My Office

About 6 months ago, I adjusted my career path from working at a large Midwestern university as an ESL instructor to working at a small private liberal arts college as an Instructional Technology Specialist. I've really enjoyed the change professionally and it's given me a chance to expand one of my passions; technology and teaching.

My office is in the fine arts building on campus and while it may seem strange that I am over here, I enjoy it. I'm on the 2nd floor and don't have any windows in my office but I look out onto a foyer with lots of windows and light.

My view to the outside

On of the things I really enjoy about being in this building are the students singing and playing. It isn't overpowering where I can't concentrate, but remains pleasantly in the background very low. I feel it gives me a little afternoon boost. It is also nice to see the creative projects that students have created.

Student Artwork

Student Artwork

Before I arrived, I wanted to make sure that I kept up on projects and such, so I asked for a whiteboard to be installed. It's actually made of glass and is quite nice and I highly recommend one. https://www.quartet.com/us/us/v/2909/1610/quartet-infinity-magnetic-glass-dryerase-boards-white-surface#.WHUwbhsrKUl 

My Project Board

This decision came about because of an article I read in The Chronicle of Higher Education, My Writing Productivity Pipeline. While I am not using it for writing, I thought it would work well for other things like projects. I haven't got it quite worked out to how I want it yet, but its prominent presence in my office keeps it at the forefront of my thoughts. While for almost anything else I consider some kind of technology solution first, the idea of using a whiteboard seemed to match my needs better. I feel that things on the computer tend to get lost at times for me and I wanted something that I could physically see in a prominent location in my office and it would keep me on track. I think it has worked well for that. My colleague Dr. Ryan Straight also wrote a piece on academic workflow that might interest you as well. https://ryanstraight.com/writings/2013/12/21/electronic-academic-workflow-paperless-researching.  I also like to keep a paper calendar just to have it there.

Bulletin Board References

For the most part, I like the layout of my office. However, in the future I may change the position of the monitors. I don't like that my back is facing somewhat to the door. I would rather be facing people as they come in. For some reason, that just seems friendlier. It might prove more distracting though since I leave my office door open and a lot of people tend to walk past. 

I like to keep things fun and light since I have a fairly casual attitude about professionalism and don't believe an office should be devoid of personal touches. Lots of  knik-knacks on the shelves and desk. I don't really play with them much, but I like having them there. The bookshelf is sort of lacking in books since I cleaned out a lot when I moved, but I have the most relevant to my new job and able to get plenty of books needed for my profession from the library. 

I also have a big bulletin board in the office that I've filled with relevant reference material for my job. The wall on the other two sides are rather bare, but I do have some things to put up there. Hopefully I can get that done soon :-) 

Facing in from the door

I hope you enjoyed the tour! See you next time.

My Blog Story: Starting a New Year

I am a voracious reader and really enjoy learning about the world. I've always admired people who can write a lot and share what they are thinking since it helps me learn and understand the world a little bit better. If you are in the field of education, writing is important. Sharing ideas and contributing is a cornerstone of the field and I believe whether you are a professor or not you should get the word out on what you are doing. However, writing is not one of my strong suits and I've always struggled to put ideas and thoughts from my mind onto something that I could share. This year The Edublogger (http://www.theedublogger.com/) has offered to send weekly prompts to people in an effort to help people write something and I thought that it would be a great way for me to try and get in the habit of writing and sharing regularly.

Well, Tuesday arrived and an email popped up from them and I thought "Oh geeeze, I forgot about this and I now have to do it. Ugh." But I committed and it's something I really want to do professionally so I opened the email. I was a bit surprised by the topic of "My Blog Story" Somehow I had been thinking of something like, "Ten Things that you do with Technology". But the more I thought about it, the more I liked starting with this topic. It allows me to set the tone for my blog and to think about what I want to write about here. I think this will help me focus my future writing and what I want to share with others. So here it goes...

My Story

What you might find in my blog. Like I said earlier I enjoy reading and learning. I also enjoy sharing what I've found so I expect that I will be including links and things from other sources on my blog. I don't know if that is something people will find valuable or not, but we'll see.

I have started a blog on and off for years. I am hoping that I can use this opportunity to make it something consistent. I think it will help me reflect on what I am doing and where I would like to go. Hopefully it will help me develop professionally and allow me to be better organized.

I read other blogs, but not consistently. I hope to also get into that habit a little more with this project. Ed Tech put out a nice guide of 50 Higher Education Blogs and I've tried reading some of those. http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2016/05/higher-ed-must-read-it-blogs You may want to take a look at some of them.

• https://bryanalexander.org/
• http://www.emergingedtech.com/
• http://cat.xula.edu/food/
• https://cit.duke.edu/blog/
• http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/

They put down some guidelines for the post and I thought I would write about these a little as well.

• quality over quantity – some of the best blogs have short but impactful posts. Don’t force an arbitrary word count or length requirement on yourself.

Hopefully. I won't do this. I don't want to blather on about something and hope to share something that people will find useful, but I am not exactly sure whether my writing is focused and impactful for readers or not. This one feels a little more like a personal diary than something for the public. More about my inner process and motivation, which sounds better for a writer. Hopefully I will make adjustments as I go along with this.  

• posts that are helpful to the reader tend to be the most popular, so try and keep your potential reader in mind if building an audience is one of your blogging goals.

Reader in mind....Hmmm Who is my reader? Well, I hope it will be people who are interested in Technology and how we apply it to learning. But beyond that I am not sure. Is it for beginners? Experts? I am not sure it is for either of those. I don't know if an expert would find what I say valuable and I'm not sure about a beginner either. I don't know if I'll be writing something like "Trying Google for the First Time". I don't think that is where I want the focus to be...but maybe. I know when I was teaching writing to ESL students that was something we always tried to focus on in the beginning. Who is your audience? But it isn't always easy and I find my self struggling with this.  

• reuse and recycle – if we hit a topic that you’ve written about before, take the opportunity to edit, update, and republish, or simply leave a link to your older posts for the community. It is ok for blog posts to be living documents that evolve over time.

I like this idea of coming back to a topic. Things change over time and it is good to revisit them to see what has changed and how you have changed as well. I'll keep this in mind for the future. 

If you are interested in trying this for yourself checkout the link below.

http://www.theedublogger.com/2017/01/03/edublogsclub-1-my-blog-story/?utm_source=Edublogs&utm_campaign=45230d0690-EdublogsClub1&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0417f70ab4-45230d0690-104419121

See you next time!

Mike
#EdublogsClub
Twitter md108091

Some Links and News

Good afternoon. I hope you have had a good week and are enjoying the weather. Here is some news, tech tips, and links that you may find useful.

New Report

The New Media Consortium (NMC) released a new brief titled,  Scaling Solution to Higher Ed’s Biggest Challenges. They identify eight challenges: Financial Aid, Integrating Student Data Across Platforms, Evidence-Based Methods Across Disciplines, Discovery of Learning Technologies, EdTech and Evolving Roles of faculty, Supporting Adjunct Faculty through Tech Deployment, Innovation Implementation Learning Curves, Sustaining Innovation through Leadership Changes and provide possible solutions to the challenges.

I would encourage everyone to take a look and the report. http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc-report-addresses-higher-eds-biggest-challenges/

Expand Your Toolbox

Dr. Byrnes, while giving her Dow lecture titled, Choreographing a Life mentioned that  having a toolbox that you can reach into to pull out useful tools is beneficial in life and work. Since we are well into the semester you may want to take some time and reflect on your instructional strategies. This article gives you 50+ instructional strategies that you can employ as an instructor. It doesn’t list everything  and doesn’t provide explanations, but it can serve as a reminder and a starting point as to what is out there. http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/instructional-strategies/50-teaching-strategies-to-jumpstart-your-teacher-brain/ . Further explanation of strategies is provided at http://www.fortheteachers.org/instructional_strategies/

Organizing Data

Sometimes students (and researches) have difficulty breaking down data that they have collected into something meaningful that they can work with. This post from NPR gives a nice process on how you might approach your data. It could be especially useful for students just starting the process in your class.  http://training.npr.org/visual/what-to-do-with-a-big-pile-of-data/

Keyboard Shortcuts

Do you use the Chrome web browser? Keyboard shortcuts are a way to make your browsing time more efficient. It can often be faster than using your mouse.

Open a new window- Ctrl + n

Open a new window in Incognito mode- Ctrl + Shift + n

Quit Google Chrome- Ctrl + Shift + q or Alt + F4

Reload the current page- F5 or Ctrl + r

Save your current webpage as a bookmark- Ctrl + d

Make everything on the page bigger- Ctrl and +

Make everything on the page smaller- Ctrl and –

There are lots more shortcuts and you can see a list here https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/157179?hl=en .

Upcoming Online Conference

On December 2 and 3, Google is sponsoring an online conference “Education on Air: It takes a Teacher”. While many of the topics will be focused on Google products, there are some things that might interest you if you don’t use them.  You can filter by theme such as Empowering students or  21^st Century skills. Some presentations that might interest you; “Wicked soap company: an entrepreneurial approach to chemistry”, “Globally minded students”, “Making smart decisions online”, and “Media literacy in the digital age”. Registration is free. https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/

               

Twitter

Ever used Twitter before? It is a great way to  learn and share things. By using hashtags (#) you can note and search for things. This link gives you an idea of what Twitter is about and how you can use it professionally  http://ditchthattextbook.com/conferences/twitter/ .

Here are some hashtags that you may want to start searching regularly on Twitter.

#elearning

#onlinelearning

#highered

#engchat

#math

#arted

#science

#latinoedu

#collegeaffordability

#highered

#savelibraries

#humanrights

#education

#sustainability

#library

Here is a link to lots more. http://www.teachthought.com/twitter-hashtags-for-teacher/?utm_content=bufferbc706&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Open Access

This week was Open Access Week and many events were held throughout the world in support of this. Open access gives libraries, researchers, faculty, and students a way to economically do their research and share information. We are working on this at Cottey and these links may help you become more educated and find some resources.  http://openaccessweek.org/  - http://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/ - https://www.library.ohiou.edu/2016/10/faculty-panel-to-discuss-experiences-with-open-access/ You can also search Twitter  for resources #openaccess, #OAWeek2016, and #OAAlden

Reflective Questions for Students at the End of Class

Ever use questions at the end of class? Terry Heick wrote a blog post about doing this http://www.teachthought.com/learning/use-twitter-exit-slip-teaching/ This technique can help students retain and synthesize information.  Take 5 minutes at the end of class and ask them write down an answer to a few of these questions.

1. What surprised you today, and why?

2. What’s the most important thing you learned today? Why do you think so?

3. What do you want to learn more about, and why?

4. When were you the most creative, and why do you think that is?

5. What made you curious today? How does learning feel different when you’re curious?

6. When were you at your best today, and why?

7. (Assuming we were studying the same thing and you could decide and have access to anything), where would you start tomorrow? Why?

8. What can/should you do with what you know?

Thanks,

Mike