Links for teachers

Biology: what glowing hamsters can teach us about genetics (video of animals bio-engineered); reprints of antique medical illustrations - cross reference with cool art; European Molecular biology lab creates 3-D digital embryos - kinda like Google Earth on a REALLY small scale.

Psychology: - study shows cognitive therapy is as good as antidepressants; study looks at why failure inspires some and demoralizes others; book review - The Time Paradox, re: how individuals think of time shapes personality; Brain science - the source of genius;

• Science: Richard Feynman on the essence of Science;
• Language: Merriam-webster announces top 5 words of the year.
• Art and Music: the youtube symphony orchestra puts classical music online; Free downloads of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash duets; the white album turns 40; 10 fun facts about Picasso (source for images); reprints of antique medical illustrations - cross reference with biology.
• History: world history in images from 1949 to 1989 in under 5 minutes - to the tune of Billy Joel's We didn't start the fire (video).
• Green issues - the environment: green cars at LA auto show.

image from http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2008-01/homer-simpson-brain-mri.jpg

Grants and resources for instruction in the arts

Recently in discussion of grants and funding available on campus, someone said, "Why isn't there any money for the arts?" Well, there is, for example the National Endowment for the Humanities, and The Wallace Foundation. Edutopia (a George Lucas educational foundation) has a post on the best places for grant information.

Susan Turner, who writes grants for the college, advises to start early and not underestimate the time needed. She notes that potential grant requests relate to a project—usually within a program area—that can be described and budgeted. All potential requests for funding will be prioritized by the Provost.

Grant requests are based on a problem or need that can be clearly stated. So the first step in submitting a request for funding is to complete the summary section of the approval form The next step will be to discuss the concept with the appropriate dean(s) and secure initial approval. Then submit it to Dr. Sangki Min and he will review all requests with the Provost. Susan will contact the successful requesters to discuss the request and design a realistic work-flow schedule for getting a proposal out the door! Her first concern is developing that work-flow schedule (back dated from the submission date) so that there will be adequate time spent on the research and writing and reviewing stages.

All grant requests should include a timeline of who is responsible for what stage as the project is implemented.

Ben's Active Learning Resources

Ben Hayes collected the following resources as part of a Dine & Design workshop.

• Definitions of Active Learning (with brief examples, and a list of online resources from the University of California at Davis).
• The Active Learning Site, Charles Bonwell. Bibliographies of active learning articles in disciplinary areas, for large classes, and to promote critical thinking; research summaries and Internet links.
• "Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom," Charles C. Bonwell & James A. Eison. Discusses the value of active learning and ways it can be incorporated into the classroom.
• Active and Cooperative Learning, R.M. Felder. Links to active/cooperative learning journal articles and websites.
• Active Learning for the College Classroom, Donald R. Paulson & Jennifer L. Faust: Describes 29 active learning techniques.
• Active Teaching and Learning Rationale and strategies for active learning in the college classroom, including teaching and learning in the lab. (Module 3 of Getting Results, an online course for instructors on course development, funded by the National Science Foundation, produced by WGBH in Boston and The League for Innovation).
• Scenes from a Classroom: Making Active Learning Work (University of Minnesota, Center for Teaching and Learning Services). A tutorial with guidelines and keys to success for planning active learning activities. Includes scenarios depicting typical problems and their solutions.
• Active Learning in Large Classes: Video Resource (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Center for Instructional and Professional Development). This site provides an interactive tutorial. Seven video clips, each accompanied by a Word document, demonstrate: clickers, learning teams, discussions, and other in-class activities
• Active Learning with PowerPoint University of Minnesota, Center for Teaching and Learning Services). A tutorial on ways to use active learning strategies with PowerPoint presentations; includes 12 active learning strategies.
• "Active Learning on the Web," Bernie Dodge (San Diego State University). Ways to use the Internet for active learning.
• "Student Diversity Requires Different Approaches to College Teaching, Even in Math and Science," Craig Nelson, Indiana University (In American Behavioral Scientist, V. 40, No. 2, 1996, 165-175). Research by Triesman and others demonstrates the positive effect of using collaborative small groups with students from non-traditional backgrounds, (ie Blacks, Hispanics, and rural whites), who struggle with college coursework. Argues that traditional approaches are biased, while active learning strategies can lead to “massive differences in overall student achievement.”

More teaching resources from the web.

With the election there's a load of great content that might connect to students' lives.

• The last presidential debate in 10 easy minutes (video)
• Standford's course on presidential elections (lot o' links + video)
• The geography of the US presidential election - part 1 (Spoiler alert: the whole Red/ Blue state dichotomy is misleading and trite). Stanford lecture (almost 2 hour video)
  

In the world of literature:

• Academy award winning animated video of Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea
• This year's Nobel prize for literature goes to...
• Free Yale course on the american novel since 1945

Business and Economics

• Nobel Prize (in Econ) Paul Krugman on the current "readjustment/ crash" (word choice depends on your portfolio).
• Free Yale course on Financial Markets

See Also:

• Art:a horse paints -is it art?
• Geography and culture: gaming software used to create virtual tour of BeiJing's Forbidden City
• History: PBS documentaries on the 1929 crash
• Debate: Batman vs. the Penguin

Free courses by Yale including:

• Milton, Greek history, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877, Fundamentals of Physics , France Since 1871, game theory

and seasonal botany photo

700 lbs - so it says.

Web resources for teachers

Going to try a new format. Too much fun (and potentially relevant) stuff; if it isn't shared quick it could be lost, so minimal descriptions

Video of scholarly and education merit to provoke discussion (or digression):

1. Anthropology: KSU's web celeb anthropologist Michael Wesch
   
2. Biology - crab rides a jellyfish; Learning about memory and aging on YouTube
3. Business: Yale professor explains financial crisis in 10 minutes
   
4. Chemistry;
5. Physics (including a boomarang in zero gravity);
6. Art: THe 50 greatest art videos on YouTube;
7. Collections: NYTimes top 5 online video lectures - and Open Cultures top 75 online educational videos - part of their "signs of intelligent life on youtube collection". Free Engineering and SCience courses from Stanford online; source to watch complete documentary films for free;
8. Pedagogy: Father Guido Sarducci breaks it down (learning and retention- Remember Saturday Night Live in the late 70's? funny because it's true)

See Also

• Education and technology: research shows people are more likely to lie in email;
  
• Brain Science: how the mind works - Brain Rules reviewed; What Magic teaches us about neural processing (2 articles), what it feels like to have a stroke (neuroanatomy part of TEDS talks - best stuff on YouTube); 2008 election and neuroscience
  
• Language: argument that English is a user-defined and user-modified technology; Chinglish recognized as full-fleged dialect (anyone have info on Spanglish?); Stanford's online writing classes; podcasts can teach you almost any language
  
• FREE AUDIOBOOKS: The Gutenberg project - a huge mass of audio books on line - I only bookmark human read titles, see also the growing collection by Literal Systems; 1984 by Orwell:
• How to (DIY's): how to make garden lights out of LED lights and mason jars; How to make online video's without getting sued (copyright info).
• Pedagogy and books to consider: review of book How Children Fail by John Holt;
• History: animated video of Howard Zinn's History of the US Empire
  
• Election related: a non-partisan project helps community organizers to find neighbors who think they are registered but actually aren't; 2008 election and neuroscience
  
• Of arcane scholarly interest: info and links to photos by famed Harvard Ethnobotanist (combined ethnography and botany);

Cool academic resources: Media rich

More educators are incorporating wikis and blogs into their classes. Web spaces are great places to share syllabi, lesson plans, and handouts. Research shows students expect it. Furthermore, they have a great potential “fun factor.” These formats allow for embedding video, pictures, links, audio and more. Web-enhancements, whether through LMS (like Angel) or through free Web 2.0 tools, efficiently share supplemental, and/or media rich material.

Here’s a list of both highly academic and fun resources. Check them out and share with students.

• PsychCentral has 10 great free videos on the teen brain, the paradox of choice, eating disorders and more.
• The Guardian: UK lists the 50 Greatest Arts Videos of all Time (on Youtube that is)
  
• In case you haven’t’ seen Randy Pausch’s inspirational and relevant “last lecture,” it’s deeply moving and amazingly upbeat.
• For history buffs, Howard Zinn’s Peoples history of the United States – animated video. 8 ½ min long.
• Oculture’s 70 signs of intelligent life on YouTube a collection of first rate videos.
  
• For political science/ journalism applications, Seymour Hersh (Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist) on covert operations in Iran.
• for biology/ botany - a time lapse video of fungi and slim molds (short and oddly compelling)
  

Recent publications re: Adjuncts

The Chronicle of Higher Education has recently published several articles related to adjunct instructors. In "We're not your colleagues" a former full-time faculty member and administrator returns to campus life as an adjunct and sees things diferently; and, "The Price of Gas Fuels Tough Choices for adjuncts" brings up a perhaps unforeseen effect of rising gas prices. See also:

• Inside Higher Ed "Will Adjuncts Pay to be Certified?"
• Inside Higher Ed "For Adjuncts, Progress and Complexities"
  
• Allyn Bacon "adjunct online links library"
  

Also, when asked what advice they had for new part-time teachers, a collection of veteran adjuncts from several departments offered the following:

1. go to in-services and departmental meetings, to get key information
2. seek out your dean and communicate - if you plan a field trip, trip to the library or move/reschedule class for any reason, let your dean know.
   
3. give every student a syllabus on the first day
   
4. read the KCKCC "Adjunct faculty handbook"

Teaching with embedded video

Our campus community has an impressive online video presence.

In fact, in the most recent online video to go "viral," you can see a Fort Hays debate coach lose it and moon for rebuttal. One of our own acts as the voice of reason and calm. You may have seen it on network news. YouTube pulled the video, but it's up on Live Leak, viewable at Boing Boing (It is intense - contains very coarse language and, as I said, an exposed rear-end).

The Strawberry Fields Community Garden Project, produced by the school's economics club in conjunction with the Strawberry Hill Home association, shows community involvement and applied, active learning. It features Dr. Medhi Shariati, as well as several students you see in the halls or in class. It's the featured video this week to your right.

The music department represents us with class through many videos of the Blues Devils. Different musicians and musical genres show up. Sometimes the camera is on a tripod, and sometimes on the shoulder of someone in the back of the audience, but the obvious sense of fun makes them worth checking out.

The track team also shares video to assess and improve performance.

See the growing list of examples of our excellence at the forefront of online shared video.

Gearing up: Resources and Suggestions

On syllabi, include your name, the textbook title, and dates of exams and activities. The master syllabi templates aren’t finished products – they need specific info. Check out Dave Knopp's insightful 1 page paper re: student vs. faculty expectations of a syllabus. .

Email students ASAP. Sending a mass email is easy.Your class "group" has already been created in Groupwise. Go to the address book and enter the 4 letter abbr. for your department and scroll to your class. Attach syllabus or other materials.

Get to know the Academic Resource Center (ARC).Tutoring isn’t just for struggling students. Bookmark these links and share them - repeatedly, in email, on syllabus, and every chance you get:

• The Reading and Writing Center
• The Math Tutoring Center
  

Learn where the library is and plan a tour ASAP: Contact the main desk at 7650.

Make an effort to break the ice, build community and establish trust. If you’re interested in fresh ideas re: icebreakers, check out one of KCKCC’s first wikis. Build community throughout the semester.

adjuncts: support and development

One recurring theme of this blog is the support of adjunct instructors. Several times I've supported myself and others exclusively through adjunct work at multiple locations, logging as many as 700 miles a week. That's what got me hooked on audio books. Here , in the fall of 2007, as many as 43.7% of classes were taught by adjunct faculty who aren't otherwise employed on campus.

When you consider that adjuncts teach fewer classes - that's a lot of people who work out of their cars, make due with limited, communal, office spaces and spread their commitments across several schools or businesses. Several sources note that the price of gas has already steered startling numbers of students toward online classes, and experts predict these classes will be taught predominantly by adjuncts. These aren't the only challenges facing adjuncts.

Support for adjunct faculty development.
We have significant resources for adjunct faculty, that many don't know about. The Faculty- Staff Development (FSD) site is a great place to find resources. From there, and additionally:

• adjuncts can present symposia and there is a stipend (200$?).
• Funds (up to 375$) are available to attend conferences. (note: be willing to share what you learn. Perhaps write for this blog or interviewing for the audio podcast)
• the FSD adjunct page has the adjunct handbook and several newsletters from different adjunct support organizations.
• FSD sponsors Dine & Design and TechTALK presentations where we share strategies, activies (we don't like the term "lesson plans" but you get the idea), and theory.
  
• you can download Softchalk Software for creating cool interactive online quizzes and instructional material (it's in Angel Support materials). We will have to discuss the benefits of Angel in a future post.
  

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What do you need to know and / or want to talk about? How can we better support adjunct faculty? Post to the comments section of this article.

Web resources with a Math/ Science / Technology (MST) focus.

The web has a wealth of material to support teaching of the sciences. Youtube offers many, but the problem with youtube is that it isn’t easy to find relevant, quality, content. Luckily Open Culture has done that recently. You can also find resources through our social bookmarking site and at http://del.icio.us/gdixon/math.

Primarily MST resources

• A basic skills math podcast that connects everyday life to math concepts. This has potential for learning communities http://www.mathgrad.com/shownotes.html
• Pedagogy in Action, a site by the Science Education Research Center of Carlton College, has a wealth of resources for teachers, particularly science teachers. http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/index.html
• For Chemistry videos, check out http://www.kentchemistry.com/KentsDemos.htm
• MIT provides a great number of resources through its open courseware initiative.
• The Indian Institute of Technology and The Indian Institute of Science provide solid content.
• xkcd, a webcomic, posts comics related to math.
  
• 
  

Wide variety of subject interests - Sciences and Humanities

Many universities and an increasing number of community colleges are making course content available free online. Generally, these schools consider sharing content to be a community service.

• The University of Pennsylvania has a 60 second lecture series on a wide variety of topics including chemistry, physics, history, psychology, women’s studies and more. They have some big names. . I stumbled upon it through the presentation by Labov – a giant in linguistics. Because the format is around a minute long – it requires subject experts to summarize, which is an invaluable tool for effective teaching.
• Uchannel, associated with Princeton, aggregates (collects) feeds from many quality institutions.
• UC Berkeley has pioneered the use of YouTube to deliver content.

If you have resources you've found that you like, please share them by commenting to this post.

Resources for teaching 6-24-8

This week we mourn the passing of George Carlin, Counter-Culture’s comedian of the 70’s and 80’s and a prolific writer more recently. He created one of the best ways to teach both comparison contrast and the use of metaphor in language through multimedia available free online in a routine called, “Football vs. Baseball.” Find the text and audio , and you can also see video via several sites on YouTube . See him perform the monologue and /or an interesting slide montage. I'll try embedding a video somewhere. The slide montage might really work with Non-native English speakers.

Also a shout out to Janice McIntyre and those who have been using www.freerice.com to build and reinforce vocabulary. She says her students wouldn’t leave class one day because they were so engaged. Designed by a computer programmer who wanted to boost his children’s SAT scores, not only will the game make you smarter, every correct answer feeds the hungry worldwide through the U.N. World Food Programme. There’s a great audio program (with text) from NPR.

NPR provides some great resources. Today they mentioned the Wallace Foundation as a resource for teachers. The site bills itself as high quality source for learning and enrichment activities. They also sponsor grants.

The Chronicle of Higher Education this week praised one of my favorite sites, Open Culture, for teaching resources and for personal enlightenment/ entertainment/ etc. The Chronicle discusses the great online courses available free, but I download audio books and audio short stories. Open Culture also sifts through the morass of YouTube and finds teaching and educational stuff actually worth viewing (it’s out there – really!) And, Open Culture updates frequently. Another collection of redeemable YouTube videos can be found at their smart youtube viewing collection.