305 Tech Talks

First off, it's great to know there is a non-profit organization out there, run by C.L. Lindsay, aiming to help students and professors stay out of academic trouble as well as educating students about responsible use of the multitude of online cites available today. While watching Trouble Online: Campus Computing and the Law presented by C.L. Lindsay III, I was reminded of how vulnerable we all are and how much experience I personally have that should be shared to help others, especially youth, to avoid issues and gear up for success as well.  ( http://uishelix2.uis.edu/vod/vod/2012/032212eccelindsay.html ) Having taught at the community college level for half a decade or more, I am very familiar with the plagiarism issues and tools available to teachers through turnitin.com and other online databases. I am familiar with the pitfalls of providing credit card numbers for a service that results in additional charges, though in my case I could fight the charges witho...

As for Sir Ken Robinson's talk, I couldn't agree more that knowledge is more about what you don't know (what you are open to) than what you think you do know (what you are closed off to learning).  In fact, I will briefly note here that I practice Zazen, which is Buddhist practice, but that is not the pertinent point. So, I will jump right into my thoughts on what teachers could consider doing to better reach and engage students. Teachers could openly share with students their own biases. Biases tend to work themselves intrinsically into the way we think and communicate with others in ways that sometimes makes a bias sound like a fact or even wisdom, when it is more like an opinion or feeling. Even when we are aware of our own biases, they can still subconsciously affect how we treat people and probably affect how we teach. This kind of conversation between teacher and students (and students to teacher as well), in my opinion, would help c...

Reading the Beloit Mindset List made me think of the faux commencement speech published in the Chicago Tribune in 1997 called Wear Sunscreen. I graduated Jr. High in 1998, but had not read the article. I must not have been a big news paper reader at age fourteen.  But, the year I graduated high school, in 2002, that speech was remade into a recording by Baz Luhrmann. It was called "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen." I was 18 graduating high school just like this Beloit Mindset list was delivered to 18-year-olds today, so this was what we listened to the entire summer before going into college:  Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen I have actually had students in my classes listen to this audio version, as an assignment, and write their own version of advice to pass down to seniors at their old high schools to provide any guidance or wisdom. The Mindset List would be a fun assignment to give students.   When reading Mindset List, I was surprised to...

Blogging: a personal or group-generated map of material with a general, unifying theme The word blog can sound like work, just like "writing" sounds like work to most, yet we do it everyday. We write on Facebook, we write emails at work or school, and we write notes and to-do lists probably daily for most people. Ambitious minds might think, "I'm going to start my own blog," and then never achieve the goal because it sounds lofty and like a big project.  However, we create blog-like material everyday when we post on Facebook or Instagram.  It is a place, a space, to build upon thoughts, to develop your knowledge base (of yourself, a topic, or a field of interest), and over time, it takes its own organic shape. If we were to post on a personal blog rather than a public social media site every day, we would all have blogs.  Why do we find Facebooking fun or even necessary, but blogging or having a personal site we can choose to share with family or friends priva...