Just to be clear, the items below are in addition to the weekly team writing — this week with a focus on identity — and the individual blog post that answers, “what does disruptive technology mean to you?”
This week, as we are out of town, we are asking you to do some independent work as a team. You can meet during class time or not, as you choose. There will be two reading assignments for this week, which focuses on identity. The first is Gee’s piece about discourse analysis. The second is a art/cultural philosophy reading created by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore. It is a summation of McLuhan’s core ideas in condensed and graphically novel form. It is particularly interesting in that it was written 40+ years ago and yet you will find much of what he says very contemporary.
In addition to the readings, we are also asking you to do a little exploration into emerging technologies. One of the better resources on the web for educators to tap into is Educause. Actually both of us will be at the annual Educause Learning Initiative meeting this week in Austin, TX. They produce an excellent series called, “7 Things You Should Know About …” It is essentially a series of short white papers that answer seven simple questions about a given technology. On lots of levels it the first place we stop when researching a new technology in a teaching or learning context. Find the seven things series by visiting the Educause site (http://www.educause.edu/7Things).
With that in mind, we’d like you to look at a few of the ones they have there that perk your interests either as an individual or in your team. Once you’ve organized your thoughts a bit about it we’d like you to create and share a short YouTube video that lets us know the following:
- What technologies did you review?
- Why?
- Are there novel ways you could see those technologies being put to use in education?
- Are there technologies you couldn’t find at the Educause site that you’d like to learn more about?
If you don’t have a YouTube account, just create one and record your video. If you don’t have a webcam, all the machines in our classroom have one … otherwise, most of the campus labs have webcams available. Once your video is recorded on YouTube, you’ll use the Embed Code to create a new entry at the course site with your video in it. To embed a video follow these directions:
- Log into http://blogs.psu.edu and create a New Entry at the course blog.
- Switch from “Rich Text” to “Convert Line Breaks” in the Format drop down menu
- Write and format the text for the body of your entry. (Note: The easiest approach is to describe the video first, then insert it.)
- Look for the Embed code on the YouTube page and cut and paste it into the text body of the new entry. (The embed code begins as “<object width =…")
- Save and publish the entry. The video stream will be displayed in your blog.
Your entry format field should look like this before adding your embed code:
NICOLE ROSE OLCESE says
Just for clarification :)… in addition to the youtube video, do you want us to complete the “identity” group response based on this weeks’ readings?
Cole W. Camplese says
Hi Nicole. Yes the Weekly writing with a focus on Identity is still expected. Sorry for the miscommunication.