useful tool in the classroom for assignments when I want my students to produce a video essay. Without any special equipment beyond an iPhone, students would be able to do some pretty sophisticated editing. I focused just on the audio tools this week because my video wasn't terribly long and I prefer to tackle just one flaming hoop (aka new skill) at a time, but the app also has tools for cutting, cropping, filtering, etc. that would allow for cooler, more streamlined videos as well.

The only downsides I can see are that there doesn't appear to be an Android or Windows version of the app (which means not all students can use the same tool) and that the app requires A LOT of storage space to function well. If students are working in groups, however, it probably wouldn't be too difficult to ensure that there is at least one iPhone user per group. The storage issue isn't a deal breaker either, if students are willing to use an app like Google Photos to store their pics and videos off of their devices.

Overall, I was very pleased with this app and plan on continuing to use it for my braiding tutorial project. I give it two very enthusiastic thumbs up!

Leaving a Legacy as a Digital Citizen

Prior to this week's readings, I hadn't thought much about digital citizenship, as such. I thought about being smart about what I shared online and how I set my privacy settings, about treating people online with the same respect I would show them in person, but I had never attached a specific name to it. I really appreciated Garth Holman's framing of the topic as leaving an online legacy rather than focusing so much on the Internet as a dangerous place. Of course, there are predators and frauds out there who would love to take advantage of the unsuspecting web surfer, but they tend to target those who engage in activities that wouldn't fall under the definition of a legacy, so teaching students to construct a positive digital footprint is likely to also protect them, without drawing on the vivid picture of Internet Bogeymen to scare them straight.

See what happens when you talk to someone you don't know online!

My own negative experiences online have been fairly mild. The worst instance was when someone I would have preferred to shut out of my personal business created a MySpace account posing as someone I trusted so that I would accept the friend request and she would be able to see what I was posting on my account. I don't know if she expected to find me saying terrible things about her online, which I guess would have made her feel better about things she had done to me, but she was certainly disappointed if she did. I'm not one to call names in private, let alone in the forever world of the inter webs, regardless of what my privacy settings might be. The result was that the situation de-escalated. I quickly realized what was going on and quietly unfriended her, with basically no damage done. My commitment to keeping drama offline meant that even when someone tried to attack me, she had no ammunition. Basically, I was building a legacy, and it turns out legacies are pretty safe.

MySpace. Remember when that was a thing?

What I like best about this approach is that it seems like it could work even with students at the height of their invincibility complexes, by which I mean, it's easy for any of us, but especially young students, to think that Internet dangers will never happen to me. Other people might get cat-fished, but not me; someone else might get a virus from illegally downloading music, but not me; that person's ex shared intimate photos after they broke up, but my significant other would never do that to me. If fear of getting caught/hurt is what we're trying to use to motivate student behavior, then we need them to believe that getting caught/hurt is something that could realistically happen to them, but human nature says they probably won't. Legacy, on the other hand, just requires us to get students to buy in to the notion that they can have an actual impact on the world through their online presence and should therefore curate an overall positive image. That's still not an easy task, but if we craft assignments that focus on solving real world problems and share what we find in public spaces, we just might get the kind of feedback Holman describes, with famous people commenting on student videos, for instance, showing them in a positive way that the world is, in fact, watching. And student egos may prove easier to fan than their fears.

What could possibly go wrong?

When our focus is completely on protect, protect, protect, by limiting student access to the Internet or leaving technology out of our teaching equation entirely, then we are failing to model for our students how they ought to behave online. This "positive is better than negative" approach holds true in parenting, as well: I get much better responses from my children when I tell or show them what I want them to do, rather than just giving them a long list of what not to do. Legacy is about showing students what they can do, and do really well, online, which makes so much more sense to me and seems so much easier to introduce to younger kids than outlining all of the specific, often awkward-to -discuss dangers of an online environment.

Turns out if you use Creative Commons to search for "Chester the Molester," all you get is a picture of beloved comedian, Jim Gaffigan, so here's a stand-in for awkwardness.

I tested it out with my composition classes this week since we were discussing social media's impact on culture anyway, and my students seemed taken with the idea, either latching onto the term as describing what they are trying to do online, or nodding and commenting that they really ought to start doing that before they find themselves on the job market (Although some were still committed to stirring up drama online because, and I quote, "I just love gossip!" I guess we can't save them all.). At any rate, legacy is a tool I will definitely employ again in the future, so thank you Garth Holman! (I really wanted to link to his video, but Flash Player is being uncooperative so here's a link to his blog instead!)

Cool Tools Review #2 - Slatebox

For week two of my Cool Tools Reviews I looked at Slatebox.com, which is an infographic/mind mapping tool. For the second week in a row I've stumbled onto one that comes with a cost, but it is not as prohibitive as last weeks. Slatebox is free for an individual and $8/month for a classroom with up to 30 students, and the free account allows slates to be easily shared across multiple platforms. I could see this tool as being useful for presenting complex ideas or for getting students involved in mapping out ideas in a more entertaining way than just creating an outline or writing on a whiteboard.
It was easy to use, requiring perhaps five minutes of effort after the tutorial to feel pretty confident in how to do the basic functions. This ease of use would certainly improve the chances of students being able to pick it up and use it successfully in a single class period. The downside to its simplicity is that it is somewhat limited in what I could actually do with it. I kept wanting it to be Prezi, but it wasn't. This isn't necessarily a shortcoming, just something to consider before committing to a paid subscription.

This is more or less an outline of Digital Citizenship's "Nine Elements"

As you can see (I hope) in the image of the slate I created, this tool has bright colors and access to many publicly available images that can make creating an infographic fun as well as easy. And it was useful to me in visualizing the material in one of the articles I read for class this week that I felt was particularly important and I wanted to retain. I would probably only spend the money on this, however, if I was planning on having students map most of their reading assignments or do them as pre-writing activities before turning in essays. Given the current structure of my composition classes, I don't think it would be worth it for my purposes.

TPaCK, Venn Diagrams for the Win

By the time we finished watching the "TPACK in 2 Minutes" video in class last week, I understood the argument that, as educators, we need to bring our knowledge of content, pedagogy, and technology to bear on every lesson if we want to fully engage our students and give them the best opportunity to learn. It's a simple concept, but it's not so simple to implement.



The trickiest circle of the Venn diagram to work with is the one dealing with technology. At this stage in the game, I know what I want my students to learn in my classroom (writing as a process, critical thinking, arguing toward common ground rather than "winning," etc.), and I know how I want them to get there (pre-write/write/rewrite, follow the money, listen deeply to the other side, etc.), but I'm not sure I always know the best technologies to use to help them get there.

My temptation is to use technologies I am comfortable with. Pen and paper, word-processing software, Springboard, library databases, doodle for scheduling, Google Drive for group work, email, texting, PowerPoint, screen casting, YouTube: these are my go-to tools and they can accomplish quite a bit. But, when I want to do multi-modal projects, I'm less comfortable with video-editing software; when I want students to conduct primary research, I have to pray that Survey Monkey or Google Forms will cooperate during my demonstration; and when I want to conduct grade conferences remotely, I have to overcome my discomfort with video conferencing.

The reason I tend toward the comfortable is that I know I have to be able to model the technology for my students if I want them to use it successfully and trust that I know what I'm doing. Even with word-processing software, which seems like it would be a cinch for digital natives, I always spend time going over it with students ("Do you know how to add page numbers or page breaks? No? Well let me introduce you to your new friend, Insert menu.") I walk students step-by-step through turning in items on Springboard and have them turn in a low-stakes assignment with it first, but I still always get a few frantic emails just after the drop box closes for their first major assignment from students who couldn't quite get the software to work for them. I talk about key words, and expanding and limiting searches in databases, because most of my students have never considered doing anything beyond typing a question into Google, maybe Google Scholar.

The take-away for me, then, with the idea of TPaCK, is a reminder that technology in the classroom always needs to be introduced in a thoughtful and thorough manner, seriously considering the theory that supports its use and clearly modeling and providing the opportunity for students to use the technology successfully. We need to avoid becoming stagnant in our use of particular tools, but we shouldn't just introduce some new bell or whistle every week just to try to show the kids how hip and with it we are (my students have never been deceived about this, and frankly, neither have I. I knew me in middle school <shudder>). It strikes me as flexibility, but with purpose. I will remain open to adding new tools into my toolbox, but I will only introduce them into my classroom when I have a clear view of how they might enhance learning and am fluent enough in them to help students troubleshoot and find solutions when things don't go exactly as planned.

Cool Tool Review #1 - GoAnimateforSchools

I'm not gonna lie, this website was not nearly as fun to play with as I had hoped. I mean, making cool little animations, adding voices and text, and bringing a lesson to life sounds like a fun way to do class prep, but I'm not convinced this is the right tool for doing it.

On the one hand, GoAnimateforSchools seems to have spent a lot of time thinking about the safety of K12 students with intense privacy settings and PG content for animations, which I'm sure would be reassuring for many educators. That security comes at a cost, however, with teacher accounts (meaning the teacher can make videos to show students but students don't get to make their own videos) running $79/year. If I were to subscribe for both myself and enough logins for all of the 125 students I typically teach in a year, it would cost me $447/year for the Higher Ed version or $298/year for the K-12 version. In other words, teachers better bring their grant-writing skills to the table. They do offer a two week free trial for a teacher and 50 students, so an instructor could test it out with students to see if there is any merit to it, but videos made during the trial can't be shared beyond the closed group.

You know, unless you know how to make a screencast on screencast-o-matic.

I worked way too hard, for way too long, to create this ridiculously short video. I had thought I would make multiple videos using the three different types they offer (Business Friendly, Whiteboard Animations, and Video Infographics), but life is too short to keep messing with a software that doesn't automatically save changes and wouldn't let me return directly to the edit page after previewing my video. 

With enough time spent reading the sites blogs, doing tutorials, and exploring samples of what others have made and used the program to teach, it could be an okay tool, but I am not prepared to invest that much time into something that may not be worthwhile. I'm hoping some of the video and animation tools that others in this class are reviewing will prove to be more user friendly at a lower cost, both of time and money.

Produsers, Prosumers, and the Job Market

When I think about participatory culture in my personal life, I know I am pretty actively involved in it. I see pictures of cool hairstyles on Facebook and adapt them to my daughter's head. I watch youtube tutorials on crochet patterns and then make my own version of them. I'm inspired by online recipes all the time, though you better believe I'm using parsley instead of cilantro (you can keep your nasty soapy-tasting herb, Interwebs!). I post pics of what I've made on social media and generally link to the websites that inspired me in the comments. At this point, going to Google images is one of the first steps in my creative process for most projects I undertake, from Halloween costumes to craft ideas for my daughter's classroom parties to illustrations for my lecture slides for my composition classes. It's a little jarring when I find I have to actually pay for instructions or inspiration, though I am sometimes motivated to do so.

I bought a kit that came with an instruction booklet
and materials to make this guy and some of his
friends last year.

This mermaid blanket, on the other hand, I adapted from a
YouTube tutorial.

One of the struggles I've faced that has kept me from fully engaging in this sharing culture, however, has been a lack of access to certain technologies. Every time I post a picture of a fancy braid I've done in my daughter's hair, someone comments that I need to have my own YouTube channel to teach others how to do it. I'm not at all opposed to sharing my expertise and am flattered that other people are interested in this hobby of mine, but I lack the camera crew, or technology that could stand in for one, to actually enable me to film myself braiding and then edit it for mass consumption. 

Bet you wish you could see how I made this happen!

 Now, I could go out and buy a new camera and tripod and editing software to launch my new, clearly viral hair tutorial series, but since I'm a writing instructor rather than a hairstylist by trade, it doesn't seem like a wise financial investment. It's entirely possible that I could find ways of adapting my smartphone or iPad to this purpose with decent and inexpensive results, but again, I'm not sure it's worth the investment of my time given my day job.

I think this struggle of access and investment is at the heart of the issue of pursuing an open culture in education. On the one hand, when we already have the necessary skills and access to technology, we teachers are pretty inclined to share. The birth of the meme below is a good illustration. It started as something that I said on the fly in class as I tried to explain to my students what their essay introductions needed to accomplish without devolving into the rigid structure of the five paragraph theme. My students responded well to it, and I thought it was funny, so I shared my illustration on Facebook because I thought it might prove useful to one of my teaching friends, or at the very least, entertain them. One of my friends and colleagues was so entertained by it that she deemed it worthy of a meme and spent a few minutes turning it into one, which she then shared as a comment. My friends loved it and wanted to share it, so we decided to make the image public. I'm told it was even printed off and now hangs in a couple of university writing centers around the country.

Look Ma, I'm a meme!

I loved every bit of sharing this particular nugget of wisdom. I loved the positive feedback. I loved the sense of connecting with my fellow teachers. I definitely love the picture my friend chose that reminds me of one of my other common van references involving Chris Farley, living in a van, down by the river. But most of all, I loved how easy it was to share.

That ease is important to me, not because I'm lazy, but because I have so many demands on my time and need to use it wisely. My effort has to match the payoff, at least to some extent. This meme is fun, but it has yet to lead to a hiring committee deciding to put my CV and letter of application into the interview pile. I've spent countless hours in the last year revising part of my dissertation into a chapter for an edited collection, however, because I'm hoping it will one day do just that for my job prospects. I fear that not just tenure committees, but hiring committees, would view any online sharing of work, no matter how rigorous or grounded in research, as essentially as frivolous as a meme and therefore not worthy of academic consideration. For those who have tenure, it may be possible to work from within to change the expectations of the system, but for those of us still trying to break into full-time or tenure-track positions in higher education, being completely unselfish about sharing our expertise in open formats (that we may need to spend considerable time/effort/finances learning) could lead to us not being able to do pesky little things like pay our bills and feed our children/selves. 

I'm curious how such open-source content creation is viewed in K-12 settings in terms of hiring and promotion. Is there space in a typical teaching portfolio to showcase such materials? Does the collaborative nature of so much of it raise concerns of plagiarism or padding ones resume? 

I would imagine that districts would love the flip side of the equation, though. Textbooks are such a financial investment, yet they are so often obsolete by the time they are produced, distributed, and used for a few years. Then again, maintaining the technology that students use to access "free" content online is also expensive and a constant battle against becoming obsolete. Additionally, the digital divide or participation gap is a real problem in school districts with high poverty rates. 

I guess, overall, my thoughts are that we are moving as a society towards a sharing economy and that is going to impact our classrooms. While it is a boon for teachers to have access to all that their peers are willing to share, that access doesn't automatically erase the obstacles to education that are endemic in our current education system, which is built on the exploitation of underpaid instructors and which perpetuates the class and segregation lines we have developed over our history as a nation. Still, I believe this open and participatory impulse is a move in the right direction and I would like to contribute to it more as my skills in doing so increase (here's hoping through this course!).

Sharing is Caring

When I started teaching English composition as a first year MA student in 2007, my program took a rather "sink or swim" approach to training teaching assistants. We were given three half days of orientation, a sample syllabus, and a department-approved textbook the week before our classes began, then we met weekly throughout the semester with other new TAs in a teaching practicum led by the Director of Composition. The practicum functioned as part formal pedagogical training, part practical planning session, and part support group. Sharing was absolutely essential to its success, as well as ours. Having never even taken a composition course myself (I tested out of them), I was particularly desperate to hear people say "I tried this activity in class and it worked," so I could figure out what to do in my class.
"Teacher Research" and the beauty of failure:
I soon discovered, however, that my favorite resources were the published articles we read that followed a simple formula: I thought x activity would be a great way to teach y, but it blew up in my face, and here's what I learned from that experience. I might not get a specific, concrete classroom activity out of such articles, but I did get a sense of camaraderie with other teachers, as we all, even the seasoned professionals, seemed to be figuring this out as we went. Such sharing of classroom failures also encouraged me to remain flexible in my teaching. Just because an activity worked in one class didn't mean it would work in another, or that it was always the best way to teach a particular concept. I eventually came to express this philosophy in these terms: It's not just acknowledging that I might be wrong, but remaining certain that I am not completely right (an idea I first saw expressed in this book by Kate Ronald and Hepzibah Roskelly). Keeping my fallibility always in mind helps me to try new strategies and to accept that some of them will fail.
If the teachers who came before me had been unwilling to be transparent about their classroom failures, as well as successes, my classroom would be a very different place today.
Student Safety in the transparent class:
The key to sharing both successfully and wisely, though, comes when we remember to protect and respect our students. Sharing our frustrations with student behavior or mistakes in the safety of our face-to-face practicum was okay, but to voice such comments online is unfair and often simply unkind. It's a tricky balancing act between only sharing the positive, success stories, giving a false impression of what teaching is actually like, and sharing our failures in ways that end up disparaging students rather than focusing on what went wrong on our end.
I see this play out in my Facebook newsfeed all the time. A big block of my friends on Facebook are fellow composition teachers, so I know I have a sympathetic audience for things like my recent post about the perpetual frustration I feel when a student emails me after missing a class to ask "Did I miss anything?" and my overwhelming desire to reply, "No. We were so devastated by your absence that we just couldn't find the will to go on." It's good to feel solidarity with my colleagues in such a moment, and it is certainly better to talk to them about my frustration than to actually send that reply to my student, but it is also important to remember that each student who sends that email is making that mistake for the first time and needs to be granted the opportunity to learn from it while maintaining their dignity. Anonymity is essential for that. When it comes to sharing a student's exact words, though, one should get their permission first.
Sharing is Caring (Except with the flu. That you can keep all to yourself):
In the end, then, I agree with Dean Shareski that we have an obligation to share our teaching practices with others. I could not have become the teacher I am today without the sharing of other teachers, and I believe others have benefited from the materials and activities I have shared with them at conferences and in informal meetings. I would add, however, that sharing our failures can be even more important for building a community of teachers.