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The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows. Poetry
Exceeding music must take the place
Of empty heaven and its hymns.

Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”

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I used this video as a prompt to get them thinking of the idea of linking embodiment with social activism. The assignment asked them to create any format they felt comfortable with for ....

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Non-Binary Activist Janaya Khan is the Future's Brightest Light

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"Folks want to know how to begin the practice of loving. For me that is where education for critical consciousness has to enter. When I look at my life, searching it for a blueprint that aided me in the process of decolonization, of personal and political self-recovery, I know that it wasl earning the truth about how systems of domination operate that helped, learning to look both inward and outward with a critical eye. Awareness is central to the process of love as the practice of freedom. Whenever those of us who are members of exploited and oppressed groups dare to critically interrogate our locations, the identities and allegiances that inform how we live our lives, we begin the process of decolonization" bell hooks

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"Folks want to know how to begin the practice of loving. For me that is where education for critical consciousness has to enter. When I look at my life, searching it for a blueprint that aided me in the process of decolonization, of personal and political self-recovery, I know that it wasl earning the truth about how systems of domination operate that helped, learning to look both inward and outward with a critical eye. Awareness is central to the process of love as the practice of freedom. Whenever those of us who are members of exploited and oppressed groups dare to critically interrogate our locations, the identities and allegiances that inform how we live our lives, we begin the process of decolonization" bell hooks

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Students Teaching Students (inspired by Eric Mazur's insights into peer instruction & DALC Fellows) 

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Students Teaching Students (inspired by Eric Mazur's insights into peer instruction & DALC Fellows) 

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At the end of last semester, we introduced our project ideas. Mine was very ambitious and the team suggested I scale it back. This is what i came up with 😊

Core values of the experiment

"The role of a teacher is to create curiosity
Create intrinsic motivation
Use the information to solve "real world" problems."  Mazur
And I would add to create community and empathy that can extend beyond the classroom walls.

I wanted to see if I could take "active learning" further by actually placing myself in the role of student in the class and giving over the reigns.

The Experiment:
1. Groups of 5 were assigned a chapter of our textbook "How to Write Creatively" By Heather Sellers.
2. The task was to "teach" in whatever style they imagined most effective. They were free to choose what they felt were the most germane features of the chapter/what would best serve them as writers.
3. Once the chapter was delivered they had to generate a creative writing prompt based on the chapter's lesson.
4. They had to generate an evaluation rubric for how they would assess their peer's work.
5. Once the work was completed, they were responsible for collecting, grading, and returning the prompt to their peers.
6. People submitted their work under a pseudonym to circumvent any issues of bias and to free up expression.

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Chapter 3: What Factors Motivate Students to Learn

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I was that student that felt disconnected and struggled so I appreciated the approach in Chapter 3. I think in setting up our course we need to take a much more holistic approach towards the material and the assessment style. I think the way chapter identifies the kind of "one way street" design of the traditional classroom (even a circular classroom disrupts this hierarchical relationship) was useful. I would replace the idea of "goals" which are alway exterior - to something more like "purpose" which comes from the inside. Not entirely separate but helpful for me to think about (can discuss more). I thought the idea of performance versus learning goals was enlightening - the idea of fitting in is so important. Interesting to read in this context. The strategies appeal as they do take a holistic approach - like mentioned in comment re chapter 6 - we are teaching students not content. I would add that a motivating factor that is intrinsic in storytelling is to build curiosity - students may not know what they care about until it is presented in a way that they want to know what happens next. (actively involved in creating content/relating to their lives - etc all the strategies mentioned in chapter 3). I related to when the authors wrote about students who feel they are "not good at_____" already. I love questioning the value of that - what achievement and success actually mean. I think overall chapter 3 has some great strategies for approaching motivation. Important reminder that I think we all learn as teachers (even students) early on - just because we are excited about a subject does not necessarily translate and the challenge/opportunity is to realign ourselves with our students so we can both find a way in together (as we feel this information / subject is important for growth etc).

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Decolonizing the classroom (? of inclusivity, non euro-western approaches)
What about evaluation - what do we value?
How does one measure progress in the classroom?
Think of Benjamin's Angel of History with the disasters piling up - what we call Progress.
https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html

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Walter Benjamin On the Concept of History /Theses on the Philosophy of History

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Full text of Walter Benjamin’s theses On the Concept of History with links to pages giving the background to the writing of the piece together with an essay on difficulties with the published translation

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Phil G's idea of a marriage contract with the students (and continue check in) is intriguing.

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The role of a teacher is to create curiosity
Create intrinsic motivation
Use the information to solve "real world" problems.

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Phil shows how he uses Padlet. I want to try it!

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My Course Flow attempt for a reflective writing exercise.

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I found course flow useful for really breaking down and organizing my activities.
I can also see that it can help a sub take over an activity or provide step by step instructions that other teachers can adopt.

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I submitted my self assessment examples for feedback!

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Engaging first years
Strategies for keeping student's on track
Writing effective questions (helping Diane get the most out of her student's readings)
Student's struggle with perfectionism
Create Kahoot quizzes for their peers

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The idea of commenting to the person as opposed to a product (artefact). Jeff Gandell (WID Fellow) gave a workshop on using emotion in the classroom. I attended and shared this strategy. He responded that it is effective to comment to a person as opposed to an artefact. From my forum post "So an interesting thing that is happening is that students are writing back MIOs regarding their feedback (granted this is not final feedback on their assignment). Some just MIO to say "thank you - this was very helpful" or to clarify what they meant. One woman shared how writing has always felt like a weakness and knowing she is on the right path was satisfying. I think this is all a result of responding to the person and not the paper. I will upload my self-assessments shortly. "

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Ahmad idea of creating a dialogue
Paddlet to upload summary of course
Question of the week
7-8 concepts to look at and see how they are connected visually
Grab bag idea in classroom - 5/6 ideas in the bag
Feedback on my idea of creating project management co teaching teams :
Try it out this semester as a test run 3-4 classes
Plan an escape route

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I learned new lingo and ideas! I realized how many "active learning" strategies I was already employing.
An artefact "is a materialized representation of a  learning, an idea, or a problem" (Chris Whittaker)
Scaffolding: I have been using it without realizing the term. "Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk" (Rebecca Alber, Edutopia).
Group Work: Groups can handle things that individuals cannot. (Evidence-based)

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I want to remember to implement a version of this:

Reflection on Ambrose Chapter 7 (Helping Students Become Self-Directed Learners)

One thing I found interesting that I think would be good to implement (even as soon as this semester) is the idea of building in pauses and prompts for students to monitor their understanding. The chapter mentions that students tend not to spend much time in planning their approaches or reflecting on the strategies they’re using. So these metacognitive tasks must be explicitly presented, otherwise we risk that students might miss out on understanding how to improve.

One thing I could do, which would be especially pertinent to some of the asynchronous online elements I’ve created, would be to periodically prompt students to summarize what they’ve just learned in their own words (this goes along with the idea I took from chapter 6).

This could be done in a fun way- for instance, asking them to turn to a family member, or “dial a friend” and take 2 minutes to summarize (of course they wouldn’t actually have to do this!). Perhaps I could invite them to express it through multimedia or video as well. This way, they would be invited (forced!) to monitor their own learning, and adjust if they find it difficult. They always say the best way to understand something is to teach it!

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Workshop felt amazing. Was really moved by what Diane shared and the general spirit of teachers getting together and valuing one another's efforts. Really inspired at how motivated we are all to engage our student's using aesthetic values. 💖

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Phil posted an article that really irritated me 🐝  but during our discussions I saw that there is a tipping point to granting extensions and trying to accommodate each and every student at the expense of ... our own sanity, class equity, etc.,.

This was my written response on our teams forum:

I am looking forward to this discussion. The Enlightenment era as we have come to call it was a time of tremendous advancements in almost every field. So no argument there (and I am not knowledgable enough) - but it was also a time when certain groups of men defined what it meant to be civilized. Those with oral histories, those with darker complexions, Locke's reference to Africans as "people without heads having their mouth and eyes in their breasts" (I know this line from Chinua Achebe) and the false binary between rational/irrational - thinking/feeling - objective/subjective that Michaud references and that also relegated women to the realm of "feeling and irrationality" does not really do it for me. Also what exactly is objectivity? It is proven that by changing the temperature in a room you can predict the kinds of decisions people will make. I think we feel therefore we are. And if we were more in touch with feeling - sensing - we would not be able to cut ourselves so readily off from nature and the suffering of others. Who said you can judge a society by how it treats its animals and old people? Against benevolence? I don't get it. We do not need to be against benevolence - we are a non-benevolent society. We are so out of touch (in my opinion) that we need to teach people how to feel, to be in touch with their feelings so that they do not repress themselves into violent anxious messes making their sadness everyone else's problem. And this does not mean catering to every whim. It means also allowing someone to feel sad or frustrated. As for the helicopter parents - that was a reaction to the parenting that came before. For sure there needs to be balance/boundaries/regulation - because the world (as James Baldwin wrote) "waits outside hungry as a tiger" but what if this new generation is enough generation down the line to make changes, to demand a certain kind of "humanity" that has been absent/repressed. I don't know but when it comes to education - I like this (reductive in ways but I think compelling) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8 Hope everyone is well!

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We all loved this resource Selma posted. Lots of useful information and strategies!

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Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning

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Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers

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Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers

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Discussion: Feedback/ Student Responses 

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Discussion: Feedback/ Student Responses 

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Hickey Article re: Assessments. Considering "how will you use that in the future"
Questions of meta-cognition. Get them to think of the whole semester and their relation to it.
Inquiry-based learning. What do you know? What do you still want to know?
How to make feedback efficient and useful (personal MIOs)

In conversation with Diane confronting the issues of student responses that remain on the surface or Google level
Daniel : "Questions are more important than answers" Socratic Method
Model "bad" answers and have them grade them
Create a rubric with the students
Challenge: create a rubric in Moodle

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Can I achieve a positive developmental outcome in my students using a strategy (project management) that was developed in the weapons development industry? 😳

What it is:
"A project is a task with a defined end target. Project management is the management of the change process required to achieve that end target, within certain time and cost parameters.

There are five distinct steps in effectively managing a change process—in doing project management:

• Defining the change objective.

• Developing a strategy and plans to achieve that objective.

• Creating a project management group to effect the change.

• Installing a control process to monitor progress.

• Managing the project by implementing the above four steps."

Morris, P. W. G. & DeLapp, S. E. (1983). Managing change through project management. Project Management Quarterly, 14(2), 60–70.

I would use the above template to create a project management team in my classroom.  The goal is to create a working

😳 Peck, M.J. & Scherer, F.M. The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis. Boston, 1962.

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Just brainstorming- any suggestions. So think every 3 weeks in a a new team takes over.  14 ish weeks of class.

Teams of 8-10?

2 note takers - any concepts of words that need development - they send their notes to the reporters.

2 reporters that take the information and send the summary notes and feedback to teacher (they will have a rubric) of how effective they feel the week was. Students evaluate and define their own needs in the class

2 on site researchers/ fact checkers. Students act as teaching assistants in the classroom, providing and contributing to the flow of information.

2 pollsters. Responsibility to survey class and tabulate feedback. Power dynamic shifts as students provide evaluations. Teacher will have a clearer picture on how class is going.

2 developers. Based on the class/topics discussions and with the student poll reports -  what suggestions for direction do they think next week’s lectures should take. Students have an opportunity to take an active role in setting the curriculum.

This is part of an overall participation grade. Thinking worth 25% of their final grade. Roles can change week to week. But they maintain the group for a month.

They team at the end of their tenure sends in a self assessment report describing how they felt the activity went and if they found it useful.

I will meet with the team in the middle of their tenure

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My BXE Storytelling Class had to write a 5-650 word story based on a prompt of their choice. They then brought in a copy of their story, omitting their real name and coming up with a pseudonym. I divided the class into groups and each group received a batch of stories to choose their favourites from. We did rounds over 2 days to get down to the top 6 stories out of the 40 submissions. From that top 6, they chose the 1st, 2nd, 3rd place. I printed up Tim Horton's gift cards and gave chocolates to the honourable mentions (there were 2). They absolutely loved this exercise. Once the winners were chosen I had them walk up to the front of the class (so identities were revealed) to collect their prizes as I played the theme from Rocky.

The entire class was involved in the selection process. They understood that there was something at stake (winners and prizes). They read all their classmates' work a number of times. They debated within their groups the merits of the stories and why one succeeded over another. This was an end-of-semester activity and they were all well versed in what elements comprise a powerful story. The winning story is below.

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This was a game changing video for me.

"I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material," says Mazur. "Who was to blame? The students? The material?" Mazur explains how he came to the conclusion that "It was my teaching that caused students to fail!"
The fact that his pre-med students at Harvard could not explain Newton's basic law of Physics but could go on to higher order problems was shocking. "The two main features of the peer instruction approach is that (1) there is active engagement in the classroom. "It's impossible to sleep in class because every few minutes your neighbor will start talking to you." And (2) there is continuous information flow back and forth with the student and teacher and also between students. What about solving the physics problems in class? Mazur says that he realized students watching a professor solve problems at the blackboard had little lasting benefit.
He advocates for peer instruction as an approach to promote active engagement:
"It's impossible to sleep in class because every few minutes your neighbor will start talking to you."
As well, there it disrupts a monologic or static (non-experiential) information delivery system.
"Traditional indicators of success are misleading."
"Education is no longer about information."

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Prompt: You're sitting at your desk eating candy hearts. You start to realize the notes on the hearts are trying to give you a message.

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Fairy Princess

Andrea Strudensky

The Storytelling Animal

30 November 2021

Listen to The Heart

I am sitting in my office with a bag full of candy hearts on my lap, highly unmotivated to complete the messy pile of assignments scattered across the Black Walnut wood desk in front of me.  The mountains of papers waiting to be completed have at most two words written on them: my name, Noah Zahl. I ignore my tasks and continue shoving one candy heart after the other into my mouth, putting great effort into gulping down the large amount of chewed-up product.  I feel the lump of swallowed candy hearts slowly trail down my throat, so I realize that I should take it slower with the devouring of these sweets.  The next candy heart I pull out of the bag is light blue.  I hold it between my index and thumb and bring it close to my eyes.  I examine the pointiness of the tip of the heart and gaze at the cusp of where its curves meet.  In turning it around, I notice a message that writes:

GET TO THE HOSPITAL NOW! IT’S AN EMERGENCY!

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I think to myself. I pull out another candy from the bag. NO, THIS IS NOT A JOKE, the pink candy heart tells me.  I re-read the message, hoping I am experiencing a moment of deception by my own vision.  The message, however, remains the same.  I turn the bag over and forty to fifty colourful candy hearts rain on the paper mountains all my desk.  The candy hearts are filled with different messages telling me: YOU WILL SEE, YOU NEED TO GET TO THE HOSPITAL, YOU’LL FIND OUT, SEE A DOCTOR, etc.

I grab a handful of candy hearts, bolt to my car and drive to the clinic.  I dash through the waiting room, ignoring the receptionist’s loud instructions telling me to “get back here!” in a bitchy tone.  The obnoxious clicking noises her heels make travel across the clinic as she chases me.  I spot the copper plaque screwed into the wall reading Dr. Alexander Bodman, MD and barge into the office.  It’s empty.  He arrives a few moments later, holding a file in one hand and reading glasses in the other.
“I’m gonna have to ask you to kindly leave, Mr. Zhal,” he calmly tells me.
“Please, you have to see me!” I cry out as I show him the bag of candy hearts. “I know it sounds crazy, but these candies have written messages and they said that I need to come here!”

I hand the candy hearts to Dr. Bodman.  A yellow one falls on the floor, he ignores it. “I’ll be right back,” he says as he places the papers on his desk and steps out of the room.  I immediately pick up the yellow candy heart.

LOOK AT DR. BODMAN’S FILES.

I peek through the cracked door and see Dr. Bodman discussing with another doctor and the secretary.  I cunningly head over to his desk and read the papers he left.

Patient name: Noah Zahl

My eyes scan the document until I stumble upon a section that reads: Final diagnosis: Schizophrenia

At the same time, I hear Dr. Bodman from outside the door. “Yes, I will let him know right now,” he tells those outside as he comes into the office and closes the door behind him.

“Mr. Zahl, are you aware that all of these candy hearts are blank?”

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But as I began to watch Creole, I realized that it was Creole who held them all back. He had them on a short rein. Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny’s witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing-he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.“

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did.

It's terrible sometimes, inside," he said, "that's what's the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there's not really a living ass to talk to, and there's nothing shaking, and there's no way of getting it out- that storm inside. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.

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Feedback:
What my students told me they appreciated most this semester was that I included them in the process of the class. They felt that their voices (literally they sang in class) / ideas/ were not separate from the content of the course (their ideas were assimilated into our discussions). The assignments allowed them to express themselves while building on the course content.

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"Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story" 

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"Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story" 

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I love "Sonny's Blues"  because it is raw and real. I love this story because it gets to the heart of what we all want - to be listened to, to be shown that deep water and drowning are not the same things. In Paul Celan's Meridian speech (his acceptance of the Georg Büchner Prize for literature), he writes:

"The poem intends another, needs this other, needs an opposite. It goes towards

it, bespeaks it.

For the poem, everything and everybody is a figure of this other towards which it is heading.

The attention which the poem pays to all that it encounters, its more acute sense of detail, outline, structure, color, but also the *tremors and hints* -- all this is not, I think, achieved by an eye competing (or concurring) with ever more precise instruments, but, rather, by a kind of concentration mindful of all our dates.

“Attention,” if you allow me to quote from Malebranche via Walter Benjamin's essay on Kafka, “attention is the natural prayer of the soul.”

The poem becomes – under what conditions – the poem of a person who still perceives, still turns towards phenomena, addressing and questioning them. The poem becomes conversation - often desperate conversation."

In. my view, life on earth for us complicated humans is lousy with isolation, pain, climate crises, virus, war, refugees, colonial atrocities, and on and on. As CEGEP teachers, we have these young people in our classes. Mostly impressionable, and full of the comings and goings of their daily lives, carrying their families, their ancestry, their love affairs, and dreams. I want to create a space in my classrooms (as I have the privilege of this position) for their unique turning "towards phenomena, addressing and questioning," for their desperate conversations, and for listening so that we can build a more empathetic civilization. I do not want my classroom to reify a system of domination. Where I teach "content" and not students and ask them to work in isolation from the rest of their lives. I am not interested in factory workers that "produce" "work" that reiterates MY ideas to appease the authority in the room. (This does not mean I do not provide challenging content). I just do not assign work that has them stressed and scrambling (and often plagiarizing) because they have been taught "there is one answer, it is at the back of the book, and don't look, and don't ask anyone" (to loosely quote Sir Ken Robinson). I want work that shows the process, not the bottom line, that is collaborative and generative and not alienating. Work that leaves room for curiosity and/or questioning. Work that is not easily reproducible and in the end forgettable and disposable.

bell hooks died yesterday (December 15, 2021) and the world lost a guiding light. While she is speaking in the essay I am quoting from below to the civil rights movement and struggles of black people (and especially black women) in America, it is a powerful statement of the need for community and healing.

“Love as the Practice of Freedom”
bell hooks

Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to
systems of domination—imperialism, sexism, racism, classism. [...]
A culture of domination is anti-love. It requires violence to sustain itself. To choose
love is to go against the prevailing values of the culture.  [...]

To heal our wounded body politic we must reaffirm our
commitment to a vision of what King referred to in the essay "Facing the Challenge of a
New Age" as a genuine commitment to "freedom and justice for all." My heart is
uplifted when I read King's essay; I am reminded where true liberation leads us. It leads
us beyond resistance to transformation. King tells us that "the end is reconciliation, the
end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community." The moment we
choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment
we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate
ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.  "

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1. Tailor/scale the "project management" idea. Try it out this semester in 1 class.
2. Create a list of active learning strategies that I can share with the community.
3. Try to teach in an active learning classroom. Take the workshops, learn how to use the equipment.

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Thank you to Selma & Chris for their incredible leadership and guidance! Diane, Daniel and Phil for all the hours of generative conversation, laughs, and exchanges. Paraphrasing Phil, I am usually fidgety/impatient in meetings and while I did need to stand and throw cat treats from time to time, I really looked forward to these meetings. I was always surprised with how quickly time flew and how inspired I felt. The take-aways were always so helpful. I can't wait for next semester's adventures! THANK YOU! 💖

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1. Welcome to the fellowship. New vocab and ideas!
2. Mazur: Game changer! Padlet
3. Intro to Course Flow
4. Assessment discussion
5. Exploration of active learning strategies
6. Presentation with Diane Shea on art in the classroom
7. Discussion of text and student engagement
8. My DALC project idea
9. Participation examples from Fall 2021
10. Winter 2022 goals
11. Quotes ideas that inspire
12. Acknowledgements

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I was blown away by their professionalism and creativity. They seemed completely invested and the results were pretty stellar across the board.
There were 2 phases: The delivery of the information (chapter) and the writing prompt and evaluation.

For the delivery of the chapter they played it pretty conservative most of the time. I wondered if this was because they were mirroring what they have experienced as students?

Some of their teaching strategies included:
PowerPoints (incredibly clear & concise - much better than mine!)
Kahoots (online games for review)
Engaging class discussions

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Where they really shone was the creativity and thought they put into their prompts. They were fun and really inventive.
EVERY STUDENT completed the work and submitted it ON TIME to the team. They understood that the team only had 1 week to review and grade. It was incredible how mindful they were of their peer's schedules and timelines. Not one team asked for an extension for their grading!

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"It was really fun having you sit with us, and have you make little comments like we do - I especially liked it when you sat close to my table!"

"I enjoyed getting to grade other students work, and to see a variety of presentations from different people! And since I had to memorize my chapter for my powerpoint, the information isn't going away any time soon! :)"

"Teaching the class was a really fun way for us to learn the course material and I thought it was pretty effective for the most part! This was also a great exercise for any students who wish to pursue a career in teaching, I know of a few students in our class who would like to, including myself."

" I think it was a really fun and interactive way of having us learn and teach the curriculum."

"As someone who wishes to teach, having the opportunity to teach and grade class prompts allowed me to be put in a position where I was able to experience and grow comfortable with preparing and carrying through a lesson.
In addition, it was great to receive feedback from my peers on my own work. This experience truly allowed me to grow as both a writer and student."

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I wish DALC 100 more years! This Fellowship has brought my pedagogy to the next level. I have met a group of people who are deeply invested in student success and engagement and for that I am truly grateful. The DALC community is strong and generous and I am so happy to be a part of it! Thank you Selma, Phil, Mathilde, Diane, and Chris for everything! Cheers to DALC and to Dawson for making this fellowship possible!

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Image taken from student teaching slides

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If I return to my mission statement:
The role of a teacher is to create curiosity
Create intrinsic motivation
Use the information to solve "real world" problems.
Create community and empathy that extends beyond the classroom

I feel they were curious and excited. They were definitely motivated as evidenced by total class participation/respect of due dates/ feedback given in the writing assignments given by the groups as opposed to handing in work to me on Moodle or in class. One student in particular who never uploaded anything to Moodle handed in all 8 writing prompts.
(By default I received feedback on my own shortcomings/ or blind spots as a teacher. This encouraged me to ask myself what more can I do to inspire motivation?)

In terms of real-world problems, I will conflate that with my own words about creating community and empathy. All my classes are implicitly about encouraging students to feel more empowered to enact change, make choices, and take risks. I feel this experiment was successful as they showed deep respect and nurtured each other. I have very little direction aside from basic instructions. They had to figure out as a group what to teach and how to teach it.
(I realized once again it is hard to break a "please the teacher get a good grade mindset" - but do I feel this exercise was a good "ice-breaker")

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"There are several definitions of social media, highlighting a variety of characteristics such as the promotion of user interconnectedness (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008), creation, dissemination and consumption of knowledge (Ricoy & Feliz, 2016) and the opportunity to develop relationships (Khan, 2013). In concrete terms, social media are web-based tools used to create and share content in a highly interactive way. Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and Blogs achieve this interactivity by allowing creators and consumers to comment on, annotate and repurpose content, together or individually."

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

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"One of the most important benefits of using technology in one’s teaching practice is increased student engagement. A study by the Online Learning Consortium found that technology, in general, increases engagement with course materials, with professors and fellow students (Online Learning Consortium, 2016).

Seaman and  Tinti-Kane (2013) also found that 78.9% of the time, digital communications and social media in particular had a positive impact on faculty-student communication. This demonstrates that social media can also be effectively used to simply enhance communication, and not necessarily as a tool to increase participation.

Moreover, due to the medium’s interactivity and to the multiple possibilities for co-creation, social media in educational environments can “yield new forms of inquiry, communication, collaboration, identity work, knowledge development” (Greenhow & Gleason, 2014)."

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

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"Benefits

Learn new digital literacy skills

Improve knowledge retention & understanding

Increase class participation and motivate students

Build community; connect students to each and the global community

Become an effective member of an online community

Improve student writing (through writing for peers, feedback)

Learn a different style of writing

Go beyond text, e.g., images, video, design

Take classroom knowledge public

Let students show their personality

Improve student attitudes towards the course content

Digital citizenship

Global competency"

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

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"In her role as a literacy consultant, Roberts often leads groups of writing teachers in professional development workshops where she encourages teachers to try the writing assignments they assign to students for themselves. But first she has them examine the role formal and informal language plays in their own writing.

“I have the teachers break out their phones and examine the last few texts they sent,” Roberts says. “The goal is to have them figure out: ‘Who was your audience? Where was your conventional language? Your more conventional shorthand?’ Getting teachers really curious about how they engage in those platforms is a really nice first step.”

After that, teachers can consider how they might teach digital writing in their classrooms. “The best advice I can give is to respect the students space, but bring it into their classroom,” Hyler says. Tech adverse teachers may struggle at first, he admits, although even that can turn into an opportunity for learning.

“If you’re unsure of how that lesson would go, learn alongside your students,” Hyler suggests. “Have them show you how they’re writing and ask them questions: ‘Why are you writing that way?’ There’s a lot of power in that.”"

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

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“There’s a real opportunity there to teach the power of brevity—how to say big things with only a few characters,” says Roberts, a former staff developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. “How do we want to approach word choice or talk about syntax and clarity of voice? It’s a powerful and productive place to teach those concepts of writing.”

Like Hyler, Roberts believes that teachers can take a page from the narrative signatures on each social platform to strengthen student’s writing skills and personal voice. On Twitter, students can use viral tweets as mentor sentences, breaking them apart to discover what made them so popular. Instagram and Twitter, which let users pair images and short videos alongside minimal text to convey ideas, offer a new take on creative writing.

In particular, she points to the work of Chicago teacher Gregory Michie, whose work with students mixes written text with hand-drawn artwork, video and music. “All of that is storytelling,” Roberts says. “It’s the whole blend of images and words—it’s quick little videos or snapshots. That is a story that a writer is telling.”

Of course, there’s still a place for longform essays and formal writing, and strong writing instruction will effectively incorporate both, she says. “Instead of ditch that and teach micro writing, it’s more of an and you can teach micro writing,” Roberts says. “It’s an extension.”

https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

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1. Assign photo essays and photojournalism
Spice up your  assignments by asking students to complete a photo essay or engage in a little photojournalism. Photo essays can be tied into virtually every subject from health to math to social studies.

2. Create writing prompts with photos
Daily journal writing is an excellent way for students to practice their English and composition skills. However, it can be difficult to come up with fresh topics, and students can
become bored writing on the same subject day after day.

Instagram photo effects offer an easy way to create a variety of visual images that can be used as writing prompts.

Photo prompts can also be used for poetry and fiction assignments as well as an interesting lead-in to essays in other subjects. For example, distribute photos of landforms to students for them to identify before writing a geography paper.

3. Document science experiments and art projects
Any class activity that uses a step-by-step process could benefit from being documented via Instagram. For example, take a photo of each step of a science experiment or an art project and add a caption with instructions for that step. Then, upload to the class page so students can reference the instructions from anywhere.

4. Showcase class activities and student progress
Instagram offers an easy way to share classroom progress and activities.

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Instructors cannot make assumptions about students’ proficiency with social media. Student proficiency must be taken into account when designing activities.  For example, they may be proficient at communicating informally, but may not fully comprehend what is required to critically assess information, engage with information and present findings in an academic environment. Other challenges include:

Lack of technology skills or support

Online abuse

Time required to monitor

There are steps that can be taken to help address some of these challenges. For instance, activities and assessments should be designed carefully, based on appropriate learning outcomes. Comments and posts on social media platforms are public. Have a discussion with your students about communication expectations, boundaries and what is not acceptable. Lastly, to help prevent online abuse, students should also be reminded that online behaviour is subject to the Student Code of Conduct.

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https://teaching.utoronto.ca/resources/teaching-with-social-media/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20important,Online%20Learning%20Consortium%2C%202016).

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-31-how-social-media-can-help-teach-good-writing

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Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching with Social Media - Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teaching with social media This guide provides an overview of teaching with social media at the University of Toronto. Its goal is to help Instructors: understand considerations around the use ... Teaching with Social Media Read More "

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I am very interested in movement in the classroom

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Next Level Presentations: Combining Team Teaching/Movement/Self Assessments 

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Next Level Presentations: Combining Team Teaching/Movement/Self Assessments 

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I love Dalc and Dalc is the best - everyone should join dalc - fund dalc - give dalc all the awards -dalc should be mandatory

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I love Dalc and Dalc is the best - everyone should join dalc - fund dalc - give dalc all the awards -dalc should be mandatory