Tech Tools for Students and Teachers

Guest Blogger: Brenda Snider

 

As we continue to develop online learning, what can we do to prepare students to succeed? Consider the tools and resources you need to help your online students succeed. Online students do not always have access to campus resources.  Departments such as the Learning Resource Center and the library will need updated websites to provide the resources online students require to complete their assignments.

The role of the instructor of an online course is to guide the learner. The student becomes responsible for his/her own learning and develops into a life-long learner. Instructors must guide the learners to be critical of online resources. The students need to learn which online resources are trustworthy. 

Consider the following technology to help with your online classes:

Have you ever tried Grammarly? This program checks for grammar issues and plagiarism.  In addition, it provides a personal writing handbook. This online handbook lists grammar rules based on your usage of Grammarly.  The program is simple to use. Copy and paste your text in the document box, and click “start review.”  When the program finishes the review, you see your score, a listing of your errors, and suggestions on how to correct them.  To sign up for a free seven-day trial, visit grammarly.com.

The appropriate use of media elements can improve learning.  An effective tool is podcasts, which may be audio-only, audio with images, or video.  Pod Bean is a free tool for creating podcasts (http://www.podbean.com/start-podcast?sourceid=bing_01).  

Jing  by TechSmith  allows you to capture basic video, animation, and still images, and share them on the web (http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html). The program is free and limits your output to five minutes.  The captures are short and focused. This program can be used for clarifying an important aspect of the learning materials.  If you review the short videos on the D2L faculty resource page, you will see examples of how Jing works. These short videos may be added to your online classes.  In addition, your students may create videos for highlighting what they have learned.

Another tool is mind mapping. XMind is an example of mind mapping (http://www.xmind.net/).  This tool can be used to clarify thinking, manage complex information, brainstorming, and organizing your thoughts and projects. A free version is available.

With online classes, the possibilities are endless. We have to open our minds to new ways of presenting information without going overboard. Too much technology can be overwhelming and hinder learning.  A little technology goes a long way in promoting learning.

Finding a Balance

Guest Blogger:  William Donohue

As I sit in my office, on a beautiful autumn afternoon, writing this blog, I have a moment of calm to what has been a chaotic week—both professionally and personally, some my doing, others beyond my control. This has not been a typical week (is there such a thing?), but a few times every semester there is a perfect storm of so much going on that I can’t catch my breath.

The question that I want to ask, and that I look forward to reading about in the comments, is how do others find balance in their lives during the sprint that is a semester of teaching? How do people in The Lincoln University Community find motivation to keep going?

To illuminate my week, here are some snippets:

 Monday, 8:45 a.m.: The power to University Hall mercifully comes back on as I am setting up for the first of 28 student conferences of the day and preparing a backup plan to take written notes that I can transcribe to the computer later.

Sunday, 7:30 a.m.: After making coffee and tuning in to WXPN, I take a draft to read from the pile of the 150 drafts (2 per ENG 099 student) that I will discuss with students in their one-on-one conference.

Monday, 11:15 a.m.: Power goes back out; I hope that I saved the Excel document with the notes about individual student issues taken during the morning conferences.

Tuesday, 4:30 a.m.: My 15-week-old son, Sawyer, the first child for my wife and me, decides it is time to get up and start the day.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, around midnight: I fall asleep reading a student draft and decide that it is time to go to bed

Tuesday, 12:30 p.m.: I am halfway through the student conferences and although I have explained “run on sentences” in most of them, showing each student seems to help them understand.

Thursday, 7:30 p.m.: A device called “The Snot Sucker” is put to use on Sawyer’s nose while my wife holds him and I suck.

Friday, 9:06 a.m.: I find most of my students it the library after they followed a handwritten note taped to the classroom door saying “Class Is Meeting At The Library ACC. Information System Ask Help Desk For Direction.” I lead them back to our classroom, and we discuss revision.

Monday, 3:08 p.m.: “Cherish life,” says a student in my ENG 102 class.

Monday, 3:07 p.m.: I ask the question, “In the play Our Town, what does Emily’s ghost mean when she says ‘They don’t—understand—do they?’

Wednesday, 1:10 p.m.: I can see the light at the end of student conference tunnel and I am exhausted. But I am reminded of the words of the great composition teacher Donald Murray, who wrote of writing conferences, “I am tired, but it is a good tired, for my students have generated energy as well as absorbed it.”

Wednesday, 4:15 p.m.: While watching the end of a documentary titled OT:Our Town about students from Dominguez High School in Compton, CA, who put on the school’s first play in 20 years, I tear up a little when the student playing Emily says, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute.”

Tuesday, 5:45 a.m.: Sawyer falls back asleep with his head on my shoulder.

Teaching Grammar/Learning Grammar. Sigh.

Guest Blogger: Linda Stine

Like everyone else, I've been moaning and groaning my way through midterms this week. And, like perhaps at least some of you, I've been wondering if my grammar explanations have been doing more harm than good, as I note fragmented ideas and run-on sentences and commas popping up in locations that just seem to belie any rational explanation.

On a listserv for writing teachers recently, a good conversation has been taking place on the whole issue of grammar instruction, student writing, and transferability of writing skills. We know that learning a new concept causes temporary backsliding as students struggle to fit the new knowledge into their existing sense of language structure and begin questioning everything, even concepts that they had previously mastered. (I like to think that's the reason for all those inexplicable commas...). We know too that the same backsliding occurs when students are asked to write on more complicated issues or in other classes with different content matter. We know too that teaching grammar directly and explicitly does little to improve student writing.

So given that, I was wondering what ways you have found that help your students learn, internalize, master, and transfer effectively to other classes the basic concepts of academic grammar and mechanics? Do you discuss grammar rules and then ask students to practice them in exercises before applying them in their own writing? Do you start with the students' own writing and work mainly on getting them to clarify their thoughts, trusting that grammar issues will clear themselves up without formal instruction simply as a side effect of clearer thinking and wider reading? Do you note grammar errors on papers? How? Where? When? Why? Do you have any techniques that work well for you that you could share with the rest of us? Or do you have questions about the whole pesky "good grammar” issue that you keep wrestling with without finding a good answer?

What should we all be doing, I wonder, to ensure that we are graduating students who can write clear, standard, academic English?