Creech-Online.com

Category: Ed Techy Stuff

  • Don’t Get Impressed by the New Shiny

    There’s a lot of glitz in technology. When something new comes along, if it does something really cool that nothing else does, there’s something in your favor. Easy to use app? Awesome. Is it free*? There’s another plus. Are all the cool kids using it? OH MAN SIGN ME UP!!

    But to revisit the old saying that not all that glitters is gold, is completely true. Sometimes that which glitters is glitter, and it gets into everything and ends up being horribly annoying.

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    The same goes, I feel, with educational technology. That old and busted technology may be a heck of a lot more stable than what’s new and hot. For example, iClickers. Sure, there’s web-based polling tools, but if you’re sitting in a large lecture hall deep in the bowels of a building where your cell service doesn’t reach and wifi is sketchy at best (or the network itself is sketchy), that old and busted radio frequency based iClicker device will work. No, there’s no glamour and it doesn’t have a cute app where you share unicorn or poo emojis, but it just works. And sometimes the pain of having to deal with old technology is worth it to ensure that the overall goals are met.

    So why do I bring this up? In a time of limited budgets and expectations that things just WORK, it’s hard to chase after every new technology to see if it meets needs for everyone. That new technology, for example, might have a great iOS app, but no Android app. That technology as well might be free for a faculty member to use but cost students additional money. That new LMS might be eye-catching, but it lacks integration with standards and is hard to customize for your institution’s specific needs.

    So my final point on this is that while its fun to chase the new shiny objects in the ed tech realm, that new technology may just not be as functional as what is available. Don’t get dazzled by the glitter…because the last thing you want is a glitter bomb.

    *Free as in there’s no financial cost, but we’ll get your personal information for marketing 
    purposes…

  • Considering Course Redesign…

    The institution where I work and teach is in the middle of an LMS review as I write this (mid-December 2018), and as I prepare to teach my Science Writing and Presentation class this Spring, as I prep my class in Blackboard I’ve had a few things running through my mind:

    • If we’re possibly changing the LMS, how much work do I want to put into my course design?
    • Do I plan on the new LMS being “flatter” so I can only go two folder layers deep – meaning I have to rethink completely how I’m arranging my content?
    • Do my students really care what my course looks like as long as they know where to find stuff they need?

    Now for each thought – points one and two actually flow together. We’re on Blackboard Learn where I teach and work, so if I want to create folders-on-folders-on-folders going ten layers deep…I can. However, that’s lousy design. Do I want to start putting any level of work in to redesigning and flattening my course? Of course I do. This way if we do make an LMS change, I can prepare myself for a more limited (yet easier to navigate?) experience.

    I’m not an instructional designer by trade/education/etc (although I did complete a one week instructional design boot camp at the University of Virginia), but I feel like I know bad design when I see it. However, I’m pretty particular about my courses and when I taught online at my previous institution, even though they gave me my course content “ready to go” – that was a load of garbage. It was full of mismatched fonts, spelling and grammar errors, and more. I’d spend 10+ hours fixing my courses so my students didn’t think I was 100% inept. Mainly because I believe that if your course appears like you care, your students will get the point.

    So…for several years, this was me the weekend before classes starting trying to fix the errors others had so kindly left for me in the pre-packaged class (and me not wanting to look inept):

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    But now if I have crappy course design, it’s all on me! But with a potential change to an LMS that won’t let me nest things six folders deep (like I’d do that anyway!), I need to rethink how I arrange my content. I’ve started by simply embedding the links to content within items, which are blocks of text, files, video, etc inside of Blackboard. I can have students read the context of what I’ve uploaded for them to review, instead of them seeing the file to download first, then seeing the context. Good design? We’ll see. My plan is to keep everything two folders or less deep this semester.

    So what does the potential switch of an LMS have to do with redesigning a class? Well…it has everything to do with redesigning that class! Each LMS offers a new set of features – or, unfortunately, a more limited set of features – that has to be accounted for. If I’m teaching a class where I can embed videos or images into quiz questions in my current LMS, but the new LMS won’t allow that…that’s a massive change that must be accounted for. For me right now, if I really look at a) making my course as flat as possible, b) using only quiz questions that will likely be compatible with another LMS, and c) keeping the fact that my course might have to be tweaked upon migration in mind, I might stand a chance to see my content migrate to the new system with only a few needed changes.

    …or I might have to start all over again.

  • Good Old Fashioned Presentation Technology

    So in addition to working full-time as an educational technologist, I also teach a writing and presentation course in our School of Communications.  Now it’s all fine and good to work with students on their verbal communications (“Don’t say “like” again, you’ve uttered that word 10 times in the last 30 seconds.  Come up with a more unique filler word.”) and their non-verbal communications (“LET GO OF THE PODIUM.  You’re going to shake it to pieces!”), as well as addressing presentation anxiety.  However, we have forgotten to include something that could impact every presenter out there…

    Imagine you’ve created your presentation in Google Slides or the PowerPoint app in Office 365, and you’ve saved it there, expecting to just log in and open up your presentation when you get to class, or to your interview, or to that conference.  All of a sudden you realize you can’t get to your slides, and you have no backup plan.  You have not downloaded your slides to your computer, or saved them to a flash drive.  So you’re standing there, ready to go, but your slides are completely inaccessible because the network has crashed, and where you’re at in the building you have zero cell service, meaning that you can’t even use your cell phone as a hotspot to connect the computer to.

    Um…oops?

    Yeah…oops.

    Basically, you’ve failed Presentation Prep 101, which is simply the infamous Murphy’s Law:  Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

    We’ve become dependent on cloud storage and effective network uptime to the point where if things crash, it’s a shock.  It shouldn’t be.  Technology isn’t 100% foolproof, and we should know this by now.  We’re not stupid…we’re arrogant.  We believe that everything will work when it should.  We never fully comprehend the cost to us of being unprepared for presentation failure.  It could be that your grade for your presentation will be much lower than it should be. It could be that the time you took preparing your argument is wasted because you had everything online. It could be that you don’t get the job  you wanted because you couldn’t present your materials during an interview presentation, and you looked unprepared and foolish.

    Now to me, there’s several easy ways around this.  The easiest thing to do is to save your presentation offline.  Save it to your computer, save it to your flash drive – get it off the cloud.  This should be a no-brainer, but it’s not.

    The second option is to have printed copies of your slide deck available, in the event a) the network is down, and b) the computer is unusable. You’ll have your slides – it’s not pretty, but you were prepared.  Now, this won’t help you if you have a crowd of 1,000 – but in the event you’re presenting to a possible employer and there’s 10 people viewing your presentation, it could demonstrate that you were ready for the unforeseen – making your presentation maybe not as effective, but demonstrating that you were ready in case of an unforeseen problem.

    The third option is a throwback. This option rarely fails, and if so, the fix is quick and cheap.  I give you…the transparency projector.

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    So why do I bring up the old fashioned transparency projector?  Well…it’s not network dependent, it can work anywhere you have a wall, and if a bulb burns out, there’s usually a reserve bulb available, and switching it out doesn’t require a lift or fancy tools.  The only way it doesn’t work is if the power is out, and if that happens…there’s bigger issues!

    And transparency projector bulbs don’t cost hundreds of dollars like they do in regular projectors!  And no need to have HDMI, DVI, RGB, or any other masses of cables involved!

    So…ok, back to reality.

    The old transparency projectors are dead and gone, but at the end of the day it’s critical that we understand that technology does indeed fail.  For students (and instructors!) the taking of granted of our technology working the way we expect will come back and bite us at bad times, and it can have a real cost when it comes to our credibility and performance on the presentation.