Because of a couple of my past posts, people often find my blog when they’re looking for information on teaching with the iPad. So I thought I might give an update on the technology tools I’m using in my teaching and personal productivity this semester on various platforms. I’ve mentioned some of these before, but it’s interesting to track which ones have infiltrated my workflow permanently and which have failed to prove their utility (for my purposes, at least).

Yahoo! Pipes configuration...not as hard as it looks.

In the Classroom

• Attendance iPad app. I used its photo-management feature to take photos of all my students on the first day of classes this semester. A great tool for learning names more quickly (always a huge struggle for me) and for tracking attendance accurately. Though its interface is plain – taking roll isn’t sexy – it’s a valuable app.
• Alas, I don’t really do classroom presentations on the iPad. I thought I’d end up using Keynote from the iPad in the classroom, in lieu of toting my laptop to class. Nope. I ran into initial compatibility problems with an old version of Keynote on my laptop, and then realized that my photo- and video-heavy slideshows are difficult to create on the iPad anyway. So I’m still just using my MacBook Pro in class for Keynote.
• However, beyond Keynote: The iPad now projects whatever you show on the screen through the VGA adapter. Hooray! I’ve now been able to demonstrate digital magazines and books to students using the iPad in class.
• Evernote. I create class notes or guest lecture outlines on my laptop in Evernote, then access them on the iPad when needed. Incredibly handy and paper-saving.
• Caffeine (Mac only). A simple plugin that prevents your screen from dimming or turning off during presentations and video viewing. So useful.
• I learned how to use Yahoo! Pipes this semester to aggregate my students’ blog posts and pull them into our class website (a WordPress.org installation on my own domain) as one feed. It was much easier to do than I thought it would be.
• AP Stylebook. I subscribed to the digital/app version so I never have to take the book to class, and I never leave it in the office over the weekend when I need it for grading at home. That happened far too often, and it’s been worth it (yes, worth $24!) to not have to worry about this problem.

Some of the comments stored in my "Commonly Used" list in GradeMark.

Grading and Feedback

• I use two apps for simple grading calculations because I am lazy. The iPad app is called GroovyGrader, and it’s free (with ads). The iPhone app is called EasyGrader and costs 99 cents. (Both work on either device. I like GroovyGrader on the iPad because I don’t have to scroll to see the full list of possible grades.) When you just want to know the grade out of 100 points when a student misses 5 questions on a 40-question exam, and you don’t want to do the math every time or create an Excel spreadsheet…this is your app.
• I used the GradeMark feature of Turnitin in Blackboard for the first time this semester. I have concerns about Turnitin as a company due to its use of its student paper database for a new service that students can purchase prior to turning in their work that alerts them to possible plagiarism. I found GradeMark so easy to use, though (darn it), that I’ve decided to continue to use it this year and then explore other options. The GradeMark system allows the instructor to see Turnitin’s originality report information and also attach comments (both unique to that student or pre-prepared from a customizable database) for a student’s paper. The standard comments come with explanations of writing concepts (e.g., students can immediately be reminded of what a comma splice is when they view that comment). The comments are saved online for the student to access. The grade attached to the paper is automatically posted in Blackboard’s gradebook. The instructor can even see whether a student has viewed the feedback provided. You can download the papers in one zipped file so you always have a backup and a record of what students received from you. In all, I have to admit it’s a pretty cool system.
• What did not work for me: a couple of years ago, I tried using a Wacom Bamboo tablet (a nice little device that I still use when I weary of a mouse or trackpad) to mark up student papers in Adobe Acrobat. This was a hugely time-consuming process that required me to first create PDFs of student papers, attempt to scribble neatly on them with the tablet, and then email the copy with feedback back to students. Ugh. Never again.

Communicating with Students and Colleagues

• I am a Twitter aficionado and use TweetDeck on my MacBook and the official Twitter apps for iPad and iPhone. TweetDeck lets me easily track all the tweets from my current students on their class lists and all the activity around their class hashtags.
• I have used Jing a number of times this semester and in previous years to create screencast tutorials for various online activities students need to complete (such as creating a blog on WordPress.com). These tutorials save me untold hours of demonstrating in person and writing directions in emails. I also have used Jing for providing feedback to students on online work that is difficult to comment upon otherwise. I can narrate what I see in their work (e.g., a blog post), point at and highlight things with the mouse cursor, type into their documents, and then send them a secure link to the online video, which is quickly uploaded to Screencast.com through the Jing software. One caution: my students watched the screencasts so many times this semester that I had to upgrade my Screencast.com account to a pro account ($9.99/month) to ensure that the necessary bandwidth was available. That was a bummer, and I’ll be re-evaluating my use of Jing+Screencast.com for tutorials. For individual feedback, though, I think this is a great combination. Students responded positively to it as well.

Unsubscribe.com button for Mail plugin. Note my brief, sweet Inbox Zero.

Productivity

• I learned about Unsubscribe.com this fall, and have been using it to aggressively reduce the amount of automated email I receive. I use Apple Mail and have installed the Unsubscribe plugin. When I receive automated mail I no longer want, I just select the message and click the Unsubscribe button in my toolbar. The service then automagically unsubscribes me. It’s pretty awesome. There are plugins available for other email apps as well. (Incidentally, I think I’m also saving money by not getting so many shopping-related emails!)
• Although many to-do lists are available out there, I’ve stuck with Toodledo. It’s simple, has a clean web interface, works with my iPhone and iPad, and is reliable.
• Google Calendar is wonderful and allows me to have not only my personal calendar, but also calendars for my individual classes that can be embedded on my class websites (like this). It’s helpful for me to see all my upcoming events and deadlines – and theirs – in one place.
• Dropbox and SugarSync are cloud storage services that I appreciate very much. Dropbox works with many iPad/iPhone apps, making it a central point for storing file I might need to access elsewhere. SugarSync is similar, but is configured to automatically back up key folders on my laptop ($59/year, but the peace of mind is worth it). I can also access anything in those key folders anywhere I have Internet access, which has been helpful on a couple of occasions.
• TextExpander. My students may suspect this by now, but every time they get an email from me that ends with “Please let me know if you have more questions,” I’ve actually only typed “ppl” – and TextExpander has done the rest. I have used this tool for numerous grading and writing purposes over the time I’ve had it installed. (All those Texas Monthlys in my dissertation, with their annoying italics? I typed only “TM” every time.) The software reports that it has saved me over 30 hours of typing during our wonderful time together.
• FocusBooster is a great Pomodoro Technique app that – when the going (read: grading) gets tough – allows me to work for 20 minutes, then knit take a 5-minute break (or whatever intervals I need). When you just can’t bring yourself to work, sometimes settling into just 20 minutes of work (at first) seems much more doable.

Reading and Writing

• I use Reeder for reading RSS feeds on the iPad (after trying many other RSS readers for the iPad). I use Google Reader pretty much solely as a subscription manager at this point, and just sync my account with Reeder for more comfortable reading away from the computer on the iPad or iPhone.
• I use Readability to reformat websites for easier reading, and I use Instapaper (on the iPad and soon on a new Kindle) to save long stories to read later. Interesting stuff gets saved to my Pinboard account for later reference. (Pinboard also automatically saves any tweet I send that includes a link, so I never have to wonder, “What was that article I tweeted the other day?”) Pinboard is worth every penny of the $9-something lifetime membership fee I spent on it. Readability, Instapaper, and Pinboard all work via bookmarklets in my browser. Instapaper and Reeder both work with Twitter and Pinboard, too.
• I enjoy using Outliner on the iPad to develop writing projects. Though it does much the same things as Inspiration, which I have used on the MacBook for a long time, I find it fun and thought-provoking to literally move my ideas around on the screen.

Multimedia

• I have taken up photography as a hobby and have been enjoying using Snapseed and TiltShift Generator to edit photos and upload them to my Flickr account. I also have a lot of fun using FlickStackr to look through photos in Explore on Flickr, which is inspiring and educational for a new photographer! Guardian Eyewitness is also a great iPad app that highlights an amazing work of photojournalism every day. I have more apps I could include in this category, but they’re not strictly teaching-related tools, so…

If you like these kinds of tools and want to keep learning more, I highly recommend that you regularly read the ProfHacker blog and follow it on Twitter as well. Many of these ideas came from ProfHacker initially. I also learned of others from the fabulous folks I follow on Twitter. The community of technology-minded academics there has been an amazing resource for me.

Do you have other technology tools that have made your teaching life easier or more enjoyable? Please share in the comments!

When I was a senior at Trinity University, I took both the Magazine Writing and Magazine Production classes offered in the Department of Communication, even though I was an English major. I still have copies of my production class’s magazine, of which I was the editor.

Those two classes, taught by Sammye Johnson, had a major impact on the path of my education and my later career choices. While I was in grad school, I was fortunate to return to Trinity as a part-time instructor and to teach the production class myself. It was a great challenge, but was also lots of fun.

I was impressed and excited to learn, in the process of writing my latest MediaShift story, that some magazine classes are no longer producing print magazines, but instead have gone all-digital. Though I’m a little sad that the students won’t experience the anticipation and thrill of receiving their freshly printed magazines at the end of the semester, the new directions of these innovative courses are well-suited to today’s changing industry.

Read the full story here!

Photos and Photoshopping by me, with guest appearances from the When Words Collide textbook, the AP Stylebook for iPhone, Backpacker’s iPad edition via Zinio…and even a few print magazines, including Afar, Wired, Portland Monthly, and New Scientist.

Useful Links

• 20 Common Mistakes Made by New Bloggers
• Creating a good About page
• Maintaining blogging momentum
• Lots of details on legal issues for media producers
• 40 Lessons Learned Over Five Years of Blogging
• How to verify links before you re-post them
• How bloggers make money with blogs
• 10-point posting checklist
• Creative Commons-licensed photos at Flickr

Here’s the Prezi I’m going to use in my talk with them, and after the jump, a long list of resources and examples of what I’m discussing. If you have suggestions for other links I should add to this page, please let me know in the comments.

Here are some links to resources and examples to illustrate this presentation.

Storytelling

Examples

• Long-form text stories: choose your favorite topic and study the stories (reverse-engineer them!) What makes them work?
• Using Facebook to tell a story
• “He took a Polaroid every day, until the day he died”: Photos and a few words tell a story
• This American Life tells the story of the housing crash (and it’s not boring)
• Ira Glass of This American Life offers his thoughts on storytelling
• Stories of one place
• A story with a message, but without words (note the title)
• Storytelling with a narrated slideshow
• Six storytelling projects at one link

How-To

• A quick, quality overview
• How good a storyteller are you?
• Storytelling for the web
• Telling a story on Twitter: can it be done?
• A textbook, but a good one that’s cheap if you buy it used

Curation

Examples

• A tool: Storify
• National Journal uses Storify to track discussion of the potential government shutdown
• “Is This the World’s Best Twitter Account?”: Andy Carvin of NPR provides amazing curation of news from the Middle East uprisings
• Mother Jones Libya explainer
• What one newsroom did when faced with a weather emergency: audience content and mobile reporting combined

How-To

• Using Storify and similar curation tools successfully
• Content curator job description
• Twitter tips for college newsrooms
• Accuracy and accountability matter, even (especially?) in social media: a checklist
• Evaluating links before you pass them on

Data Interpretation

Examples

• Another Collegian offers access to a salary database
• The LA Times Data Desk
• New York Times: Mapping America
• Interactive timeline of Middle East protests from The Guardian
• Google Public Data Explorer explanation and unemployment example
• xkcd Radiation Dose Chart
• 50 “most stunning” infographics and visualizations
• The Daily Telegraph puts the audience to work to analyze data

How-To

• Using Many Eyes to build your own interactive graphics
• 10 useful resources about data visualization
• Making effective timelines for journalism
• Types of visualizations and things to think about
• Why journalists should learn to love data
• “Tools to help bring data to your journalism”

Other Interesting Stuff

• Commodity news, commodity pictures, commodity journalism: how can you break the mold?
• Checklist for multimedia accuracy: no matter what tools you use, the fundamental value of accuracy never changes!
• The Washington Post’s StoryLab: where stories are crowdsourced and discussed with the audience
• Thinking deeply about the purpose of links in your online stories
• You need the mobile journalism mindset, as well as the tools for reporting
• Doing radio reporting with nothing but an iPhone 4
• The iPad 2 for journalists
• Getting audio reports online quickly, from Al Jazeera’s work in Egypt
• Newsgames blog and information site and related site Play the News
• Newsrooms resist gaming: includes a couple of examples of games
• The concept of “gamification:” how will you apply it to news?

Photo by user Kuha455405 on Wikimedia Commons.

Moreover, if you’ve taught news and media literacy, or even just had conversations about news with adults, you’ve probably heard people say that one reason they don’t watch news is because of all of the depressing, sad stuff they see. After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, writer Steve Silberman posted on Twitter, “Since 9/11 or so we’ve all been watching videos that look like the world is ending. I’m getting PVSD or something.”

Perhaps a goal for media literacy instructors might be to help people deal with coverage of these tragic events so that they can stay up-to-date, but don’t develop “PVSD” by doing so.

Silberman’s term PVSD brings to mind PTSD, of course, though media viewers are obviously not frontline victims of the trauma. Yet are media viewers also at risk for psychological harm when they see hours upon hours of crisis coverage? Even though they lack direct contact with those suffering the effects of disaster and war, and do not necessarily experience personal loss or injury, the immediacy of and immersion in the tragedy that are offered by 24/7 news coverage could have a lesser but important effect on audiences.

Photo by Thomas Ahern on Wikimedia Commons.

• Viewing a tragedy live on television appears to strengthen the relationship between media exposure and symptoms of PTSD.
• Some images of tragedy seem more distressing than others. For example, among direct victims of the September 11 attacks, those who frequently viewed images of people falling or jumping from the WTC reported more symptoms of PTSD and depression. It is unclear however, how long this effect lasts.
• Given the sparse research literature, it is difficult to make generalizations. Furthermore, it is unknown if people who are more distressed choose to consume more disaster-related news, or if news of the disaster causes distress, or if there is some other causal mechanism. It is important to note that media coverage may serve as a traumatic reminder to those affected by the event.

So the research is inconclusive so far, but there may be a relationship between viewing media coverage of tragedy and ongoing distress from PTSD- or depression-like symptoms. Additionally, simply avoiding the coverage may not be an option, especially for media and journalism students who are often required to keep up with the news for their classes.

Strategies generally suggested for “self-care” of PTSD might be good ones to recommend to students and other adults finding coverage of tragedy difficult to take. The VA offers some standard suggestions for PTSD sufferers that could be useful in this situation (selected and adapted from this guide for those who have been directly involved in disasters):

• Remind yourself that stress reactions after disaster are common.
• Spend time with or help others. Disasters are unique types of trauma in that most often many people have been affected. Being with family, friends, neighbors, or others may help you realize that you are not the only one affected…Providing support or rebuilding lifts your mood and makes you feel less alone.
• If you are grieving, find a way to honor the losses…Try writing about your loss or creating a ritual, ceremony, or service to express your grief.
• Take a time out if you’re feeling angry. The stress that comes along with disasters can create irritability and anger. This can affect your health, sense of self-control, and relationships.

To this list, I’d add the following suggestions, thinking particularly of my college students:

• Choose your conversation partners carefully. Yes, it’s good to discuss the things you’ve seen in the news with someone else, as the above guidelines recommend. But this is not the time to talk to friends who relish magnifying the drama of every life event, and who will probably not help you keep the current events in perspective. Find your grounded, even-tempered friends to keep you company and discuss these difficult topics.
• Don’t watch or read about the difficult topic too soon before bedtime. Not to sound juvenile, but the effects on your sleep and dream life can be very real. Experiencing events similar to the tragedy even in your dreams can make them feel more real and personal, especially if people from your real life are brought into dream-world situations like those happening in the news.
• Avoid social media discussion of a topic if you are having difficulty coping with it. On one hand, you can get some good information, and social media do let you share your feelings with others. On the other hand, the constant flow of (often unconfirmed) new developments may be overwhelming, and the inability to pre-screen the links on which you’re clicking may lead you to see things you aren’t emotionally prepared to see. Gathering information on the topic in a more deliberate way, using primarily media that have been produced with some time lag for verification, can ensure you stay up-to-date, but don’t have to ride an emotional roller coaster with every new tweet or Facebook status update.

We know that coverage of disaster and war won’t go away anytime soon, and perhaps it will become more graphic in various ways. If we want young people to be able to keep up with the news and deal with its potential consequences for their psychological well-being, it might be helpful to offer them some specific things they can do when faced with wall-to-wall coverage of potentially traumatic events.

Fascinatingly, it seems that surviving trauma, though it’s certainly not a good thing, may for some people result not in PTSD, but in what some researchers (New York Times link; more here) call post-traumatic growth:

P.T.G. research suggests that an encounter with severe trauma can actually lead to highly positive changes in individuals.

It can also increase their resiliency to subsequent adversity. Today, some researchers say that posttraumatic growth is far more common than long-term posttraumatic stress disorder. The norm is to adapt and grow following trauma.

By teaching coping skills for dealing with difficult media content, we can also perhaps help students see that these are, in fact, skills for dealing with a variety of challenging life situations. That’s a valuable lesson that reaches well beyond media literacy.

Most of my reading these days is grounded in social connections. With the exception of the (mostly guilty pleasure) fiction I read in the evenings before bed, I read online all day, almost every day. I read things that have been shared by my Twitter and Facebook communities, or I find things on my own and consider whether to share them myself.

During my forced period of lonely reading, I recognized some of the skills that I have to apply during my social reading. It seems to me that these are exactly some of the types of awareness we try to cultivate in students who are developing their skills as readers and writers. Some of these are obvious, others maybe not so much.

The first set of questions to consider is based on a standard media literacy approach, applied in the social media context when we examine content shared by our contacts:

• Who’s the source? Who shared the link, and who actually created the content? Are they connected? If so, does their connection matter? If not, why did my contact share this content? What’s his or her motivation to share, or his or her personal interest in this content? (See also Howard Rheingold’s advice on “crap detection.”)
• What comment did my contact attach to the content? Why? Has it altered my interpretation of the content, and if so, how? Do I agree or disagree with my contact’s commentary? If there is no commentary, is there a reason why not?
• What is the main point of this content? (When so much information flows forth from social media, we have to be able to quickly “get the gist” of what we choose to read more closely.) What is my reaction to it?

When I choose to retweet or re-share information, I have an additional set of considerations:

• To which audience do I distribute this content? My Twitter and Facebook communities overlap by a few members, but are really quite different. I have to consider my audience’s interests and preferred content consumption styles in making this choice. The constant challenge to “think of your audience” issued to students in writing courses takes on an immediate relevance in social networks.
• Do I distribute this link with my own contact’s commentary attached? How would my audience respond if so? (How might they respond just to my sharing of content from the contact him- or herself?)
• If I substitute my own commentary, I must quickly summarize my response in a few characters, or I must responsibly shorten my contact’s commentary to be able to add my own. How do I best capture his or her response and complement it with my own? How do I respectfully disagree, if necessary, to maintain a civil tone in my network?
• If I summarize the content of what I am sharing, how do I do so accurately? How do I also write my summary in an intriguing way, inviting my network to click on it themselves? (This is akin to good headline writing, and indeed, some instructors have used tweet writing as a way to teach headline writing skills.)

In this post, I’ve tried to make explicit some of the sophisticated interpretive skills required by active participation in social networks and sharing content. For those who diminish social media as mere narcissism or distraction (yes, they’re still out there), I challenge them to see these media as another place where students can develop their critical thinking skills, in many of the same ways we ask them to attempt in traditional reading and writing. This is a new format, to be sure, but an increasingly important one, and also a format in which students can find much that interests them personally.

Photo by Ethan Lofton.

I have thought a lot about the nature of questions and their relationship with my teaching.

Of course, I always want students to ask questions in class. I welcome all questions, because they show engagement with the class (even if superficial), but I do certainly savor the insightful, penetrating student question that takes discussion to the next level.

On a bigger scale, I want my class to be about students’ questions so that the topics feel relevant and interesting to them. I don’t always know what students want to know or to be able to do after the end of a course. I often do surveys at the start of a semester to see what they’re thinking. And, naturally, I’ll always need to supplement their interests with other things they didn’t know they’d be interested in; they don’t know what they don’t know yet. But I want their curiosity to guide a great deal of our class.

I tried one semester to designate a question of the day for each class session on the schedule. We ended up talking about different things than my questions had originally mentioned. Again, though, that’s me imposing my questions on the class.

I really like this idea from the Teaching Professor blog by Maryellen Weimer at Faculty Focus, which combines a question from the professor with students’ own questions, generated after they have gained knowledge about the subject:

Victoria Costa writes about teaching introductory biology and chemistry courses to nonscience majors and beginning the courses with what she calls a course question: “How does chemistry (or biology, depending on the course) impact my personal life and society?” This question forms the basis of the course final, provides the framework within which students pose for themselves a “personal perplexity” or question of particular interest to them. In their final, an essay, they explain this question’s relevance to them and society, and they use course content to explore the question’s answer.

Costa’s course assignments also connect to the “course question.”

This semester, I’ve had my grad students in Qualitative Methods submit five questions about their assigned readings instead of the assignment I’ve previously used, which was a one-page response to the readings. I read over the students’ questions and use them in class. The questions highlight their areas of uncertainty, make connections among the readings, and help me get everyone participating in discussion.

I have also had my 110-student undergraduate class divided into teams this semester and last fall. Each team of five students submits a form at the beginning of class that asks for a discussion question related to the reading. I read the forms as they finish them, highlight interesting or recurring ones, and talk those over with the class before we begin the rest of the day’s activities. This has also been pretty successful.

I know many faculty bemoan students’ seeming lack of curiosity about the subjects we teach, but if we get them started by asking them to take time to examine their knowledge and think about the topic’s complexity, they often find provocative and fun issues to ask about.

I’ve struggled, though, with finding more ways to elicit and integrate students’ own interests and questions into our class — particularly in the large undergraduate class I teach, and especially “on the fly,” when questions are sparse in the middle of an activity or a lecture portion in class.

What other methods have you used to help students’ questions guide your courses and class sessions, and to keep the questions and curiosity flowing?

The Atomic Web Browser app - an iPad alternative to Safari.

I’m excited to start my first full semester with an iPad at hand, ready for use in the classroom. I’ve found some ways to work around the frustrations I encountered in my first attempt to teach with the iPad, so here are some of my new strategies and plans for using the iPad during teaching.

Projecting the Web

I’ve downloaded Atomic Web Browser for 99 cents, which will project web content through the VGA connector. This is a major advantage over Safari for iPad. I also much prefer the tabbed browsing offered by this browser to the page system in Safari, as it’s more convenient both for casual reading and for pre-loading a selection of web pages prior to the start of class and easily switching among them. It also supports multi-touch, which is nice when you’ve become accustomed to that capability elsewhere.

Blackboard on the iPad

Starting up the Blackboard Mobile Learn iPad app.

(Setting aside the variety of problems with Blackboard itself for a moment…) The new Blackboard Mobile Learn app is much improved from its previous versions, which for me were essentially useless. You can do a lot of what you can on the web through the app at this point, so administering your class activities on the move during class time (or from your couch at home) is now much more feasible.

Teaching Writing

The iCardSort app in action.

I’m not teaching a writing course this spring, but I can see how some apps I’ve started using for myself are going to be very helpful in working with students on their projects. For example, iCardSort, a free iPad app, can be used to show students how to brainstorm and organize their ideas for a new project. Outliner (currently $4.99) can be the next step in the process, generating a clear outline for the project that can be easily manipulated. (I use Inspiration for outlining on my laptop, though I may move to something with a better UI sometime soon.)

Using the Outliner app for one of my own research projects.

For the more visually oriented, a mindmapping app like iThoughts HD ($9.99) might be a better option, though I haven’t tried it myself. iThoughts HD will apparently also project through the VGA connector, so an all-class brainstorm session for writing projects or other topics is an exciting possibility. Unlike a whiteboard activity, the iThoughts HD session can be saved as PDF and shared with the class in a more permanent form. (Hmm – I may have to buy this one after all.)

When I do teach writing again, I’m also really looking forward to being able to walk around the computer lab with the iPad and immediately locate and show students examples of things we’re working on. For example, I could go find examples of anecdotal leads in online news stories for a student who’s unsure about how they’re used – without having to borrow the student’s computer or project the example on the classroom screen through the instructor’s station, which would distract everyone from their work.

Demonstrating Multimedia

Another great aspect of having an iPad in the classroom for someone teaching journalism and communication is simply the ability to show students some of the innovative new ways media professionals are preparing content for the iPad. If I hadn’t been able to use an iPad through my university, I’d feel very much left out of this rapidly developing area of the industry. However, I’m happy to be able to demonstrate these new products in class and discuss them knowledgeably with students as someone who keeps up with the field and uses these new products daily. The iPad has been a great asset in this way for me as an instructor.

Students’ responses at the end of the semester to our use of popular nonfiction in lieu of a traditional textbook were generally positive. Though I’m rotating out a couple of the books we used in favor of more reader-friendly and updated titles for the spring semester, the selections I used this fall were well-received. Some commented that they enjoyed the variety of perspectives and examples in the books, which was gratifying. Personally, I also found the books much more stimulating to read and teach, and I’m looking forward to reading my three new selections over the holidays so I’m ready for the spring semester.

My holiday reading pile.

I also tried out some new strategies for managing and engaging this large class of 116 students. There are no discussion sections for the course, so it was important to me both to provide many opportunities for small-group and whole-class discussion and to help students connect with others and build support systems within the class. I set up two grouping systems: “blocks” of ~20 students, named by colors; and “teams” of 4-6 students, which were numbered. (The whole syllabus is here.) Though it took a while to get everyone used to the nomenclature, I think it was really helpful to have the students immediately grouped into networks with others. After 4-5 quick iClicker reading review questions, every class session also began with a 10-minute team discussion period, during which students completed a response form that I collected and immediately used in an initial question-and-answer period to launch the day’s discussion.

Interestingly, in studying my grade breakdown for the semester, it looks like two trends occurred. (I didn’t get too quantitative on this, so these are just impressions.) First, the teams that bonded – who I could see really interacting well in class – seem to have obtained higher grades individually. Of course, this has to partly be due to their better cooperation for the few group assignments, but I would like to think it’s at least partly because they could rely upon each other for help and clarification of course material and requirements.

Second, I also think that I probably had a much lower rate of attrition this semester than I did last semester, notable especially in a fall semester when many first-semester new students in this general education course may vanish. I appear to have fewer Fs due to student disappearances (and fewer Fs overall) this semester. Again, I’d like to think that’s because the teams held each other accountable to some degree – and simply were just there every day as familiar faces for students who might otherwise become lost and disconnected in a big class. I’m sure there were other factors – maybe they liked nonfiction better? maybe some of the new assignments were also easier? – but perhaps there’s something more behind that difference in failures.

Finally, I’d like to share the students’ responses to the final exam’s extra credit question, which asked them to identify a concept or topic from the class that they thought they’d remember five years from now and explain why. Here’s a breakdown of the 84 responses (why 32 students didn’t do the extra credit, I’ll never understand!):

• Selective media exposure/biased assimilation/filtering: 12 (True Enough brought this home)
• Media literacy and its overall importance: 11
• The realities of celebrity/rethinking our connections to celebrity: 11 (the students loved Fame Junkies!)
• Analyzing ads/awareness of advertising and marketing strategies: 9
• The role of PR and video news releases in journalism: 5 (we watched some of Toxic Sludge is Good for You)
• Media fragmentation/niche audiences: 4
• Power of media to define/shape reality: 4
• Mean world syndrome and cultivation theory: 3
• Growth of technology and communication methods/devices: 3
• Decline of print media: 3
• Narcissism of youth and possible media role in encouraging: 2 (from Fame Junkies again, and we did this in class)
• How Wikipedia works: 2
• Growth and power of social media: 2
• Social media and “slacktivism“: 2
• Third person effect: 2
• Lack of world news coverage in the U.S./closure of foreign news bureaus: 2 (this made an impact)
• Photo manipulation and ethics: 2 (both were female students)
• Media consolidation/role of conglomerates: 1
• Importance of failure in media industries and in life: 1 (Clay Shirky’s discussion of “failure is free” in Here Comes Everybody)
• How we make choices: 1 (we watched Sheena Iyengar’s TED talk on this)
• TED talks are cool: 1 (we did use a few others in class too!)
  
• Role of media regulation: 1
• Young people don’t know about the world, news, etc.: 1
• Comedians can be informative: 1 (we used a lot of Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert clips too)

Looking at this list now, I’m pretty pleased with it. Unfortunately, some of the structural media issues didn’t quite stick with the students (or weren’t as appealing to use for the question). Still, I am surprised by how many remained interested in and concerned about their own selective tendencies with regard to their media exposure, and about how those preferences would shape their lives, politics, and so on. If I’ve managed to make them more aware of their choices and their effects, then I’m content. And, just as I see my students begin to question and analyze their own choices, so too should I continue to do the same – and that’s how we all learn from each other.

I may write more about this class and my plans for next time around when I have time and a bit more distance from the semester. In the meantime, thanks, MCJ 1, for a great semester!

This has been an exceptionally hectic week, including both my trip to the National Communication Association conference in San Francisco, where I presented, and the usual pre-Thanksgiving shuffle of student assignments and meetings on campus. So, in lieu of an original blog post this week, I’ll give you a roundup of some recent stuff that I haven’t previously posted here.

“Control in the Classroom” at the University of Venus

I recently wrote a guest blog post for the University of Venus blog at Inside Higher Ed. In it, I describe my early teaching failures and how I’ve attempted to grow from them by trying to become a more open, (somewhat) less structured teacher.

Once the adrenaline wore off after about four class sessions, I realized that those sighs coming from the students weren’t due to the enlightenment they felt upon entering into my instructional presence. They were groans of pain as they massaged their hands after trying to take notes on my speed-lecturing. There may have also been groans of boredom.

Check out the full post here.

City and Regional Magazines Go Digital

I’ve been curious about city and regional magazines since grad school, and even did my dissertation on Texas Monthly. I took the opportunity in a recent MediaShift post to explore what these magazines are doing in the digital realm. I especially loved learning more about the history of Honolulu Magazine, which has its roots in the early history of Hawaii and the desire to present the islands as “civilized.” Sounds like a future research study to me!

Read the whole post at MediaShift here.

Make Magazine and Technological Utopianism Research Presentation

At NCA, I presented a paper I’m working on that addresses technological utopianism in Make magazine and at the Maker Faire event. I used a Prezi at a conference for the first time. I don’t know how much is intelligible from the Prezi alone, and would also say that I’m still learning how to make the most of Prezi! But here’s the presentation for your perusal. I hope to publish the paper in a journal very soon and will post here when I do.