Ideas Worth Spreading

I just got introduced to such an incredibly great site—

Quoting from their site, “TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks are available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.”

Today I was listening to Sugata Mitra, a professor of educational technology at Newcastle University, who talks about his Hole in the Wall project, where a computer with an internet connection was put in a Delhi slum. When the slum was revisited after a month, the children of that slum had successfully learned how to navigate the Internet. His experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity. Now how intriguing is that?

The "Hole in the Wall" project demonstrates that, even in the absence of any direct input from a teacher, an environment that stimulates curiosity can cause learning through self-instruction and peer-shared knowledge.

Slumdog Millionaire, which just won four Golden Globe Awards, is based on a novel by Vikas Swarup. Swarup said he was inspired to write his book by Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project. He states, “That got me fascinated and I realized that there’s an innate ability in everyone to do something extraordinary, provided they are given an opportunity. How else do you explain children with no education at all being able to learn to use the Internet. This shows knowledge is not just the preserve of the elite.”

Adjuncts Teaching Adjuncts

I am an adjunct technical instructor at a community college in Lincoln Nebraska. I have been an adjunct for over 18 years now, in several different states. What I’ve noticed in general is that most community college instructors are experts in their fields, and they have a sincere desire to teach what they do to others.

Their only weakness is that they are not necessarily trained educators. Training is typically achieved through being informally mentored with a more experienced faculty member in their department, maybe sitting in on one or two other classes, and/or maybe taking hit-and-miss short professional workshops that address teaching issues throughout the year. Adjuncts also frequently have to fit all this training into their free time, which gets squeezed in between their primary work and their adjunct teaching.

So I see adjuncts as the glass-half-full. The full part—the water—is their subject matter knowledge. Lots of great stuff there. The empty part—which can vary in volume—reflects their teaching skills.

So my focus this year is to share ideas and tools that could be useful for other adjuncts to think about incorporating into their teaching—and thus adding to the full part of the glass.

Some time ago I gave a series of talks to faculty and staff at my community college about using wikis and/or blogs as another teaching aid. There was a lot of interest, but every once in a while someone would bring up concerns about copyright or intellectual property issues.

I found a site that might appeal to some of us to address that area. Copyscape is a free online plagiarism checker. Just enter your page's URL. And it will search the Web for word-for-word reproductions. It will even highlight the copied text.

http://www.copyscape.com/

It also allows you to include a graphical notification on your web site that you are using this feature.

New Years Resolutions

I'm normally one of those people who avoids New Years Reservations like the plague. But I'm going to try something new this year.

I'm always trying to find that ultimate successful long-term strategy to help me keep learning new ideas. I figured if the list of things to do was so short and so sweet so as to not be intimidating, I just might have a chance at actually being successful at it. For the past 6 months, I've experimented with a little post-it note on my desk. I called it my "to do" list.

My goal was to watch something new for 10 minutes, read something new for 10 minutes, do something new for 10 minutes, and write something new for 10 minutes, each work day. I must confess, this simple little post-it note inspired me to start drinking my morning coffee in front of my computer while I attempted to become human. After all, I'm not fit to interact with humans until I've had at least 2 cups of coffee in me anyways. That gives me plenty of time to work at this list. The strategy actually worked for me—early morning hours are when I am freshest. Of course, I couldn't boast a faithful 5 days a week—I considered myself lucky if I accomplished these once a week.

So this year, I'm going to change my criteria just a little:

My modified goal will be to watch something new for 15 minutes, read something new for 15 minutes, do something new for 15 minutes, and write something new for 15 minutes, each week.
If I do each of these once a week, say for 40 weeks this year, that gives me a full 40 hours of voluntary learning time. (It also leaves me plenty of time off for holidays, vacations, conferences, etc. without feeling guilty.) Right now that seems pretty doable! Of course, it is only the first week of January...