Google Forms

Two responses to my query on Twitter about getting feedback from students. Moodle has some kind of feedback module, apparently, but I don't know if we have it. I had not seen it when I went poking around earlier, and my e-mail to the Moodle administrator was not answered. So I went with Google Forms.

And it is great.

I made up my questionnaire and e-mailed the link to all my frosh. I wanted to know about certain aspects of a project that I had done in a new way recently. The responses have already started, so I know some of my students check e-mail on the weekend!

There's a spreadsheet that shows all of the responses together, and a summary page that has bar graphs and percentages.

I think I need to transfer the course evaluation to this format.

Backchannel

I didn't even know the word "backchannel" a year ago.

Last year during the presentations in Catholic Theology I had the students who were listening take notes. I was trying to encourage paying attention while their classmates presented, but at times it seemed that students were more focused on writing than active listening. They were almost transcribing, and copying down PowerPoint slides that were too wordy (despite my guidelines).

So, a bold experiment (for me). First, following Germaine's idea, no text on the slides. Just graphics, and the titles of their subtopics. And, I had the class on a chat website during the first presentation day. Write at least one comment, or ask a question, I said.

Some of the comments were simple affirmations ("I really like the slides" or "that story was AMAZING"), and while I had hoped for something a bit more substantial relating to content, I think the speakers probably appreciated those when they got a look. But there were some other comments that were closer to what I was looking for, and there were some good questions. It's possible that some of the good stuff came from a couple of students who are not usually very vocal in class. It also helped spark some of the conversation after the presentation.

I asked for reactions. They seemed to like the idea better than note-taking, anyway. One student said that it helped her to focus on what was being said. That is perhaps counter-intuitive. I used to think that the idea of a sort of conversation going on while someone was speaking was a bit... rude. So it was a bit of a leap to try it. I think we'll continue the experiment for the rest of the presentations.

Angels on Moodle

Okay, have a couple of links to articles on angels posted to Moodle, that expand a little on what we discussed. And, started a forum: one question about angels and another about "church," the topic of the chapter we are on. I'm not assigning it for now. I want to see if students will make use of it anyway, just because they want to share opinions. I don't expect that, really, based on past experience, but they looked interested when I introduced it.

Too bad we're doing a hardware upgrade this weekend and the site is inaccessible until at least this afternoon.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yesterday in a freshman theology class, someone brought up the story of the angel Gabriel and the announcement to Mary about Jesus, and then, based on whatever I said in response to the question, there were yet more questions, about angels. A teachable moment, right? A topic in which they are genuinely interested.

When all was said and done,I had a sense that some were not satisfied. The thing is, I don't know everything there is to know about angels. And the information I supplied them with just left a couple of kids wanting more. I am pretty certain. But we moved on.

Here's the thing. Every student had in front of her a laptop connected to the collective consciousness of the world (you know, the Internet. I'll dispense with my Borg analogy for now). You get the point. Information at their fingertips. I am not the repository of all knowledge. So why did I feel I was the only one who could answer their questions? Why did we ignore those machines sitting on their desks?

There are issues that raises, like whether freshmen can find good information on the web. Oh, right, if they don't learn that here, where will they learn it?

So, I'm just brainstorming here. Provide some links to good websites? Talk about filtering all that info on the web on day 1 of the class? Every student getting the Diigo toolbar on day 1 so that they can share what they find of the things they are interested in?

Yesterday was a teachable moment. But not as much for the students as for me.

Moodle madness

Oh, what a tangled web we weave... when we try to do everything on Moodle. Moodle is good, don't get me wrong; I use it extensively. But I have an assignment where each student records a podcast, and two other students listen and evaluate according to a rubric, as well as do some summarizing. The original assignment gets points, and the listening gets points. I had the girls submit their evaluations on Moodle. Some are Word documents, some PDF's because they could not open the Word version. Now I can't get some to open for me, AND, I can't figure out a good way to get each student's evaluations (submitted through two other students) back to her.

I believe I will have to give up "paperless" for this one.

Passionate about teaching

According to blog posts I've been reading lately, I as a teacher am supposed to be pursuing my passion through social networking. Fishing, or birdwatching, or basketball, or whatever. I know at least one teacher who does that.

But I'm already investing hours into reading tweets about ed tech, and chatting online about ed tech, and bookmarking, sometimes skimming, blog posts about ed tech, and planning lessons that integrate ed tech. Then there's my daily life, and once in a while I squeeze in some minutes to read a novel.

That's it, I think! Only so many hours in a day. I think we're going to have to call ed tech my passion for the moment.

Teaching tech?

Alison wandered into my office the other day to ask, "When you did that podcasting assignment with your classes, did you ever get to a point where you felt like you were banging your head against a wall?"

She has a way with words. And she spent more class time than I did explaining what to do. I just gave them videos and instructions on Moodle and sent them to the tech guys. But there were plenty of problems. The answer was yes.

At points I feel like I am a tech teacher and not a religion teacher. If the content is taking a backseat, something is wrong. The tech part should be seamless, some of my Twitter colleagues have said. I don't teach the tech, a colleague says. They teach each other.

It has also been said that the kids are all tech savvy, and that is just not true. Some are, to a point. Some of them don't know any more than I do, and some know less about certain things. So how much class time is it reasonable to give up?

I don't have to teach my students how to type, or how to construct a decent sentence in order to have them write a paper. Do I need to be the one to teach them how to download Audacity and LAME? (Assuming I have figured it out for myself?)

Just wondering.