BlueSky

Blue Sky Session Tuesday Morning


 * Historical Methods introducing to practice and profession of history. Big questions and nuts-and-bolts. Dreams: Creating historians. excite them about doing history--active, not passive. get dirty in the archive (archive as lab). being in presence of real thing, real object. local archives afford this experience and excitement of being directly engaged with material remains of the past. See themselves as part of a long tradition of nonfiction storymaking. seeing the past as a series of never-quite-finished stories. stories in process, filtered through interests. A centuries-long conversation. Wants a workshop not a lecture class. model what we do as historians. excitement of discovery--unearth something new or unconsidered in the archive. appreciate importance of empathy: why do we do this? what is history? doing history to achieve empathy, fundamentally a human exercise, grounds us as humans and instructs us in modesty. people in the past have done really cool things. (Against "presentism.") Public nature of history--something negotiated and interacted with outside of class. museums, tv documentaries, etc. public dimension and importance of history--e.g. scrapbooking. emerge from class with a sense of shared expertise--confidence that they can achieve expertise over some part of the past. skills empowering them as experts in a particular field and


 * fine-tuning a present course, a very engaging professor, but now wondering if he should be doing things online as well. Politics and multiculturalism, a course that requires difficult dialogue: also looking at all issues involved in "isms" in America: racism sexism classicism, islamophobia and homophobia, etc. Many open discussions in classroom. Progressive and open students are engaged--but wonders if he is overlooking other students who are not engaging. wants to read reflections of those who don't agree--wants to hear the ones who are not speaking. listening to the silence in a classroom. but also wants students to go beyond discourse inthe classroom, express themselves online but in the confines of civility. how to get involvedin cognitive inquiry and emtoional inquiry within confines of civility. contradictions in America, hard questions of social justice--but if you let them loose online, what might happen in the class. "Teaching for freedom" is what I do--how much freedom can work in a class? Students love supreme court cases--they believe in the supreme court. Transcripts of SC decisions are loaded with jargon--has worked with lawyer colleague to make the cases simpler--would like to put these "translations" online and have them read and discuss online before they come to class. would like to use online discussion tools to discuss cases. the class is loaded and people fear it--portfolio is a "nightmare" but an important reflection of their life in class for three months: essays, critical reflections, everything. at the end of the semester the portfolio reveals the experience. a teaching tool--but students wait to the last week of semester to fight to get portfolio together. wants to use web tools to make entries of day-to-day work in the class. a Top Dream, a Tough Dream--caught in quagmire of "will I shoot myself in the foot by putting things online?" Issues of control--even necessary controls.


 * composition course with a service learning component. in fantasy world: class of twelve students, meets three times a week for 90 minutes. each student will keep a list of every ethical decision they make, from small to major. between first and second week, discuss ethical decisions and underlying values, nature of these decisions. second week: each develops for themselves a service learningn project out of one of htese decisions, an individually-tailored project. even if the setting is conventional, the route is by means of their own decisions. They're required to do a lot of writing--but keeping journals that are shown to teacher seems inauthentic. But a closed blog in which the students read their own blogs with teacher with screening power would be shareable and the experiences would yield synergies and shared reflections. Have to write a research paper. Will expect them to take ethical project and research in larger context. Are soup kitchens effective? e.g.-- and by end of semester they will give media-complex presentations of their work their thinking their conclusions and how the issue might be fixed. the presentation would be not only to the class but the group context they have inhabited in their work.


 * revamping american studies course: history from the aspect of sociology. mostly first-year students, not a prerequisite so sometimes attracts juniors and seniors as well. 50 students in each section. (ouch!) Yesterday fed her dreams about students taking over. profressor provides start and parameters, and students help to set syllabus and progress of class. wants to encourage more engagement with reading materials. film and music work, would like to do more of this. looking at original documents they love, but the light bulb: they can find these documents themselves. wants more individual context and manageable workload at the same time. more outside classroom in terms of playing and learning. cut lecture down to almost nothing. work in groups inside and outside classroom. basic exercises with observation. likes idea of "workshopping things" mindful of personal style: student feedback likes the energy and bubbling, but this actually allows students to become overly dependent on the teacher's energy.


 * in renaissance lit., combats chronological snobbery and the scariness of a christian world. empathy crucial: people are people despite "isms" Milton is other to them, they struggle to understand words on page, and they're thinking about very scary topics. giving students open reign elicits hostile stuff sometimes. but better to externalize this than to internalize it--next time might do hybrid exercise: hand in to the teacher and share online. private responses only to the person as wel as to the group. Images of truth as having to go round and round (donne) and piecing together truth (Milton). Students either think they know the truth, or fear they know nothing of it. saftey in small numbers in a class. but how to achieve trust and intimacy in a larger group. also basics of making their way through the-- a clas where theyt feel safe and can do deep thinking.


 * research methods in sociology course (sociology an dcriminology) quantitative methods course in social statistics. course has reputation of being dry. trying to undry it. elementary statistical ideas from mean median mode standard deviation: by the end of term building to more complex statistical procedures. Course is also thought to be "cookbookish." Do a b c and you arrive at a number, plug into SPSS, get a "general social survey" from UMich, work with this. Main problem with course is that it's divorced from the rest of their unde4rgraducate education in the social sciences. lots of engaging classes, then you arrive at the stats class. Wants to integrate this course with the rest of their undergraduate education, to address larger methodological issues inthe social sciences. Two-pronged plan: approach quantitative social science with critical eye. quantitative method runs the risk of limiting the types of questions students can ask, neglecting hisotorical ideological cultural aspects of social life. Story here of guy coming out of bar. emerges into an alley, one streetlight, he's looking for his keys. fellow person: "where'd you lose for your keys?" "over there" "why looking here" "this is the only place with light" Wants to address this phenomenon and limitation--what do statistics miss in the social world? Damn Lies and Statistics -- Second prong: address the math phobia. half pick it up easily, half do not. Deal with the phobia, but also deal with divergent levels of skill--don't bore the students who pick it up faster.


 * haven't decided which class to tweak yet. there's an elementary ed class already hybrid and asynchronous. there's also a service learnign honors comp class--this transformation is so complex that further tweaks may be too much, but closed blogs are an attractive option. then aed class ro secondary social studies majors--grammar and writing process. issue of getting into dicey material for some students. wants civil interchanges. the dream class: totally engaged intellectually with content of course and with each other. has actually happened sometimes--a couple of lit classes, occasionally but not very often in comp classes, in honors classes there are somteimtes groups for which the lightbulb really comes on. what's the common denominator? the mix of students. how to get that mix together? seems beyond the prof's control. not sure which avenue to take to get this mix. Perhaps the thing to do is to look at all the brandnew wonderful choices--what about an online tutoring service?


 * fsa 280 students with disabilities in context. 25 hours with child who has a disability--observing what it's like to live with a disability day-by-day, and contact with parents who are raising this child. Some students want more medical information, but this course goes into a disability-studies framework, disability as a social construct. Some don't want this, and others thrive in this perspective. Closed blog for journaling would be great. The textbooks describe disabilities treat them as pathologies. This course doesn't use a text--blogs oculd get them into discourse that are more contemoporary and full of voice. srvice=learning component here. want to create a set of resrouces for disabled and parents. New: a blogstorm, looking at everything the disabled folks could do for communitiy, turning around service learning paradigm. what can "this little guy" with multiple disabilities contribute? etc. the dream: all student shave a laptop provided by university, giving them the opportunity via satellite to observe inclusive classrooms globally. also likes idea of supreme court cases in a uer-friendly way. to go to the uN when they were making the salomenca (?) statement. can they with laptop walk around the classroom and obsreve each class.


 * adjunct in health dept. responding to emergencies. cpr in second life have to be certified in emergencies, but red cross has changed skillas assessments. Kirkpatricks and assessment values. more in classroom with students both online and offline. students, faculty and designers as a team to design assessment. good for educator and instructional designer. also wants stonrger links between instructional design and curricular design--how can we find synergies.


 * a librarian speaks! teadches oneshot classes. time to tech the class effectively would be the greatest gift. that's the dream.


 * from blue sky to deep space! it's all dark out here. class with all students eganged, working together 20 hours a day, teachign teacer stuff he hadn't thought of. engaged with class and each other. workshop, empathy, responsible for learning, looking for ways to create environments where students would want to spend 20 hours a day working ona project.


 * fsa 103--gender race and class issues in ed. limited to new inclusive special educattion students. 25 in class in fall semester, mostly first-semester freshmen. first experience with education, and they want to be teachers. issues of social justice and context in community. wnats to incoporate popular music to make concepts real. "why are all the black kids sitting together inthe cafeteria." different kinds of racism--author insists that only whites benefit from racism. uses rap song called "the racist"--they analyze it, and the lyrics lay out all classes of racism just the way tatum does in that chapter. how to find these artifacts and analyze them? wants to find more stuff like that. also tv and video cliops, and get students to find ore of that, to turn teacher on to these materials, as they often do. wnats students to record interviews, minidocumentaries (two mintues) related to course content then post for sharing in course. otherideas: course wiki where readings can be worked with, laying out and defining concepts and finding reallife examoples. doesn't want them to do reading and response papers so she can tell they did the reading. also, watching alex read yesterday, thiking about a dyad or group of sutdents podcasting and posteing responses to reading. doing group interviews. also likes idea of court cases online.


 * assessment of literacy. research finds aoppropriate reading insturcution vital for literacy, but that beginning reders are not getting appropriate instruction. wants to help students to become facile at using assessment to inform instruction,. tap into whole arean of professional assessment. have class develop wiki coming from a series of blogs in which class investigates different kinds of assessment tools, sharing via blogs, then using blogs to inform creation of class wiki. each student need not go through each assessment--future classes cna go through wikis and get to appropriate assessments and facilitiy.


 * another librarian - coordinator of instruction--a resource for social imoplementation of blogs and wikis, supported by technical knowledge of other folks.


 * teaches three classes--one very dry. eco-tourism class shared with geography dept. enrollment is from different departments all across campus--why? not clear. problem of how to teach such a diverse class. US populations different from china and Japapn, so another teaching strategie may be appropriate. a new strategy--wireless access means good to use laptops from the cart--using in classroom but the concern is that too much laptop use will encourage other . examples of ecotourism: national parks an dforests, rental cars, hotels. Asks them to find information about these environments. elicits very intriguing stories. one student liked it very much. she had a fever--told her that even if she's dying she needs to come to class. she was in fact very healthy, worked hard, and found evidence of hotel culture. boston 1892--modern hotel, odern hotel, what does that mean? indoor plumbing means modern hotel--she found this out by searching. Organic hotel? use organic detergent, etc. to reduce energy consumption, one could only use one engine in jet-- so wants to use search more. Also wants to use more video, short clips. On NPR ATC, natinal parks in Florida, everglades, downloaded this program, sent link to them, asks for email back that they were done. Uses talk shows, movies, shows e.g. "The Beach." Wants to do womething new: research and evaluation class--very tough course. has two sections. what about quality of knowledge in addition to quantitative. wants to try blogs instead of textbooks--summary of text chapters, post to blog. personal blog to know them more, but also a place to put the chapter summaries. all for extra credit. let the whole class do one project.


 * full-time administrator the dream job is to hear the dreams and to think about how to support and realize these dreams. get us off the ground.


 * computing support loves to hear the innovative ideas, esp. with technology--makes them feel they're contributing. teaches omputer applications course. fears that he's moving from scaffolding to training--uses technology to teach concepts an diedeas. Wants student report system with coursecasting to discuss not the ocntent but hwo they learned the concepts. create community outseide ocurse in which students are teaching students. students can explain to each other, often better than professor. one big red button on the course console. gets pulled in when projects need big resources, storage space, etc.


 * tech trainer - a resource to find how faculty are incoporating tehcnology, and to support faculty and their students. she's in the lbirary. this session helps her know what kind of training she should be providing: workshops, one-on-one, and documentation. The perfect classroom--another Big Red Button.


 * english ed. teaches tech class undergrad and grad, continually trying to refine how she does it, becoming a more sophisticated thinker about why we use these technologies. core gropu in fall of 20 freshmen. would like to develop leraning community in the core group. a shared blog, a wiki that explores their experience of the campus--lays out terminology they're learning as they integrate into Cortland. Would like to do a serie sof podcasts about hte freshman experience, and esp. about coming to english--what does ti mean to come into a discourse, to work in an interdisciplinary area. very talented ta will be working with her. in tech class(grad class) feeling frustrrated that they'r enot conecting with adolescents. what is the field componenet? wants to evelop a project that will involve them working in the community, cf. service learning. lastyear website project for local boys and girls club--worked well. Also interested in Alex's project ot build on an island in Second Life.  recommend will richardson's book--and the blog. student talkign to will richardson in second life--meeting authors in-world, exciting for students, wants to keep refining. wants to assign students to "invent a classroom" (in second life?) and have them teach the course--challenging when one meets only once a week. Istead of teaching abou teaching, have the students immersed in the projects themselves. Teachign students as if they were real teachers. Also a list of six books to read! Dream world is in which all the tech can happen with all the reading life she used to have. Reading life has been radically altered.


 * teaching teachers how to teach teachers. Going wild with the fantasy. Students who come into the classroom wanting to be teachers for a variety of reasons: what are the real reasons? why did they choose english? some love reading, some think it's easy with summers off, some think it's compatible with family life. She's in this field because literacy, reading and writing, are tools for achieving social justice, the tools to change the world, tells her students they're the radicals of the world. fantasy is that by the end of the time with them they'll come over to believe what she believes and then they'll change the world together. wants them to come to embrace this way of thinking. one way is through practicing reading and writing in this class (writing mehtods and practice of reading arts)--methods class is different from comp but also comp instrucftion. many have not had a transformative epxerince of literacy. wants to do authentic an dtransformative writing, chaning them as individuals and analyzing inequities in local cultures and beyond, and then using this analysis and reflecting on what they can do in their teaching to effect these changes. learning by doing and then reflecting. also wants students to be motivated. wants to move behond transactional model--wnats them to be not resigned to it but really motivated aned engaged by it. wants them to be motivated to be transformative educators. wnats them to be emphathetic--moving from thinkign about heir worldviews and to encounter other perspectives. how is their experience like and unlike others' experiences. part of this means she has to be a different kind of educator, not a banking model of education, not an authority figure but a colleague. Letting stuedents take control of class but providing foundational ideals as well. wants to achive all this in one or two semesters. in teaching of writing class, does genre study. what is it to be a writer? what does it mean to be a writer? have them move from brainstorming to opubishing and reflect on process--then how to take that experience into their own teaching instruction. Does poetyr, memoir, feature article, but wants the essay piece to be more research-oritented out of involvement in communiity, engaging in locasl school culture, analyzing a problem, writing a pper on motivation in a field study linked to another course (doing this already)--wants them to practice being engaged transformative activists to help all students receive an equal education. could invovle technolgy we're discussing. wiki could facilitate democratic nature of class--could see students collaborate on developing what ocncepts mean through the semester. Also has an idea to used second life to crate an alternative school. removes studetns fr5om the reality but odoes have us explore a utopic school-- but the first step in teh fantasy is to be a littel more vunlerable--maybe the fantasies are for five years out, but the first step is to start a blog herself. start a blog, do it regularly, engage in intellectual community, then get students engaged int hat way too, a mroe democtractic ethos. in five years, the students are all fighting for equality, workign together in fantsy universe, with national recognitions.


 * painting 1 2 3 4 5 and independent study. another stage in the dream. wants students to devleop strong inquiry an dcreative process. old school is art teacher as guru and mystical. new school is to bring the mystery of the process into always in a fresh, ready environment, with the next step at the ready no matter what. technology menas more ready resources. cortland pretty isolated from museums,. gallieris, worldliness that leads to art--so there can be a virtual link to museum sites, a matter of figuring out how to bring it into the classroom. how to deal with comoputes in a messy art environment. would like to walk into the classroom and have it be like opening the doors to anywhere, any placeL: culture, period, be able to look at the artists who are colleauges, some dead and some living, as much inspiration from ancient Japanese pottery as the artist down the block. This generation can sometimes believe in thesmelvews and their creativity, but they don't understand how they're part of a larger creative whole. reach in and ifnd what we need for a particular purpose. if there's a conection, or a block comes into view, one could resonpond instantly right then and there to the stimulus. take it back into work with some immediacy. great also to model research methods so that when they get themselves to this point, they could do somethign similar, and then roll it into class work and their presentaitons, and the contexts they're woking in - something outside themsevles. And what about conversations with students on other classrooms> to see other students struggling, windows into professional studieos, seeing things in process, seeing the struggle in the inbetween. great o have resoruces in how-to to learn new techniques to support their ideas. a technique junkie but doesn't know everything--how to find these resources. had a virtual gallery space going for advanced students and senior poortfolios. had to take the gallery offline but had to take it down because of lack of resrouces. so students need to be involved in production and mounting on web. who looks for it and who finds it--eep in their own website. a more open dialogue would be grand. more opoen dialogue inthe PROCESS.

--chuck--see taking IT global.


 * lbirary copyright clear, everyone well-trained to find what will capture imagination. library a center where faculty and studetns can enliven their poassion for elarning and creating, a oplace to explore your sense of wonder. always likes to have something to write about. has unearthed blog she started, and www.memoriallibrary.blogspot.com two new entries "the North Wing"--that's where her office is.


 * strictly administration, to support what we choose to do. here to find resources, to balance what faculty need in the field and how it can be supported with money, people resources, wants to be more adept at changing, very tough to do with technology changing so rapidly. what to do with people way in front and way in back. spends her life in a meyers-briggs type indicator, spending time with adult learners, will take back seomthign but not sure what. pie in the sky is tough with busy work life an dfamilty life.


 * does web development, ostly academic side. goal for the web: get away from static development to get to more engageing and less obviously stated stuff. goals of most websites is direct and imoportant, but they're not compelling, not exciting, not motivating. information is imoportant, but we need to take a step further ad see how we can get people excitied. chemsity web site: where's the kaboom? how to be more engaging in web experiences? more multimedia, but balanced with accessibility.