I was privileged to lead a sectional at the WELS EdTechLead Summit this week and I have finally posted the presentation on this site. It was a lot of fun to be able to talk briefly about team chat platforms and just to show off some of the myriad of options available.
I am hoping to be able to record the presentation and post that in the future, but for right now it is just the slide deck. Thanks!
79. Self-Learning vs. Online Instruction
Research shows that online classes are most effective when there is substantial interaction among the students and between the students and the instructor. In this episode, Dr. Spiros Protopsaltis and Dr. Sandy Baum join us to discuss the possible adverse effects of proposed changes in federal regulations that may reduce the extent of this interaction.
This is a great episode which talks critically about how online education programs can also fail those same people they are meant to serve. For me, lost in some of the discussion around “access” is that online programs have allowed professionals like myself to pursue higher education degrees when I would have just stopped otherwise.
A lot of time and ink is given to other communities, and rightly so, but I am very thankful for the online opportunities that I have been given and is part of the reason that I continue to teach online as well.
The One About Manager READMEs by Michael Lopp
I’m not sure if I will follow through with publicly posting my thoughts, but a bit of self-reflection on what it means to lead for me would probably go a long way in figuring out some things that have been sitting in my head and on my heart for a good number of weeks.
Why It’s Okay To Do Less & Talk More by Trevor McKendrick
I have definitely come around to the idea that it is OK to talk through ideas more than originally thought. This is the kicker:
And with every iteration of talking about the idea you actually understand the idea better. A new idea is this delicate thing, a mere thought floating in a single person’s head unprotected from criticism.
Ideas need other people to be tested.
It was not terribly long ago that I had almost completely rid myself of carrying a laptop. I was able to keep a desktop at home, a desktop at work, and a tablet for those times I was traveling and really needed to get online for something more involved than checking my phone.
However, that was then, and teaching online courses has tethered me to a laptop far more than being a sysadmin ever did. My dream of whittling my bag down to a tablet and various other small materials is essentially dead. Current online teaching platforms require a laptop to be effective while doing some of even the most mundane of tasks.
This is not a real complaint, more of an observation about how our tools are dictated by the platforms and the assumptions developers make. While my students could effectively handle most of their course from a mobile device (and I have in mind to work toward making the courses I have complete control over as mobile friendly as possible), the teaching experience still requires access to at least a laptop, and often a desktop with multiple monitors.
When Steve Jobs spoke about the stratification of computing into different categories (traditional PCs as trucks, tablets as cars, etc.), I thought the metaphor was apt, but I hoped to be able to stick myself into a car when it came to mobile computing.
Instead, I now carry a crossover in my bag so that I might be able to get work done even when I am away from one of my desks. While it works well, part of me wishes I could still stick with just a hatchback.