Stress management for the online student

6 stress management tips for the online student
Why didn't we address this sooner? Nothing profound or earthshaking but this might be a good link to share with your students - maybe in an Announcement. Maybe time it to coincide with finals or midterms or a big paper?
A little yoga, maybe?

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Work Skills Your Students NEED for the Jobs of the Future

What will your students need to know in 2020?  I found this fascinating infographic about the types of skills that the jobs of the future will require.  What do you think of their findings?




Source: Top10OnlineColleges.org

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Why it's Important to be Digital in our Classrooms

Why do teachers need to embrace the digital age?  In short, it's because digital skills are increasingly needed for just about every profession!  While your students may not be learning a digital skill for a specific future career in your class, learning to use different programs, apps, and software in your course will help train their brain to learn those career specific skills in their future jobs.

Here's how healthcare is being affected by digital tools.  My own doctor uses a laptop in the exam room, using it to record things her patients tell her, to remind her of what we've gone over already, and to have my various lab results at her fingertips.  She also sends my prescriptions to my pharmacy electronically, and will either print out or e-mail me a summary of what we've discussed that day for my reference.  How are digital tools affecting the careers your students plan to go in?



Get health and fitness tips at Greatist.com

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The Three R's

What are the 3 R's in education?  Reading, writing, and 'rithmatic come to mind, but it's so much more than that.

Dennis Sparks wrote an excellent article on creating new habits of the mind, and how we ignore just how much work is needed to fully develop these habits.  We need to remember the other three R's-  relate, repeat, and reframe.

Relate, repeat, and reframe helps ensure long term success.  Relate, repeat, reframe helps us all remember that our students (or faculty, if you're training them) are human.  Humans make mistakes.  Humans revert back to old, bad habits if the new, good ones are not firmly put into place.  Humans take awhile to learn things, and even longer to retain things for the long term. 

Relate, repeat, reframe.  Check out Sparks' excellent article.

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Will MOOCS Doom Online Education?

One question I get from people when they find out I am involved in online education is "Don't you worry that MOOCS will make you irrelevant?"

The idea of MOOCS is certainly intriguing.  MOOCS stand for Massively Open Online Courses.  They are built so that there can be unlimited students in it.  They are usually free for students to take, although they do not have any college credit affiliated with them.  As an instructional technologist, I have spoken to people who who are surprised that we have caps on the number of students we can take in our classes- their idea of online learning was MOOC style. 

Here's a great infographic on MOOCS that explain why I personally think that MOOCS will not take over the current online education model, although I think they are an interesting experiment.  Education is not attainable to many, many people in the world, but MOOCS have a substantial failure rate.

What's your take on MOOCS?

Source: TopCollegesOnline.org

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A fine balance

In a recent issue of Online Cl@ssroom, columnist, Errol Sull reflected on the considerations of adopting new tools in an online course. In light of my own online classroom experience, and his suggestions and reminders, I have put together a few rather broad ideas for consideration:

Prepare to learn with and from your students. Provide a (monitored) sounding board via a discussion for students who might need a bit of encouragement or direction when using new technology for a project. Be flexible but firm when you introduce a new tool. Applaud if they discover something new or problematic. Teaching students to think and solve problems, is never out-of-date.

Seek help! Each new piece of software, is likely to have a corresponding blog, forum, or email newsletter. Take advantage of these. Sometimes you can find tips and ideas that don’t come with the software guides.

Keep students in mind. Technology choices should never be about less time teaching, but rather time used more effectively.  Students will continue to need you, no matter how cool the tools, to answer questions, focus and motivate, reduce anxiety, and hold the flashlight when they need help.

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Put a CORK in it!

We’ve all read about the importance of group work and collaboration but sometimes getting things started is part of the challenge! One way to get students to form teams is to use corkboard.me (www.corkboard.me). You can use this tool to facilitate a brainstorming session - my example is on “healthy lifestyle choices”. They can add suggested topics to your corkboard (anonymously) then when you’re ready, they can sign up for whichever topic they want to work on.

I’ve also seen it used as a way for students to introduce themselves to the class. Play with mine and see if it might be useful in your class! http://corkboard.me/oCgczOvjhd

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5 Things Students Want their Teachers to Know about Online Learning

I found the blog post, 5 Things Students Want their Teachers to Know about Online Learning, by Lisa Nielsen in her blog, The Innovative Educator, to be a worthy reminder. According the students and teachers at the iNacol Virtual Schools Symposium:

1. Socialization is important
2. Students want to see their teacher and
3. to see each other.
4. They want you to get to know them and 
5. want you to keep the course relevant. 

Although none of this is terribly new, several ideas and useful sites to accomplish all of this are included. Check this out as you refresh your courses for the spring semester.

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Email and the angry student

Angry, frustrated, upset students. We have all had them both in the classroom and online. It is SO tempting for both parties to respond emotionally in this anonymous setting. Here are a few thoughts provided by Victoria S. Brown of Florida Atlantic University in the January 2011 edition of Online Classroom together with the collective personal experiences from our Butler Online staff.

• Do not respond immediately. This is the online equivalent of taking a deep breath and thinking before you speak.
  
• Wait at least an hour or two before crafting your response. But by all means, do respond. Write your email, and then pause and reread it carefully, maybe out loud, before sending.
• Use a professional tone. While email seems impersonal, the person reading it will react very personally. Be careful that your language is neutral and free of sarcasm, condescension, and other unintentional but negative undertones. While students may get upset no matter what you say, it is better to err on the side of caution.
• Address the student by name. Beyond the positive defusing power of using a person’s name, it will help to remind the student that this is not an anonymous situation, that a real person is listening and responding.
• Limit your response to only the issues at hand. Be as brief as necessary.
• Close “Respectfully, [your name]
• Finally, make sure you keep a copy of the original message and your response(s)

Do you have any thoughts or additions? Let us know.

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Voices of a Generation: Students Speak Out

In September 2011, Ann Curry hosted Education Nation's first student panel discussion, "Voices of a Generation". Young people provided insight into what they think needs to be done to ensure that every student receives a world-class education. Click "Voices of a Generation: Students Speak Out" to view the video. Some of the student comments included:

1. Us youth love all the new technologies that come out. When you acknowledge this and use technology in your teaching it makes learning much more interesting.
2. We appreciate when you connect with us in our worlds such as the teacher who provided us with extra help using Xbox and Skype
3. I have to critically think in college, but your tests don't teach me that. 
4. We learn in different ways at different rates.
5. I can't learn from you if you are not willing to connect with me.
6. Teaching by the book is not teaching. It's just talking.
7. Every young person has a dream. Your job is to help bring us closer to our dreams.
8. We need more than teachers. We need life coaches.

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Notes in the Cloud

Do you lecture and encourage your students to take notes? Penzu might be the tool for your class! It's promoted as a secure, cloud-based, online journaling tool but since many of our students are toting around a laptop/netbook anyway, I think it'd be great for students to use for taking class notes too! The basic version is free, it date stamps each entry, and you can organize and delete your notes at will. Suggest this the next time your student says that the notes she took in your class are on her (lost) flash drive! Check it out at www.penzu.com and let us know what you think!

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Spice Up your Math Class

I just came across Using the Internet to Spice Up your Math Class, a great resource for teaching Math in the college classroom. The site is a mind map with links to oodles of resources (how do you like that technical terminology?). Just click the +sign on any of the labels to expand the content. Hope you find something useful here.

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Think Anatomy

Think Anatomy is a great site where students can learn almost anything about the human body. The site has links to several videos, images, interactives, mnemonics, games, lectures, quizzes and tests, etc. It even includes iPhone and iPod apps that can be downloaded.

If you find the above sited useful you might also like Get Body Smart. This is a learning experience that includes these body systems:

• OVERVIEW OF HUMAN BODY SYSTEMS

• SKELETAL SYSTEM

• MUSCLE TISSUE PHYSIOLOGY

• MUSCULAR SYSTEM

• NERVOUS SYSTEM

• CIRCULATORY (CARDIOVASCULAR) SYSTEM

• RESPIRATORY SYSTEM

• URINARY SYSTEM

• HISTOLOGY

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Notely Student Organizer

Notely is a collection of online tools designed to help busy students organize their hectic lives. Notely has the tools to help students get organized and achieve better grades.

http://notely.net/

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The WorldWide Telescope

The WorldWide Telescope has so many rich features that it is difficult for me to explain. You can download this program to your computer - and, yes, it is free. As the download site states:

"The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and planetariums in the country."

Watch this TED talk that introduces the World Wide Telescope to get a better idea of what it is. Then, download the program and have some fun. It really puts a perspective on our place in the universe.

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These Blocks are so Cool!!

I am sure all of you played with blocks as children. In this intriguing TED talk, blocks take on a whole new meaning. "MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables -- cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?"

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A Timely Reminder

Think about this before you drive! Thanks for the reminder, Meg.

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Middlespot Video Tutorial

Middlespot is a new kind of search engine that would be super for student research and collaborative projects. You can share mashups created here, collaborate on them, add your own files and photos, etc, etc. It is rather hard to explain what a mashup at Middlespot would look like. View the video to get a clearer picture!

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100+ Free Internet Resources

This site is just full of, well, as the title indicates:

100+ Free Internet Resources

The categories include:

• Digital Storytelling


• Language Arts


• Math


• Science


• Shared at FETC


• Social Studies


• Teacher Tools

Thanks to Eddie Andreo for this valuable link!

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How do you help students complete online courses?

Meg sent this link to the online instructors but we thought it was so valuable that we wanted to include it here also.

http://www.sloanconsortium.org/node/2486

As Meg stated in her email:

". . . the BEST article I have read in YEARS regarding how to improve your course so that students succeed. I hope you will read it and consider adopting one or more of these suggestions. It’s a great gage to determine how friendly your course is.

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