Collected Stories: Climate Change

Brand new day

Yesterday I received my VoiceThread Certified Educator badge through VoiceTread (Credly badge displayed).

Next up is Google for Education Certified Trainer. May it take less than a year. I’m supposed to get it done by April 2018.

Coolio. Let’s begin.

Instant Pot

So, I got a new kitchen toy in mid December. I’ve not used it anywhere near as much as I would like.

This is a post to admit that, and to say … ONE TIME per month—at a minimum—I intend to try something new with it.

What’s up for January? … Not quite sure – just grabbed “Instant Pot Ultimate CookBook: The Complete Pressure Cooker Guide with Delicious and Healthy Instant Pot Recipes (Instant Pot Cookbook, Pressure Cooker Recipes Book 1)”

I need to check through my pantry and decide what to make as we’re running out of January.

February (on deck) … making coconut ‘yogurt.’

There is so much fall clean up going on… but I need to think about Spring 2017 and CITS F222: Website Design

Hello Everyone!

  • In October I will review and update the Syllabus for Spring 2017.
  • In late October I will prep the schedule–calendar–for Spring 2017.
  • In November you’ll see changes to module pages updating them for the Spring week-by-week layout.
  • In December the site will get a bit of a face-lift to refresh specific sections.
    • This is also when I’ll review all of the reading materials (links) that are not from our text and update as needed.
22
Sep, 2016
Grass growing around the sewer lid

Getting serious about Twitter?

099373-twitter-bird3-squareEgads! I’m a professional. I’ve been online since (okay, I won’t say)… but in the five years I’ve had a Twitter account–the one I use, not the one I want–I’ve not tweeted *enough.*

Enter IF THIS THEN THAT to the rescue. I most certainly have communicated a LOT and shared cool tools and how-tos via different web interfaces. Let’s consolidate. “Let’s get connected…”

Now, the interesting thing to me was WHEN I decided to start pushing my WP posts to my Twitter feed, I was presented with a fun dilemma – JetPack would connect my WordPress.com sites to my personal WordPress site hosted elsewhere. Verra cool!

What am I doing now? Frittering away time that I should be spending on my Financial Peace homework, or working on the draft ONID Project site. Yeah. It’s that kind of day.

What’s up with the sewer lid?
I took this photo when out walking (August 2016) and found it awesome that grass will grow…

Revamping CITS F222 for Spring

While I truly enjoy spending a few hours just playing around with WordPress, sometimes it feels as if I’m under pressure to find just the right thing.

I did that earlier this week. It took a lot of playing and a bit of tweaking, plus a few other people’s eyes. Here is my final layout:

cits screen shot of website

It is simple. It is clean. I’m going to try to stick with it for all of the weeks. Of course, some will be slightly different. ALL of them need to have an image that represents that week’s lesson.

27
Oct, 2015
Graphic from http://deakinprime.com/

Model Student Creation

Let’s say you’re a faculty member and you want your students to research a topic and then synthesize the information. {Don’t skip this step… it is about learning, creating supports learning. It is not simply about creating.} Add a creative element to the process by asking the student to curate their findings online. A few tools you can use (and student examples) include:

Before your students create, model the behavior you want to see. Students can create video lecture, presentation, online posters, timeline, audio files similar to how an instructor can. If you want students to use YouTube videos for course presentations, embed YouTube videos as a welcome note and lecture items early in the semester. Also link to or provide getting started materials.

Places to curate and arenas to use for sharing products vary from class to class, but good choices for UAF students include: Google Sites and Google Drive Folders because all UAF students have access to the Google Apps.

Learn more and see more examples – https://iteachu.uaf.edu/online-training/grow-skills/filelink-management/content-curation-tools/

Resources

UAF eLearning and Distance Education designers write teaching tips each week. The following are a few you may want to put in your Getting Started folder or your introduction to the module:

Featured image from http://deakinprime.com/news-and-publications/news/create-or-curate

13
Oct, 2015
baby clothes sorted for quilt

Baby quilt

Get excited… I am. Blair of WiseCraft made a quilt out of Aedan’s clothes. I haven’t seen the pictures yet – the quilt is in Portland with the photographer. Here’s a quick shot of the clothes I sent for her to use.

I’m the youngest of five children; my family and friends blessed me with both an amazing largess of items before he was born, AND hand-me-downs… my three brothers all have kids and two women from church gave me boxes of items. That’s just one reason why I’ve carefully laundered and packaged up the most usable items and sent them on their way to friends who were pregnant or just gave birth. I kept quite a bit for exactly this purpose–maybe some day… a quilt!

I heard back from Blair and she kept out the two items I marked ‘most treasured.’

5
Oct, 2015
red chair with tv radio sitting on it

Use Video to Capture Students’ Attention

red chair with tv radio sitting on it
Small and dark but still captivating

You may consider video difficult to get started with. Make your first video using tools you already have: Keynote (or PowerPoint) and QuickTime. Once you’re ready, upload your presentation to YouTube for easy sharing.

Download PDF: TT-video-engagement

“People react to well-crafted videos and audio with increased attention.”1 Using skills you have and software you most likely own, create items to reach your students. Charles Mason, photography teacher at UAF, while creating his online version of Basic Digital Photography used two slides, five images, and his voice to illustrate depth of field incredibly well in a video lasting less than three minutes!2  

Make your slides; talk to your students. Describe what you’re doing via a screencast or illustrate a point with a story by narrating your slides. Both Keynote and PowerPoint allow you to save a narrated slideshow. Once created, export it to QuickTime. The next step is to open the QuickTime file and share it to YouTube, where you to gain access to editing tools and transcript services in addition to placing your work in a space that is highly accessible. Now embed your video or video link in your course materials.

Even without filming yourself, you can strengthen your course by telling stories and asking colleagues to share theirs. “Nothing persuades our learners better than seeing real people who are like them — giving testimony, telling their stories, giving their lessons learned.”3 These illustrations make the course personal for you and your students. Focus students’ attention to specific points you feel are important while increasing student engagement with your course material.

If you’re comfortable with video, consider using it to show scenarios; “video can utilize scenario-based decision making, which we know from the learning research is a powerful tool to support comprehension and remembering.”1

Adding your voice to slides is useful for other reasons. Charles Mason’s first short video is a course summary he created so UAF eLearning could help him market his course, JRN 204/ART 284.3   His course  filled up in the first few days of registration; perhaps this video helped that happen?

Brian Rosenberg, president of Macalester College says “the notion that new social media are exclusively the province of the young or the technically savvy is mistaken.”4  While he had help creating his video and a very different goal, you too have help. Contact UAF eLearning to find out more and join the  “serious sources [that] are turning to video…TED video, the New York Times, The Economist.”4

Full steps on how to do this with screenshots at: janene.community.uaf.edu

 

REFERENCES

1Thalheimer, W. “Video is the New Text… Hmmm!” http://www.willatworklearning.com/2015/05/video-is-the-new-texthmmm.html

2Professor Mason’s lecture video: https://photography.community.uaf.edu/all-units/unit-2-depth-of-field/

3Professor Mason’s  introductory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HdG5K_BT5Q&feature=youtu.be

4 Rosenberg, B. “What I learned from YouTube”  http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Learned-From-YouTube/65141/

 

RELATED

https://iteachu.uaf.edu/online-training/grow-skills/video/youtube/  

https://iteachu.uaf.edu/2015/06/16/screencasting/

https://iteachu.uaf.edu/2015/03/31/why-we-teach/

https://iteachu.uaf.edu/2014/06/17/using-youtubes-caption-editor/

https://iteachu.community.uaf.edu/files/2013/03/CustomizingYourYouTubeChannel.pdf

23
Sep, 2015
Image of WordPress logo on folded paper

Looking at WordPress a New Way

Recent requests at work have caused me to reconsider hand-coding in favor of plug-ins. There are a lot of requests. If, for example, a request is to streamline a process and have information coming through the work site be able to easily integrate with a CMS that we have… should I hand-code all of that or see if there is a series of plug-ins, or just one, that will do the work for me?

Contact Form 7 has add-ons that allow for reCaptcha No Captcha as well as integration into SalesForce. Will it work for us? I think I should find out.

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