I’m really excited and fortunate to be involved in a whole lot of stuff at Algonquin College these days. In addition to teaching part time in the Interactive Multimedia Developer program, I’m also teaching online courses in Digital Communication and Social Media in Business, and Jester Creative is working with the college to produce a LipDub video which is going to be shot early next year.

All of these great projects have given me the opportunity to explore and experiment with the role social media is playing in post secondary education.

I just finished giving a short talk on Facebook in the Classroom at the first ever Innovation Case Jam, an event focused on bringing college faculty and administration together to share ideas and come up with new and innovative ways to enhance the college experience for students, teachers and administration. I had to duck out of the event early to get back to my class, but I wanted to summarize some of the thoughts from my talk here to continue the conversation.

The Secret to Success

By far the biggest issue with Facebook in the classroom is the whole privacy question. A lot of teachers are hesitant to engage with students on Facebook as it’s often seen as more of a “personal” space. We use it to interact with our friends and family, and don’t always want to cross the personal/professional boundary with students. Conversely, students are also hesitant to link up with teachers, for many of the same reasons – do teachers really need to see the photos from last weekend’s kegger?

I believe I’ve found a solution to some of these issues. I think there’s a lot of value in having a class Facebook Group. It’s a great, interactive space where students and teachers can share relevant links, videos, posts, events and so on. It’s a wonderful supplementary learning tool, and Facebook Groups can be made not only private, but secret, so the group can be locked down to outside participants and won’t show up in searches.

The problem is, in order to invite people to a group, the administrators must be Facebook friends with the people they are inviting. This brings us back to the whole issue of privacy.

Here’s how we solve it – make Facebook Group administration a student-driven effort. One way you could approach it is to assign class reps with the creation of the Group, and have them invite their classmates – your students are already connected with each other on Facebook anyway, right? Take yourself out of the mix.

Not only that, but by handing Facebook over to the people that know it best – your students – you’re giving them ownership of the community. Now, you’re not having to do all the posting and explaining – rather, your students are free to share and explore and connect on their own.

You should still be part of the group, for sure – but rather than run the conversation, just guide it.

One example of how this is working really well is with Algonquin’s LipDub project. Though this is a Facebook page – a more public community than a group – it’s similar, because it is totally administered by the students – they are responsible for updates and for managing everything that goes on the page. We monitor and address any issues (there haven’t been any to speak of). The community is starting to thrive and as the project continues it will be a source of motivation, buzz creation and information. Perfect!

How about you? What are your experiences with Facebook in the classroom? Do you have questions? Let’s discuss in the comments below.

Photo credit: anna-b on Flickr

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I kind of fell into the whole teaching thing. It was never my plan to be a teacher. I had no desire to attend teacher’s college. In fact, when I was growing up, I was never really even that fond of school. I liked to learn, but was more self-guided. I didn’t enjoy the structure of school; my attention span was far too short for long, boring lectures and 2 hour exams.

But, 20 years on in my career, here I am. A teacher.

Math sucks. Mr. Hanley was my Math teacher in Grade 11. I despised Math. I was lousy at it, it ruined my A average, and it was all I could do to muster up the energy to go to class. I’ll never forget my first day of Grade 11. I was in a brand new school, thousands of kilometres away from where I’d spent most of my childhood, and I was miserable. I walked into Mr. Hanley’s math class with a sense of dread. I didn’t know anyone, and I was convinced that I was going to flunk.

I was sombrely sitting at my desk, hatching my plan to escape out the window when suddenly, the door of the classroom opened and Mr. Hanley walked in, with a very serious look on his face. He resembled a younger, more conservatively dressed version of Dr. Johnny Fever from the 70s TV show, WKRP in Cincinnati. He shot a death dart glance around the room and the class went silent. I wondered which of the windows I should make a break for. Mr. Hanley quietly sat down at his desk. He sorted papers and shuffled paper clips for what seemed an eternity. Then, ever so slowly, he reached for his desk drawer. You could hear a pin drop. He carefully pulled out a baseball hat, and put it on. I quickly realized that this was no ordinary baseball hat. It had a brim about a foot long. On the front of the hat were two giant, Disney-esque cartoon eyes. Stuck to the brim were two large, white felt teeth. On the sides of the hat were pasted two long, floppy ears. It was Goofy.

Then, with a completely straight face, Mr. Hanley said, “So, are we ready to do some Math?”

I think we all have a teacher in our past that made an impact on us. Mr. Hanley was that teacher for me. Not only was he a laid back guy, but he treated each one of his students like a real person. We weren’t “dumb kids” in his eyes. He knew we all had infinite potential. Each day he showed up to class, Mr. Hanley had a smile on his face, and a sparkle in his eye. You could tell he just loved to teach. And even though I still hated Math, I didn’t mind going to his class, because he was simply a joy to be around. He not only helped me to “get” fractions, he helped me to understand that it was okay to be an awkward teenager. That even though I might struggle with stuff, that I was fine just the way I was. He helped me realize that challenges are part of life, and if I just try, I could make it. I got a B in his class, and I know that it wasn’t because I was any good at Math. It’s because Mr. Hanley’s passion made me want to succeed, so I tried harder.

Let’s not forget why we’re here. Another school year has started. If you’re a post-secondary teacher like me, you’re swamped. You’ve got dozens of new students, and not a whole lot of time to learn their names, let alone what makes each one tick. It’s easy to get caught up in the stress of class prep, marking and administration. It can feel like you’re on autopilot, just trying to make it through another class.

Stop.

Step back for a minute. Forget the prep and the admin for a minute. Like Seth says, don’t rehearse so much. Take a deep breath. Your students are not looking for someone who will just recite facts at the front of the class and slap marks on the top of their pages. They are looking to you to give them an experience that will help them to expand. They are looking to you to share what you know. And that doesn’t come from a PowerPoint slide. It comes from YOU.

The true love of teaching for me, is not in standing at the front of my class spewing information. It’s in sitting down beside someone and letting them show me what they’ve achieved. It’s in the conversations that happen before, and after, and during class. It’s in the Skype conversation I had with one of my students at 11pm last night, because he was excited to talk about a video he came across. And mostly, it’s in knowing that, in my own small way, I’ve been able to help some people realize their potential, like Mr. Hanley did for me.

That’s what gets me up in the morning. That’s what makes me show up to class even after I’ve already worked a 10 hour day.

Thanks, Mr. Hanley, wherever you are. You taught me what it means to be a good teacher. And I aspire to be like you every time I walk into a classroom.

Now, where did I put my Goofy hat?

[image credit: Patrick Haney on Flickr]

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It’s that time of year again! I love back to school. I’m excited to meet my new group of students (I always have first-years in the Fall), and look forward to helping some future web designers and developers learn some new skills. Teaching is one of the most rewarding things I do.

With all of the other stuff I have going on – my business, speaking, blogging commitments, and volunteer work – prepping and managing a 6 hour a week course load with 80 students can easily get overwhelming. Fortunately, I’ve found some online tools that have helped to make things not only more efficient for me, but more interesting for my class. Here are a few ways I’m bringing online tools into my classrooms.

Google Docs

One of the major issues I had when I was first starting out with teaching was I was always having to move files around. I’d prep my PowerPoint slides, write my notes and prepare handouts, then I had to either copy them remotely to the college network (which can be slow and unreliable), save them on a USB drive, or email them to myself. It was an extra step that could wind up in catastrophe if I forgot to do it (which I did, once or twice).

Enter Google Docs to save the day! Google Docs, if you’re not familiar, is a web-based word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet suite from Google. With Google Docs, I keep all my class files in one spot, and I can access them from anywhere with an Internet connection (even on my smart phone!). Now, I just do my prep at home, and when I get to school, I call up my documents in Google Docs and off I go. One less step, and less risk I’ll forget something important at home.

The best part about Google Docs is you can share documents with others. So, instead of printing handouts, why not save some paper and share a handouts folder to your class? Or, have them write their assignments in Google Docs, and share them to you for marking? There are plenty of applications. Once you start using Google Docs, I promise, you’ll never go back.

Class Community Sites

Maintaining good communication with your class outside of class can be a big challenge. LMS systems like BlackBoard only go so far, and can be clunky and time consuming to use. I’ve taken my classes to a collaborative space outside the LMS environment, creating a Class Community site around my course. In this space, which is invitation only and not available publicly, I can post announcements, share links and videos (it’s a great place to post the YouTube videos I talked about here), and it provides a forum for dialogue not only between you and your class, but between classmates as well.

My students love the interactivity, and I love the convenience and easy updating. I have used Ning in the past, and am now experimenting with Google Sites. You don’t have to be a web designer to set up a site using these tools. If you can create a Word document, you can have a Class Community Site.

Often as teachers we can feel isolated – we’re not always sure what other things our students are learning in their programs of study. Having a space to connect with other teachers could go a long way towards creating a better learning experience for our students. A Community Site can be taken a step further to a Faculty Site as well. Imagine being able to share with teachers in the same program or department as yourself. You can share tips, ideas, discuss challenges, and help each other out. I think there is huge potential in creating dialogue between teachers, especially teachers within the same program.

Skype Video

My students love guest speakers. A couple of times a semester, I will bring engaging and inspiring folks from industry into class to present and do Q and A. It adds another viewpoint and dimension to the class, and they get a break from listening to me yammer on. Often I bring in local people, but since I’ve been out here on the Internet, I’ve met so many people in other cities and countries who have so much wisdom and experience to share. Since I don’t have a budget to bring them to my class physically, I use Skype Video, and it works beautifully. The students enjoy it immensely and I think my guest speakers get a charge out of it too.

Skype is free and many college classrooms have web cams now. Why not give it a whirl?

Those are just three simple ways you can make your teaching life easier using technology. All of these options are absolutely free and available to anyone online.

What’s in your online teaching toolkit?

[photo credit: AllanCaplan on Flickr]

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I was thinking back to the first time I was in college, back in 1988 (ooh. I’m really dating myself now). There were no computers in the classroom. We lugged around armloads of textbooks and binders with foolscap clicked into them. There were no text messages coming in on our mobile phones to distract us from what was happening in class (although we did pass notes). Times sure were different back then.

Ironically, I was in a technical school, taking a technical program (TV Broadcasting). So, I was surrounded by technology every day, in the form of TV cameras, video switchers, lights, editing controllers, and the like. To add insight to irony, we were using these tools to communicate messages to audiences. Our great instructors used the technology to help us learn to communicate. I guess I was lucky that way.

What the Tech? Flash forward 20 years or so, and technology isn’t just something you learn about in trade school. It’s incorporated into everything we do. Kids are growing up not knowing life without mobile devices and the Internet, and any of us who are Gen X or earlier are being forced to catch up to a world in which technology is at once ubiquitous and elusive.

As teachers, this can put us in a hairy predicament. We’re just trying to figure out how our new dumbphone* works, and our students are toting iPads and Androids in their backpacks. Yet, we’re supposed to be the experts in the classroom that have it all figured out. We’re supposed to be using the technology as proficiently and seamlessly as they are. It’s enough to make some teachers want to bury their heads in a heavy textbook and never come out.

Rocket Surgery 101. It doesn’t have to be this way. Bridging the gap between what we know as instructors and how our students are learning isn’t as scary as it seems. The problem is, there are SO many choices as to how we’re going to leverage technology in the classroom, that it’s hard to know where to begin. So, I thought it might be useful to provide a couple of tips that you can try out with your students starting right away. I want you to give it a whirl, and report back on how it works. Remember, it’s all an experiment!

Keep in mind, that these tips don’t just have to apply to education in a formal classroom environment. If you’re holding any kind of workshops or training on any level, these techniques can apply.

Virtual Office Hours
Most Learning Management Systems (LMS) have some sort of capacity for holding live chats. Some instructors use this to hold Virtual Office Hours – a set time every week where they are available online to answer questions or concerns, or discuss various topics. It works well and students like the interaction, particularly in a Distance Learning environment. I suggest taking Office Hours to a new level. Why not start off the discussion by posting a video on YouTube and sharing it with the class? You can record straight into YouTube, so you don’t need any fancy editing gear – just a microphone and a web cam. I use this to discuss current events and give reminders of assignment deadlines mostly. But we’ve all been in the situation where we get 20 emails from students asking the same question. Why not use the video to respond to everyone at once?

Once you’ve posted the video, send out the link to the class with the announcement of when your Virtual Office Hours will be taking place. They can view the video, and then show up to the chat already having some discussion points and also having any potential issues cleared up.

Then, if you want to get really fancy, you can take your chat outside of the LMS, and move to something like Skype (live audio chat, good for small groups), or Oovoo (multi-way video chat). Other tools worth looking at include TalkShoe, where you could do a live broadcast and have students “call in”, then share the show with anyone who couldn’t make it to the discussion, or even share it with other classes!

Facebook Groups
If you haven’t already created a group for your class on Facebook, do it. Let’s face it…the majority of your students are spending all their time on Facebook anyway, so why not be where the action is?

Think of a Facebook Group as an opportunity to create a living, breathing environment where the class can share links, have discussions, and comment on things. You can post photos, videos, links, and events – so there are tons of possibilities. Perhaps you want to post your Office Hours video there, instead of on YouTube? Easy peasy, and again, you can record straight from your web cam. Maybe you want to share links to recent news, or post industry events like tradeshows and conferences to the calendar.

What’s cool is, anything you post will show up in group members’ Facebook stream, so as they go about their day, they will see bits and pieces of things relevant to what they are learning. It’s a way to keep them learning even when you’re not in the classroom. And once encouraged, people love to share, so suddenly, your class is helping to create the content for your course!

The great thing about Facebook Groups, is you can make them secret. That means, the class group won’t show up in public searches, and it’s by invitation only, so you can carry on in a private manner without worrying about a bunch of non-students getting in there and cluttering things up. And if you’re worried about becoming Facebook friends with your students just so you can have them in the group, don’t. You can set individual preferences inside of Facebook so particular friends only see what you want them to see.

So there you have it. Two quick ideas that you can start to experiment with today. Try it out…and get back to me with your thoughts. I’m eager to hear your experiences! And also, if you have any of your own tips to share, please do so in the comments. Happy teaching!

*Hat tip to Jon Swanson

[photo credit: katiew on Flickr]

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I sort of fell into the whole teaching thing.

I never had aspirations to actually BE a teacher. I wasn’t a great student, after all. Sure, I didn’t skip classes, mostly got my homework done on time, but my grades were a mess – partly from being a military brat (Canada’s education system is not really set up for transients), and partly because I simply didn’t have an aptitude for things like math and grammar (though my Art, Music and Drama marks were always stellar).

When I graduated from high school I wanted to get as far away from it as possible. I couldn’t wait to get into college – where I knew I’d be much more successful in a less book-learnin’, more hands-on environment. I was right about that.

After college I fully expected to get a J-O-B, maybe as a junior editor in a newsroom or a production assistant for a local show. I certainly didn’t expect my first job to be as a producer.

I’ve said before, that a producer at a community television station (public access TV for you all down south) is something quite different than a producer for a regular TV network. I was a camera operator, writer, director, editor, sound person, and much more. I had 7 shows to produce, not just one. Like other TV producers, I worked 80+ hours a week. But unlike them, a HUGE part of my job was teaching.

You see, about 90% of the people that worked at the station were volunteers. People from all walks of life who shared a common interest in producing TV shows. They helped out in all areas – camera, audio, lighting, editing, writing, producing, directing – you name it. But most of the time they came in green – having little or no video experience. It was part of my job to ensure that they knew the proper techniques. This happened through formal workshops (I was required to teach one per week in various disciplines) or on the job training (like, during a live TV show).

Having just come from being a student myself, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was going to be successful at this whole teaching thing. But, it was my job, and I’d best be getting the hang of it. My friend, mentor and boss at the time, Andre, gave me some good advice. “Just tell them what you know. Don’t overthink it.”

So really, my only job was to figure out what I already knew.

Seven years and hundreds of workshops later, I landed in college again. Back to being a student. Back to filling my brain with new ideas – I traded in my video camera for a computer and was off to the races.

Upon graduation from College 2.0, I was fortunate to be hired by one of my instructors. She owned a technology training company. She had some web projects and video projects to start me off, which was great. But one day, she came to me and said she needed someone to teach this new software called Dreamweaver (this was 1997). She handed me a book called “Learn Dreamweaver in 21 Days” and told me in 4 weeks I’d be in front of 40 students eager to learn this cutting edge technology. Gulp.

The teaching gig (ironically in the same classroom where I’d just spent the previous 7 months) went pretty well, and boy did I learn a lot. I learned pacing and timing. I learned how to read the class and gauge by number of blank faces how well they were following along. And most importantly, I learned that it’s okay to not always know the answers, as long as you are willing to find them out.

So really, my only job was to figure out what I didn’t already know, and then get to know it really well.

Flash forward to 2008. I’d spent a good deal of time in the previous 10 years doing corporate training and software training, writing training documentation, designing curricula, and coordinating programs for adult learning. I felt as if I was catching on to this whole teaching thing.

I decided to connect with my old classmate who was now running the same program I’d taken at the college in ’97. I expressed an interest in teaching and provided some suggestions on the kind of courses I’d like to teach. I was accepted to the part time faculty and again, I was off to the races, teaching video and web/social media. I was given pretty free reign to design the courses how I wanted them, and more importantly, given a really talented bunch of people to teach. What I love about teaching at the college level is learning about the people in my class – who they are, where they come from and most importantly, what drives them. Their passion for video and multimedia is what drives me to be a better teacher.

So really, my only job is to help others understand what they already know and equip them with some tools so they can be successful.

Teaching is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. It’s the thing I look forward to, and I miss it when its not there. I love it when my students get as fired up about this stuff as I am. I love seeing the results of their hard work and mostly, I love it when I see that lightbulb go off over their head – the one that shows me that they don’t just know it…they understand it.

I learn more from being a teacher than I ever learn from being a student. You can too. You just need to focus on three things in order to become a better learner, and a better teacher:

1. Figure out what you already know
2. Figure out what you don’t know, then get to know it really well
3. Help others to understand, and equip them with tools to aid their success

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My Algonquin College Web Media class this year is doing some amazing work. I wanted to take this opportunity to showcase, with their permission, a few of the blogs and web site projects they have been working on. Please take a moment to click on the links and if you like what you see, get to know them. These people are the future of our industry. What they are doing and what they have to say is very important. Listen to them.

Interactive Multimedia Class of 2010 Blogs:

Noriko Natsume
http://www.eyestir.com/nnproject

Jason Derouchie
www.handtobrain.com

Alexi Dumochel
Tokyo on the Brain
http://aricoukaze.wordpress.com

Al Morrison
http://corloveaduck.wordpress.com

Jacqueline Brinsmead
http://randomthoughts63.wordpress.com

Brandon Brule
www.brandonbrule.com/blog

Sheila Sugavanam
http://sugabam.wordpress.com

Calgar-C
http://calgarc.com

Brendan Shaughnessy
http://welljackson.wordpress.com

Servillano Poserio
http://www.mindhackers.net

John Warren
http://www.thebestjohn.com

Matthew Lavigne
http://mlavgn.wordpress.com/

Tom Martineau

http://tmartineau.wordpress.com/

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