Author Archives: Cole Camplese

Using Blackboard

Hi all … I typically don’t use Blackboard or other course management tools like it when I teach, but I wanted to ask you — would you prefer that I do keep some information there as well? I am thinking at the moment of using it for announcements, due dates on assignments, and for grades. Anything else? I want all the writing to be public, so I will not have you put assignments there, but if there are interesting things you’ve seen other faculty do with Bb, please share those thoughts in the comments below! Oh, and by the way … Bb Mobile Learn isn’t all that bad for staying connected on the go.

Bb Mobile. Testing it on the iPad.

Modeling Expectations

So next week we start with the team posts. Things are looking to ramp up, and while I wait (not so) patiently to see how you will react to this week’s work with your postings I thought I would share with you a model that can illustrate the kind of substantive work I am expecting starting next week. The first week is very much about setting the stage and getting to know one another, but once the team postings start there is a rigor associated with my expectations that may be a bit beyond what you are used to encountering. You heard me say a few times on Thursday that I will not be giving tests this semester, but I will be assessing your grasp of our material through your conversations in class and your postings here on the blog.

With that in mind I want to share with you a link to the work grad students are doing in this course at Penn State. They are a few weeks ahead of us, so it stands as a good model to the kind of things you will be tackling in the weeks ahead. Now, keep in mind that they are reading multiple chapters of multiple books each week — something I have chosen not to do to you. Even so, I want you to be prepared for what I expect. Here are two examples of team based writing outcomes that you should use as guides for your own attempt at sense-making in your weekly team posts. See both, “Engaging in the Development of Identities” and “The Shapes of our Identity” as examples of team based posts for a week.

Kicking off the Themes

Next week we will kick off the exploration of our first theme, community. I’ve decided not to rotate through the three themes week to week and instead pause and spend three weeks on each theme. That will allow us to deep dive a little more and will give me a chance to give you some more dedicated readings and activities. Looking forward to seeing you and I am really looking forward to reading your posts!

Charlie Robbins on Social Justice

In Shady’s personal introduction he shared a TEDxSBU talk from our own, Dr. Charles Robbins. Dr. Robins is the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Dean of the Undergraduate Colleges here at Stony Brook University. He is an exceptional friend, colleague, and educator. His passion for undergraduate education is rivaled only by his deep interest in social justice. His talk at our own TEDxSBU was the only one of the event to receive a standing ovation.

I Lied. Getting into the Course Site.

Ok … here is a quick primer on getting into the course blog … once there explore and if you need help refer to the Lynda training I linked to it in the previous post. Go to the course site (you are here now) and find the sidebar where the heading is “Meta” and click the “Log In” link.

login

You will be prompted for your NetID and then returned to either the course site Dashboard itself or the SBYou dashboard — where you are taken has to do with a few factors. If you are not taken to the course Dashboard — You will know where you are based on the “Admin Bar” at the top. If it says “Disruptive Technologies” you are in the course Dashboard and you can publish away. It would look like this …

Screen Shot 2015-01-31 at 10.02.26 AM

If you land at the Dashboard for SBYou, roll over “My Sites” and find “Disruptive Technologies” to jump over to the course site.

dash

Corn — Who Knew?

One of the more intriguing things I learned in class yesterday was that Jay has spent time Detasseling Corn. Prior to last night I had no idea that was even a thing … well a quick google search later and I have done the deep dive into the life of a detasseler! It is interesting that in most of the YouTube videos I watched they bus high school kids in to do the dirty work … creating an ad-hoc corn detasseling community in the corn field.

What is a Weekly Create?

Anything. I want you to make stuff … take a picture, make a gif, make a meme, record sound, shoot some, video, or write something. My goal is to get you to stretch your creativity and make digital things. They need to be posted to the course blog and you need to write something about what you made. Here are some questions to consider … How did you make it? What was the motivation for making it? What did you use to make it? Did you enjoy making it? Was it difficult? What does what you make say about you? Does it shape your identity? Are you happy with it?

At the end of the day, I just want you to spend some time thinking about creating digital artifacts. You will do one each week and we will build the rubric together, but for the most part anything goes!

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Getting Started with Diigo

This semester I plan to make use of Diigo to manage links and resources that I see that I think you will find interesting. I encourage you to learn how to use it for both this class and for helping you organize stuff online. One of the main reasons I like Diigo is the ability to markup and annotate webpages and then allow others to see the annotations. This is really helpful as I share things with you — you get to see what I find important. To take advantage of that you will need to create your own account and be signed in. Here is a decent overview of Diigo … take a look and let me know so I can add you to the course Diigo group.