Teaching with Technology

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Teaching with Technology

Educational Applications of Podcasting in the Music Classroom

April 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Kim, Uncategorized

How can music teachers teach music effectively with technology? This type of questions may sound a little daunting or intimidating for some musicians who have been “classically” and traditionally trained. For the music teacher, keeping up with technology can be an overwhelming task. I was one of them (and still am!) when I was in graduate school over ten years ago. My composition professor who was near 70 years old at that time used and taught MIDI and notation software program “Finale” for Music Technology course. The program was newly designed and my professor had already mastered the whole program and taught the “Technology” course in 1995. Did I take that course? Nope! Do I regret it? Yes, I do. Do I know how to do it now? Well, I am getting there. Now the question is why I decided not to take that course. First of all, I was not into “technology” at that time and clearly did not see the “beauty” and the effectiveness of what music technology can bring in to my own experience in learning and teaching music. I also thought I could teach just well with my piano skills and techniques. Well, I still think that I could teach just fine without knowing all the technology tools out there. However, what I know now is different: I recognize the effectiveness of integrating technology in learning and teaching music.

The article I chose to read this week is about Podcasting in the music classroom. Educational use of podcasting is already well known and proven for its effectiveness and value. The author points out that introducing new concept in a music classroom can be challenging when music teachers do not meet with their students every day. So she suggests short video or audio podcasts to review the lesson or to demonstrate musical techniques. She claims that students will be able to learn and understand better through hearing teacher’s verbal explanation or watching teacher’s demonstration on instrument repeatedly. I also believe that in addition to increase the contact time with students, podcasts can offer multiple benefits to music students. The author suggests a variety of ways to use podcasting in music course such as recording warm-up pieces, posting copyright-free songs and instrumental performances as some examples. I could see myself posting short videos such as “How to sit at the Piano”, “How to play Blues”, “How to play with pedal”, “How to play certain articulations musically” and etc. It seems to be endless. Such videos will have the impact of what a private lesson can offer. Podcasting can be a collaborative work with students by posting their assignments or projects to share with classmates or other people in the world. They can download and re-work on their group project easily and show the process how they are working together on podcast.

According to the author, there are a few things to consider if you would to like to start podcasting:

1. You must define the needs of your students, the listeners.
2. You must consider the authority of the producers of the podcast when presenting it to your students. In addition, you should seek out podcasts that connect with the listeners.
3. You should consider the design of the podcast. For best result, look for short, single-concept podcasts that can be used by both teachers and students.

As the author writes, podcasting can be an easy technical addition to any music classroom. The flexibility of this medium will allow the music teachers to achieve a multitude of musical goals and also help and stimulate students’ interest in learning music in multi dimension.

Kathleen Kerstetter, Music Educators Journal, June 2009; 95;23

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Switching Gears: Moving from e-Learning to m-Learning (KBA #7)

April 4th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Gil

Each issue of JOLT includes a section titled “Concept Papers” and this selection concerning m-Learning appears in the most recent edition’s concept paper section. In a one word summary, “Wow.” This article notes the explosion in online course offerings in the past decade, using a medium sized public institution (9,000 students, 500 faculty) as an example (between 2002 and 2008 online course offerings increased from 35 to nearly 3,000) and considers the prospect of “place independent” learning made possible via mobile devices such as iPods, PDAs and similar ICT (information and communication technology) devices.

Though I’ve spent some time today in Second Life, we live in a real world (sometimes anyway!). Though the authors undoubtedly wrote this article before the announcement of the iPad, I think it’s important to mention this new ICT in the context of m-Learning. Already one university has announced “an iPad for every student” under the tag line, “Think outside the classroom.” And that phrase very well summarizes the article Switching Gears, namely that ICT tools hold the potential to carry instruction and learning outside the confines of (even) computer connectivity. Again, wow.

Back to the article that is nicely summarized in this graphic supplied by the authors:

Criteria necessary for "switching gears" from e-learning to m-learning

En route to the conclusion that developing m-Learning requires significant institutional support and investment, both for faculty curriculum development and technology infrastructure the authors makes several interesting observations. They begin with the question whether “ubiquitous laptop computing” is a truly viable future option for educational investment. I thought about the exercise early in the semester, perhaps it was at our first class meeting, when we were asked to devise the “ideal” computer laboratory and it bore little resemblance to our actual laboratory. A room full of comfortable chairs and sofas and an iPad in every lap would come closer to what most of us described as ideal. Mobile devices, the authors note, are always connected, offer unique affordances and are carried by just about everyone.

Through interviews with three faculty who have attempted to use some forms of m-learning technologies (such as podcasts and digital audio) the authors observe that today’s “digital youth” are perhaps not so adept with technologies such as podcasts as other studies have suggested. Music videos perhaps, but podcasts not so much so. In actual practice, transferring podcasts to mobile devices proved time-consuming and cumbersome for students (there’s that problem of technology getting in the way again…) and eventually in one course the faculty member resorted to simply streaming video from university servers on networked computers.

The ultimate goal of the faculty members interviewed for this article is to leverage the affordances of mobile devices to facilitate two-way, or one-to-many and ultimately many-to-many, communications but in the opinion of one faculty interviewee m-learning currently constitutes a one-way mechanism. The same faculty member finds the solution to that issue in more robust media and multimedia including (perhaps) the incorporation of social media (Facebook is cited as an example, though wikis may be another option).

Ultimately moving from e-Learning to m-Learning will require significant investments of time and effort on the part of the faculty, to recreate the curriculum for ICT devices, and significant institutional investments in technology infrastructure and support in the form of technology staff. At the end of these investments, though, lay the democratization of instruction on a scale that perhaps even the one laptop per child visionaries could not imagine.

Wow.

Source: Robert Crow, I.M. Santos, J. LeBaron, A.T. McFadden, C.F. Osborne, “Switching Gears: Moving from e-Learning to m-Learning,” MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2010): 268-278.

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Enhancing student’s loyalty to CIS majors – J-article 7.

April 4th, 2010 · 3 Comments · John

Citation

Hunsinger, D. S., Land, J., and Chen, C. C.  (2010).  Enhancing student’s loyalty to the information systems major.  International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education, 6 (1), 81-95.
doi: 10.4018/jicte.2010091106

Main Points

–    Many colleges and universities face the problem of recruiting and retaining students in computer information systems (CIS) related majors.  The authors’ study proposes a model to identify the primary factors leading to the retention of existing CIS majors.
—    They identify four factors leading to student intention to remain a CIS major or to refer others to become a CIS major: (1) expectations, (2) perceived service quality, (3) satisfaction, and (4) regret.
–    They discover that certain factors play a significant role in influencing a student’s intention to remain a CIS major and/or to encourage others to major in CIS.
—    By determining which factors impact students’ intentions to remain a CIS major and to encourage others to major in CIS, we can focus our resources on these areas instead of spending time and money on those services which are not influential.

Analysis

This article looks at a critical area for the United States, the retention of CIS majors and subsequently graduated employees with a CIS background.  In the years 2000 – 2005, computer science enrollments in American colleges and universities dropped by over 50% and of those who do enroll in CIS majors, the drop rates run between 30% – 40%.  At the same time, the expected growth in the information technology (IT) career field will be over 30% each year through 2012.  This disparity peaked the authors interest and hence this study.

The authors do a very good job of laying out all the background and supporting material affecting the four retention factors.  They look at three services areas for CIS majors (academic, professional, and extracurricular) and hypothesize a similar statement dealing with expectations of these three service areas, “the higher a student’s expectation to receive the service, the more satisfied the student will be with the CIS major.”  The study posits that there is a positive relationship between perceived service quality and satisfaction.  The perceived service quality has five dimensions; assurance, empathy, tangibles, reliability, and responsiveness.  All of which hinges on the institution’s (faculty, staff, administration) support with resources, qualified instructors, positive attitudes, caring attention to students, and willingness to help and provide prompt service.  From my studies in the CTCH 602, College Teaching, course this semester, all of these attributes play a role for any major to retain students and more importantly promote a learning environment.

The authors conclude by stating that bad news travels fast.  As they say, the principles of consumer marketing research are applicable and the behavior of CIS students influences others.  If current students are satisfied or dissatisfied, they will relate that to prospective recruits and new CIS students.  Another interesting conclusion on their part was that extracurricular services do not appear to play as large a role as academic and professional services.  This would imply that consideration should be given to further study on the value added for resources against extracurricular services, i.e. clubs, studies abroad, etc.  This is an overall good article, good study, and informative – worth the read.

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Why Wikis? Student Perceptions of Using Wikis in Online Coursework (KBA #6)

April 4th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Gil

“Why Wikis? …” in the latest issue of JOLT is an extremely well-written and balanced overview of the utility and limitations of wikis in instructional settings. On the heels of last week’s disappointing article about wikis this was an encouraging breath of fresh air to read.

The authors from East Carolina and Eastern Kentucky universities begin at the beginning, with the creation of the “wiki” in 1994, and describe well how wikis bring together the creation, organization, description of discovery of knowledge under a single shared interface. As they note, today’s “web” is very different from “the internet” of static web pages and with such affordances as wikis possess communication has evolved from the “one-to-many” (websites) and “many-to-one” (boards) modalities to “many-to-many” collaborative processes.

From recent studies of wikis the authors outline both promising and problematic findings concerning the use of wikis in instruction. Through its tracking of edits, collaborative writing projects engage students to thoughtfully consider what has been written by others and how it may be improved upon. Undergraduates report this supports their development of new evaluation skills enabling them to evaluate and critically examine new content. Graduate students report that wikis support group learning processes, and administratively wikis are being used for such purposes as recording an evolving set of curricula (an example from Alaska is cited in which over 10,000 pages of curricula comprise the wiki).

There are limitations to the use of wikis ranging from perceptions from students that wikis are “frivolous” to discomfort with the concept of students participating in the creation of course content (i.e., “learner-centered”) as opposed to their relatively high comfort levels with traditional “teacher-centered” courses. The authors cite a study reporting that student frustrations with learner-centered technologies are less often a consequence of the collaborative technology itself and instead can be explained by either misuse of the technology or inadequate support provided by the instructor.

The study conducted by the authors focused on student perceptions using wikis in online coursework, and those same students’ perceptions regarding uses for wikis in K-12 classrooms. Most of the students in the study had no previous experience with wikis. While only about two-thirds found wikis “easy to use”, nearly all agreed wikis are a good tool for teaching and learning and effective for collaborative problem-solving. In textual reflections students saw significant benefits to using the wiki in the online course. Some of the limitations cited by students had to do with the user interface provided by PBWorks, specifically the absence of “drag and drop” functionality. (Once again surfacing the theme of student frustrations with the technology getting in the way of the learning!). Students identified several uses for wikis in the K-12 environment including the creation of learning communities among students, using wikis to provide content and forums for exchanges with students and parents, and collaborative research projects for students.

The authors find the keys to utilizing wikis in sufficient training in, support for and thoughtful design of instructional uses (including assessment components), and provide a very good, concise, table of recommendations for educators considering the use of wikis in the classroom.

As noted at the onset of this article, it’s a breath of fresh air. Wikis are a relatively new information appliance and do seem to merge some outmoded navigational and updating characteristics (e.g., manually resetting links to renamed pages!) with new and dynamic functionality (many-to-many real time collaboration). We’re only starting to explore the potentials of these new appliances, and the authors of this article take an open, fresh approach to the problems and prospects of wikis. I highly recommend their template found on page 132 which identifies key considerations to keep in mind.

Source: Faye Deters, K. Cuthrell and J. Stapleton, “Why Wikis? Student Perceptions of Using Wikis in Online Coursework,” MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2010): 122-134.

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Resource constraints of graduate information systems courses in Turkey – J-Article 6.

March 31st, 2010 · 1 Comment · John

Citation

Balaban, M. E., Kirlidog, M., and Ayvaz-Reis, Z.  (2010).  Perceived importance and resource constraints of graduate information systems courses in Turkey.  International Journal of  Information and Communication Technology Education, 6 (1), 67-80.  doi: 10.4018/jicte.2010091106

Main Points

–    Education is an expensive process and the quality of an education program is largely affected by resources devoted to it.  
–    Availability of qualified instructors and physical amenities such as labs are the most important resources that determine the educational quality.  
–    Based on the graduate Information Systems curriculum recommendation of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Association for Information Systems (AIS) this article investigates the perceived importance of each course taught in graduate Information Systems (IS) programs in Turkey.  
–    The perceived importance is also compared with the availability of instructor and technological resources for each course for insight into educational resources and constraints.

Analysis

The article starts well describing the IS graduate programs in Turkey.  It details the limitations associated with this field to include of the 130 universities, 94 public and 36 private, only host 12 undergraduate and 13 graduate level IS programs; no standardization in languages, English, German, Turkish, and Turkish/English combination; varied entry requirements; and varied course titles.  The authors leave the background section to move into the theoretical section of the paper by making a declaration that quality of an education program is largely affected by resources devoted to it.  This section is devoted to comparing the good old days of resource-based learning to the more recent “bottom-line” approach, where the merits of an education system are evaluated according to the outputs or results.  In a resource constrained world, a balancing of both approaches must be made to continue to be successful.  The authors note that the accreditation process in India remains resource-based which says a lot to the commitment that the Indians have made to the IS field and may show their forward thinking to corner the expertise in the IS field.  The next section looks at the curriculums offered in the 13 graduate level IS programs and recommends a minimum 60-unit program.

The authors employed two methods for their research, 1) Content analysis of the IS graduate level courses and 2) they then performed a qualitative analysis of the answers gathered through a survey.  Their results boiled down to reaffirming that a program’s merits should be based on the learning that takes place and that the contents of teaching are determined by constraints of instructors, teaching material, and other physical amenities.  The best result was their uncovering the shortcomings between the perceived importance of a course and the resources available, instructors, software, and facilities.  I wouldn’t recommend this article.

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E-book Reflection

March 31st, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

 

E-book is a new niche in our technological life. It is a convenient new way for many people to store, recall and read many books in a single devise, some of which are portable. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the e-book that you buy in the open market and the one that some institutions allow you to use, such as the one at GMU library. I have purchased an e-book and used it, it is great. It gives you the ability to download books into your PC, laptop or any other machine such as the portable “Kindle”. The text of the book is yours whenever you want to access it as long as you have the machine that you loaded the text into. Also, you can load the software to multiple Hardware units for added convenience.
However, when it comes to an e-book that is offered by a school, I feel that it is horrible, reflecting my own experiences. These are my reasons for this seemingly harsh assessment:
• You can’t save the text on your PC, laptop or any other portable machine. GMU library has prevented this option.
• You can’t access the text of a specific e-book while others are using that e-book, i.e. no shared access is allowed. The library will send you a notice when the text will be available, (see notice below).
• It is not easy to open all pages.
Because of the previous reasons, the GMU school’s e-book system has become an annoying experience especially when:
• The instructor gives last minute assignments that you are expected to respond to, irrespective of your busy schedule.
• The additional pressure that last minute assignment causes in an already tense time as the end of the semester is approaching when students try to juggle and submit the assignments for the different courses they have.
As a teacher, I will not introduce a new technology unless I understand its’ pros and cons. I believe that the teacher should examine the new technology and go through the whole experience in different situations to better assess the usefulness of that new technology before it is introduced to the class. This is especially acute when the new technology represents an access tool that is not user-friendly and requires a lot of juggling of priorities to achieve the goal of exposure within a very short time.

e-Book attachment

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Computer- Assisted Grading Rubrics: Automating the Process of Providing Comments and Student Feedback

March 31st, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

 Andrew Czaplewski

Marketing Education Review, Volume 19 No. 1 (Sprint 2009)

 This is a short, concise report and “how-to” on automating a grading rubric. I thought it worthwhile to explore as a possible teaching “tool”. After reading I am glad to report that this appears to be a relatively easy and useful application, much unlike the other technologies for teaching I have encountered.

 Grading is the least glamorous job of teaching and one which so directly affects students and their perception of a teacher and class. To anyone who has taught, it can also be a substantial amount of work. Rubrics, by laying out clear expectations, can help reduce the time it takes to grade. They can even allow or better enable assistants to do the grading. They also “hold the promise of making grading more evenhanded regardless” of when or where the grading was done (Coffeehouse or 3 am kitchen table.)  Inherent in the use of Rubrics is the student’s inability to self-asses their performance in the categories. The limited column space provided in most Rubric designs further diminishes the amount/length of commenting that can occur. They often completely overlook the opportunity to comment and are used to simply assign a grade thereby missing an opportunity for constructive feedback.  This feedback and teachable moments are especially important to the Grad Student community.

 The Computer-Assisted Grading Rubric allows the teacher/assistant to be much more specific in commenting while providing thoughtfully constructed comments and feedback to students. They feel much more involved in the grading and the thought process for the assigned grade becomes clearer. The process is relatively easy. As the author points out, anyone who has graded a number of papers finds themselves using the same comments repeatedly. You simply take the rubric a step father. Once the rubric is written, and the “gradations of quality for each graded element” are established, the teacher should create a “comprehensive database of comments” for each one. It is a menu of sorts that “minimizes the effort of re-creating comments and allows comments and feedback to be refined so they are more carefully constructed to be fair, encouraging, and consistent.” This  menu that you choose from actually allows you to provide more detailed information to a student and by default keeps the playing field of grading fair. It can be added to or changed at any time and can become a very dynamic tool, changing to meet the new  needs of students each semester.    

He suggests using Microsoft Excel for this process. Once the menu of comments is ready, a code is assigned to each. By using the INDEX and MATCH functions in Excel, the instructor enters the comment code onto a students grade form (previously set up using the rubric) and comment is pulled in using a “cut” and “special paste” to replace the values with the actual comments. 

 Czaplewski tested this grading system in a graduate level International Marketing class. He felt given the case study nature of grad courses and the students, whom he identified as vocal regarding the specific nature of their feedback, the importance of detailed information on the grading would be most effective. Though a small study, the results showed that there were “improved perceptions of grading fairness and ….course satisfaction.” He notes that the approach is less “draining” because you have already evaluates the balance of your words for harshness and encouragement. “The focus is purely on assessment rather than on what to say or how to say it.” I think applying a technological solution to a time consuming problem and improving the end result not just the processing speed is a win/win situation. This is a decidedly low tech approach but nonetheless, it is effective and worthwhile. Providing students with feedback that they can use is an important part of a teacher’s job. Employing a small technology that allows an instructor to do this in a fair and time saving way is a benefit to everyone, teacher and student alike.

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Margaret Atwood + Twitter

March 31st, 2010 · No Comments · news

a witty, elegant discussion of her life on Twitter from the New York Review of Books blog:

“So what’s it all about, this Twitter? Is it signaling, like telegraphs? Is it Zen poetry? Is it jokes scribbled on the washroom wall? Is it John Hearts Mary carved on a tree? Let’s just say it’s communication, and communication is something human beings like to do.

How long will I go on doing this? I’m asked. Well, now. I can’t rightly say. How long—in no more than 140 characters—is “long”?”

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Computer Assisted Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition Language Learning & Technology Vol. 4, No. 1

March 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

The average native speaker of English has a vocabulary of somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 words.  Thus, ESL learners who wish to acquire native-like fluency should learn at least 30,000 English words.  In my opinion, it is almost impossible for an ESL learner to match the vocabulary of a native speaker of English.  Japanese college students who received 800-1200 hours of EFL instruction were able to learn between 2,000 and 2,300 English word families (groups of words having the same root word or phonic base, etc.).  Indonesian college students who received 900 hours of EFL instruction were able to learn about 1,220 word families.  Given the number of hours of instruction that these students had received and the number of word families that they were able to learn via this instruction, we can calculate the number of hours of instruction needed to acquire an English vocabulary of 30,000 words.  The Japanese learned approximately two words per hour of instruction and the Indonesians learned at a somewhat slower rate.  If we assume that students can learn two words per hour of instruction, the acquisition of a 30,000-word vocabulary would require 15,000 hours of instruction.  This is equivalent to 25 hours of instruction per week, every week, for 13 years.

In his article Computer Assisted Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition, Peter Groot examined if technology could speed up L2 acquisition process. The software used in this article is a computer assisted word acquisition program (called CAVOCA) which was developed over a trial period of several years.  Its database contains 500 words that were selected on the basis of their difficulty and relevance to the academic reading needs of Dutch university students.  CAVOCA was designed under the assumption that the L2 word acquisition process is the same as that of L1.  The generally accepted theory of the L1 acquisition process is that words are learned incidentally in an incremental way while native speakers of a language come across the words repeatedly in a variety of contexts.  Groot and his associates intended that students work through the various stages in the natural word acquisition process via the CAVOCA program.  The following are the stages that operate in the CAVOCA program:

(1) “Deduction”

This is the stage for learning the various properties of a word and storing the word in  memory. The word to be learned appears on the screen for a few seconds. Then it is used in three sentences in order of contextual richness.

(2) “Usage”

This is the stage for consolidation.  To further secure the word’s position in the mental lexicon, two sentences are presented in which the word is either used correctly or incorrectly.  The computer points out and corrects any mistakes.

(3) “Examples”

This is the stage for reinforcing consolidation.  The learner is presented with a number of authentic L2 passages that contain the word just learned.

(4) “Lexical Retrieval”

This is the final stage of the CAVOCA program.  It is aimed at eliciting the learner’s knowledge of the word.  The learner is presented with 25 sentences, each with one word missing.  Once the 25 sentences have been completed, the learner’s score appears on the screen and any mistakes are pointed out.

In a series of four experiments with Dutch university students learning English, the experimental CAVOCA program and a control program using bilingual lists of words were compared.  An overall conclusion of this study is that the experimental results cannot determine the most efficient method of L2 word learning because there are so many variables in the L2 learning process, such as “degree of L1-L2 equivalence of the words to be learned, the intensity (both qualitative and quantitative) of processing, the age and cognitive level of the learner, the quantity and quality of rehearsal practice, etc.”

Joann

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the teacher supposed to say!!? (Journal Article Five)

March 30th, 2010 · No Comments · Bob

http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/2007/issue2/fehn.php

My post this week is from my primary journal source, the  Journal of the Association for History and Computing. The article appeared in the August of 2007 issue and was written by Bruce Fehn, a history professor at the University of Iowa. The title of the article is “Powerpoint and Privileging in Teaching American History: Lynching, Racist Collectibles, and the Abu Ghraib Prison Photos.”

The author believes that the availability of information on the worldwide web (primarily images in his context) along with the relatively easy collection and projection of these images using Powerpoint, make it possible to create “visual historical narratives.”  Realize that by “visual historical narrative,”  the author means a slideshow constructed with images that tell the story.  The visual narrative is not supported by written handouts or written Powerpoint slide narratives. The narrative is the visual images.

For technical support for Fehn’s idea of a visual narrative, he looks to an historian named David Staley, who believed that a visual essay employed the same process that historians use when doing traditional research and writing. Basically, they “seek relevant primary sources, discern patterns in the evidence, and then arrange the evidence into a meaningful narrative, strung together by words, sentences, and paragraphs.” Staley believed that the sequential ordering of images “make them a history, instead of merely a haphazrd collection of pictures or gallery of images.”

Using the visual images as a narrative requires the viewers/students to “fill in the spaces between the images to create meaning.” Staley goes on to note that this approach gives the viewer/student greater space for interpreting the meaning of the visual narrative/essay.

Fehn wholeheartedly agrees with Staley and spends a fair amount of time lauding the technological capability of Powerpoint to collect and project images,  change the sequence, put one or more on the same slide, and make it very easy to go back and forth from one image to the next.  He compares this favorably with the olden times of overhead projectors and transparencies.

Fehn then describes his effort at a visual historical narrative. Check it out in its entirety of 75 slides http://www.education.uiowa.edu/research/bfehn/
A word of caution – if you choose to view the slideshow, be aware that the images are visually graphic and culturally disturbing.

He has attempted to show “an argument that white supremacist imagery normalized white supremacy which undergirded terrible acts of racist violence.”  Fehn builds his visual narrative to include lynchings, racist images, and attempts to connect it to the Abu Ghraib (Iraqi prison torture photos). He states specifically: “I intended to project an historical narrative connecting ubiquitous caricatures of African Americans with the horrid crimes of lynching in America and torture in Iraq.”

He presented his visual history  to a couple of audiences and records in this article some of their responses. You should realize if you decide to check it out that he did not lecture with his presentation. He spent approximately 7 minutes showing the images, about 2 to 10 seconds per image.  One thing that he concluded was that there was significant audience participation following the slideshow. He received numerous comments interpreting the slides and sequence.  One thing that was interesting, because it related to one of the questions that I had, was how did the audience respond to the images (5 or 6 out of the slideshow) that tied in the Iraqi prison torture.  Fehn meant the connection to be that “dehumanizing caricatures create conditions for violence at home and abroad, while generating black resistance struggles.”  Unfortunately Fehn’s audience got so involved in discussing the racist caricatures and lynchings that they didn’t get to the Abu Ghraib connection.

I found it a little hard to make the connection to Iraq, but there is no doubt that the images of prisoners in Iraq were dehumanized and tortured, not unlike the African Americans depicted in other slides. You can check it out for yourself by looking at the slideshow.

Fehn concludes by saying that Powerpoint is a powerful tool for use in visual narratives. He also  believes that the visual narratives strongly encourages and elicits audience/student participation. He believes students can use Powerpoint to construct these visual narratives in a similar way that they write papers as assignments.

My reaction to Fehn is that the visual narrative can certainly act as a lightening rod for class discussion, not only about the intensity of the images chosen, but also in the interpretation of what the “writer” is trying to convey.  The pictures make the points, but unlike written language, in my opinion they tend to provide more emotional responses and also can leave the student (and teacher for that matter) uncertain as to what the point is. It is true that student engagement and collaborative learning go hand in hand and visual narratives seem to be an excellent way to achieve both of these goals. At the same time, I do believe the instructor does need to provide some context and background, which is hard to do with only images.

Another observation I had was Fehn’s comment that with a visual narrative his role was not to be a “sage on the stage,” but instead to present the images and facilitate audience/student participation.  This prompted my title for this post: if a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the teacher supposed to say? The answer, to me, was nailed by Fehn: it is to facilitate the discussion about the narrative, not to lead and overwhelm the students. This is sometimes difficult to do in the classroom. When teachers ask questions or ask for discussion and no one responds, the initial reaction is to fill the space with the teacher’s words. As Dr. Kuhta mentioned in her college teaching class, the average time a teacher gives a student to respond to a question before answering it himself or herself is 3 seconds. We abhor silence! Give them more time, don’t jump in is the message! In other words, the message that I got from Fehn was that with visual narratives, you need to facilitate, not dictate. So what does the teacher do in my title question? Basically, present it, kick it off, shut up, and let the discussion flow!

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