Today I showed Feminist Frequency's video Tropes Vs Women in Video Games Pt 1, starring Anita Sarkeesian, to a new group of students, and then I showed them examples of censored tweets from angry gamers. Here are my reflections from that lesson:
-It never fails - each time I show this video, boys are snickering at the ridiculous female caricatures, such as Princess Daphne from Dragon's Lair. Once the video ends, and after discussion I show them the threatening tweets, they are the most interested group of students in the room. They get out of their chairs and approach the screen, as if to indicate that they need to absorb all the horror of it.
-The archival clip from the TV spot for Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time says "Willst thou get the girl? Or play like one?" This insult lands really heavily on the class. No one tries to defend the ad. It serves as an entry point into the emotions of the haters, who champion this game, but don't know what it means to be critical of it while also appreciating its place in game history.
-I really want to introduce the bell curve tomorrow, with kindness in the middle and the pernicious outliers defined in both categories.
-This lesson is always the one that ends up impacting the students most. When I survey them afterwards, they almost always unanimously cite Anita's work as the most memorable part of the unit.
-Should I scroll down the gg hashtag in Twitter? I can't really do that because of the bad language, but I suppose that I can take screenshots.
-I just went into a gg black hole. It is a HUGE community.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Story Globe
I just went to This American Life's website recently and noticed the Story Globe feature. It's a world map with little dots all over it. Each dot is a story that relates to that location. Click on a dot and listen!
Here's what it looks like (image only)
A diverse selection of stories, presented in a more inclusive way. Happy travels!
Thursday, October 15, 2015
The Profile Pic and Teen Identity
Warning: This might bring back some best forgotten teen memories about identity development.
What's your favorite social media site?
What makes a good profile pic on that site?
Each social media site has its own unwritten rules about profile pics, and looking deeper into teen choices about them reveal issues of identity development, as well as emotional abuse.
When you turn 13, you're suddenly of legal age to join the world of social media.
If you're a 12yo, like the 7th graders in my Social Media Safety class, you might have a social media account already, on the conditions that you already own a smartphone, and your parents allow you to create online accounts. If you don't, it is because one or both of those conditions are false.
"But everyone else at school has an Instagram!"
Can a child younger than age 13 use social media?
Social media sites are all regulated by COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which sets limits on data collection from users under age 13.
The enforcement and effectiveness of COPPA is, apparently, about as potent as MPAA's PG-13 rating, because when I ask my 12yo students if they use some form of social media regularly, 80-90% of them raise their hands.
They also all admit to having seen a PG-13 movie.
COPPA has had 24 cases in 14 years, which is an indication of the level of enforcement.
Pew Research Center on Internet, Science and Tech published findings from this year about teen trends in social media use, and this gender divide graph gets at a fundamental difference in the use of the profile pic:
CNN recently debuted #Being13, a documentary about what it looks like at age 13 these days, when suddenly a child has entered their teenage years, at the beginning of (perhaps a lifetime of) social media use.
The caption below this image reads: "I like made this google document on all my rules and requirements on how to take a selfie. I take a lot of pictures, but don't judge, I take like 100 usually, or like 150, maybe 200 sometimes if I really can't get a right one."
A Google Image Search on Instagram profile pics yields this array:
It might be hard to see, and you can click here to see for yourself, but nearly all of these profile pics are faces of (presumably) the actual account holders.
I corroborated this presumption with my 7th graders, who confirm that this is indeed the trend on Instagram. That way, even though your username might be different from your real name, your followers will know whose account it is. At least in teen Instagram land, this is important. Besides, if you're going to post a selfie, everyone will know it's your account anyway.
There's little room for anonymity in teen Instagram land.
Let's jump to the other side of the gender spectrum, where (according to Pew) 84% of teen boys play online games.
A Google Image Search of "gamer profile pics" produces a very different result:
None of these images are a teen's actual face, and in this search, there's a naked woman holding a game controller.
There are very few selfies in gaming culture.
Anonymity is very important among gamers.
I ask my students why this is? Boys explain that if you post your actual face, everyone will make fun of you.
Why?
"Because that's just how it works."
That is a loaded response. We spent some time unpacking that one.
The trouble with anonymity in gamer culture is well documented in the news surrounding #gamergate.
My students were quick to point out the cons of anonymity:
"You can hit and run."
What's that?
"It's when you say something mean and get away with it, because no one knows who you are."
Gamer culture is changing, thanks in no small part to Feminist Frequency's series Tropes Vs Women in Video Games, which is A+ fantastic, and many of the videos are appropriate for the classroom (screen them first obvs!)
In my classroom, by pointing out this dramatic difference in profile pic culture, I was shocked how quickly I found myself at the gates to this world of online abuse.
Back in teen Instagram land, when talking about pros and cons of the selfie profile pic, I quickly received this response:
"You can make yourself look really pretty & fancy."
Indeed, some of the most popular photo editing apps offer specific tools to whiten your teeth, shape your eyebrows, raise your cheekbones, enlarge your eyes, erase blemishes, and more.
Identity development is hard work, and it takes a lot of support from friends and family to get through those teen years and stay afloat.
All of this brings back some memories of my middle school years for sure.
The #Being13 takeaway that opened my eyes as a teacher guiding 13yos safely into their online lives is that the difficulties they encounter can be greatly lessened simply if their parents follow their accounts.
That's great to know! If you're reading this, you might want to consider sharing with parents the linked article above about #Being13, as well as the documentary itself. Parents I've talked to that watched it expressed the importance of viewing it with their teens at home.
It led me to a question:
If we know that middle schoolers need guidance IRL (in real life), might they need just as much guidance in online spaces? If they receive guidance not only from their parents IRL, but also from their teachers, coaches, other family members etc, perhaps more of these folks ought to be a part of their online life, too?
What's your favorite social media site?
What makes a good profile pic on that site?
Each social media site has its own unwritten rules about profile pics, and looking deeper into teen choices about them reveal issues of identity development, as well as emotional abuse.
When you turn 13, you're suddenly of legal age to join the world of social media.
If you're a 12yo, like the 7th graders in my Social Media Safety class, you might have a social media account already, on the conditions that you already own a smartphone, and your parents allow you to create online accounts. If you don't, it is because one or both of those conditions are false.
"But everyone else at school has an Instagram!"
Can a child younger than age 13 use social media?
Social media sites are all regulated by COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which sets limits on data collection from users under age 13.
The enforcement and effectiveness of COPPA is, apparently, about as potent as MPAA's PG-13 rating, because when I ask my 12yo students if they use some form of social media regularly, 80-90% of them raise their hands.
They also all admit to having seen a PG-13 movie.
COPPA has had 24 cases in 14 years, which is an indication of the level of enforcement.
Pew Research Center on Internet, Science and Tech published findings from this year about teen trends in social media use, and this gender divide graph gets at a fundamental difference in the use of the profile pic:
CNN recently debuted #Being13, a documentary about what it looks like at age 13 these days, when suddenly a child has entered their teenage years, at the beginning of (perhaps a lifetime of) social media use.
The caption below this image reads: "I like made this google document on all my rules and requirements on how to take a selfie. I take a lot of pictures, but don't judge, I take like 100 usually, or like 150, maybe 200 sometimes if I really can't get a right one."
A Google Image Search on Instagram profile pics yields this array:
It might be hard to see, and you can click here to see for yourself, but nearly all of these profile pics are faces of (presumably) the actual account holders.
I corroborated this presumption with my 7th graders, who confirm that this is indeed the trend on Instagram. That way, even though your username might be different from your real name, your followers will know whose account it is. At least in teen Instagram land, this is important. Besides, if you're going to post a selfie, everyone will know it's your account anyway.
There's little room for anonymity in teen Instagram land.
Let's jump to the other side of the gender spectrum, where (according to Pew) 84% of teen boys play online games.
A Google Image Search of "gamer profile pics" produces a very different result:
None of these images are a teen's actual face, and in this search, there's a naked woman holding a game controller.
There are very few selfies in gaming culture.
Anonymity is very important among gamers.
I ask my students why this is? Boys explain that if you post your actual face, everyone will make fun of you.
Why?
"Because that's just how it works."
That is a loaded response. We spent some time unpacking that one.
The trouble with anonymity in gamer culture is well documented in the news surrounding #gamergate.
My students were quick to point out the cons of anonymity:
"You can hit and run."
What's that?
"It's when you say something mean and get away with it, because no one knows who you are."
Gamer culture is changing, thanks in no small part to Feminist Frequency's series Tropes Vs Women in Video Games, which is A+ fantastic, and many of the videos are appropriate for the classroom (screen them first obvs!)
In my classroom, by pointing out this dramatic difference in profile pic culture, I was shocked how quickly I found myself at the gates to this world of online abuse.
Back in teen Instagram land, when talking about pros and cons of the selfie profile pic, I quickly received this response:
"You can make yourself look really pretty & fancy."
Indeed, some of the most popular photo editing apps offer specific tools to whiten your teeth, shape your eyebrows, raise your cheekbones, enlarge your eyes, erase blemishes, and more.
Identity development is hard work, and it takes a lot of support from friends and family to get through those teen years and stay afloat.
All of this brings back some memories of my middle school years for sure.
The #Being13 takeaway that opened my eyes as a teacher guiding 13yos safely into their online lives is that the difficulties they encounter can be greatly lessened simply if their parents follow their accounts.
That's great to know! If you're reading this, you might want to consider sharing with parents the linked article above about #Being13, as well as the documentary itself. Parents I've talked to that watched it expressed the importance of viewing it with their teens at home.
It led me to a question:
If we know that middle schoolers need guidance IRL (in real life), might they need just as much guidance in online spaces? If they receive guidance not only from their parents IRL, but also from their teachers, coaches, other family members etc, perhaps more of these folks ought to be a part of their online life, too?
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
XOXO Is For Educators
Story.
Arcade.
Tabletop.
Film/Animation.
Conference.
Music.
XOXO is an arts and technology conference that curates examples of creativity and innovation that disrupt the status quo in social and professional contexts. It began in 2012 by two Andys, Andy Baio (of Upcoming, Kickstarter, and Waxy), and Andy McMillan of Build and The Manual, and has been held in Portland, OR.
Story
Our students, whether they're 2 or 22 years old, have encountered storytelling in various forms, and are learning both from these stories, as well as how to share their own via this multitude of avenues. At this year's XOXO, I attended a few of these marvelous examples of storytelling that I think serve as wonderful models for potential student projects:
Fray Cafe: "Before The Moth, before Risk!, before Mortified, before Snap Judgement, there was Fray Cafe. 5 minutes. One live microphone. Your stories." At this event, I heard stories told live about saving a new neighbor's life, the decision to go on antidepressants, and a near death experience while lost on a desert hiking trail. Imagine live (rehearsed) storytelling at school assemblies!
Reply All: "Stories about how people shape the internet, and the internet shapes people." I had the joy of witnessing PJ Vokt and Alex Goldman perform a live taping of an episode at XOXO for this podcast. I am in love with podcasts, and what a great medium for students to share new knowledge, process and reflect, and demonstrate understanding.
Arcade
Video games are now being played by equal numbers of people of all genders and ages. It was recently announced that the largest demographic of gamers is adult women. Our students play games, but, as president Obama said, today's youth should stop playing games and start making them.
Hyper Light Drifter: Heart Machine's highly-anticipated indie game was funded by a blockbuster Kickstarter project that raised over $645k from 25,150 backers in 2013. The fast-paced 2D action RPG was inspired by SNES classics, and creator Alex Preston’s congenital heart condition. Heart Machine designer/developer Teddy Deifenbach talked with me about what could attract middle school gamers: "The character has a heart condition, but kids might not get that. They'll connect to the adventure story, and enjoy exploring around the big game world." Using tools like Game Maker, Gamesalad, RPG Maker, Twine, and Scratch, students can design their own games (and learn some basic javascript along the way) that tell any story they like.
Tacoma: Fullbright's follow-up to Gone Home was debuted as a playable demo, where you get to explore an abandoned space station to solve the mystery of the missing crew. I spoke with Fullbright's Karla Zimonja, who is an active supporter of young people learning new narratives through video games. Tacoma is being designed using Unity, which is an app students can use for free.
Feminist Frequency: One aspect of video games that's important to address and think critically about is how inclusive the medium is for wide audiences. When students are crafting game narratives, it's important that they consider their audience, and strive for inclusivity. Anita Sarkeesian hosts and produces a webseries called Feminist Frequency that "explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives." These videos are meticulously crafted, exhaustively researched, and highly regarded in the industry as truly game-changing (no pun intendo) analyses on the history, current state, and future of the art. Sarkeesian spoke at XOXO about the evolution and reach of this series, and I'll share one video here that is appropriate for teens in the classroom:
There's so much more to share - perhaps in another post! What I enjoyed most from XOXO was being inspired by the ways these professionals are engaging with and reshaping our world. I aim to pass on this inspiration to my students, show them what sorts of 21st century career paths await, and guide them in gaining some skills that will start them on their path.
Tabletop.
Film/Animation.
Conference.
Music.
XOXO is an arts and technology conference that curates examples of creativity and innovation that disrupt the status quo in social and professional contexts. It began in 2012 by two Andys, Andy Baio (of Upcoming, Kickstarter, and Waxy), and Andy McMillan of Build and The Manual, and has been held in Portland, OR.
Story
Our students, whether they're 2 or 22 years old, have encountered storytelling in various forms, and are learning both from these stories, as well as how to share their own via this multitude of avenues. At this year's XOXO, I attended a few of these marvelous examples of storytelling that I think serve as wonderful models for potential student projects:
Fray Cafe: "Before The Moth, before Risk!, before Mortified, before Snap Judgement, there was Fray Cafe. 5 minutes. One live microphone. Your stories." At this event, I heard stories told live about saving a new neighbor's life, the decision to go on antidepressants, and a near death experience while lost on a desert hiking trail. Imagine live (rehearsed) storytelling at school assemblies!
Reply All: "Stories about how people shape the internet, and the internet shapes people." I had the joy of witnessing PJ Vokt and Alex Goldman perform a live taping of an episode at XOXO for this podcast. I am in love with podcasts, and what a great medium for students to share new knowledge, process and reflect, and demonstrate understanding.
Arcade
Video games are now being played by equal numbers of people of all genders and ages. It was recently announced that the largest demographic of gamers is adult women. Our students play games, but, as president Obama said, today's youth should stop playing games and start making them.
Hyper Light Drifter: Heart Machine's highly-anticipated indie game was funded by a blockbuster Kickstarter project that raised over $645k from 25,150 backers in 2013. The fast-paced 2D action RPG was inspired by SNES classics, and creator Alex Preston’s congenital heart condition. Heart Machine designer/developer Teddy Deifenbach talked with me about what could attract middle school gamers: "The character has a heart condition, but kids might not get that. They'll connect to the adventure story, and enjoy exploring around the big game world." Using tools like Game Maker, Gamesalad, RPG Maker, Twine, and Scratch, students can design their own games (and learn some basic javascript along the way) that tell any story they like.
Tacoma: Fullbright's follow-up to Gone Home was debuted as a playable demo, where you get to explore an abandoned space station to solve the mystery of the missing crew. I spoke with Fullbright's Karla Zimonja, who is an active supporter of young people learning new narratives through video games. Tacoma is being designed using Unity, which is an app students can use for free.
Feminist Frequency: One aspect of video games that's important to address and think critically about is how inclusive the medium is for wide audiences. When students are crafting game narratives, it's important that they consider their audience, and strive for inclusivity. Anita Sarkeesian hosts and produces a webseries called Feminist Frequency that "explores the representations of women in pop culture narratives." These videos are meticulously crafted, exhaustively researched, and highly regarded in the industry as truly game-changing (no pun intendo) analyses on the history, current state, and future of the art. Sarkeesian spoke at XOXO about the evolution and reach of this series, and I'll share one video here that is appropriate for teens in the classroom:
There's so much more to share - perhaps in another post! What I enjoyed most from XOXO was being inspired by the ways these professionals are engaging with and reshaping our world. I aim to pass on this inspiration to my students, show them what sorts of 21st century career paths await, and guide them in gaining some skills that will start them on their path.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Gone Home In The Classroom
Gone Home by Fullbright is one of the most inclusive stories in video game history, and my students played it together to talk about tropes in video games.
The students even got to visit Fullbright and ask the game developers questions!
First, some context:
I was leading a game design summer camp and ended up with a dozen boys - no girls enrolled. I wanted to treat it like an affinity group for male gamers.
The tech industry has always been a major cultural battlefield for women, due to push back and misogynistic attacks from male industry folk.
As the Daily Dot reported, the largest demographic in gaming is adult women, although the stories they encounter are largely dominated by male characters, while female characters are often objectified, typecast, victimized, and/or otherwise marginalized - usually non-playable.
These gender tropes are deconstructed so well in the series Tropes Vs Women in Video Games by YouTube channel Feminist Frequency, that it has earned worldwide attention with 200,000 subscribers and 20 million views to date.
Gone Home, on the other hand, stars a young woman, includes LGBT characters, and constructs a narrative that cleverly sets the player up to expect one kind of archetypal story by using several tropes of the "survival horror" genre, only to find a very different story that nimbly unfolds within 2 or 3 hours of gameplay.
The game received 7 perfect scores from sites as reputable as Giant Bomb and Polygon.
Gone Home in the classroom:
Fullbright was very generous and donated copies of Gone Home for my students to play. I didn't tell my students anything about the game, except that I'd scheduled a visit to Fullbright later that week, and that they needed to think of questions to ask the game developers.
What I did talk about with students involved a more general discussion around gender and video games, fit for a male gamer affinity group just beginning to talk about this topic.
We generated this list of games starring playable female characters:
Metroid
Tomb Raider
Mirror's Edge
Portal
Last of Us
Ms. Pac-Man
Students were proud to know these titles, and they were happy to see such representation of female characters in games, until we all quickly ran out of titles to add. (Here's an online list, including supporting and non-playable characters).
We were able to make a long list of games where female characters needed to be saved by male characters.
When it came time to play Gone Home, my students played through it pretty quickly - within 2 or 3 hours. As a homework assignment, it could be spread out through a few days.
NOTE: The game is rated for players aged 16 and older.
The students really enjoyed the game, and they asked the game developers, Steve Gaynor and Karla Zimonja, several thought-provoking questions, that I won't include, because they're spoilers!
Their experience playing Gone Home in the classroom was very social. It started out with kids comparing progress with each other, punctuated by the occasional scream of anticipation, imagining what they might find rounding the next creepy corner of game space.
By the end of the game, all they were talking about was the story. They were comparing notes with each other, trying to piece it together, one clue at a time.
This kind of story was new to them, and no one wrote it off. They were compelled to see the complete picture, as if they were afraid to miss a single detail. The boys talked about the LGBT aspect of the story like it was the norm (which gave me great hope for the next generation), but they weren't talking about it with the fluency that comes with comfort and experience. I'd wager that this game brought them one step closer to feeling comfortable discussing LGBT issues among male peers.
Gone Home is interactive literature, and the buy-in that came with its well-designed gameplay was 100% effective in engaging a group of teen boys. It set the stage for an entire course about inclusive storytelling.
Who does this story welcome in? Who is this story about? Who might not feel represented in this story? As the story plays out, who wins? Who loses? Who's in danger? Who might feel unsafe or powerless as they hear this story?
Here were some of the takeaways that kids wanted to share with Fullbright after their visit:
"I loved hearing about how Gone Home was made - how it was supposed to be horror, and how you interviewed people and based it off their experiences."
"I loved the attention to detail in the level design."
"Thank you for not only presenting to us your individual jobs, but the way you design great games as a team. I hope to play Tacoma once it's published!"
"Thanks to your group for showing us how a great game can be made with a small group of talented people."
"I loved Christmas Duck and seeing the artwork Karla was working on."
Gone Home is my favorite game, so I also really enjoyed meeting its designers, Steve and Karla. Here's a photo of us with Christmas Duck, who plays a major role in the game.
For more information, here's a great feature on Gone Home and its connection to the Gamergate controversy.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Innovation in Education: 3 Sources
"Education needs a win, and once there's one win that everyone can point to, then it's going to help all of us."
That quote came from this 12 minute video about innovation that is a great watch:
The video, titled Future Learning, was one of 3 sources assigned by the head of my school at the end of the last school year. As employees gather tomorrow for 2015-16, these 3 sources will be guiding our conversations.
The other 2 are:
10 Ideas for 21st Century Education by the Innovation Unit, a London-based solutions firm for public services.
The Capabilities Your Organization Needs to Sustain Innovation, by Linda Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove and Kent Lineback, Harvard Business Review.
My 3 biggest takeaway from synthesizing these 3 sources:
1. The argument from the video that the 3 skills students need now are how to read, how to research, and how to think critically about any and all doctrines.
I think these are crucial, and I'll add one more, because this is my blog:
How to support people. This means how to:
-volunteer
-recognize friendship
-show up
-listen first
-constructively critique
-work in teams
-appreciate different viewpoints
-seek to grow individually and collectively
-appreciate failure
-speak out against injustice
-help and seek help
-find optimism
-inspire others
-navigate conflict
-cultivate empathy
-know when and how to lead
-mass communicate in person and online
And more along these lines.
2. It's #9 of the 10 ideas for 21st Century ed: "Work with families, not just children."
I could be much better at this. I could involve parents in their studies more, invite parents to student showcases more often, share student work more often, and, above all, ask parents for help, and to get involved, and to let the students in on these conversations whenever appropriate.
I always loved it when I got to watch my parents chat with my favorite teachers. It was like worlds colliding. There's no need not to engage all the worlds of a child in her education!
I am so inspired to do this in 2015-16.
3. What does a 'win' for education look like?
I think it first of all embodies what the business world continues to discover and measure through research, that the more diverse and inclusive the team, the more productive the team will be. This doesn't just mean race and gender, but ideology, age, physical/mental condition, and then dissolving the power dynamics that have traditionally existed between these identities, in order to truly work together to solve problems and create visions for team success.
I think it is driven by empathy. It's a gift to someone else, whether it be a friend, a family, a community, or the greater community at large. The inspiration originated first from listening.
I think it is gifted to the public and reaching outward online. While it's important to maintain a safe distance online by protecting private personal information, it's just as important to jump into the sea of fellow human beings that exists online. Social media, for example, attracted 1/3rd of the entire world's population within 10 years of its invention. This means humans REALLY want to use it! Our students want to use it, too, because its value is intrinsically clear.
I think it is student-driven, not teacher-driven, from conception to completion. The teacher is the guide on the side, and not the sage on the stage.
Monday, January 5, 2015
Online Teaching: My First Gantt Chart
As I'm preparing to teach an online class for the first time this coming semester, there is a lot of communication that needs to happen in the absence of face-to-face contact. When there are no walls to post charts, calendars, and other important information, how do teachers help students learn where to look for it all?
First of all, the learning management system creates the organizational structure that replaces the drywall and whiteboards. I'm working with Canvas, which has built-in tabs for syllabi, course overviews, calendars, announcements, and literally everything else pertaining to the class.
Taking an online class is a different learning experience. Ease of access and freedom from scheduled regular classes during the school day are traded in for strictly enforced due dates and the need to stay on top of one's own calendar. Scheduling for skype conferences and google hangouts, for example, needs to be done ahead of time before the deadline to meet that responsibility rolls around. Accountability comes into sharp focus in online classes.
This is even more important in project-based classes, where long term assignments that are student-driven can take weeks to complete, and procrastination can result in some serious difficulty for both teacher and student.
A great visual way for the teacher to communicate how many days a student should devote time to an assignment is by using a Gantt chart.
(From Wikipedia)
I made my first Gantt chart last night using Google Sheets. I was going to use Smartsheet.com, and I might still use it for future classes, but anyway Google Sheets was an easy option. I'm teaching a project-based class called Music Theory and Digital Composition. This chart details classwork for the first week:
What's evident right off the bat is looking at what a student needs to focus on for each day of the week. Is the work balanced evenly throughout the unit? With a Gantt chart, I can tell students visually what I think the easiest way to tackle the workload is, and then students adjust according to their own schedules in order to meet each due date.
The 48 Minute Music Project is the one I'm hoping students work on over time. Some students might wait until Friday to start it, but they might run into some obstacles with time-consuming workarounds. I'll communicate this concern in the assignment instructions.
In the interest of creating some kind of rhythm to an otherwise asynchronous environment that characterizes the online class, each of my units are one week long. If I were creating Gantt charts for longer timelines, I might opt to use Smartsheet.com, which has more flexible options for representing visual timelines.
First of all, the learning management system creates the organizational structure that replaces the drywall and whiteboards. I'm working with Canvas, which has built-in tabs for syllabi, course overviews, calendars, announcements, and literally everything else pertaining to the class.
Taking an online class is a different learning experience. Ease of access and freedom from scheduled regular classes during the school day are traded in for strictly enforced due dates and the need to stay on top of one's own calendar. Scheduling for skype conferences and google hangouts, for example, needs to be done ahead of time before the deadline to meet that responsibility rolls around. Accountability comes into sharp focus in online classes.
This is even more important in project-based classes, where long term assignments that are student-driven can take weeks to complete, and procrastination can result in some serious difficulty for both teacher and student.
A great visual way for the teacher to communicate how many days a student should devote time to an assignment is by using a Gantt chart.
(From Wikipedia)
I made my first Gantt chart last night using Google Sheets. I was going to use Smartsheet.com, and I might still use it for future classes, but anyway Google Sheets was an easy option. I'm teaching a project-based class called Music Theory and Digital Composition. This chart details classwork for the first week:
The 48 Minute Music Project is the one I'm hoping students work on over time. Some students might wait until Friday to start it, but they might run into some obstacles with time-consuming workarounds. I'll communicate this concern in the assignment instructions.
In the interest of creating some kind of rhythm to an otherwise asynchronous environment that characterizes the online class, each of my units are one week long. If I were creating Gantt charts for longer timelines, I might opt to use Smartsheet.com, which has more flexible options for representing visual timelines.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Digital Storytelling: #MyZeitgest 2014 Winners
I am definitely encouraging students to participate in this contest next year! It's a testament to the power of digital storytelling when put into the hands of students. Watch the winning video below.
Click here for the full post
From PBS NewsHour:
We asked students which events had the biggest impact on the world in 2014, and they answered. More than 1,000 students created multimedia projects on Trio and Meograph exploring the most newsworthy stories of year. It was a difficult decision, but our judges narrowed it down to the six winners below. For more great submissions, check out the Trio and Meograph finalists.
From all of us at NewsHour, Google and Trio, congratulations!
Click here for the full post
From PBS NewsHour:
We asked students which events had the biggest impact on the world in 2014, and they answered. More than 1,000 students created multimedia projects on Trio and Meograph exploring the most newsworthy stories of year. It was a difficult decision, but our judges narrowed it down to the six winners below. For more great submissions, check out the Trio and Meograph finalists.
From all of us at NewsHour, Google and Trio, congratulations!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)