Course Syllabus Spring 2010

Here is our course syllabus. As new materials become available, we may incorporate them into the readings and class discussions.

Beyond WebCT: Integrating Social Networking Tools Into Language and Culture Courses

Course Description: This course is designed to introduce students to web-based social networking environments and provide them with the resources and experiences to effectively integrate them into their teaching repertoire.

Course Objectives:

1. Students will become familiar with web-based social networks and their use in education.
2. Students will explore and evaluate a variety of social networking sites through collaboration on a class blog.
3. Students, in consultation with the instructor, will implement one social networking tool in a currently taught course. Students will show evidence of integration with course content and objectives.
4. Students will develop a corresponding student assessment rubric.
5. Students will share results on class blog.
6. Students will develop a portfolio of effective, appropriate, collaborative teaching/learning environments, to include a pedagogical rationale for their use as well as suggested course applications. Students will submit this work on a class wiki.

Course Format: In-class and online discussions, in-class and online exploration and collaboration.

Required Texts: Online resources provided in syllabus. Unless otherwise noted, you are to read/listen/view these materials prior to that class date.

Course Requirements:

• Graduate status.
• Students must have taught a minimum of one year in the department and successfully completed the departmental methods course.

*Since this course requires the use of a computer with speakers, microphone and webcam, we will assign those items on semester loan to students who do not have them.

Final Grade:
30% Wiki (Portfolio)
25% Classroom Implementation of Social Networking Tool
25% Blog Contributions
20% Participation

Introductory session: Learning Repositories

For Class Discussion:
Reminder: Please prepare the following three items before our first class:

1. Thomas L. Friedman’s 2007 MIT talk “The World is Flat 3.0” (Listen up to 37 minutes)
2. Diego Leal’s BRINGing it OUT a notch K12 Online Conference 2009 Keynote (25 minutes). Non-Spanish speakers can select the English subtitles option.
3. Open for Learning: The CMS and the Open Learning Network by Jon Mott and David Wiley

In-Class Activities:

1. Information R/evolution by Michael Wesch (under 6 minutes)
2. RSS in Plain English by Lee and Sachi Lefever (3.5 minutes)
3. Social Syllabus, a newly developing open learning platform that allows instructors “to deliver course materials, conduct research and connect with colleagues in their field of study.”
4. Work on class blog. Here’s a nice how-to screencast by Molly McDonald on setting up a WordPress blog:
5. The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging…And When to Use Each One
6. Great blog post example from Will Richardson on: “Why Johnny’s Professor Can’t Read”

Starting this week, you will write a bi-weekly post for the class blog. Your blog posts should reflect on class resources, discussions, projects, and/or the impact of read/write web technologies on language education. You will also respond to a minimum of seven blog posts submitted by your classmates. More specific information regarding this can be found on the course blogs page. You should also pick an education-focused blog and podcast to subscribe to for the semester; these will be another source of information for your blog posts. The instructor may periodically post/assign a topic question for you to blog about.

2nd session: Learning 2.0

For Class Discussion:
Reminder: Please prepare the following items before class:

1. Alex Reid’s post on Richard Miller’s MLA Dream (both embedded videos together are under 16 minutes)
2. From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments by Michael Wesch
3. Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler
4. Web 2.0 & Language Learning by Graham Stanley (7.5 minutes)

In-Class Activities:

1. Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge TedIndia 2009 (9 minutes)
2. Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay’s Flat Classroom Project
3. Kevin Gaugler’s CivWiki: Culturas de España
4. Jon Pennington’s Spanish Connects Us
5. Enza Antenos Conforti’s and Seth Dickens’ E-Twinning: NJ & Trento project
6. 3 Steps for 21st Century Learning by Jackie Halaw (4 minutes)
7. Work on class blog

3rd session: Educational Trends

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance)

1. 2007 Harvard Business IdeaCast’s interview with Don Tapscott, author of ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything’. (First 15 minutes and 30 seconds of the podcast)
2. Horizon Report, a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative. The web version, allows you to navigate non-linearly and leave and see comments from other readers of this report.
3. Map of Future Forces Affecting Education. Check out the map demo, especially the overview and map guide videos. You can find those links to the right of the grey colored ‘select a demo topic’ in the menu bar above the video screen area. Then spend some time exploring the 2006-2016 Forecast, focusing on ‘Institutions’ and ‘Educators and Learning’.
4. The Machine is Us/ing Us by Professor Michael Wesch (a little over 4 minutes)
5. Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free, by Noam Cohen, NY Times

In-Class Activities:

1. Chronicle of Higher Ed special video on Digital Ethnography Project (About 7 minutes)
2. Beyond Borders
3. FlatWorld Knowledge
4. California Open Source Textbook Project
5. Academic Earth
6. The Open Source Teaching Project
7. Connexions
8. Google Scholar
9. DigitalCommons@UConn
10. DASH
11. MITOpenCourseWare
12. Europeana
13. OER Commons
14. Stanford on iTunesU
15. University of the People
16. Peer 2 Peer University
17. Open Source Cinema
18. Virtual Student Foreign Service

4th session: Finding and Evaluating Information in a Hyperconnected World

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance)

1. We’re on information overload by Thomas Washington.
2. “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure” by Clay Shirky. A little under 24 minutes.
3. The Chronicle of Higher Ed: The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jensen for subscribers only. For an earlier and freely available version, see Authority 2.0 and 3.0: The Collision of Authority and Participation in Scholarly Communications by Michael Jensen.
4. The iPad and Information’s Third Age by William Rankin
5. “Social Bookmarking and Annotating’” by Bill Ferriter

In-Class Activities:

1. Netvibes
2. Page Flakes
3. Protopage
4. Bloglines
5. Google Reader
6. delicio.us
7. Diigo
8. Google Alerts
9. Zotero
10. Twitter
11. Wordle: using word clouds in a lesson by José Picardo

5th session: Collaborative Editing

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Google Wave
2. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Blogs
3. Reflecting, Writing, and Responding: Reasons Students Blog by Carie (Windham) Page
4. The Power of Wikis in Higher Ed by Linda L. Briggs
5. See Who’s Editing Wikipedia by John Borland
6. Roger Travis’ Video Games and Human Values Initiative wiki
7. Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways series

In-Class Activities:

1. Download Firefox extensions for Diigo and Zotero and practice using them
2. Create either a Netvibes or a Google Reader account (whichever you prefer) and subscribe to rss feeds (RSS in Plain English by Lee and Sachi Lefever (3.5 minutes) gives a good introduction to this)
3. Google Docs & Spreadsheets
4. Wikis in Plain English by Lee and Sachi Lefever (under 4 minutes)
5. Explore course wiki
6. Brainstorm class projects

6th session: Assessment

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Beyond Campus Boundaries ePortfolio Transforms into ‘Cultural Application’, a conversation with Trent Batson
2. Educause—Technology and Learning: Defining What You Want to Assess by Joni E. Spurlin
3. A Model for Teaching College Writing, guest blog post by Barbara Vance on David Parry‘s academhack Tech Tools for Academics blog
4. Ending the Semester, lessons learned (Part 3) by Barbara Sawhill of Language Lab Unleashed
5. Ending the Semester, lessons learned (Part 4: Assessment) by Barbara Sawhill of Language Lab Unleashed
6. Evaluación for Hisp 205—El blog central by Barbara Sawhill
7. VoiceThread as Final Exam by Barbara Sawhill on Language Lab Unleashed
8. Student Web Portfolios St. Olaf College
9. UCONN’s eportfolio You’ll need to get an account to view this.

In-Class Activities:

1. Work on class project
2. Work on course wiki

7th session: Online Rights and Safety

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Hitting Pause on Class Videos by Steve Kolowich
2. Recut, Reframe,Recycle by the Center for Social Media at American University
3. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Creative Commons
4. Time to Get Scared, People? by Tony Hirst. Be sure to read the comments as well.
5. The German privacy paradox by Jeff Jarvis. Don’t forget to read the comments.
6. The Online Amplification Effect by Margaret Soltan
7. Admissions of Guilt by Terry Calhoun

In-Class Activities:

1. Nicole McClure and Joe Madaus will share with us the use of technology for universal design in instruction.
2. Creative Commons
3. Example of Higher Ed Creative Commons Use: Drew University Writing Program On-line Resources for Writers
4. Copyright-Friendly and Copyleft Images and Sound (Mostly!) for Use in Media Projects and Web Pages, Blogs, Wikis, etc. by joycevalenza
5. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
6. Next Vista for Learning
7. Best practices for managing your online identity by claimID

8th session: Digital Storytelling

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Storytelling
2. Podcasts: What it is and how it works by Craig Syverson of gruntmedia
3. Confessions of a Podcast Junkie: A Student Perspective by Carie Windham
4. Campus Technology’s iPod Course Design not required reading
5. Consensus: Podcasting Has No ‘Inherent’ Value by Paul McCloskey
6. Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levine
7. Open Discussion on Web 2.0 Storytelling by Bryan Alexander and Alan Levin
8. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Screencasting not required reading
9. 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wiki by Alan Levine
10. marco antonio torres. Be sure to check out his digital storytelling link. Some suggestions: Digital students @ analog schools in Los Angeles, CA; School Tools in New York, NY; My son Rio in My Home

In-Class Activities:

1. Voicethread. The Voicethread 4 education wiki is a great pedagogical resource
2. podcasting
3. Animoto. Using Animoto to Promote Speaking in the Foreign Language details how José Picardo used it with his Spanish language students
4. Bubblr! Check out Flickrtoys for more by pim pam pum
5. Educational uses of Flickr. Examples: hoo-koo-e-koo, Geography Girl on Flickr! Choose your own adventure. Create posters, comics and more from your photos with BigHugeLabs. For those interested in an example of an iterative Flickr assignment assessment piece, check out this post by Darren Kuroptawa
6. Work on class project
7. Work on course wiki

9th session: Presentation Tools

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools
2. Educating the Net Generation: Chapter 7, Convenience, Communications, and Control: How Students Use Technology ; Chapter 9, Curricula Designed to Meet 21st-Century Expectations
3. Video for ELI: Net Gen Students at University of Minnesota from a 2007 Educause Learning Initiative session. Please watch the 5 minute video.
4. Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Tips
5. Check out Tom Barrett’s Interesting Ways Series using Google Docs. In particular, look at the ‘Interesting Ways’ for Web Conferencing, Wallwisher, Wordle, Prezi and Voicethread.

In-Class Activities (a sampling from among these):

1. Wordle
2. Flickr Slideshow
3. Google Docs
4. Slideshare
5. Spresent
6. Zoho Show
7. Prezi
8. Glogster
9. Vuvox
10. TodaysMeet
11. Poll Everywhere
12. SurveyMonkey
13. Jing
14. Screencast-0-Matic
15. CamStudio (Windows only)
16. Talkshoe
17. Livestream
18. Ustream
19. Work on class project
20. Work on course wiki

10th session: Social Annotation

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. YouTube Annotations
2. YouTube Launches Auto-Captioning for Videos by Ben Parr
3. And for another perspective on YouTube’s auto-captioning feature: Sorry, Google, YouTube Captions Aren’t for the Deaf. They’re for Your Robots by Xander Becket
4. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
5. Educause: Calibrated Peer Review: A Writing and Critical Thinking Instructional Tool
6. this progress by Dan Visel

In-Class Activities:

1. The Muppets: Beaker’s Ballad (1:16 minutes)
2. Test Your Awareness: Do The Test (1:09 minutes)
3. Flickr
4. Viddler
5. Forvo
6. Wordreference.com
7. Lingro
8. Wallwisher
9. Using del.icio.us to create an easy, always updated online portfolio by Michele Martin
10. dotsub
11. Work on class project
12. Work on course wiki

11th session: Virtual, Mobile Connections

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educause: From Distraction to Interaction: Incorporating Cell Phones Into the Learning Environment (13 minute audio)
2. The Mobile Campus
3. Social Media in Africa, Part 1
4. Social Media in Africa, Part 2: Mobile Innovations
5. Social Media in Africa, Part 3: Democracy. Want to know more about the impact of mobiles in the developing world? Check out this 38 minute presentation by Nathan Eagle of MIT (not required), “Crowd-Sourcing on Mobile Phones in the Developing World“
6. Travis Allen’s Blog: The Life of a 21st Century Student. We’ll be talking with Travis on April 9th in Elluminate Live!
7. The Official Google Blog: The Future of Mobile
8. From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning a blog by Liz Kolb. Please explore her site and be sure to listen to Liz Kolb’s and Jeff Stanzler’s blogtalk radio interview with Florida Spanish teacher, Ariana Leonard. You’ll find the interviews on the right hand side of her blog. You can listen to this interview directly on the site or via iTunes. (35 minutes)
9. Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 12, Learning Spaces
   

In-Class Activities:

1. Skype
2. Google Voice
3. ClassSpot
4. TeamSpot
5. Work on course wiki

12th session: Mapping Our Worlds

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Google Earth
2. Google for Educators – Maps
3. Digital Storytelling Part V – Google Maps by Silvia Tolisano

In-Class Activities:

1. Mapping Our Worlds: Creating Interdisciplinary Lessons Using Online Mapping Tools by Barbara Lindsey
2. Work on class project
3. Work on course wiki

13th session: Personal Learning Networks

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom an Alan November video (13 minutes)
2. Comparing Social Networking to Online Communities by Lee and Sachi Lever
3. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook
4. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Facebook II
5. I’m So Totally, Digitally Close to You by Clive Thompson, NYTimes
6. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
7. spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective by danah boyd
8. Why I Still Love Twitter by Isabelle Jones

In-Class Activities:

1. Work on class project
2. Work on course wiki

14th session: Gaming and Virtual Worlds

For Class Discussion (to prepare in advance):

1. Educating the Net Generation, Chapter 15, Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty
   
2. Video Games and the Future of Learning by Kurt Squire
3. “Living Epic”: What the title means and what it implies by Roger Travis. Be sure to read parts 1-3 (the links appear at the end of posts 1 and 2)
4. Educause’s 7 Things You Should Know About Virtual Worlds

In-Class Activities:

1. Share class projects
2. Course wiki