Author Archives: Dr. Laura Guertin

About Dr. Laura Guertin

Professor of Earth Science, Penn State Brandywine

Blog is now continuing on the AGU Blogosphere

This will be the last post in the blog portion of Dr. G’s Teaching with Technology Portfolio.  Although the rest of this ePortfolio will continue to be updated, I have been asked to continue blogging about educational technology and geoscience education for the American Geophysical Union (AGU)’s Blogosphere.  My blog, which went live on May 9, 2014, is called GeoEd Trek – you can read my first post on that blog, and please join me on the AGU Blogosphere for more thoughts and discussions on TWT!

 

TEDx says get ready… but keep your device off

I’m off to TEDxPhiladelphia tomorrow.  I am ready to be inspired by speakers with solutions to great challenges and innovative ideas.  I have attended and blogged about previous TEDxPhilly and TEDxPhiladelphiaEd events, and I always take away great stories to share with students.  I have been receiving many emails leading up the event with suggestions that I dress casual, pack light, and then there’s this:

Unplug » Sounds crazy to us, too but the best way to absorb TEDx talks is uninterrupted. The speakers on stage merit your full attention, and laptops, iPads and cell phones are a big distraction – not just for you, but for everyone around you. If you’re a notetaker, bring a paper notepad instead. The use of digital devices in the theater will be restricted to mezzanine seating only. Photography and video in the main theater is not permitted.

This, to me, sends a confusing message – especially when the “T” in TED stands for technology!  The hashtag #TEDxPHL14 has been lighting up Twitter all week, but will apparently go virtually silent tomorrow.  I can’t recall the last conference I attended when the use of technology was discouraged.  And as an educator, I am hearing more and more about technology use in the classroom, with BYOD (that’s Bring Your Own Device) approaches, for example.  In the conference sessions I have attended so far this year, several instructors are suggesting that faculty no longer fight students using their handheld devices, but finding ways of getting students to use their devices during class for focused tasks.

This is going to be and interesting TEDx, and I have to say somewhat disappointing, as I do a much better job typing notes during any talk/session than taking notes by hand (since the surgery on my right wrist, I write slower now).  Hopefully, people at the watch parties outside of the Temple Performing Arts Center will get enough tweets posted so I can go back and fill in the gaps of what I am unable to capture, which will then allow me to share what I have learned with students.

2014 TLT Symposium at Penn State

Another year, another great Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium (known as the TLT Symposium) held at Penn State!  This is “the” event for faculty, graduate students, and instructional designers from across all campuses of the university to come together to share their best practices and innovative approaches to using technology in the classroom – whether that classroom be face-to-face, blended, or fully online.

I blogged about the TLT Symposium on my Journeys of Dr. G blog, and you can check out my summaries for Saturday AM and Saturday PM (posts will be updated as Symposium videos are placed online).  It was quite a day with keynote speakers Daniel Pink and Robbie Melton, and lots of interesting technological approaches and ideas.

In addition to the information in my blog posts, my main takeaways include:

(1) Think carefully about motivation – and how can I address motivation to learn with my students, especially the non-science majors I teach?

(2) Be thoughtful about how to approach and address creative problems – and how can I get my students to have a more expansive view, bringing in ideas and innovations from science and art and psychology, etc., etc., to think about how to tackle some of the greatest Earth/environmental challenges?  And what role will technology play in this process?

(3) I’m wasting my energy fighting mobile devices – students are bringing them to class and using them anyway.  Is there a way to have students use these devices to keep them on task for learning?  Can/should I adopt a BYOD policy and practice?

So much technology to think about, so quickly the technology changes, and so little time to think about thoughtful approaches to using technology to enhance student learning…. but clearly, the technology is here, so the time has come to move forward with big ideas (yet not lose focus of my overarching course goals and objectives).  Wish me luck!

 

 

 

From TED: 3 rules to spark learning

Ramsey Musallam’s TED talk is described as the following:

“It took a life-threatening condition to jolt chemistry teacher Ramsey Musallam out of ten years of “pseudo-teaching” to understand the true role of the educator: to cultivate curiosity. In a fun and personal talk, Musallam gives 3 rules to spark imagination and learning, and get students excited about how the world works.”

What the description does not share is that he suggests we might be able to do better “sparking” student curiosity without technology.  Watch his talk and see what you think…

http://www.ted.com/talks/ramsey_musallam_3_rules_to_spark_learning

Taking Google Earth beyond the “dirt”

In 2006, oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle had a conversation with the Google Earth and Maps director that set our Google views on an exciting path forward.  Dr. Earle stated (in her words from a blog post): “You should call Google Earth ‘Google Dirt’. What about the ¾ of the planet that is blue?”  Zip forward to February 2009, when Google launched Ocean in Google Earth which now allows us to explore underwater (National Geographic News article).

Zip forward again to 2014, where the scientific and educational information about our oceans continues to expand via Google platforms.  For those of that teach oceanography, we now have the opportunity to have students explore through portals such as:

Mission Blue Explore the Ocean Community Map (LINK)

Mission Blue is a global initiative of the Sylvia Earle Alliance, a 501c3 organization, which was formed in response to Sylvia Earle’s 2009 TED Prize wish. Dr. Earle urged people “to use all means at your disposal — films, expeditions, the web, new submarines — to create a campaign to ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas; Hope Spots large enough to save and restore the blue heart of the planet.” Currently, the Mission Blue community includes 85+ respected ocean conservation groups and like-minded organizations — from large multinational companies down to individual scientific teams doing important research. MIssion-Blue.org

GEBCO World Ocean Bathymetry (LINK)

Bathymetry of the world’s ocean floor in the form of a shaded relief colour map based upon the GEBCO_08 Grid, version 20100927, a global bathymetric grid with 30 arc-second spacing (http://www.gebco.net/). Undersea feature names are from the Gazetteer of GEBCO:s Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN).

And of course, there is Google Maps – Street View – Oceans (LINK), which gets the viewer on the ocean floor to see everything to coral reefs to a newly-added shipwreck in Bermuda.  I appreciate how all three of these can be viewed in a “maps” view with the option to download as a KML and open in Google Earth.

If you want to keep on top of the new additions to the oceans, you may want to follow the Google Ocean Program on Google+.  Now, it is time to grab the wetsuit and start exploring!

 

 

Different tech tools used to find missing Malaysia Airlines jet

It is when events such as the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 remind us of large our planet is and the challenges of exploration – or in this case, pinpointing the location for rescue/recovery of this plane and the 239 people on board (as I write this post, the flight has been missing for eight days).

There was one report that a crash site had been determined through two seismic recordings (see earthquake data on USGS Earthquake Hazards Program website).  However, the USGS quickly dismissed the seismic events as being a crash site, one reason being the number of earthquakes that occur in this region of the same magnitude on a daily basis (see CBS Denver story).

A company named DigitalGlobe is trying a unique approach.  They are crowdsourcing volunteers (thousands of them!) to go through satellite photos to see if they can locate the plane, plane debris in the ocean, etc. (see CNN article).  Crowdsourcing has gained popularity for programs ranging from collecting data to funding scientific research.  Now, we can only hope that the combination of satellite images, the internet, and thousands of pairs of eyes can help solve this mystery.

 

28 days of #sciwrite – end Week 3

Here is the latest report on my February #sciwrite challenge (see posts from Kickoff, End Week 1, and End Week 2).  As usual, my week did not go as planned – but in the big picture, it went pretty well!

On Tuesday, I visited a friend and colleague’s middle school classroom in Philly to do an exercise on iPads with tree growth data.  And then, of course, I had to write a blog post about it (My First Run with Nearpod)!  It was an incredibly eye-opening, rewarding, and exhausting day.  I had lost my voice by the end of the day, which has rarely happened the days I teach at my campus.  Wow, my respect for what middle school teachers face has increased 10-fold, and I hope I can help them delivering even more Earth science content.  Who knows – I might even see some of these students in my classroom in the future!

My plan was to spend the rest of the week finishing up a paper on the tree growth data, but then I got the news that makes every faculty member do a secret happy dance (or, not-so-secret!) – I have a paper accepted!  Of course, there are revisions to do, and my goal is that by the end of February, I have the revisions completed and the paper resubmitted.  It’s going to be a tough goal, as I leave in the morning for the ScienceOnline conference, so we’ll see how well I do.

So this week was a detour, but a happy detour!

 

 

My first run with Nearpod

Ms. King's classroom objectives for the day of my visit!

Ms. King’s classroom objectives for the day of my visit!

Today was a really special (and exhausting!) day for me.  I spent the day in the classroom of a good friend and colleague, Theresa Lewis-King.  Theresa teaches at AMY Northwest, a middle school in Philadelphia.  Last fall, Theresa wrote a mini-grant and obtained three iPad minis for her classroom.  She knows I use technology with my students, and she was looking for ideas of how to use the iPads in her classroom.  She already discovered Doceri and was using that with students, which they really enjoyed.  But now, she was looking for a way to have students to work with authentic scientific data on the iPad, yet also use the same functionality that Doceri offers with sharing student work from the iPad screen to the SmartBoard in the front of the room.

I’m not sure how I first heard about Nearpod, but I thought it was worth a try for what I had in mind.  I attended one of their online “WebiNear” sessions, and I learned how Nearpod can control what is displayed on all iPads in the classroom, allow for students to complete quizzes and polls, allow for students to draw items, and even allow me as the instructor to view a record of all the student responses and scores.  I was able to create a free account, her school had wireless internet access, what could go wrong?  (amazingly, besides me losing my voice by the last class period, nothing did!)

Theresa told me she had just finished her unit on the process of science, and she was about to start talking about weather and climate.  I decided to use the data my students have been collecting on campus for the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Tree Banding Project to create a lesson that reviewed the differences between the terms weather and climate, look at the gap width data for a few different tree species, interpret that data, and make predictions.  I was able to use the functions available in Nearpod to have students draw graphs and answer multiple-choice and short-answer questions.  For example, I presented students with an empty graph, where I had set up the axes.  I asked students to draw on the graph how they believed the gap width on a tree band would increase over time.  After they drew their predictions and I shared some sample responses with the students, I showed the students the actual data.  Then, we answered some questions based on reading data from the graph.  Then, the students were asked to make predictions for tree growth in the future.  (OK – this is a really rough summary of what we covered – but you get the idea)  Considering that today was my first day using Nearpod, I was pleased at how easy it was to use and how effective the interactive features made my time in the classroom.  And I did not even have to utilize the feature that lets me see if any students exit out of the Nearpod program and start “exploring” the iPad on their own – all of the students stayed on task with my lesson.  At the end of each class period, I emailed a PDF file with the student responses and submissions to Theresa so she could have a copy of the student work.

I feel I was able to accomplish Theresa’s objectives for the day.  I sure accomplished my goal of not only having students get hands-on with technology, but showing Theresa how iPad technology can be used for engagement and assessment, while also showing students that students can collect scientific data for real research projects – that students can also carry out the process of science!  Now I’ll need to think about how I might be able to use Nearpod with my own university classes in the fall semester…

I apologize for the lack of photos showing the iPads in use in the classroom - as the students are all minors and I don't have parental permission to use their photos, I'll just share this one which has the back of the heads of two students, but shows an image on the iPad.

I apologize for the lack of photos showing the iPads in use in the classroom – as the students are all minors and I don’t have parental permission to use their photos, I’ll just share this one which has the back of the heads of two students, but shows an image on the iPad.

 

28 days of #sciwrite – end Week 2

My second week of the February #sciwrite challenge has ended (see my kickoff post) and (end Week 1).  Have I made progress?  Well… I’m not feeling as good as I did with my progress in the first week.  I did continue to work on a paper that discusses the initial results of the global tree banding project my students have been doing on campus.  I have a few pages written and all of the data and graphs created, but I wish some of the sections were more polished and complete.

I did write up a classroom exercise with the tree banding data (not officially #sciwrite, I know).  I’m visiting a middle school in Philadelphia on Tuesday, where a teacher there asked me to help her use iPads with her students for them to learn about the process of science and to work with real scientific data.  So I created an exercise that will utilize the app/program Nearpod on the iPads to make my time with these students a mixture of lecture, engagement and assessment.  I’ll be meeting with four different classes, and if everything goes well, this may be something else myself and this teacher will write up.

Just adding to the never-ending wishlist for #sciwrite…

 

Brandywine professors incorporate cutting-edge technology into curriculum

My campus issued a press release on February 14th, sharing a few, short highlights of what myself and two other faculty use as technology tools with our students for instruction.  It is nice to be given a shout-out, but there are also so many other faculty on campus using so many other technological tools, I bet a book could be written about innovative uses and approaches to educational technology with Penn State Brandywine students.  For example, I know some faculty utilize TED talks, some faculty have students create videos, and some faculty utilize clickers in the classroom.  With the range of tech tools and tech strategies on campus, I know it would be an impressive collection of stories if everyone shared what they used.

Of course, it always goes back to the fundamental question… is this educational technology improving student learning?  Actually enhancing instruction?  Facilitating assessment?

I think, in the short-term, my faculty colleagues are more concerned with and focused on how technology can help keep them on track with all of these snow days and class cancellations that are occurring – the winter of 2014 is one we will be talking about for a long time!

 

28 days of #sciwrite – end Week 1

My first week of the February #sciwrite challenge has ended (see my kickoff post).  Have I made progress?  Well… yes, but… not necessarily in the way I had laid out my plan!

Back in January, I had submitted a manuscript for review to a journal.  At the beginning of this past week, I received a note from the editor of the journal with some suggested additions and points of clarification to my submitted paper.  He said I could make these initial edits before he forwards the paper on to two external reviewers.  Naturally, I took advantage of the opportunity to improve the paper before the review process continued.  I had never submitted to this journal before, so I greatly appreciated the comments and opportunity to strengthen my paper.

As this task took up the beginning of the week, I spent the end of the week creating an outline of the tree banding project I’ve been working on with students.  I’m ready now to spend this upcoming week flushing out the outline with actual, complete sentences.

Week #2 of #sciwrite – wish me luck!

 

GoldieBlox is back – thanks to online voting

Last year, I wrote a blog post about GoldieBlox and the use of a Beastie Boys song to promote their toys to help girls develop an early interest in engineering (see Is a parody copyright infringement or fair use?).  The chatter about GoldieBlox company diminished in the news – but then, it has come back in a big way – with its own Super Bowl commercial!

Thanks to Intuit and their Small Business – Big Game contest that would pay for and run a Super Bowl ad, GoldieBlox earned the opportunity to advertise their product to the more than 121 million viewers of the Super Bowl.  How did they win this opportunity?  All it took was an effective application by them, and online voting – yes, it goes back to a simple popular vote held online that gave GoldieBlox this victory – and, dare I suggest, a victory to all the young girls that want to explore their inner STEM passions.

Check out the Super Bowl ad for GoldieBlox below – with a great song by Quiet Riot and great lyrics to match the GoldieBlox mission.

 

28 days of #sciwrite kickoff

As usual, a tweet today caught my eye:

I have seen #madwriting sessions come across my Twitter feed before, usually for 30 minutes or one hour, but 28 days of writing – I was intrigued to learn more!

Geobloggers Chris Rowan (@Allochthonous) and Anne Jefferson (@highlyanne) set up the , challenge, described in their blog post 28 days of #sciwrite.  This is a creative way to use technology as a “support group,” if you will, and a tool for each of us to hold ourselves accountable for writing projects that we want/need to move forward.

So, what will my writing goals be for the next 28 days?

  1. I have a manuscript I would like to submit to the Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, describing the work of myself and my undergraduate researchers in connection with the Smithsonian Global Tree Banding Project.  We have about two years of data, and I have collected and read all of the material I need for the background section.  My goal is to work with the student authors to have a first draft completed by the end of the month.
  2. I have a second manuscript I would like to write on how I utilized the Google 80:20 model in my Environmental Resource Management course last year.  I want to have a first draft of this paper finished by the end of February as well.
  3. I also have another item I would like to write, but I need to revisit if this one will even happen.  I’ve had this idea of writing a Commentary for College Teaching, about how I feel that the flipped classroom is really no different than the Just-in-Time Teaching pedagogical approach.  But I recently saw a weekly Teaching Professor posting that also challenged the flipped classroom as just a renaming of existing teaching techniques.

I have some trips out of town this month, and a couple of days I’ll be spending in Philadelphia middle schools – not to use these as excuses, but important reminders to myself to budget my time wisely to make sure I’m productive.

I’ll post my updates here and on Chis/Anne’s blog – wish me luck, and I hope the “virtual world” keeps me motivated to succeed!

 

Pick A Student

Picture this… you are sitting in class, taking notes while the professor is lecturing, and then, she pauses and turns to the class to ask a question.  She is waiting for an answer.  What do you do?  You avoid eye contact so that she doesn’t call on you.  You bury your head in your laptop, or you start texting on your cell phone…

Sound familiar?

So, how is the faculty member supposed to decide who to call on, when everyone is avoiding the situation?  Watch out, students, as faculty now have help with the Pick A Student app!

I found this app listed in an article on Edutopia titled “Teach with Your iPhone: Apps to Use in the Classroom.”  Here is the suggestion for using Pick A Student.

It’s important that all students are held accountable during class discussions and everyone has a chance to speak his or her mind. Replace that old coffee-can-with-popsicle-sticks method and choose which student to call on using the Pick a Student app. Type in the names of the students in your class — use multiple class lists if you work with many groups of students — and the app does the rest. Press a button on the screen each time you want to randomly call on a student, and a name will pop up. I love placing my phone under the ELMO document camera in my classroom so everyone can see who I’ll be calling on next.

I am so tempted to try this…

2014 is NASA’s “The Year of Earth”

From the NASA Earth Right Now website:

With the launch of five Earth-observing missions in 2014 — more Earth-focused launches in a single year in more than a decade — NASA will be able to deliver even more crucial data to scientists trying to understand our changing planet. Since the agency’s inception in 1958, NASA has established itself as a world leader in Earth science and climate studies.

It is not only exciting that NASA is making some clear connections to their work and our own home planet, but the wealth of data that will be coming out of these missions will provide an outstanding opportunity for faculty and students to work with data and images for some authentic learning!  I have been studying the details of the first mission, the GPM (Global Precipitation Measurements), and their education and data access sections of the website are already primed and ready to go with sharing some of the exciting results.

Look for the hashtag #earthnow in your social media outlets this year… or, use hashtagr to do the work for you!

You can read more at:

Image from NASA, originally accessed from @NASA tweet, 1/22/14, 2:09 PM

Hashtagr – aggregating hashtags over multiple platforms

As usual, this technology tidbit that came to me via Twitter caught my eye:

I certainly don’t use all of the available social media channels available, but I knew I wanted to explore this more.  Because I am not on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest, I’ve often wondered what I’m missing on those platforms, especially during professional geology conferences where hashtags are becoming utilized more and more.

The website Hashtagr is a simple site with a simple description on the About page:

Hashtagr was created by three college students who saw the unifying social potential of Hashtags. Hashtags have become the world’s chatroom. Unfortunately, we noticed that although there are many platforms that utilize hashtags, there wasn’t one that aggregated them cross-platform. Thus, Hashtagr was born.

Why am I not surprised that three college students could make this happen???

At this time, their search engine only pulls from Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram Photos & Videos, and Vine Videos – Google+ and Facebook will be added soon.

So I gave it a whirl and discovered many images from #GSA125 and #AGU13 (… and found some images that were clearly NOT part of the meetings!).  I’m not sure if there would be a classroom/educational application of Hashtagr in my courses, but it still provides an interesting social media snapshot of events – all from a single hashtag.

 

Can/Should Tweets Become Advertisements?

So here’s a tweet that made me do a double-take…

Can you imagine, even for those of us that are not journalists, having your tweet appear in a full-page ad in The New York Times without your permission, and even after you have said “thanks, but no thanks”?  This article is definitely worth a read – and ends with an interesting discussion of Twitter’s terms of service and the suggestion that, perhaps, the NYT and other publications should have their own clear terms and rules – perhaps.

You can access the article at: http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/when-a-partial-tweet-becomes-an-ad-what-are-the-rules/

 

 

Flowchart: Can I use this photo/video/music in my project?

I saw this image in a tweet from @jasonrobertshaw, and thought it would be a great one to share with students as they complete their multimedia projects in my courses.  I like how the flowchart includes a checkpoint for faces and voices – something that especially needs to be paid attention to if minor children are captured and identifiable.  Also, the image is a great reminder to all of us to think about how we use multimedia material, especially if it is not created by us originally.

Image seen in tweet from @jasonrobertshaw, dated October 24, 2013

A wise edtech observation to kick off 2014…

I recently learned about the LOL my thesis website (see my blog post describing the site), and have been eagerly awaiting my one-sentence submission to appear.  As I scrolled through the other entries – some entertaining, some intriguing, I came across this submission from 12/31/13:

Screen Shot 2014-01-01 at 8.34.03 PM

I had to pause when I read this posting.  This has been one of my largest concerns with educational technology and classroom teaching.  Whether it is a college faculty member that just wants to try the new tech toy with students, or the K-12 teacher that was provided technology to use in their classroom but with no professional development on how to use it – there is always a learning curve involved.  Technology evolves and becomes available so quickly, but have we really thought through how to change/improve our teaching with technology?  Are we too quick to “jump” and use edtech just because it is there?  And, is it ever possible to know how something will work (meaning, positively impact student learning) before even trying it in the classroom?  Can improved access to technology result in different teaching practices and an increase in student learning and engagement?

Another LOL my thesis post echos the concerns that clearly not only I have, but students as well:

Screen Shot 2014-01-03 at 1.58.49 PMSee the Masters thesis from the student that posted this one-sentence summary.

It is going to take more than 2014 to answer these questions…

 

 

“Science” is the word of the year (2013)

NOTE: Link in the above tweet is no longer valid. This link will take you to the article in SF Gate.

The dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster determined that “science” is the word of the year for 2013, beating out other contenders such as “communication,” “ethic,” and “integrity” (see article on the Merriam-Webster website).  How did science rise to the top?  Merriam-Webster made this determination by “analyzing the top lookups in the online dictionary at Merriam-Webster.com and focusing on the words that showed the greatest increase in lookups this year as compared to last year.” Interestingly, if you look at their top 10 list, the words are not new words but ones that came up quite frequently in the news this past year, what they are calling “the words behind the headlines.”

But not all dictionary publishers agree with the Merriam-Webster selection.  For Oxford Dictionaries, “selfie” was their word for 2013.  And Dictionary.com chose “privacy” as their word of the year.

So make note… all those words you look up in online dictionaries become contenders for word of the year!  It is nice to know that more and more people are looking up the word “science” – now if we can only get the Google autocomplete to come up with better suggestions for “science is…” (in addition, see my post on “Scientists are…”).

Screen Shot 2013-12-30 at 8.41.10 AM

iPads for addressing astronomy misconceptions in scale

Many individuals and even entire schools and school districts are quick to jump on technology bandwagons when a new piece of technology is released.  The excitement and the hype of bringing new technology in to the classroom at time will override the more important questions – will this technology improve student learning?  Or could the technology actually hurt student learning?

Apple products are commonly found in schools, especially the K-12 classroom.  iPads are especially popular with teachers and students, and many articles and/or contributions are quick to state that students like the technology; therefore, the technology is good and effective (in their view).

It is refreshing to see the results of pedagogical research get published, where actual learning is measured.  Take this recent study produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, published in the January 2014 issue of Computers & Education.  The article, titled “Conceptualizing astronomical scale: Virtual simulations on handheld tablet computers reverse misconceptions,” is pretty self-explanatory.  One of the article highlights is the “pinch-to-zoom” feature on the iPad, used by high school students even in an unstructured setting, is showing to be effective in helping students understand challenging concepts such as astronomical scale.

I wonder if this could also help out geology classrooms.  Even in higher education, we struggle to teach students about time and space – scales that students are challenged to comprehend and apply to concepts and processes.

To learn more about this study, please visit the following sites:

Lol My Thesis

After seeing “lolmythesis.com” come through my Twitter feed twice in one day, I knew this was a site I had to check out.  The website is very simple, “summing up years of work in one sentence.”  The About page states that the site was started by an undergraduate student looking for a way to distract herself from her own thesis.  The site contains a collection of one-sentence summaries from undergraduate and graduate-level theses – and some are pretty good!  Take, for example, this contribution (below) and other posts that list the discipline as geology:

Screen Shot 2013-12-28 at 8.34.07 PMAnd there are plenty of other submissions posted on the Lol My Thesis website.  Clearly, the site is popular with all that are completing or have completed a thesis – since the site started in early December (the first tweet is dated December 10), there are 662 tweets of one-sentence thesis summaries and over 450 followers on the @lolmythesis Twitter account (as of 12/28/13).

The site reminds me of the Up-Goer Five text editor on which I did a past blog post.  Using non-jargon terms to communicate the purpose of research is another fun way to “boil down” the essence of your work and to keep it simple.  But although students and professionals have fun with these sites, there is still nothing like a well-written title and abstract to communicate one’s work (in my opinion!).

And yet, I can’t help myself…. I will now go to Lol My Thesis and submit a one-sentence summary of my dissertation!

 

Scientists are…

On December 4, Phil Plait, the author of Slate Magazine’s Bad Astronomy blog, published a post that really sent some seismic waves through the science world.  Someone alerted him that if you type “scientists are” in a Google search box, Google with automatically suggest the following words to complete the phrase: liars, liberals, stupid.  I was (am still) shocked by this, so of course, I had to try it out for myself.  Here it is, 13 days after the original Bad Astronomy post, and we’re not looking any better:

Screen Shot 2013-12-17 at 11.36.17 AMWhy is this happening?  It comes from a Google feature called autocomplete.  Based on the search activity of Google search engine users and the content of web pages indexed by Google, the user is provided “helpful” suggestions for making searching faster and easier.  Google also says this feature can “rest your fingers” by requiring less typing and may catch spelling mistakes in the search box.

What does this mean?  It certainly doesn’t shine a positive light on what people are searching for online relating to scientists, and it certainly seems to indicate that there are several webpages that have negative content towards people that do science.  Scientists are well aware of the websites that use words to attack science and scientists – but is it really that many that these terms rise to the top of the list?

What impacts might this have on students, K-12 and university-level, that are researching possible career fields and/or writing papers on scientists?  Will these autocomplete suggestions have students second-guessing a career in STEM?  We can only hope not.  Phil Plait has some great suggestions at the end of his post as to what we can do to create better search results, and a stronger/more positive identity for scientists.  I agree with all of his suggestions, and feel that even non-scientists that have a passion and appreciation for science can help the cause!

And, while you are at it, can you all help get better search results for “geologists are…”?  Much appreciated!

Screen Shot 2013-12-17 at 12.05.25 PM

 

Before you Instagram your next museum visit…

When I had a film camera (“back in the day”), I was selective about what I took photos of during my travels, and how many photos I took.  The costs of purchasing film and photo processing held me back from snapping photos of anything and everything.  Enter in to my life… the digital camera!  I love my digital camera, and I take photos of as much as I can when I travel, especially to museums.  All I need is an SD card and backup battery, and I’m ready to go!

For example, in a couple of days I am heading to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City.  I’m going to see the exhibition Whales: Giants of the Deep, which is closing in a few weeks.

Why will I take over 100 photos of just this exhibit?  As the exhibit is closing, I will not have a chance to see the displays again (and I take pictures of the displays and the signage, so I remember the supporting content with what I view).  I also teach an introductory-level oceanography course, and I’m sure I will be able to use some of this content and the images in the course.  Since I “may” see something in this exhibit that I “might” share with my students, it is worth it to me to grab as many photos as I can.

But this article posted on Smithsonian.com, which addresses a LiveScience article, says I might be hurting my own learning by taking so many pictures!  Although I won’t be taking the same survey that the students did in the LiveScience article, I will be thinking twice about how I spend my time in the Whales exhibit – if I am zipping right through or using photos to supplement my museum experience.  I encourage you to read the article yourself and think about your own photo practices.

But, I will say that at the museum, I’m going to head over to the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life and take a photo and say hello to @NatHistoryWhale!

Using ScholarSphere to archive conference presentations

I recently gave a poster presentation at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco on  December 12.  One of the challenges of giving a poster presentation is making sure that those that came by my poster have the opportunity to go back and review the information I presented when he/she is ready to “process” that information.  For example, the AGU conference had close to 3,000 poster presentations each day of the 5-day meeting, and then many, many oral presentations.  As attendees at AGU, we try to gather as much information as possible, but many times, we cannot even begin to process what we learned until days/weeks after the conference (especially when the conference takes place during the last week of classes or final exam week!).

I’m excited about a new service Penn State is offering to faculty/staff/students that allows us to archive our abstracts, posters, and any other professional materials – a service that will even allow non-Penn State people to access my presentation materials.  Allow me to introduce you to ScholarSphere!

What is ScholarSphere?

ScholarSphere is a secure repository service enabling the Penn State community to share its research and scholarly work with a worldwide audience. Faculty, staff, and students can use ScholarSphere to collect their work in one location and create a durable and citeable record of their papers, presentations, publications, data sets, or other scholarly creations. Through this service, Penn State researchers can also comply with grant-funding-agency requirements for sharing and managing research data.

In ScholarSphere, I was able to upload my abstract and a PDF file of my poster.  I set the access to this record as “open access,” so that anyone with the URL to my record and/or if they search for my name in the repository, they can find my conference materials.  I’m looking forward to uploading past and future materials to the site – it will be nice to have one place that will serve as a snapshot and archive of my professional dissemination activities.

And here is the link to my 2013 AGU abstract and poster! https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/files/7d279302z

I’m also looking forward to using ScholarSphere to archive not only my research results, but the outcomes of undergraduate student research.  If you want to see a great example of how this repository is being used, see how a Penn State entomologist is using ScholarSphere to document a rare insect collection.

 

 

More than your (past) employer may see what you post on Twitter

As a personal rule, I do not follow any of my students on Twitter (even if current students follow me), unless they are doing undergraduate research projects with me (I find Twitter a great way to connect with them, especially when we are at conferences, and we can communicate much quicker about research status and results rather than via email).  And I always encourage all students to be responsible with Twitter, that they should never tweet something negative about a current employer or fellow employees.  Unfortunately, students/alumni do not always follow this advice – and neither did this (former) chef at a restaurant in the UK.

I follow science writer @edyong209, who retweeted the tweet I posted above, which has then been retweeted over 850 times.  Below are screenshots with the profile for @ploughpub and the tweets posted by the departing chef (read from the bottom up).  Some of you may laugh when you read this, and some of you may be disappointed.  But my take-home message is… you never know who may see what you tweet (and how far that tweet may travel across the Twitterverse!).

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NASA Social at AGU 2013

At the American Geophysical Union meeting this past week in San Francisco, I was thrilled to be one of 20 people selected to attend a NASA Social.  Formerly called NASA TweetUps, their Socials gather together fans of NASA (no prior science experience necessary) that follow NASA on their social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google+) to engage with NASA to witness the liftoff of a current mission, or in this case, to hear about the latest science discoveries at the AGU conference.

You can read about my NASA Social experience on my Journeys of Dr. G blog, and about other NASA Socials on the NASA website.

How did I know I wanted to participate in this event?  My motivation was part fan-of-all-things-planetary, and part remembering  Alexia Hudson’s experience from her White House Tweet-Up in 2011.

I think there can be an incredible benefit to attending and/or hosting a “Social” event.  Not only does the event encourage a community of people to come together around a common theme to be “social” in person and then via online postings, but there in an incredible academic benefit to the new content that can be learned – in this case, for me, it was learning about past, present, and future NASA missions, and how NASA science relates to Earth processes and human life on our own planet.

I hope I have the opportunity to participate in another Social in the future.  I know there are many students on my campus that have Twitter accounts, and I wonder how they would receive a thematic social event at Penn State Brandywine…

 

Google Street View of Antarctica

I have been at the American Geophysical Union conference this past week in San Francisco, attending amazing technical sessions and being overwhelmed with all the latest and greatest discoveries in Earth and space science.  I tried to keep up with the announcements coming through on my Twitter feed, and one tweet that was not conference-related caught my eye that I just had to “Favorite” and go back and check out:

If you are not up to speed with Google Street View, I encourage you to check out their About Street View page.  There have been so many great additions to Street View, especially the Street View Treks that are bringing us to areas where cars cannot go.

Google Street View has special collections, such as virtual tours of National Parks (see Abbey Dufoe‘s post about this), the oceans, and now, Antarctica!  I wonder how many virtual fieldtrips I can pack in to a semester with my students….

The Antarctica Street View will make a nice addition to existing Shackleton resources online, such as:

 

 

Prezi session at the PSTA Conference

Today, I am at the Pennsylvania Science Teachers Association (PSTA) annual conference, being held in State College, PA.  This conference pulls in a great many science teachers and future teachers from across Pennsylvania (somewhere between 500-1,000 people in attendance) to share teaching strategies and resources in K-12 education.  Presentations focus on chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, Earth science, pedagogical practices, and of course – educational technology!

The first session I attended this morning was given by a high school teacher.

Using Prezi to Meet the Ecology Standards

Learn ways to use Prezi to illustrate key ecology concepts. Participants receive access to a complete ecology unit including a pre-made Prezi, guided note sheets, quizzes, unit test, and a student Prezi project description and rubric.

If you are not familiar with Prezi, I feel their website describes it accurately as online “zooming presentation software” that goes beyond what a MS PowerPoint presentation can do in terms of the delivery of images and text.  This video gives a little more background on the product:

For full disclosure, I am not a fan of Prezi.  Seeing all of the fancy zooming and spinning around as one transitions from topic to topic I find really annoying and unnecessary.  I have never enjoyed presentations that have used Prezi, and I have never used the program myself.  This conference session was not my first choice of the morning, but as the speakers for the session I wanted to attend cancelled, I thought I would attend the Prezi session to see if I could be convinced that there is value to using this tool in the classroom.

Points during the presentation that opened my mind to where Prezi could be useful:

  • The presenter did a very good job by starting with “why” she uses Prezi with her students.  She said that not all of her students have access to MS PowerPoint at home (which is an issue also with my students), and since Prezi is a fully online program, students can set up a free account to create something even more innovative than a PowerPoint file.
  • During a demonstration of one of her existing Prezi files, she showed us how a “slide” can zoom in on just the terms or the image you want students to look at, to keep them from copying down everything on the screen in front of them and not listening to what you are lecturing about.
  • She also showed us how one cam embed photos and YouTube videos in Prezi, and since most K-12 schools block YouTube videos from playing the classroom, this is one way to work around showing YouTube videos.
  • Students can collaborate synchronously and asynchronously on one Prezi

The point that caused me some concern about using Prezi with students:

  • Inserting images – although Prezi seems to search online for Creative Commons images, this is not explained to students and no citations are required or necessary.  In essence, students are still randomly pulling images off the internet and inserting these images in their presentations – a Prezi presentation that is freely available online for the public to view (if that setting is selected).

To be fair, there is one use of Prezi that I can see some real value for in teaching – teaching students a sequence and/or about scale.  With PowerPoint, if I were to teach about a chain of events, I would have to jump back-and-forth between many different slides and probably duplicate many to show students where each event falls in a timeline.  With Prezi, I could easily have one zoomed out image showing the entire chain of events and quickly zoom in and out between events so students can see where everything falls along that timeline.  The presenter showed an example with the food web in an ecosystem, and was able to move through the different levels along different pathways of the food web for the same ecosystem.  I think being able to zoom in and move through a timeline or along an image of an outcrop would be helpful for students  in understanding spatial and/or temporal features.

So, am I now a fan of Prezi?  Not quite yet.  But I am now going to look in to see how people are using Prezi to teach geology and geologic time.  A quick search of the database came up with over 1,000 Prezis when I typed in “geology,” so it may take some time for me to find a quality Prezi for me to be convinced of its pedagogical value (or, I’ll just have to create my own!).

 

Does social media make your experiences less special?

The title of this post came from a tweet I saw by @SmithsonianMag, which linked to a great post on their blog that answered their own question with “Your Life Experiences Aren’t So Special—Here’s Proof

Thomas Jullian made a 1 min 46 sec video from 852 Instagram images from 852 different people.  If you think you have captured “the” most unique photo of an iconic tourist location – think again.  The video can be viewed in the blog post and below:

This video had me thinking… this might be a clever idea for a student assignment, having students gather photos of different locations of environmental significance to look at change through time.  I’m not on Instagram myself, but I’m sure students could come up with some creative uses of monitoring environmental conditions and human impacts through the examination of photos.

 

Is a parody copyright infringement or fair use?

Trending these days is the GoldieBlox video, a clever video with three young girls that set up their own Rube Goldberg machine, showing that girls are just as smart and clever with innovative design and curiosity.  And the background music is just a clever, a re-do of the Beastie Boys song “Girls,” recorded with younger voices and new girl-friendly lyrics.

GoldieBox video (unfortunately, the original video has been taken down – see the end of this post).  Here is the link to the video with the new audio track.

The initial reaction to the video was very positive – how could anyone not like a product that encourages young girls to explore their inner STEM identity?  But this is where the catch comes in – GoldieBlox is a commercial product using a commercial song to promote itself.  So is it really fair use – especially when GoldieBlox did not receive permission to use the song in the first place?  Granted, the lyrics are certainly different, but the melody is certainly the same and easily recognizable.  Early articles reported that the Beastie Boys were suing GoldieBlox, but it turns out that GoldieBlox was the first to file suit.  A statement from the two surviving Beastie Boys was released (taken from ABC News):

“Like many of the millions of people who have seen your toy commercial ‘GoldieBlox, Rube Goldberg & the Beastie Boys,’ we were very impressed by the creativity and the message behind your ad,” they wrote. “We strongly support empowering young girls, breaking down gender stereotypes and igniting a passion for technology and engineering. As creative as it is, make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product, and long ago, we made a conscious decision not to permit our music and/or name to be used in product ads. When we tried to simply ask how and why our song ‘Girls’ had been used in your ad without our permission, YOU sued US.”

I think this issue of fair use for a parody vs. copyright infringement incredibly complicated for students to understand – especially when there are several examples of videos out there that are parodies, such as Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise transformed to Weird Al Yankovic’s Amish Paradise.  But in this particular case with GoldieBlox, it is complicated by using a parody to sell a product.  Who is in the wrong here?  Should the Beastie Boys applaud the positive spin on their lyrics that encourages girls to become engineers and let the issue go, or should they take a stand and defend their creative product (the original song)?  Or is there an issue in the first place, as this article discusses that the parody is trying to get a bigger message out beyond the product?

It will be interesting to see how this turns out in the end… you can track lots of feedback and opinions on Twitter via the hashtag #GoldieBlox – clearly, the opinions are divided on “Girls.”

11/27 update (from CNN.com) – GoldieBlox toy company backs down from Beastie Boys fight.

Below is the founder of GoldieBlox, Debbie Sterling, who spoke at TEDxPSU in 2013.

 

Skype in the Classroom – Exploring Oceans

Inspired by Fabien Cousteau’s record-breaking Mission 31 expedition, starting November 1st, Skype in the Classroom will set sail on a month-long exploration of the oceans with Skype lessons from marine scientists and oceanographers from all over the world. Learn more at:  https://education.skype.com/exploringoceans

Teachers (it looks like it is designed for K-12 audiences) can take students on the “ultimate field trip” and learn about everything from deep sea creatures that glow in the dark, to the advanced technology used to investigate the Titanic shipwreck. Students can about being an underwater filmmaker, sailing the seas on a boat made from recycled plastic bottles, or why hammerhead sharks look so weird.  The themes being explored for the month of November include habitats & ecosystems, conservation & sustainability, impact of human activities, exploration and adventure, pushing scientific frontiers, and the future of the oceans.

Teachers can sign up for the latest lessons, or create their own lessons about the ocean and meet other classes around the world as their students learn.  Many of the existing lessons seem to ask teachers to have their students view videos and websites before the Skype session, and some of the sessions are even being led from underwater in the Aquarius habitat.

This is certainly a huge undertaking for Skype in the Classroom.  Having a marine geology background, I am pleased to see an entire month dedicated to ocean-themed programming.  However, I wonder how the impact of such an event can be assessed.  What determines if this effort is successful?  The number of classrooms that log in?  The number of sessions offered?  Ideally, I would think the best measure of success would be students taking action and being advocates for the ocean – and maybe, just maybe, become marine geologists themselves!

 

Government shutdown shuts down access to geoscience resources for the classroom

I’m not in the classroom this year – I’m on sabbatical, taking a break from teaching and campus service to focus on research full-time.  Although I have already had my moments of frustration at the lack of access to government websites during this current government shutdown, I can’t imagine what my colleagues are going through that are in the classroom and trying to access everything from datasets to images.

If you tried visiting USGS, NOAA, or NPS right now, you will be greeted by these front pages:

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They say, “you don’t know what you’ve got, until it’s gone,” and that is certainly the case here.  From looking at streamflow discharge data to satellite images, classroom instructors now are left to modify/extend/or completely delete assignments for students.  Many instructors, as well as K-12 teachers, work to use real-time datasets to create authentic learning for students, so that “cookbook” exercises with fabricated data are no longer used.  Sites like the USGS allow instructors to select regional data from streams close to campus, or we can break students up in to teams to cover wide geographic areas.

At least once a week, I like to use an Image of the Day to start my classes, getting students engaged in an exercise where they need to think about observations vs. interpretations of what they see, what information is missing or additional information they would like to know, etc.  Unfortunately, NASA Earth Observatory and other great image databases are now inaccessible.

And then there are the fieldtrips to public lands… national parks are a favorite with geologists!  Just last year at this time, I was heading down to Puerto Rico with a group of students from campus for a trip that included a full day in El Yunque National Rainforest – I have no idea what substitution I could have provided for my students that would have been an equal to what they would have seen and learned in El Yunque.  And I couldn’t have had them just visit the website, since the websites are down.

If anyone doubts the impact of the government shutdown on geologists in the classroom, just check out Twitter – there are plenty of tweets like these:

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Technology opens so many doors for geology instruction, yet at the same time, it can close those doors just as easily and quickly.  Teaching with technology is fragile – something we are all being reminded of right now.

 

 

Google Street View Trekker in Hawaii

I am extremely excited about this news.  Hawaii is a significant geologic location, and one that I know I’ll never get my students to.  Fortunately, Google is taking my students for me!  Who knew that by strapping a camera-equipped backpack on to one person that roams around lava fields could create such a rich resource for classrooms.

Mother Nature News shares more as Google Street View hits Hawaii hiking trails.

Did you ever want to be one of those people that wears the backpack for Google?  Now is your chance!  Google is accepting applications for trekkers.  Read this post on the Google Lat Long Blog to learn more about how they expanded their trekker network for the Hawaiian mapping (after viewing the video below, who wouldn’t want to do this job???).

Google Maps Engine Lite and its MOOC

There has been a significant update to Google Maps, a new platform that allows for even more flexibility to create customized maps.  Called Google Maps Engine Lite, this free tool allows for data to be imported from a spreadsheet, multiple layers for display, and more.  See this article from the Google Lat Long blog to learn some more and to see some examples.

How did I learn about Google Maps Engine Lite? I enrolled in the online course Google offered, titled Mapping with Google.  The course was structured like a MOOC (although they never called it that), where everyone logged in on their own time and completed a series of activities at their own pace.  The course had projects to complete involving Google Maps Engine Lite and Google Earth.  I did not learn anything new from the Google Earth portion of the course, but it was helpful to have at least a structured introduction and orientation to the new Maps Engine.  Yet again, Google provides a new tool for me to share with students and to get them engaged with various projects.

Check out my certificate of completion!

MOOCmappingcert1.png

Google’s Pictures of Earth Through Time

An announcement from Google on May 9.

Today, we’re making it possible for you to go back in time and get a stunning historical perspective on the changes to the Earth’s surface over time. Working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, we’re releasing more than a quarter-century of images of Earth taken from space, compiled for the first time into an interactive time-lapse experience. We believe this is the most comprehensive picture of our changing planet ever made available to the public.  [article link]

Check out some of their animated GIFs of Earth over time and explore different views into this global timelapse built from global, annual composites of Landsat satellite images beginning as early as 1984.  I can see this tool being used effectively in courses even beyond geology and/or geography.

Google Maps Geologic Wonders

One of the biggest challenges any geology faculty member faces is trying to get students in the field.  Getting out of the classroom and face-to-face with a rock outcrop or coastal zone is the best way to get students immersed in the physical environment for teaching/learning and overall excitement for the discipline.  There are some places on the planet that faculty are extremely challenged to take students to.  Luckily, Google is making it easier for us to get students there (at least virtually).

With Google Maps, I can now explore with my students to the Grand Canyon, the Canadian Arctic, and the Galapagos Islands.  Not bad!  Now if I could only get them to map some of my favorite national parks, like the Everglades and Arches….

 

Students that post my notes online – beware…

Yes, even in my geoscience courses, I spend time talking about copyright, intellectual property, and why we use images with a creative commons license for our class multimedia projects.  A couple of years ago, I found one of my syllabi on a website where students can upload their course notes and files – and get paid for their upload.  I was furious that a student “sold” my syllabus and made money off of it!  For that reason, I now include a copyright statement in my syllabus, and I now tell students that they better not dare (OK, maybe not in these words) sell my syllabus or post it online at any of these websites that post college course materials:

Copyright ©2012 Dr. Laura A. Guertin.  All rights reserved.  This material may not be reproduced, displayed, modified or distributed, in whole or in part, without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder. For permission, contact guertin@psu.edu

What this means… My lectures and course materials, including presentations, tests, assignments, outlines, and similar materials, are protected by copyright. You may take notes and make copies of course materials for your own use. You may not and may not allow others to reproduce or distribute lecture notes and course materials (including this syllabus) publicly whether or not a fee is charged without my express written consent. Similarly, you own copyright in any papers you write or projects you complete for this course. You will be notified ahead of time if you will be required to share the results of your work with a public audience (such as dissemination through a public VoiceThread, online posting of your podcast, etc.).

So zoom forward to this past weekend.  I was searching online for a good website on Earth system science that I could include in some materials for a group of middle school teachers I work with.  I did a search for “Earth system science,” and a YouTube video popped up on the Google search page.  It was a thumbnail of a video, where the template was the same template I use when I give my overview of Earth system science lecture to my students.  At first, I thought, “hey, that’s cool – someone uses the same template I do!”  But when I clicked on the video, I discovered that the “video” was a slideshow of the PowerPoint that I show in class!  (and no, I did not upload to YouTube)

Now I do not distribute notes or PowerPoint presentations to students (I don’t use many PowerPoints to begin with).  The only time I’ve circulated my notes are to students that have missed class because of a medical illness or emergency – this makes me even more frustrated that someone back in 2009 took advantage of my kindness and posted my notes online at SlideServe, which then got turned into a YouTube video on SlideShare’s YouTube channel (I did some investigating!).

My frustration caused me to jump into immediate action.  I emailed SlideShare to “respectfully request” that they remove MY PowerPoint that I created and did not give permission to appear on their site.  I also filled out the form online at YouTube to request the video be taken down of my PowerPoint.  I was extremely pleased that in 24 hours, SlideShare emailed me to say my PowerPoint had been removed, and I heard from YouTube in two days that my video was no longer in their website.  Victory!

Did I overreact?  Sure, my PowerPoint had over 11,000 hits on SlideShare – maybe someone learned something from it.  But it was the principle that someone used my material, without my permission, in a way that I had not intended.

But now I have learned I have to let it go.  I did a quick internet search for “Guertin syllabus,” and it is crazy how many websites have copies of my syllabi in their databases – CourseHero, StudyBlue, etc.  I guess victory is not mine after all…

The Up-Goer Five text editor – explaining my geoscience research

Although it’s a crazy-busy day today, I couldn’t resist taking this challenge that came across my Twitter feed!  For the full explanation, please visit the Highly Allochthonous blog posting on Explaining geoscience using only the 10 hundred most common words.  I saw how my fellow geoscientists carefully crafted some of their descriptions of their research, challenged by not being able to use discipline terms such as “paleomagnetism” to basic terms such as “snow” (see Sarah Boon‘s entry).

I went into this challenge thinking this would be easy for me – after all, my research is in geoscience education.  I figured that “pedagogy” would not on the list, but how hard could this exercise be?  So off to the website I went for The Up-Goer Five text editor, and I started typing!

Well, I got squashed right away!  Not only was “geology” and “research” not on the list, but “Earth” nor “science” was even present!  This ended up being much, much harder than I anticipated.  I don’t know if the following description makes my work easier for anyone to understand, but it was a very interesting challenge!

Here is what I do (really brief, and I apologize for that, but more meetings await me today) – with the thousand most common words. (also linked here)

My work looks at the way students learn about water, life, rocks, and air. I am a teacher at a college, and I study how my students learn with computers, small ones that fit in their hand and and big ones. I study how students can make voice and movie pieces. I also have my students take their work and share it with others outside the college. I enjoy learning about how students learn!

It is interesting how this “fun” technology tool is actually making it difficult for me to explain my research on/with technology!

 

Hanging out with Google and National Geographic

Today is National Geographic’s 125th birthday – happy birthday, NatGeo!  I saw via Twitter that National Geographic was going to mark the occasion with a Google Hangout on Air, but not just any hangout!  National Geographic was pulling in explorers from across all seven continents to share their experiences, most exciting (and scariest) moments, predictions for future discoveries, etc.  After seeing the description on the National Geographic website, I had to join in – at what other time would I be able to see Jane Goodall, Bob Ballard, and other heroes of mine?  OK, it wasn’t exactly the same as seeing each individually “live,” but seeing this conversation was quite an event, and it is all archived in YouTube.  There was even a Google Map with more information about each explorer.

I saw many postings on the Google+ page for National Geographic from people having trouble accessing the hangout – I believe it was people that had gone to the page early and didn’t refresh the page once the stream started.  I know I was a few minutes late to the hangout, and I think this is still an issue for Google+ users.  But it will be interesting to see the continual expansion and use of Hangouts on Air in the future.  I think this is an excellent tool for educators, especially K-12 teachers, to use in their classroom to connect their students with people and communities that would otherwise not be possible.

I can’t wait to see the reaction of my students when I tell them in class that I “hung out” with Jane Goodall this past weekend!

 

Yammer Time! Or is it?

Wouldn’t you know that as soon as my wrist heals, I sustain a double knee injury.  I’ve been in physical therapy every semester since Fall 2010, but now that I’m just about healed from everything, I can find some time to start blogging again!  I’ll have more to post in the future about some projects from previous semesters (such as using iPads in Puerto Rico), but I’ll start now with the same topic all my colleagues are stressing about – the start of the Spring 2013 semester!

Last semester, I attended an on campus and online session to learn more about Yammer.  Not familiar with Yammer?  Think of it as a Facebook site for a private group of people.  It is used in the corporate world a fair amount, it seems, and Penn State has set up its own Penn State Yammer network.  I learned I could set up a private group for my class even in the Penn State-only network, where students could post, comments, upload files and images, etc.

The pluses = students are familiar with the Facebook format, so creating/replying to posts would not have much of a learning curve (if any), students would not have to worry about “the world” seeing what they put online, and if I created the correct prompts, I could have some great asynchronous conversations going on.

The minuses = this tool does not get me closer to my course goals and objectives.

Yes, it always comes back to that question, “what do I want my students to come out of my courses with?”  I’m teaching a new course this semester, Environmental Factors and Their Effect on Your Food Supply.  When I started thinking about what to cover in this course and how to do it, I went back to the online tutorial for Designing Effective and Innovative Courses by SERC/On The Cutting Edge.  And although I think Yammer would be “fun” and “cool” to try out with students, I have to give it a pass – at least this time around.  I’m going to be focusing on geographic literacy and Google Maps right away, which I know will take some time and where I want students to keep their focus as well.

My classes start Monday, January 7 – wish me luck!

 

 

TED-Ed

Finally, I think my wrist is strong enough where I can get back to posting interesting tech stories from around the world and my classroom!  When I saw the announcement about TED-Ed, I knew this is one of the first postings I wanted to make.  I really enjoy TED videos.  The collection includes videos on topics I would never think of, like Jae Rhim Lee’s mushroom burial suit, or learn from Terry Moore the correct way to tie my shoes.

I like the idea of shorter videos, I like the idea of having videos that explain concepts that can be tricky to understand.  And I appreciate that TED realizes that the videos will never replace the instructor in the classroom but instead serve as a great supplement.

What I see missing is the “other stuff” that goes along with teaching.  Videos are nice, and videos can grab the attention of students.  But what about reviewing that content?  What about the critical thinking questions that should follow after the video, to encourage discussion along the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomic Scale?

Why not have videos that take controversial subjects head-on, like evolution, hydrofracking, nuclear power, climate change… if resources are going to be invested with snazzy graphics, then why not make TED-Ed videos on the most rigorous and challenging topics for teacher to teach that can then develop student conversation and engaging discussion?  If anyone can say, “bring it on!”, it is TED.

I guess I have to wait for more videos to appear.  Right now, I’m not seeing much I would use for introductory geoscience courses.  Yes, images of the ocean are nice, but I would love to see TED create videos that are conversation starters and a challenge for students to get their heads around, just like some of the 18-minute TED talks.

Article – Behind Today’s TED-Ed Launch (LINK)

Video – Introducing TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing

Wired Campus

I receive the daily emails from Wired Campus, a blog part of The Chronicle of Higher Education.  Their articles are great stories and reflections on “the latest news on tech and education.”

Here are some of my favorites from recent postings:

  • Debating the ‘flipped classroom’ at Stanford  (LINK)
  • Facebook deletes university’s history project for violating social network’s rules  (LINK)
  • You can summarize your thesis in a tweet, but should you?  (LINK)

TEDxPhilly

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On November 8, 2011, I attended my second TEDx event.  TEDxPhilly was themed around The City, bringing speakers and audience members together “to examine some of the greatest challenges, innovations and realities that shape and are shaped by cities and their inhabitants.”  The day was broken down into four sessions: Engage, Transform, Converge, and Reveal

It’s not possible to write one blog post to encompass the total impact of the event.  Sure, I could talk about awesome organizations such as Philly Youth Poetry Movement, Play On, Philly!, and Elect Next.  I could discuss inspirational artists, such as Janet Echelman and Saturn Never Sleeps.  But what is important to me is to figure out what ideas am I going to spread (“Ideas Worth Spreading” is TED – get it?).

So here are the takeaways for my future course offerings in my Earth/environmental/geography:

  • Revisit the footprint from biking, walking
  • Mix internal and external education (learning for self and for teaching/helping others)
  • Examine the costs of having cars go through traffic lights vs. roundabouts
  • As the I-95 corridor in Philly is structurally obsolete, explore what could be built
  • Connect more with location information on rain gardens, green roofs, etc. (Philly Watersheds)
  • Examine the connection between geographic location and quality of life
  • TED videos can be great conversation starters – either in class or out of class for a discussion board

And other random bits I learned:

  • There are no barriers over which to transmit knowledge (Ethan Nguyen)
  • The app Angry Birds can be fit into any presentation on any topic

By the way, one of my favorite lines of the day came from the opening speech by Mayor Michael Nutter: “The voting booth is a place you want to occupy.”

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Tech reflections from #GSAMinn

From October 9-11, I attended the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, MN.  Although I usually blog about how technology can be used to enhance teaching, some of the more impressive uses of technology were in running the meeting itself.

There’s an App for that.  To start with, I was able to download the mobile app with the entire conference program.  This is not the first conference I’ve had an app for.  I didn’t use the app as much as I could have, probably because paper program books are still being distributed (still easier for me to flip through a book to find a session).

Upload, and you’re ready to go.  For the past several years, speakers giving oral presentations have been allowed to upload their PowerPoint files before even traveling to the conference.  This makes everyone plan ahead and get the talk finished early!  I took advantage of this service, uploading my talk the previous week and feeling relieved that everything was completed and received by GSA.  All the talks are then sent to the room where the talk is being held, and the talks are automatically uploaded on the session room laptop.  As I was co-chairing a session on Sunday, it was amazingly easy to just have to introduce a speaker and click the mouse to begin a PowerPoint.  Technology has definitely helped make the oral sessions run smoother (if only it could help with the quality of some of the individual PowerPoint slides!).

The meeting was flooded with sessions that discussed how to use technology in K-16 education, such as Teaching Geoscience Online and Virtual Reality in Geoscience Education. My poster was in the second Virtual Reality session.  It was my first time participating in a digital poster session (which means having one 4′ high by 8′ wide board for a paper poster, and one giant digital screen to connect to a laptop – see me at my poster below!).  This was the best setup for discussing and showcasing how I use Google Earth course ePortfolios in my courses.  It was an amazing range of posters using Google Earth and GigaPan technologies. What surprised me was how popular the session was.  I was at my poster ALL DAY – it was one, long, exhausting day, but people were coming through the posters from 9AM to 6PM, so it was a wonderful opportunity to share my work and student innovations.  I have a feeling that digital poster sessions will continue to grow at future conferences, which so much digital technology being integrated with geoscience teaching and research.

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QR Codes, where are you?  What I didn’t see (and what someone tweeted about) is the use of QR codes.  I had two for my poster, but I did not see any QR codes in talks and hardly any at posters.  This is very different from the ISTE conference I attended earlier this year (see my blog post), where QR codes were everywhere, and conference attendees were using their iPad2’s to take photos of the QR codes to get the resources linked in the code.

et tu, iPad?  Speaking of iPads, I was surprised to see so few people using them.  The iPads were everywhere at the ISTE conference, but most of those conference go-ers were K-12 teachers.  Some of my colleagues were using iPads at the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) business meeting back in June, but most of them said they were “trying out” the iPad to see if they could use an iPad for a meeting instead of a laptop.  Although I have an iPad I could have used at GSA, I brought my laptop.  Maybe it was just for the sense of security, knowing I would have access to all of my files “just in case,” and I would be able to do all of my everyday activities on the computer and online.  I do want to try to attend a conference with only the iPad, but if the conference is during the semester when I still have classes going on, student emails to answer, manuscripts to revise, then I will want my laptop.

Not quite a trending hashtag.  The geoscience community is very active on Twitter.  The #GSAMinn hashtag was established for the conference.  If you click on the “Continue reading…” link below, you’ll see a Storify I put together with some of the more unique tweets from the conference (there were plenty of scientifically and data-rich tweets, but these are the ones that brought a smile to my face!).

So I didn’t have any amazing “ah-ha” moments at the conference when it comes to technology and education, but it is always nice to see what is out there and what others are up to, whether it be in the classroom or behind-the-scenes running the conference.

[View the story “There are tweets, and then there are tweets… from GSA 2011” on Storify]

Is Twitter a Lens or a Microphone?

On Friday, September 23, I was thrilled to welcome to campus @alexiahudson, a research library from @PSUAbington.  I invited Alexia to come speak to my honors research methods course, as all of the students at a recent open mic for Constitution Day said they did not have Twitter accounts and didn’t see the use for one.  I immediately knew Alexia could come and talk about some exciting uses and trends with Twitter.  Why Alexia, when I use Twitter myself?  Alexia had the honor of being one of about 40 people selected to join President Obama in the first-ever White House Twitter Town Hall!

Alexia started with a simple (or not-so-simple question)… is Twitter a lens or a microscope?  That led into the following highlights from her talk:

  • The 20th century was a time of information consumption.  The 21st century is a time of knowledge exchange (consumption, content creator, participant, citizen journalist)
  • Twitter is action without the opportunity for pontification
  • In Twitter, words count and determine influence.  The key is… do people think enough about what you are tweeting to share with other people?

Alexia also shared some interesting uses of Twitter beyond the White House tweetup, such as the Columbia Business School’s decision to have students write in 200 characters or less why they should be admitted – yes, that was the application essay!  (see article 1 and article 2 for more information)  She also shared how the Library of Congress is archiving tweets (see article 1 and article 2) – yes, what you post online really won’t go away.

In the end, Alexia summarized her thoughts by stating that Twitter is the merger of personal, communal, public and civic engagement.  I couldn’t agree more.  Apparently, the students are on board with this as well – one student, currently upset about a certain issue, has created a Twitter account to spread the word and hopefully see some positive action come out of her concern!

Alexia recommends reading the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project report on Twitter 2011.  I’m asking my students to come up with a 140-character thank you for Alexia.

Tweeting Haiku

This 2010 NPR story titled Haiku Takes To Twitter, 140 Characters At A Time and 2009 NPR story titled Twitterers Message by Haiku remind me of my own haiku/Twitter experience earlier this year. I even created a Storify about it, titled #AGU11AbstractHaiku – What happens to scientists when an abstract deadline for a national conference approaches.  I wonder how I could bring haiku tweets to my classroom?

View “#AGU11AbstractHaiku” on Storify

 

change.org

Start, join, and win campaigns for social change.

Nice!  I was aware of change.org, but never spent much time on their website or really thinking about the power and effect this website can have.  And it is only a website, but wow, it makes the democratic process accessible to anyone with an email address.  Anyone can generate an online petition to gather voices from people they have never met to rally together for social causes.  Amanda from change.org spoke at the Fair Trade Cities and Universities Conference in Philadelphia on September 9, and her 8-minute speech on how one person wanted to buy fair trade flowers, and used change.org to start a petition and was able to get 1-800-flowers to sell fair trade roses (see the Victory description).

I can see where change.org could serve as a very powerful tool, even when trying to raise awareness of campus issues.  I know we will definitely use this site to drum up support when my campus puts forth its Fair Trade resolution.

Mobilize the Movement, Part II

This weekend, I’m attending the “Mobilize the Movement” conference, a three-day gathering of people interested in all that is Fair Trade related to towns and universities.  My previous post (Mobilize the Movement, Part I) explored my best intentions to be green and to take notes in the cloud, only to be foiled by a wireless network that went down.  This post will comment on what I’m seeing for the use of technology by the Fair Trade movement, specifically to create communities for networking.

I need to do some deeper searching, but beyond Facebook and some tweeting, I’m not really seeing an effective use of technology, especially social media, by Fair Trade.  I spent a lot of time in the sessions pertaining to Fair Trade universities, and I spoke to many students and faculty.  Students desperately want to be connected between campuses to share efforts, strategies, and successes.  Faculty want easy access to the “nuts and bolts” of Fair Trade and the opportunity to share syllabi, strategies to communicate with administrators, etc.  During one of the sessions, I voiced a suggestion that what the Fair Trade Universities movement really needs is one-stop shopping – one location that acts as a website to have one-way sharing of resources but also serve as a hub for communication and collaboration.  My request was somewhat answered in a later session, when the group United Students for Fair Trade said they were putting together something on Ning to start conversations, review examples of Fair Trade University resolutions, etc.  It’s certainly a start, and I appreciate the students taking the initiative for this, but there is still far to go.

My campus is small enough (~1600 students) where face-to-face communication is still effective and easily accomplished.  But I’m hoping I can create for my campus and for students at other campuses a rich resource of useful and valuable materials for all of us to work towards having the Fair Trade stamp of approval.  In my evaluation, the Fair Trade movement could use and would benefit significantly with a boost of technology and more social media.

Mobilize the Movement, Part I

This weekend, I’m attending the “Mobilize the Movement” conference, a three-day gathering of people interested in all that is Fair Trade related to towns and universities.  With every conference, I always take copious notes and try to share the information with as many people as possible.  In trying to keep “green,” I decided to use the wireless at the HUB in the Union Center in Philadelphia (where the conference was being held) and record my notes in a Google Doc.  This way, I could also share my Google Doc with a student that is working on a project with me this semester involving Fair Trade, and I’ll always have access to my notes in the cloud.

The best laid plans…

Things started off well, but at one point, the wireless died at the HUB and I did not realize my Doc was not automatically saving.  It didn’t take long for me to check the tweets from conference participants on my cell phone to see that others were being impacted by this wireless collapse.  This was the first time I used Google Docs on an iPad, so the interface didn’t have as many obvious menu options, such as SAVE.  It wasn’t a major failure – I only lost notes from one-and-a-half sessions, but “lost” is the key word here.  Would this have happened if I took written notes?  Certainly not.  But then, how “green” would that have been?  How else could I have been able to efficiently take notes and share them with others?

In the end, I’m reminded just how much I rely on technology, yet how much technology can let me down.  Make no mistake – I’m still getting so much out of this conference.  But for today, the final day, I have brought my laptop with my USB/wireless connector through my cell phone.  Then, the only thing I have to worry about is if the battery life of the laptop can last long enough to get me through the day….

+1Me for +1 Curiosity

I’m currently reading Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change The World, a fascinating exploration of the psychology of games and how we can use the lessons in games to change reality for the better.  Her description and analysis of games such as Chore Wars and SuperBetter fascinated me – it’s amazing to think that a game can motivate people to do everything from clean their house to cope better with health and medical challenges.

And then I read about +1Me.com, the gold star for grown-ups. McGonigal detailed that she was giving a keynote address at SXSW Interactive when, a few days later, she received an email message from someone she did not know.  The email said a friend had +1d her for: +1 Intelligence, +1 Public Speaking, +1 Inspiration.  That friend, Clay Johnson, enjoyed the talk so much that he was inspired to create this web application.  Now, these two are friends in real life, and I would love to be a fly on the wall during their conversations about how to use game feedback systems to increase democratic participation.

I read about +1Me.com the same day I had met with one of my senior undergraduate research students.  She is facing a significant shift in the topic of her senior thesis, and I thought that +1Me.com might be a nice way to keep her going and motivated.  I went to the site (you don’t need an account to send or for the recipient to receive), and I was disappointed to see that I could not give a +1 for Motivation.  But, I was able to recommend the attribute for their list of 37 existing attributes.  And if my attribute is selected and added to the list, I’ll get a +1!

(*note that the +1Me.com website is no longer online – updated 03/27/14)

Although this post is a tribute to Clay Johnson and his innovation, Jane McGonigal’s TED talk on Gaming Can Make A Better World is worth watching!

A class that is all YouTube all the time

I don’t recall exactly where I saw a story about this, and I’m not really sure what I think about this. A course where the entire content is delivered through YouTube? I can see that. But to have students submit all assignments and have all discussions in YouTube? I’ve viewed the introductory video to the course (embedded below) and read this article, and I wish there was an ending video that was a summary and her reflection on how the course went. This might be answered in her video book Learning From YouTube (yes, I said video book, by The MIT Press). This instructor offered the class in 2007, 2008, and 2010 – but did any other instructors jump on the YouTube delivery wagon? I wonder if this model continues today.

eReaders and female users

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This tweet certainly caught my eye, as I am a female and proud owner of a Kindle.  The article on Mashable’s website has two graphs that show the increasing trend of women with eReaders and increasing trend of people over 55 years of age using eReaders.  The article does not comment on the use of eReaders in higher education, but at least these data show that instructors should not expect a gender gap on who embraces an eReader.

 

Students speak about professors’ technology skills

From The Chronicle of Higher Education,Video Forum: Students Assess Their Professors’ Technology Skills

This was an interesting conversation, on many levels. First, this interview with four college students was conducted through Google+ and recorded with a screen capture program. I could see this being used for office hours and review sessions. But what I really like (something that we don’t do enough in higher education) are the direct questions asked of the students as to how effective faculty are in using technology in the classroom. Yes, I think even faculty will admit that PowerPoint is not necessarily the best way to go – and part of the solution needs to be better training and professional development opportunities for faculty to learn about new approaches with new technologies. And I agree with the first commenter at the end of the article – students should not expect faculty to put their PowerPoint presentations online (that’s not the solution, either).

It would be interesting to see this conversation take place every six months or so, as technology and classroom integration of new technology changes.  How much longer will we (faculty) be giving drive-by PowerPoint presentations?

USA Today reports on web restrictions, social media in education

Two interesting articles appeared in the July 25, 2011, edition of USA Today:

Web restrictions draw ire of some educators

Social media find place in classroom

I work with K-12 in-service teachers, helping them with their Earth Science content knowledge and finding them excellent online resources containing images and videos to authentic data sets.  As voiced in these articles, I, too, am frustrated that sites such as flickr and YouTube are blocked from classrooms.  The EPA and Smithsonian have their photos in flickr, and the Discovery Channel has videos in YouTube – all significant sources that can be effective contributors to classroom learning.  I was appalled to learn that National Geographic is banned in some schools.  National Geographic – really???

I appreciate the comments in the articles that state banning websites that can serve an educational purpose is really no different than banning books.  I encourage everyone to read these articles, think about Banned Books Week by the American Library Association, and stay tuned for what libraries and other school teachers/staff are organizing for this fall, a Banned Sites Day/Week.  Decide for yourself how banning websites in schools relates to intellectual freedoms, the First Amendment, and the power of information (delivered via technology).

 

Initial thoughts on Storify

To me, Storify is an interesting way to capture what is being published online, whether by an individual or an organization, about a particular topic.  I’ve just scratched the surface myself, experimenting with Storify to compile tweets and/or images.  You can see my stories from the ISTE conference and American Museum of Natural History Tweetup at:  http://storify.com/guertin

The ProfHacker column online at The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story about Telling Social Stories with Storify, and I came across an interesting Storify story (still confused if “storify” is a noun or verb) on using Storify for Advancement.

I think the tool is fun, I think the interface is a little clunky (granted, the tool just became public this year), but I can see some academic uses.  Storify allows students to become citizen journalists, to become the creators of content, not just the consumers.  The story can be truly multimedia, allowing students to pull in from Twitter, flickr, Facebook, Blogger, and any other website.  I have an undergraduate researcher experimenting with Storify this summer.  She’s creating stories relating to environmental issues.  One of her stories relates to the ban on plastic bags (successful in cities such as San Francisco).  She is tracking the number of tweets, types of tweets, and who is tweeting about plastic bags.  Her final “report” to me will be a Storify story.  Looking forward to seeing how this comes out!

 

Article – Who is TED, and Why Can’t I Talk for More Than 18 Minutes at a Time?

I’m not sure why this article is appearing in the Journal of Sustainability Education, but for those new to TED, it is worth a read.

Who is TED, and Why Can’t I Talk for More Than 18 Minutes at a Time? (May 9, 2010)

I first learned about TED through a middle school science teacher.  He was excited to share with me how he found the lectures outstanding to use with students – the right length, and not blocked in the K-12 classroom (at least not his classroom).

TED is well aware of its role in education.  The organization has created the TED-Ed Brain Trust, “a private forum created to shape and accelerate TED’s push into the realm of Education. The aim of this community is to assemble a new archive of remarkable TED-ED videos, each designed to catalyze learning around the globe. Unlike TEDTalks, TED-ED videos are less than ten minutes long and may assume a variety of different formats.”

I’m excited.  I’m seeing more and more students arrive on campus that have heard of TED, and some have even explored and watched TED videos on their own.  I’m not sure how to measure the impact of TED videos on my students and their learning, but if it gets them engaged and talking in and out of the classroom, it can’t be a bad thing.

QR codes for art museums, elm trees and tombstones

I’m coming across an explosion of websites and uses for QR codes. Cybrary Man’s Educational Web Site offers an extensive list of links to sites and suggestions for the educational uses of QR codes.  I particularly enjoyed the QR Literature Quest that has famous first lines from books and authors embedded in QR codes.  Students go through their school library in the form of a scavenger hunt to find the books relating to those quotes.

On the TeachPaperless blog, I saw a posting called “Thinking Outside-the-Box With QR Codes” (July 15, 2011).  The author details how the Denver Art Museum used QR codes to only repeat the information available on exhibit, but he also shares an application of QR codes that enhanced the information at a photography show.  I like the idea of using QR codes to geolocate a display on view.

Just this week, I was visiting State College and was struck by massive tree stumps in the ground.  At first, I was disappointed to see that some massive trees were being cut down on campus, but then, I saw the sign with the QR codes to explain what was happening.

What happened to this elm tree? What happened to this elm tree?

Finally, one of the “field sites” where I do research with students is in cemeteries.  I recently came across this article on the NPR website, titled “Technology Brings Digital Memories To Grave Sites” (NPR story, May 30, 2011).  Then an article appeared on the Mashable website relating to the same topic.  QR codes, now appearing on tombstones!  In addition, I could see QR codes being used in cemeteries for walking tours and for presenting additional historic (and even scientific) information.

Can’t wait to see where QR codes will pop up next.

 

Skype for a Math Study Session

First, I have to say that I have nothing to do with what is being described here.  Although I know all three students discussed in this example, I have to give them full credit for figuring out how to use social media to overcome a barrier.

You see, my campus, Penn State Brandywine, is a commuter campus.  Students commute to campus for classes and then leave for their jobs or to return home.  Students cannot always come back to campus in the evening for review sessions or to connect with peers for study groups.  Well, three students enrolled in a general math course figured out how to get around the challenge of being in three different places at once.  Sophomore Taj Magruder, sophomore Labanya Mookerjee, and senior Brooke Ballard practiced solving math problems together in the evenings, but each in the comfort of their own homes.  The group used Skype as their communication tool.

In this audio clip, you will hear Taj describe how the group used Skype in their general math course in Spring 2011.

#AskObama @townhall @whitehouse

Wow, I did not see this one coming… although, I should not be surprised.  On July 6, 2011, President Obama posted his first tweet on The White House Twitter account (see below).

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This is what kicked off the first-ever Townhall at The White House:  http://askobama.twitter.com/

Before the events, everyone in the Twitter-universe was invited to #AskObama a question via Twitter.  Some tweets were selected and appeared on a screen during the event.  The President was not restricted to 140 characters in his responses (he responded verbally), but The White House twitter feed summarized each response in a few posts.

People were also able to apply to be one of 30 selected to attend the Townhall in person.  One of the Penn State Abington librarians was selected to be in the audience at The White House – how exciting for her!  Her story is definitely worth reading.  Here, I repeat Alexia Hudson’s statement that was the reason for her selection for the event:

Six days earlier, she and an unknown number of other @Whitehouse followers responded to a Tweet asking why they should be invited to the high-profile event. Hudson’s answer: Librarians are champions of equitable access to information and digital literacy yet they are rarely included in political discourse.

In addition to the official event website, several Storifies have been generated, capturing all the tweets.  Here is the link to one of many that summarizes the event.

I wonder if others will follow this format – “others” being, for example, the President of Penn State, CEO of a corporation, head of a nonprofit agency, etc.  What a wonderful way to connect with the net-connected generation.

 

The National Jukebox from The Library of Congress

One of the research projects I have with an undergraduate researcher involves embedding audio clips from the Smithsonian Folkways website into Google Earth placemarks (see Teaching World Music with Geospatial Technology).  But a May 2011 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus reports on the new National Jukebox, “the free online music repository features streaming versions of recordings from Victor Talking Machine Co. that were made between 1901 and 1925, a period predating the use of microphones in recording. Sony Music Entertainment provided the music from its catalog. More recordings housed by Sony, from Columbia Records and OKeh, will be added to the jukebox.”

What I have found is that each of these audio files includes an embed code, and I was able to successfully embed these audio clips into Google Earth.  I’m excited, as this now provides more quality music files to include in Google Earth projects.  (example Google Earth file)

The Library of Congress National Jukebox:  http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

Chronicle article “The Library of Congress Adds a Jukebox”  (article link)

 

Chronicle article – Using Twitter and QR Codes at Conferences

After seeing such a visible presence of QR codes at the beginning of presentations and at posters, and witnessing the flood of tweets with the conference hashtag at #ISTE11, I was reminded of this article I saw in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  It’s not only happening at educational technology conferences!

Using Twitter and QR Codes at Conferences
May 11, 2011

 

ISTE 2011 – Not-Your-Average Tweets

With such an enormous volume of tweets at ISTE 2011, it is not surprising that there would be “fun” tweets mixed in with the serious/academic tweets documenting conference content.

So, in honor of Social Media Day… a Storify from that captures Not-Your-Average Tweets from ISTE 2011

http://storify.com/guertin/unexpected-tweets-from-iste-2011

Enjoy!

 

ISTE 2011 through the Tweets of Undergraduate Researchers

My first Storify… story? I don’t know what to call it, but this was fun to put together (and very easy).  Note that you will have to click on “Load More” at the bottom of the page to view the entire story.  A direct link to the Storify storyboard is available at: http://sfy.co/CMk

View “ISTE 2011 through the Tweets of Undergraduate Researchers” on Storify

ISTE 2011 – Day Four

Day Four, the final day of ISTE 2011.  The conference still had session rooms with standing-room only and energizing talks.  Although I wish there were more days and more sessions, at this point, I don’t think I can take in any more information.  Time to sit down and process what I have learned!

I started the day in a session on ePortfolios.  I have two online portfolios, with this entry in my blog for my Teaching with Technology Portfolio.  And the session did emphasize that people can have more than portfolio, as different portfolios can be written for different purposes for different audiences.  For education, an ePortfolio can have multiple purposes, such as learning/processing/planning, marketing/showcase, and assessment/accountability.  The idea is to have students create a positive digital identity (I like how the speaker said that students need to think about their digital tattoo, the information about them that goes online that never goes away).  Google has all the components for students to have in an ePortfolio – Google Docs for documents, Picassa for images, Blogger for reflection, and Google Sites to pull everything together.  No longer should graduates be bringing CD’s to job interviews with their portfolio – now, graduates are bringing their iPads with the electronic version!  I will definitely have students create ePortfolios in one of my courses this fall, and I’ll refer back to this site filled with resources (site 1).

I traveled through the Exhibit Hall one final time and sat through two sessions at the Adobe booth.  I just purchased InDesign, and I look forward to exploring the Adobe Education site for more tutorials and information (I know I’ll get more off their website than through the rushed sessions in the booth that went off topic too often).

I also went to a session titled “Kindle: Beyond the Printed Page.”  The panel, led by Amazon, presented some impressive information and stories of Kindle use.  I had heard that back on June 21, 2010, Amazon reached the point where they were selling more Kindle books than hardcover books.  I didn’t know that on May 29 of this year (2011), Kindle books were now outselling all print books on Amazon.com.  Certainly, Kindles can hold several hundreds (thousands?) of books, eliminating heavy backpacks and reducing the volume of space needed in school lockers.  Other facts I learned include:

  • The built-in dictionary function on the Kindle allows for “on the spot” literacy, where students can look up a word right away.
  • Any book published before 1923 is available for free.
  • PDF, doc files, and jpgs can be emailed to the Kindle.
  • A Kindle keeps the reading level of an individual student “secret.”
  • Pinellas County Schools in Florida give all students (3,108) Kindles to promote equity across the school. They encourage that schools provide cases when they distribute the Kindles to students, and schools should not underestimate how long it will take to register and load books onto 3,000 Kindles!
  • Bigfork High School in Montana has the students engage in a live Twitter discussion while reading a book on the Kindle.
  • Fulton County in Milton, Georgia, found that students were recommending Kindle books to other students, and that the Kindles worked very well when a substitute teacher had to come in to cover a class.
  • Other innovative uses of the Kindle included using the web browser function to take quizzes and post information online.
  • Time needs to be made for teacher professional development when diving in and using Kindles.

Another website I need to check out:  http://www.amazon.com/kindle/education/    I look forward to sharing with them what we have been doing in the honors program Literary Launch with our Kindles (see our YouTube video that describes the honors students using the Kindles)!

And one final note of caution for myself…. I heard many great talks that were “cool ideas” and “best practices.”  But as a pedagogical researcher, I’m always looking for the assessment piece.  Just because a student says he/she liked the [insert tech toy here] and self-reports an increase in learning, that does not always translate into actual learning.  So I’m bringing home some excellent information, but processing it with caution.  I do not believe in using technology just to use technology, and engaging a student in learning does not always translate to actual learning.  Definitely need to think more on this….

 

ISTE 2011 – Day Three

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What an absolutely fun way to start Day Three of the conference.  While waiting for the opening plenary to begin, the standing/sitting-on-the-floor-room-only crowd was entertained by dancing robots and then a short performance by STOMP!  Then, we shifted into our academic/teacher hats for the plenary.  Some random statements from the plenary I jotted down (actually entered into the iPad I borrowed from my husband):

  • Live what you teach
  • The #1 reason people choose the field of education is to make a difference in the lives of young people.
  • Leadership is a choice, not a position.
  • We all need strong skill sets, tool sets, and mind sets.
  • Believe in the possibilities.
  • Live life in crescendo.
  • Technology is meant to bless, not just to impress.
  • Be sure you haven’t had your career ladder against the wrong wall the entire time.

Moving on, I attended a workshop in the exhibit hall booth of the Library of Congress.  The presentation was titled “Social Media and the Library of Congress.”  I’m ashamed to say that I have not utilized or even investigated this amazing resource as much as I can/should.  But I am certainly going to dive in and spend several hours exploring the digitized map collection, resources on national parks and conservation, and the images/audio/video that are copyright free and available for students to use in multimedia projects.  And their primary source sets and lesson plans will be valuable for me to share with the in-service teachers I work with this summer.  Thank you, LOC!

After grabbing lunch at Reading Terminal Market, I headed over to the poster hall to help @humanitiesTREK (account no longer active) set up her poster on Teaching World Music with Google Earth.  I’m so proud of this undergraduate researcher and the success of her work!  Thank you to all the wonderful conference goers that stopped by to chat with Labanya about her creative accomplishments.

I then headed over with @earthspacequest to the Model Lesson session titled “Information Please: Using Infographics to Teach Digital Age Literacies.”  I have never been a big fan of infographics – they seem to cartoon-ny and not a clear way to communicate important data.  I learned that any graph/map is considered an infographic, and I love maps, so I guess I am a fan.  However, I am going to be very cautious about using and presenting infographics to my students, as I find that students need a lesson on “graphic literacy.” For some reason, my students think everything belongs in a pie chart.  Students need to be thoughtful with how to represent data and use graphics to communicate a targeted message.

I feel that I’ve learned so much at this conference – can it be possible that there is still more to learn???  Something Sara (@earthspacequest) and I spent a little time speaking about (and I hope we can continue and expand the conversation) is all the technology that is available to educators.  Do we really need to use it?  Will a SmartBoard really help me achieve the learning goals I have for my students?  Is Twitter really necessary for news updates, or why can’t I just visit CNN.com and “google” for updates?  This goes back to one of the statements from the morning plenary, “technology is meant to bless, not just to impress.”  I consider myself pretty thoughtful in my approach to using technology in the classroom, but now I need to think even more…

 

ISTE 2011 – #teach w/ #tweet

Although most of my posts relating to ISTE 2011 are highlights of my conference experience, this session has earned its own entry.  On Monday, I attended a session titled #teach w/ #tweet. First, I have to share my experience of just getting into the room to see the talk. 45 minutes before the session began, people started lining up outside of the session room, and everyone was told they would not be able to enter the room until 15 minutes before the session was to begin at 2:30PM. By 2:15PM, I could not believe the huge line/crowd that had gathered for the session – I have never experienced this at any conference I’ve ever attended. Every seat in the room was quickly taken, and I’m glad I waited in line for a seat.

The session was led by @brueckj23, @crafty184, and @jonbecker.  The overall goal of the session was to explore how Twitter can be used in elementary education, secondary education, and higher education.  The session began with a discussion of the power of learning networks – how they help us make connections, make contributions, make conversations, and make requests.  Several examples were then provided for the use of Twitter with students, such as:

  • Elementary school students, instead of creating a paper color chart of the weather, follow tweets of weather reports and use Google Spreadsheets to tally the data.  The locations of the weather reports can then be plotted in Google Maps.
  • Have any student (ideally, a parent doing this with their child) posting one tweet a day (text, audio, or video) for a one-year period.  Useful tools with Twitter integration include DragonDictation, Audioboo, and UStream.tv.  Check out an example with @bruecka23.  This reminds me of Project 365 in Flickr.
  • Establish a hashtag for a class.  Follow the tweets (and other hashtags) in TweetDeck.  Remember that the tweets will disappear after a period of time (I need to figure out how to create a record/archive class tweets).
  • Monitor current events in Twitter.  An example was given as to how a 6th grade Spanish class followed tweets from the USA and Chile when the Chilean miners were trapped.  Students could also follow the Presidential debates.  Twitter breaks down walls and time barriers to these events.
  • Have students go into Twitter and explore what interests them!  (Side note – I have a student doing just this now in the summer, with her eventual goal of creating some compilations in Storify relating to environmental issues she is passionate about.  But maybe I could do more of this with my classes…)

And I have not been watching The Voice, but apparently, the hashtag #thevoice has been fast and furious since the series started!

The outline/model lesson for the session can be found at: http://bit.ly/AKR2323
A Twitter Intro course can be found at: http://bit.ly/bei-tweet   The username is bei.guest and the password is innovate.

I really appreciate how these presenters are really thinking outside of the box to use the real-time nature of Twitter to provide an engaging experience for students.  Thanks for the inspiration and ideas for my classroom!

 

ISTE 2011 – Day Two

Day 2 at ISTE 2011 – the first full day of the conference with a range of talks and posters and workshops. Instead of reporting on all the “technical” things I learned today, I think I had some bigger takeaways from the day (note that my day started with Sara Neville presenting her poster from 8-10AM – and she was a superstar!).

What I learned at Day 2 of ISTE 2011

  • Teachers like iPads. At my science conferences, I have seen my colleagues very hesitant to plunge into using an iPad for taking notes and doing work. It seems that K-12 teachers wouldn’t dare leave home without it! I have seen many, many teachers using multiple apps and functions of the iPad – they are clearly comfortable with the technology.
  • Teachers like giveaways/swag. The exhibit hall is full of swag! But then again, who doesn’t like the free t-shirts, canvas bags, pens, flash drives, flashcards…
  • It’s all about the QR codes. I have never seen so many QR codes at a conference. Teachers are using their iPads to take photos of QR codes at posters, in the exhibit hall, and even wearing QR codes on the backs of t-shirts. Not sure how I feel about QR codes on t-shirts…
  • Teachers love to Tweet. I knew there were several PLNs on Twitter, such as #edchat. But trying to follow the conference chat on twitter with #ISTE11 is too much. And teachers are getting their students to tweet, too! (more to come in a future post…)

The exhibit hall is immense and overwhelming. One reason I was overwhelmed is because there must have been 20 different venders selling the same product. It also seems that most of these products perform functions that could be done “in the cloud” or with other freeware. I think/hope that teachers realize commercial products are not necessary for all classroom tasks (think Google).

As I spent most of my day at posters and in the exhibit hall, I was not able to attend many talks. But when it comes to the talks and the posters, I was generally disappointed at the quality of the titles, and the lack of accuracy in what the title indicated the session would be about. For example, one session I attended today has the phrase “using social media” in the title. But the only “social media” in the session was a discussion of students creating websites. So why not just say “websites” in the title? I actually do an assignment with my undergraduate students in my honors research methods course where we talk about what makes a good title. I hope all conference presenters are more thoughtful with the content of the title, and have the title be more meaningful instead of broad and cute.

Now I have to say, I have taught workshops for in-service teachers in the past, and I have found all of them to be positive and passionate, even in the most challenging of classroom settings. This is so true, even here at ISTE 2011. Every teacher has been kind, excited, eager to learn, and eager to share. I have heard nothing negative from anyone at this conference, not even on Twitter!

Who knew that at a technology conference of close to 13,000 people, I could learn more about teachers and their comfort level with/use of technology! (and, I picked up a few teaching tips here and there….)  I wonder what I will learn tomorrow.

ISTE 2011 – Day One

Today was the first day of #ISTE11 – the International Society of Technology in Education conference in Philadelphia.  ISTE is a professional organization for educators and education leaders engaged in improving learning and teaching by advancing the effective use of technology in PK-12 and teacher education. As I work with K-12 teachers and have undergraduate students develop materials to be used in the K-12 classroom, I knew this would be a valuable conference to attend and present.

It’s hard to formulate all my thoughts into a coherent statement, so I’m listing random phrases, statements, and organizations that struck me as something on which to reflect, and something to investigate further.

  • “Unlocking potential” (theme of conference, but worth reflecting upon)
  • Joining forces as a community to unlock potential
  • Avoid the dreamkillers
  • Pursue your passion with a purpose, to make a difference
  • Embrace your own global journey Research Journalism Initiative (LINK)
  • SHOUT (I’ve participated in these online seminars by Smithsonian scientists before)
  • ePals – global electronic pen-pals
  • The MY HERO Project
  • Recommended book: Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World, by John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam

And now for some of my favorite tweets…

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I have a feeling the phrase “unlocking potential” also refers to the potential I still have to make a difference on students and teachers.  More to come in Day Two…

 

TEDxPhiladelphiaED 2011

On Saturday, June 25, I attended (in person) my first TEDx conference.  The ISTE conference is taking place in Philadelphia this year, and and education-focused TEDx was scheduled for the day before the conference.  I applied and was one of 330 people selected to attend the TEDxPhiladelphiaED program.

To summarize… thumbs-up to the giveaway (echo smartpen) and inspiring speakers; thumbs-down to the technology failure throughout the event.

The most inspiring speakers were Barbara Chandler Allen (Fresh Artists), Matt McInnis (Inkling), Sharon Campbell (RMS Energy Star), John Hunter (World Peace Game), George Moore (Magic Wand Foundation), and Molly Milroy (Invisible Children).  What made them inspiring?  It was not necessarily use of technology but their pure passion for making a difference in the lives of students and empowering them to go on and make a difference in the lives of others.  Please visit the links to their organizations above – you will not be disappointed!

John Hunter on the World Peace Game

Oh, and let’s not forget the “youth” representation at the event.  In conjunction with TEDxPhiladelphiaED, a youth poetry contest was held, and the winners read their poems at the event.  WOW – how thoughtful and inspiring they were with words.  Hopefully, their reading of the poems will be posted online soon – such maturity and professionalism beyond their age.  And another young professional was the co-host of the event, Adora Svitak.  A video of her TED talk (yes, a 13(?)-year old giving a TED talk) was playing in pieces before TEDx began.  What I wouldn’t give to have Adora in my classroom someday!

Adora Svitak: What adults can learn from kids


I have left TEDxPhiladelphiaED tired, inspired, and ready to reflect upon how I can do even more to engage my students and tap their inner-passion to learn.  Barbara’s Fresh Artists has reawakened me to just how bad the budget issues are hitting Philly elementary schools (83 cents for art supplies per student per year? Really???).  Students, civic engagement, philanthropy, innovation, giving back while receiving… wow, all is possible in the classroom.  We as teachers just have to have the guts to make it happen.

Utilizing Existing Gigapixel Panoramas for Virtual Fieldtrips

Here are suggested gigapixel panoramas appropriate for a virtual fieldtrip in various disciplines.  These are the links to support an article for Quick Hits: Teaching with Technology.

Listgeeks – and the purpose is…

Listgeeks is a social network for creating, comparing, and sharing lists of “things.”  I first read about Listgeeks in a tweet by @museum140:

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Personally, I like the idea of going through an exercise to create “top 5” or “top 10” lists.  It makes me reflect upon where I am, where I’ve been, and what is important to me.  Although it is a good exercise for me, do I need to share this with the world?

I’m trying to think if there is an academic application of students sharing lists and exchanging ideas.  What exactly would the purpose be of creating the list?  Is there really an academic benefit, or even a social benefit?  When a user creates a list, a URL can be associated with each item in the list, allowing for a little more information and further exploration.

I guess I need to spend some more time with this tool to “get it.”  In the meantime, feel free to explore my lists for “Best Natural National Parks I Have Visited” and “Favorite Female Scientists.”

Here’s an introductory video to Listgeeks.

AMNH + Twitter = connecting with Leakey + Johanson

On Wednesday, May 4, I saw this tweet by the American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH):

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I was THRILLED to see that this talk between two amazing paleoanthropologists, Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey, was going to be shown online with a live video feed through ustream (I was in State College and unable to attend the lecture in person).  I’ve seen each person speak separately, never together.  And, a hashtag was established for the event #humanorigins, which was my cue to jump onto Twitter to participate on the Twitter backchannel.

So I’m in my hotel room and I visit the AMNH website to tune in for “Human Evolution and Why it Matters: A Conversation with Leakey and Johanson.”  I fire up TweetDeck so I can post and follow the hashtag.  And then began viewing a fascinating and engaging lecture, a lecture that I was even able to engage with via Twitter.  It was exciting, it was fun, and the witty comments by Leakey and Johanson kept all the tweeters busy!

Was watching the lecture online the same as being there in person?  Certainly not.  But having the opportunity to “participate” via Twitter allowed me to connect with others during the lecture, helping me feel that I wasn’t watching this online stream alone.

Then, a few days later, I receive a tweet from Kate Wong (@katewong), a Scientific American editor:

Screen shot 2011-05-08 at 10.49.24 AM.png

I’m really surprised and honored that someone felt my tweets were worthy for a story!  Kate’s Storify is very well done – be sure to check it out to see how she used the tweets, and most importantly, learn about the latest views by Leakey and Johanson on human evolution.

Now, I need to learn more about Storify…

I hope more museums will broadcast live video streams when speakers come to town.  For example, dinosaur paleontologist Jack Horner is coming to speak at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia – and yet, I’ll be back in State College.  It’s a shame I can’t be there to attend, to learn what Jack Horner has to say about dinosaurs.  Hopefully, there will be audience members tweeting!

The lecture by Leakey and Johanson can be listened to here (LINK) and viewed and below.

Your online presence is not yet welcomed here

I read this article with great fascination.  It is from the Chronicle of Higher Education and was included in the daily Wired Campus announcements that I receive via email.

A College Unfriends its Social-Networking President (LINK)

At first, I didn’t understand the title.  I thought it was some student club called the Social Networking Club that got rid of its president.  Wow, was I surprised to realize this was the president of the Rhode Island School of Design!  He’s on Twitter (@johnmaeda) and YouTube, but not on the “most popular” list with his faculty and students.

I encourage you to read the article for yourself, but here is my takeaway – when coming into a new community, a physical community dominated by face-to-face interactions and communications, don’t lose site of the immediate importance to build relationships face-to-face.  There seems to have been too much of an emphasis on the online community BEFORE getting established on the campus.  It will be interesting to see if John Maeda changes his online communication patterns and/or the online campus presence.

 

2011 Pennsylvania Music Educators Annual Conference

And now for something completely different…

On Friday, one of my undergraduate student researches and I co-presented at the 2011 Pennsylvania Music Educators Annual Conference.  Yes, you read that correctly – I am a geologist, and I presented at a music conference.  Talk about being a fish out of water!  But it was a fantastic experience, built out of a collaboration with fellow Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Fellow Ann Clements, a music educator at University Park.

Our collaboration is explained on our Teaching World Music with Geospatial Technology website.

We are a research team of four – myself, Ann, my undergraduate researcher Labanya Mookerjee, and Ann’s graduate student Teri Yerger.  We connected via phone, email, and through other forms of technology.  It wasn’t until we got to Magnolia Room D in the Hershey Convention Center that the four of us came together for the first time.  To me, this is one of the most fascinating parts of the project.  Absolutely, the resulting Google Earth files that teach elementary school students about music and culture are significant, but having the entire project collaboration take place electronically and not face-to-face is worthy to note.  As someone that works with undergraduate researchers, this is an important model for all mentors to keep in mind – that collaborations can be successful when conducted entirely online.

2011 TLT Symposium

It’s an event I rarely miss, the Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium, held every spring at Penn State University.  I’m always curious to hear what my faculty peers are up to across the university, and the keynote speaker each year never disappoints.

By the way, I embraced the hastag #tltsym11 and Tweeted (@guertin) during much of the conference (except during my own session).  It was a great way for me to take short notes that identify the powerful points and statements relevant to my interests.

This year’s keynote was presented by Clay Shirky, titled Congitive Surplus, Collaboration, and Social Learning.  The talk was fun and informative.  The content brought me back to my days as the civic and community engagement coordinator for the campus, as that’s what social media allows – we are now the creators of the content and the collaborators for disseminating information.  His talk led me to suggest to the honors students that we consider his book on Cognitive Surplus for our honors common read in the fall semester.  It will be interesting to see if the students want to learn about this subject in a deeper and structured manner.

The first session I went to was the one on The Pedagogy of Convenience Using Cloud Computing.  I’m already using Google Docs with my honors course this semester, and was already thinking of using it with my non-honors students in the future.  I’m surprised by how many students do not have Microsoft Office on their home computers, and I’m getting documents in all sorts of creative formats that I can’t open (note that although all the campus computers have MS Office, my campus is a commuter campus, so students will work at home and not on campus).  The presentation fortunately confirmed for me that students are comfortable working in the cloud and can be effective collaborators.  I also picked up a new phrase for me – “learning ecology.”  I need to research this more.

The next session I attended was The Unlearning of Science Education: The Story of SC200.  I had already heard about this course through ETS postings, and this course is exactly the type of course I’m interested in teaching, as I teach intro-level science to non-science majors.  I like how the instructor connected current science news stories and studies with blogging.  Although the point sticking in my head the most is that some students had a “fear” of posting, as they did not want to sound ridiculous, like they did not know what they were talking about, and that they feared that a future employer may find their posting through a Google search.  It goes back to something I struggle with – should we “force” students to publicly post in our courses, especially when a grade is attached?  More to think about.

The third session was the one I presented in, along with my TLT Fellow team Chris Millet and TK Lee, Enhancing Geographic and Digital Literacy with a Student-Generated Course Portfolio and “Amazing Race” in Google Earth.  Of course, I could spend the time in this space stating how brilliant we were(!), but to me, the best takeaways I had include: (1) co-presenting with my TLT Fellow team.  They are a great group of guys to work with, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to share our work as a group; and (2) the last-minute arranging of our session in Google Docs!  TK set up an outline in Google Docs, and the night before, Chris and I happened to be in the Doc at the same time, making edits and leaving comments for each other to firm up our outline.  I was in my hotel room – I have no idea where Chris was.  But for both of us to be online at the same time connecting and collaborating was effective and (unfortunately) something I don’t get to do very often with faculty colleagues.

Next up was the presentation by World Campus about an Online Club Impacting Student Sense of Community.  I was very interested in this session, as I’m always looking for ways to connect the students in the honors community at our commuter campus.  We need to find ways to use the web to more effectively foster these connections.  It was eye-opening to hear about the challenges of setting up an official online club at the university.  But it was clear the online club was important to the psychology majors for their identity, sense of community, and opportunity for professional development.  This session is definitely getting me to think about how I can bring more resources and opportunities to my campus students.

Then there was Cole’s session…. the best for last, right?  Cole Camplese moderated a panel titled Student and Faculty Expectations of Technology and Education.  In this standing-room only event, students and faculty commented on their uses of various technology and commented on questions the audience responded to with clickers.  There was also a Twitter backchannel with interesting comments.  However, I’m still shocked by one of the questions asked to the student panelists (actually, it is their lack of reaction that is what shocks me).  The students were asked to name their most significant learning experience at Penn State.  Silence.  Then the students were asked to name maybe not the most significant learning experience, but “a” significant learning experience.  More awkward silence.  Then someone from the audience shouted, “can you name any learning experiences?”  These were four well-spoken, mature and polished students, that had no problem talking during the panel discussion.  At Penn State, we provide experiences in and out of the classroom, with and without technology… it really disappoints me, as a faculty member, to see students not able to articulate an academic highlight of their student careers.  Yikes.  Maybe we need to go back to square one – maybe technology isn’t creating significant learning for the students, at least in their eyes. This is a point I want my students to begin thinking about and reflecting on – students should be able to and NEED to be able to identify a significant learning experience; otherwise, what good are all of my pedagogical and technological innovations doing?

GeoTalk and Better Posters

It seems that quite suddenly, via Twitter, some great resources were having attention drawn to them.  All too often, students (and faculty!) struggle with the best ways to disseminate information.  Here are two blogs, and more specifically two entries from these blogs, that caught my eye.

The Smart Posters entry on the Better Posters blog suggests placing QR codes on posters.  The QR codes can link to a video of you talking about your poster (in case you are not present at the time someone comes by), a supplemental website, your resume, and more.  Ever since I saw QR codes in the windows of the cafeterias at the Googleplex, I’ve been fascinated to learn of alternative uses (Google used them for people to scan and find out the menu for the next day).

My fellow geo-tweeters are calling attention to GeoTalk, a blog to help geoscientists become better communicators.  I still cannot stop laughing over their entry showcasing Bad Presentation BINGO.  I found the original source, and it is fun to take a look at.  I think this made myself and others stop and think how many squares would be marked off from even our classroom lectures!

And who says you can’t learn something valuable from Twitter?

Happy 5th Birthday, Twitter!

Hard to believe that Twitter is now?/only? five years old.  It’s amazing who has embraced this form of social media, from television stars and athletes, to zoos and national parks.  Even nonprofit organizations and the White House have their tweets!  Twitter has played a notable and significant role in connecting people after natural disasters (Haiti, Japan) and during political demonstrations (Egypt).

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But I’d like to share a short example of how I’ve seen students use Twitter.  The honors scholars at my campus just finished a two-week awareness campaign to help people learn about human trafficking and modern-day slavery.  One of the methods they used to “spread the word” was Twitter.  They came up with a logo and name for their campaign.  They followed organizations and individuals on Twitter that had similar concerns.  They tweeted during the two seminars we hosted on campus.  They retweeted information and postings from other organizations.
Did it work?  Was awareness raised?
The nice part about Twitter is that you don’t need a Twitter account to follow the conversation.  We had many students go to our site and read the information – nice, short, 140-character bites of information.  We even had someone from outside the university send us a message, asking us if we were having a human trafficking conference, as the information was so great.
Our two-week campaign is up, but students are still tweeting and getting engaged on campus.  Students now want to do a Twitter campaign for global water issues.  If 140 characters can get students engaged and excited to continue to learn more, then yes, Twitter works!  I sure hope it is around for another five years, at least.
You can visit our Twitter account at:  http://twitter.com/notproperty
Articles on Twitter’s 5th birthday:
Happy Birthday Dear Twitter!  Now You Are 5 Years Old! (link)
Dismissed as a joke, Twitter Revolutionized the Way We Communicate (link)

Why Social Media Can and Is Changing Education

Online blog post:  http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/1860

I came across this posting (retweeted by someone), and it is worth pausing and reflecting on the power of online media. Has education changed? You bet. How about professional development? Even more. For example, one of my undergraduate researchers just created a WebQuest titled Teachers & Tumblr: Assessing the Use of Tumblr as a PLN. If students can see the value and power of the internet beyond “just looking stuff up,” then so can we.

This TED talk is linked in the article I cite above – as all TED videos, definitely worth watching!  Here, Chris Anderson discusses How Web Video Powers Global Innovation.

TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls Crowd Accelerated Innovation — a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. But to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness. And for TED, it means the dawn of a whole new chapter …
 

In a nutshell, the article states that social media: (1) is free; (2) cuts down on isolation; (3) builds tolerance and understanding of cultural diversity; (4) amplifies passion; (5) the world of education is (and needs to be) more open.

I agree!

Once, twice, three times Skype in one day!

Friday, March 18, was a record day for me – with Skype, that is.

My morning began Skyping (is this even a word?) with Callan Bentley (@callanbentley) at North Virginia Community College (and allow me to put in a plug for his geoblog, Mountain Beltway).  Callan and I are putting together a session proposal for the Fall 2011 AGU conference in San Francisco in December.  We were originally thinking of doing something focusing on teaching and research issues for two-year colleges.  But we immediately got “distracted” with a discussion about uses of social media in geoscience education.  Twitter, Facebook, blogs… everyone is doing something, somewhere, with social media!  So be on the lookout for an AGU session on Uses of Social Media for Geoscience Education and Outreach.  This should be really exciting!

Next, I shifted to bringing Skype into my classroom (@SkypeClassroom) for the founder of Three Avocados (@nonprofitcoffee) to have a virtual chat with my EARTH 111U course, an honors course addressing Water: Science and Society.  Joe was kind enough to share how and why he founded a company that sells coffee to help support water sanitation efforts in Uganda.  Just like our last Skype session with @water, I was impressed with the impact a Skype session with an outside speaker can have on students.  And I want to emphasize the word “chat” – there were no prepared PowerPoints or speeches.  Both Joe and my students exchanged questions, responses, and comments.  We had a short time after the session for classroom discussion, and I look forward to reading the reflections my students write about the chat.

In the evening, I used Skype to talk to a former student from my campus.  Crystal graduated from Penn State Brandywine a couple of years ago and is now teaching English as a First Language in Japan.  After the massive 7.2 and 9.0 earthquakes hit, I saw Crystal in gmail and chatted with her to see if she was OK.  Fortunately, she is!  Then I asked if there was anything that I could do from my end to help her, and she said she could use some dinosaur facts to share with the kids she teaches (elementary school).  Well, it just so happens that I’m teaching EARTH 150 – Dinosaur Extinctions and Other Controversies, this semester!  I offered to have each of my students write letters to her students about dinosaurs, and we decided to Skype to work out the details of the project.  Skyping (again, a word?) made our project planning advance so much quicker than if we had tried to arrange this all via email.  I can’t wait to get my students started on writing letters to these Japanese children, not only to share their knowledge of dinosaurs, but to help the students focus on something else besides earthquakes/tsunami/nuclear reactors, if even only for a moment.

Using Skype to connect to Virginia, Missouri, and Japan, to collaborate with a geoscience colleague, non-profit organization, and a campus alum – what a day!

 

Japan Earthquake – March 11, 2011

It’s amazing how technology can bring us the news, the images, and the video from a devastating natural disaster.  The magnitude 8.9 earthquake near the east coast of Honshu, Japan, is no different.  I first learned about the earthquake through Twitter, through a flurry of posts from @geosociety, @EnnNews, @nytenvironment (no longer active), and @callanbentley, just to name a few.  Stunning imagery came through on posts by @earthoutreach, such as links to pre/post Japan on the Google Lat Long blog.  Even more impressive and interactive are the GeoEye satellite photos on the New York Times website (and a new set from NYT has been posted).

There were “reports” AND educational material posted online instantly.  IRIS always pulls together an outstanding set of Recent Earthquake Teachable Moments, complete with PowerPoint and videos.  And for those interested in showing students the power of social media in disseminating disaster information, ESRI has a created a map to show the public the worst-hit areas and to facilitate recovery planning.

The number of resources available immediately is overwhelming – and I haven’t even begun to touch on the outstanding materials available on the tsunami from NOAA.  Talk about a teachable moment!  There’s no reason an instructor should NOT incorporate current events into a geoscience/Earth science course.

(…and this earthquake has several geo-bloggers putting our discipline in perspective!  Check out this excellent post by Geotripper on Why Geology is Important, Why Education is Important: The Sendai Earthquake in Perspective)

 

 

Skype with Water.org

Friday, February 11, 2011 – the day I brought Skype into my classroom!  I’m teaching an honors course this semester, EARTH 111U – Water: Science and Society.  It is a general education course designed for non-science majors.  One of my goals in the course is to introduce students to individuals and organizations that are working to address domestic and global water issues.  A quick internet search brought me to Water.org, a nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.  I sent an email message through their website, proposing that someone from the organization Skype with my students about the work of Water.org, as they are located in Missouri and we are in Pennsylvania.  I quickly received a reply from Erin.  Erin and I did a quick Skype test between our computers, and a few days later, Erin was “virtually” in front of my students.

As a geologist, it is difficult for me not to share with you the amazing approach and success of Water.org – I’ll hold back on that for now.  What was just as amazing that day Erin appeared projected on a screen in front of the classroom was the impact on the students.  These are college-aged (with one adult) honors students – is there any technology left that could possibly impress them?  My students’ eyes were glued to the screen the entire time, except when they looked down to furiously take notes.  Erin did little “presenting” – we arranged the session to be more Q&A, and the students did not disappoint with quality questions that kept Erin enthusiastic and excited (we even went over the time we scheduled to connect).

Sure, not everything was perfect for that 40 minutes we were online.  Erin froze on the screen for a few seconds a couple of times, so we missed a few words.  I couldn’t get the lighting in the room to the exact level where she could see us the best.  And some of the students had to get out of their seats to go over to the computer (my MacBook Air) in the front of the room to ask their questions, so the microphone built into the computer could pick up their voice.  But are these tragedies?  Did this at all take away from the content or energy level of the connection?  Certainly not.

Erin’s last message to the group was to think of creative ways to become involved with Water.org and to share their work and message.  As soon as I disconnected the Skype session with Erin, the students immediately began suggesting ideas.  Why not create an educational lesson plan about the work of Water.org?  Why not create a Google Earth file that marks all the locations Water.org is doing their work?  I can’t wait to see what direction we go as a class in the future – thanks to Erin and Skype!

Absent Students Want to Attend Traditional Classes via Webcam

Something I’m still thinking about… not that I want my students to start ‘beaming’ in via a webcam to my classes, but I will be using Skype this week in the classroom for the first time.  I have a guest speaker from water.org that will speak to my EARTH 111U class (Water: Science and Society).  I think this is the way to connect students with professionals from across the globe, especially when we don’t have the resources to get them face-to-face on campus.

The Chronicle of Higher Education article from January 30, 2011 (LINK)

 

Ask Obama

Although this isn’t something being used in the classroom, I really like seeing different ways technology can be used for a community purpose and to allow the community to have a voice.

Last evening, President Obama gave his State of the Union Address.  Today, I learned that anyone can visit YouTube and ask President Obama a question: http://www.youtube.com/worldview

I’m noticing people uploading questions via text, via video, and voting on their favorite questions they want to see the President answer.  And I’m seeing some quality questions.  I like this use of technology for engagement.

I’m thinking this format could also be used at a university.  Why not have students post questions for their university president, and then the president could answer in a live session?  I’m also thinking about the challenges I have getting guest speakers to campus from a distance.  Why not have students read about the work of the speaker, generate a list of questions, and then have a Skype session where the speaker can answer the questions as part of a online lecture?

Something to think about…. what could I ask?  Who could I ask?  Technology as an engagement tool – I like it!

Did Al Gore invent Google Earth?

OK, so we know Al Gore did not invent the internet, but did he invent Google Earth?

Vice President Al Gore gave a speech at The Fifth International Symposium on Digital Earth.  On January 31, 1998, the Vice President made the following remarks:

“I believe we need a “Digital Earth”. A multi-resolution, 3-D representation of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data.”

“Imagine, for example, a young child going to a Digital Earth exhibit at a local museum. After donning a head-mounted display, she sees Earth as it appears from space. Using a data glove, she zooms in, using higher and higher levels of resolution, to see continents, then regions, countries, cities, and finally individual houses, trees, and other natural and man-made objects. Having found an area of the planet she is interested in exploring, she takes the equivalent of a “magic carpet ride” through a 3-D visualization of the terrain. Of course, terrain is only one of the many kinds of data with which she can interact. Using the systems’ voice recognition capabilities, she is able to request information on land cover, distribution of plant and animal species, real-time weather, roads, political boundaries, and population. She can also visualize the environmental information that she and other students all over the world have collected as part of the GLOBE project. This information can be seamlessly fused with the digital map or terrain data. She can get more information on many of the objects she sees by using her data glove to click on a hyperlink. To prepare for her family’s vacation to Yellowstone National Park, for example, she plans the perfect hike to the geysers, bison, and bighorn sheep that she has just read about. In fact, she can follow the trail visually from start to finish before she ever leaves the museum in her hometown.”

Sound familiar?  (OK, except the head-mounted display….)

Keep in mind Keyhole, Inc. (the software company that specialized on geospatial visualization) was founded in 2001.  Google acquired Keyhole, Inc., in 2004 and renamed their EarthViewer to Google Earth in 2005.

Things that make you go hmmmm…..

You can read the entire speech at:  http://www.isde5.org/al_gore_speech.htm

Technology in the classroom is not a new idea…

I have enjoyed the discussions on “new” technology, and then the reflections back to what was done in the past (and how our ideas aren’t so new sometimes). Take Google Street View – it only came online a few years ago, but Rand McNally published a book of Photo-Auto Maps in 1907, with arrows hand drawn on the images. Yes, Street View was first invented in 1907!

The following video is a fun look at how teachers were instructed to use “new” technology (back in the day…)

Why Geography Matters

I’m at the Geological Society of America’s Penrose conference for Google Earth this week, so I’ll have many posts in a short period of time relating to Google Earth (that’s not a bad thing, right?).

I’ve watched this video before, but since one of the Google Geo team members just showed this to the group, I thought it would be appropriate to include the video here, as it connects back to my teaching objective of increasing student geographic literacy. So take a look at Geography Matters, and the Why Geography Matters!

The Greenbelt Movement in Google Earth

The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai is one of my heroes.  She has numerous accomplishments, including founding The Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on planting trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights in Kenya and beyond.

So I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see that Wangari Maathai has brought The Green Belt Movement into Google Earth.  Check out the Climate Change in Google Earth page that showcases video tours of various Earth ecosystems, including the forests of Kenya.

View “Taking Root The Vision of Wangari Maathai” from YouTube

How to Create a Game

A recent Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology post on How to create a game for your Penn State course (hint: it’s not as hard as you think) reminds me of the fun I’ve had working on a game with the guys in the Educational Gaming Commons on a game we’ve created as part of my TLT Faculty Fellow Project.  (OK, full disclosure – all credit goes to TK Lee and Jason Wolfe for the discovery and code altering)

TK found this Google Earth API Example called Geo Whiz.  This game allows the user to move around in a Google Earth interface to navigate to a list of 15 geographic destinations.  The user has a “square” he/she must move over the global location, but only has a certain amount of time to do so.  The user scores points for successfully navigating the square over the correct location.

But here’s the modifications we are implementing – adding the Google Earth navigation compass, country boundaries, listing locations of my choosing, and adding a tracking feature that records where students are moving the square to as they try to navigate to the location.

And we have a new name!  We call it Penn State’s Amazing Race!

Why the changes?  The new improvements allow me to see where the students think a particular city/country is located, how long it takes them to find the location (if they do), and I can customize the list of locations that match to locations I am covering in my course.  Since improving student geographic literacy is one of my course goals, I can use this game as a pre- and post-survey in my course to assess where students stand with basic geographic locational knowledge coming into and leaving my course.

Games can add to a course – need to think about how to add more games….

To learn more about the Penn State Amazing Race, check out the following paper:

Lee, T.K., Guertin, L.A. (2012). Building an educational game with the Google Earth Application Program Interface to enhance geographic literacy. In: S. Whitmeyer, J. Bailey, D. De Paor, T. Ornduff (Eds.), Geological Society of America Special Paper 492: Google Earth, Virtual Globes, and Virtual Visualizations: Modern Approaches to Geoscience Inquiry and Research. Colorado: Geological Society of America, 395-402. (abstract)

ISTE SIGML comments on NYT article

I’m a member of ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education).  Their SIGML (Mobile Learning Special Interest Group) recently sent out this message in response to a recent article in the New York Times titled “Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction.”  This is not the first or last time we’ll see this discussion in the media….

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Front page of the New York Times – above the fold, smack dab in the center of the paper, an article proclaims: Technology is a distraction for students; the constant interaction with technology – facilitated by mobile technologies, of course – is addictive and the young people do not have the self-control to manage their “technology habit.”  http://tinyurl.com/28kcs5z

 

A Latin teacher calls technology a “catastrophe” since his advanced Latin class has become under-subscribed. Memo to that Latin teacher: stop blaming the technology; and starting blaming your unchanging teaching style that in effect, disses the kids: by insisting on using the (same) old way of teaching you are telling the kids that their new way of learning is bad, is wrong – but the kids know that their way of learning isn’t bad, isn’t wrong. Upshot: kids ignore the Latin teacher.

The scurrilous nature of the NYT’s attack – the article quoted only experts who were negative about  technology use, deleterious references poured out, fire hose style, while the positive impacts of the technology on the students’ lives were doled out with a nano-sized eye-dropper – reminded me of the old attacks on that other perverter of our children, killer marijuana. 

The tone of the NYT’s article was one of blame – our young people aren’t focusing on their studies; bad children! Excuse me, but the blame is on the adults for not stepping up to their responsibility of educating the children in how to be better time managers. And by adults I don’t mean just the classroom teachers – we ALL need to be involved in educating our children… it takes a village.. at least.

Memo to the NYT’s journalist: there is no going back to pencil and paper; mobile technologies are here to stay. We adults, we educators need to step up to the plate and help our children become responsible technology users. But, sadly, such a logical and obvious suggestion wouldn’t warrant a front page spread in the New York Times.

 

Thank you for your time,

Elliot Soloway, soloway at umich.edu

ISTE SIGML  Chair & Grand PoohBAH

#edchat

Earlier this year, one of my undergraduate researchers came across a community within the twitter-sphere – a group of K-12 teachers that come together in twitter for weekly discussions on educational topics.  Yes, that’s right, they come together in twitter.  A vote is held each week to select the topic for discussion, and twice on Tuesdays teachers log in and use the hashtag #edchat to follow the conversation.  To learn more about #edchat, check out What is #edchat? and Join the Conversation.

If you would like to connect with a different group in twitter, perhaps one of the following more closely aligns with your interests:  #scichat, #mathchat

Image of the day

There are a few websites out there that have a really nice collection of “Images of the Day” appropriate for Earth Science courses.  I like to use these images when I begin a class (without showing students the caption – seeing what they can come up with on their own), or have the image and corresponding story be the focus of an online discussion posting.  I think there is so much more captured in images that I have yet to tap into.  Check out these sites for yourself!

Earth Science Picture of the Day – http://epod.usra.edu/

NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day – http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/

National Geographic Photo of the Day – http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day

Library of Congress images and copyright

One of my undergraduate researchers just emailed me, asking if she can use images from the Library of Congress website for a project.  First, I’m thrilled that my students are aware that the “best practice” is to use images in the public domain, images with no copyright.  I asked her to send me the links to the pages where she was considering using the images, and while waiting for her reply, I decided to start searching through the LOC website to see what they say about copyright.  I found some interesting information.

The Library of Congress has a page on Copyright and Primary Sources:  http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/copyright.html

The LOC also has links to additional, helpful websites.

And I also recommended to the student that she check out The Library of Congress’ photostream in flickr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

Copyright issues of multimedia projects

I just came across an interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, titled Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects (November 17, 2010).  The full study is detailed and provides nice examples for the English classroom that easily translates to other disciplines.

McGrail, E, & McGrail, J. P. (2010). Copying right and copying wrong with web 2.0 tools in the teacher education and communications classrooms. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(3). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol10/iss3/languagearts/article1.cfm

 

Children’s Music Play and Video Game Technology

For 2010-2011, I was selected as one of four Penn State faculty members for the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Fellowship program.  This experience in having my own 3-member “design team” work with me on develop new and innovative ways to use geospatial programs such as Google Earth in my courses.

But I must mention one of additional bonuses of being a TLT Fellow – getting to know the other faculty fellows and learning about their projects.  One of the fascinating projects I’ve been following this summer and fall semester is Ann Clement’s project on Musical Play: Sing, Dance, Play, Create!  She is investigating the sociocultural and music impact of music-based video games on children.  It is interesting to think about how the Wii and Guitar Hero may be impacting kids.

I encourage you to visit her project website to learn more about her work!  http://blogs.tlt.psu.edu/fellows/ann-clements/