1. FROM KNOWLEDGEABLE TO
KNOWLEDGE-ABLE
MAKING CONNECTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM
AFACCT Jan 2012
Professors Melissa Lizmi & Deborah Solomon
Montgomery College, Rockville

2. Michael
ssor
Wesch 2
U.S. Yea
008 the
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Prof r
Associate Professor of Cultural
Anthropology, Kansas State Univ
of
This new media environment can be
enormously disruptive to our current
teaching methods and philosophies.
As we increasingly move toward an
environment of instant and infinite
information, it becomes less
important for students to know,
memorize, or recall information, and
more important for them to be able to
find, sort, analyze, share, discuss,
critique, and create information. They
need to move from being simply
knowledgeable to being knowledge-
able.
Wesch, Academic Commons

3. Tedx Talks - Oct 2010

4. Information is
no longer scarce
everywhere, all the time

5. something in the air...
75/25 online time -- jump into their world!

6. so, where do I start?

7. Building a Class
Community
than !
Ea sier ght
thou
y ou
Communication
Sharing
Collaboration

8. Communication
If nothing else, have an active class discussion
board!
• 24/7 online community just for you and
your students
• reduces emails and number of times you
need to repeat info.
• Blackboard, WebCT, MyMC...or
QuickTopics.

9. Communication
Keeping the discussion board active
• post all important info - main means of
communication
• be present 2-3 times a week, post
interesting links and articles
• praise students & make clarifications

10. Students Sharing Work
Students
answer
weekly essay
questions
online!
ng
es igni
lo ve d log
ents own b
ud eir quic
k
St so
th d it’s
e . . . an easy
spac and

11. Students Sharing Work
• Easy online journaling
using Blogger and
Google Docs
• Students see each
others’ work, raising
the bar immediately
and continually

12. Students Sharing Work
Online Journaling Success Tips
• Tag the best student answers -
“EXCELLENT”, so students can model
• Encourage and redirect students in
comments area
• Keep grades private

13. A Place to Be
A virtual meeting place ~ part repository, part coffee shop, part
field guide for the class
• School specific: Faculty website, Blackboard, WebCT, MyMC...
• Other options: PBWorks, Wikispaces, Ning, Moodle, Google
Groups/Sites

14. • Communication >> Discussion board
• Sharing >> Online assignments
• Collaboration >> Online shared class
“space”
now what?

15. Group Projects!
ugh...what a hassle
• free-rider/interpersonal issues
• eats up too much class time
• students can’t get together outside
class

16. Group Projects
Technology = easier than ever!
• Needs (tools)
• Collaborative workspace - enabled
document creation, collaboration and
multimedia storage
• NING, Moodle, PBWorks, Wikispaces

17. Group Projects
And a project with “soul”
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Changes Waterlife and NOAA

18. Making Group Projects
Work!
Golden Rules
1. Allow students to self-select whenever possible! Group/individual
project, topic, etc.
2. Create job descriptions and accountability for each group member and
allow students to sign-up for their “position”. First-come first-served.
3. Allow students to “meet” in their own online space, but insist on access.
Facebook can even work!
4. Use peer review forms
More Good Advice
• Read article on "Hitchikers" & "Couch Potatoes"
• Have rules (i.e. can team members be fired from the group?)
• Advise students on credibility of online sources
(http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/research/credibility1.html)

19. Games
Another way to engage students is with games.
97% of kids between the ages of 12 and 17 play digital games (Pew
Internet & American Life Project)
"You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year
of conversation."
-- Attributed to Plato

20. Games
Do games “work” in the classroom?
“That games in education ‘work’ is without question. When used
properly, games can uniquely motivate, teach, and encourage our
students. If you really use games effectively, you can motivate
poor-performing or under-performing students; you can help bright
students ask important questions and relevant questions about
themselves and their world; you can help gifted kids simulate highly
complex systems.”
(Bill MacKenty, instructional designer at Hunter College Campus
School in New York, N.Y. in
http://i.ciconline.org/CiCWebResources/Articles/game-to-learn.pdf )
• UCF study showed that "over an 18-week period, students playing
the educational video games demonstrated higher gains on district
benchmark exams than students not playing the games."
http://thejournal.com/articles/2008/06/16/ucf-study-finds-video-
games-increase-student-achievement.aspx

21. Games
Some classes, even entire schools, use games as the primary learning methodology!
Quest to Learn is a public school in NY with a curriculum based on games:
"It’s important to note that Quest is not a school whose curriculum is made up of the play of commercial
videogames, but rather a school that uses the underlying design principles of games to create highly
immersive, game-like learning experiences. Games and other forms of digital media serve another useful
purpose at Quest: they serve to model the complexity and promise of “systems.” Understanding and accounting
for this complexity is a fundamental literacy of the 21st century."
www.q2l.org
Turning class into a game:
Indiana University Professor Lee Sheldon
wrote a book on how to design
your class as a multiplayer game!

22. Games
You don't have to design your entire class around games, but you can easily incorporate
games as one of your teaching tools.
• Playing existing games - find games and simulations online for homework or group
projects. (http://www.explorelearning.com, http://seriousgames.msu.edu/games.php)
• Have students design games or game-related projects for class - this
can work in any discipline area, for example:
• English class: creative writing project (i.e. “write the backstoryand plot of a new game”),
technical writing (i.e. “write 2 pages of a game instruction manual”)
• Health class: discuss the concept of “addiction” and whether it can be applied to
compulsive game-playing
• Business class: create a business plan for a new educational game marketed to public
schools
• Marketing class: write a press release or ad campaign for a new game release
• Political science class: can social change be stimulated by a “games for change” type of
game? (see gamesforchange.org for examples)
• Biology class: How would you design a game that shows how the immune system
defeats infections?
•Foreign language class: Design a game (or animation) to explain some common idioms

23. Some Cool Tools
Timeline tools:
• http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/19160/Causes-of-the-
American-Revolution/
•http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/ (free)
• Role Playing and Storytelling: Xtranormal - create two character
mini movies, ToonDoo - easy cartoon strip creation
• Collaboration and Sharing: Wordpress, Blogger, Wikispaces, NING
• Simple Game Creation: Gamestar Mechanic
• Storytelling: MovieMaker, iMovie, VoiceThread
• Google Products: Google Earth, Docs (online & collaborative),
Gmail, Calendar, Sites and Groups

24. Some Cool Tools
how about a virtual field trip?
Google Earth
a treasure trove of ideas and projects
for virtually every discipline

25. Thank you for your time and attention!
Deborah Solomon
deborah.solomon@montgomerycollege.edu
and
Melissa Lizmi
melissa.lizmi@montgomerycollege.edu