Habits of Mind and Elephants: ACIFA Presentation

At the ACIFA conference 2013 I attended a session about habits of mind how they can be elephants in the room.  Presenters Rika Snip and Lorraine Leishman from Lethbridge College presented a followup to their ACIFA presentation in 2012. In the presentstion last year the presenters asked what are we trying to talk about? What isn't being said that should be? What are the issues everyone is aware of but no one is talking about?<br>
Elephants in the room require a lot of attention and are often a painful game. Like all games, there is an ending. Often at the end of the game there is an eruption and fall out. It is important to address the elephants early to avoid the eruption. <br>

The presenters addressed three "controllers" that they called baby elephants as they could be hiding behind the big elephant in the room. The baby elephants are personal kinds of habits. These elephants are difficult to recognize and to address because they are roles and positions that disguise a person's true personality and affect workplace as well as personal relationships. By addressing the elephant or habit of mind, you can break through the person's habit and have a more authentic interaction.

The presenters outlined three habits of mind or roles: Persecutor, Rescuer, and Victim. These are the three controllers in interactions between people. The victim habit is the hardest to break and the hardest to influence. A person who is in a victim habit role is resistant to solutions to problems and gives excuses for why she can't change. The rescuer tries to help the victim, and the persecutor perpetrates the victim's feelings of inadequacy. <br>

The presenters encouraged us to try to recognize these habits in the workplace and to try to avoid being part of the game. They iterated that these controllers are habits of mind, not people  and everyone may at some time be in the role of persecutor, victim, or rescuer. The handout depicted in the picture attached shows the habits of mind triangle with the actions and feelings involved.

Upgrading Online Conference May 30-31

Join us for a webinar, a day, or the whole conference! Register here

Are you interested in online delivery? Curious how to connect with learners from a distance? Whether you are part of the Anytime Online team, the Real-Time Online group, or just like to connect with your face-to-face learners in a virtual way, this conference has something for you.

We will have a multitude of webinars on Best Practices in Online Education, including teaching & learning, and development & administration in this third annual event co-hosted by Bow Valley College and NorQuest College. Some of the presentations include:

Keynotes

• Carmen Simon (formerly Taran) of RexiMedia showcasing research on how to use PowerPoint presentations effectively
• Tony Bates, President and CEO of Tony Bates Associates Ltd, discussing how to design online programs for adult learners, including the use of social media
• Tim Coates and Deanna Shostak of Alberta Education showing how to construct effective multiple choice questions in humanities and math/science

Presenters

• Travis Seaman RTOL instructor demonstrating best practices to promote learning in a Real-Time Online environment using Adobe Connect
• Lee Murray ATOL instructor focusing on basic exam structure and blueprinting

For other presentations and more details, see the Conference Schedule. And remember that we also have a pre-conference session on May 29th.

Join us for a webinar, a day, or the whole conference! Register here

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WriteForward: What have we learned about writing?

Last week’s Share the Wealth session provided a great opportunity to discuss what we have been discovering about writing during the first year of the WriteForward project and to open up the conversations about writing here in CEFL. There were six main facts that I wanted to share with the group which are currently influencing our project work.

1. As a field, we have not defined what writing is. Our definition is influenced by our values and shapes the way we instruct.
2. Writing is individually situated and writing instruction needs to be learner-centred.
3. Writing instruction, practice, and assessment need to be authentic. This means that the learner can see how it connects to his or her life outside of the classroom.
4. Writing assessment approaches have been limited by the use of psychometric theory and the definitions of valid and reliable constructs. We need to rethink these in the context of writing.
5. Using technology for writing is part of being a literate Canadian. This means technology needs to be integrated into instruction, practice, and assessment.
6. Writing instructors need more professional development to understand how to choose writing assessments, how to interpret them, and how to integrate them into the instructional plans.

As a group on Friday, we just made it through a discussion of the first three points. We spent time contemplating what counts as writing; we approached this question as instructors and as readers and found that context played a huge role in how we define writing. Overall, an attempt at communication and expressing thoughts on paper were two common ways of expressing how we define writing. We also took time to think about what we value in writing. Again, context was key - what we value in a learner’s written assignment may differ than what we value in a co-worker’s email. In general, we talked about valuing the expression of thought and understanding, being clear, providing information, appropriate grammar and spelling, and use of voice or showing personality.

Current research encourages us as writers and writing instructors to collaborate and define writing locally - in a way that makes sense in our programs and classes with our instructors and learners. There is the acknowledgement that one size does not fit all and that we need to address this in order to best help our learners improve their writing. I’m glad that we had this opportunity to start this conversation within our department on Friday, and hope that we will make time for further discussions in the future. Thanks to everyone who participated!

For more information, please see our project website: writeforward.ca

Learn about Physics Research at the University of Calgary: Free Professional Development Day Presentation for High School Teachers

Hi All, This presentation is on May 17th, 2013, 10 AM to 3 PM, Room ICT 114, at the University of Calgary. I've found the previous presentations informative and inspiring. It's great to bring phsyics to life with fresh research efforts and results.

Topics include: 
• Nanoscale Optics
• Radiation Therapy for Cancer Patients
• Environmental Physics
• Making and Trapping Anti Matter

"The Department of Physics and Astronomy will once again be presenting its Professional Development Day Research Presentations to High School science teachers. This year we will be holding this event on the UofC campus and the date is May 17. The emphasis will be on applied and experimental research, focusing on science at nano-scales, environmental physics, the treatment of cancer patients with particle accelerators and the creation of anti-matter atoms at CERN. Please pass this poster on to your colleagues who might be interested in seeing what the UofC has been up to recently. These sessions provide an opportunity for university and high school educators to get to know each other, something that will hopefully lead to closer ties in the future."

Register by May 10th: gzannet@ucalgary.ca or call 403-220-3618

PowerPoint and videos: why the Media Development Team chose these

The technology options that are available to create educational media are numerous and growing. One of our main goals is to help instructors increase their abilities to create relevant instructional media; so to succeed with this we need to narrow down the options. We have chosen to use PowerPoint and video, but you may be wondering why. If so, read on.

First of all we need to look at why we need media at all. Traditional learning has revolved around face-to-face classes, text-dominant class textbooks, lectures and discussions with note-taking. This is a highly oral/audio- and text-based way of learning. The visual element has been limited or neglected altogether, although research has repeatedly found that visuals aid understanding and memory - hence, learning. Our aim is to get more visuals into educational materials - both still images and moving images - and to be able to share these materials with each other, learners, and other organizations. Below are the seven conditions we considered before choosing the media that will allow us to use visuals most effectively.

This article and more information are available on the Foundational Learning Curriculum Website with the Why PowerPoint and Video? link.

Accessibility

PowerPoint has become standard in all offices and office software packages, so not only is it accessible to instructors it is also accessible to learners. LIkewise for videos; they can be uploaded to online sharing sites, such as YouTube, which makes them easy to access in the classroom, at a learner’s home, or on a mobile phone.

User friendly

Anyone who has used any MS Office product will be familiar with the layout of PowerPoint which means it will be easier for beginners to navigate than other slideshow or presentation software options. As of 2009, YouTube became the second largest search engine, meaning that there are a lot of people already accessing the videos hosted there. As such, it has attracted many instructors who create and post free educational content that learners are actively looking for. Lastly, both PPT and YouTube have simplified media options; this means that no one has to be a technology expert to use them effectively.

Stability

Some tech comes and goes. Lots of interesting and innovative stuff is out there, but it doesn’t all have staying power. We don’t want to have everyone learn new skills and produce great learning materials that are not relevant or useable in two years. Both PowerPoint and YouTube have proven staying power which means it is worth investing our time to learn how to use them.

Sharing options

Sharing is a key component of the way we develop curriculum. If you can’t share it with others who need it, how valuable is what you created? PowerPoint presentations and videos can be shared through email, posted to websites and learning management systems (such as BlackBoard or Desire to Learn), and uploaded to the internet on sites such as YouTube. YouTube is also a great way of sharing media for those who watch it on mobile devices.

Integration

Rapid development is another focus of our curriculum process. We like all of our technologies to integrate with each other so that we can save time. We start by creating a PowerPoint presentation. To create a video, we take the PowerPoint and load it into Camtasia Studio (video creation software). Camtasia Studio is fully compatible with PowerPoint,so we can use the slides “as is” and add narration, motion, and annotation. Camtasia Studio then allows us to upload our completed video directly to YouTube. And YouTube videos can be easily embedded on most any website and work well with the mybvc portal. Additionally, PowerPoint presentations can easily be saved as PDF files for viewing on mobile devices or printing off for in-class use.

Support options

When selecting software we need to consider what support will be needed to use it and what is support is readily available. In terms of training, the Foundational Learning Media Development Team can offer workshops and one-on-one help with PowerPoint, Camtasia Studio, and YouTube; as well, the Teaching and Learning Enhancement (TLE) Team in the LRS are also skilled in these software options. Additionally, if technical problems occur, the BVC IT team is already set to help with MicroSoft products, including PowerPoint, and Google has accessible support for their products, including YouTube.

Forward Thinking

Even stable technology changes over time; it gets updates, enhancements, and new features. When selecting educational technology we need to consider which types of skills we will be able to transfer to future technologies. History has shown that when PowerPoint gets updates, the base technology skills are still relevant. The growth of the internet and of online education over the last decade has shown that the technology skills of searching and uploading digital content (such as with YouTube) are, and will continue to be, valuable. Besides technology skills, media creation requires many visual skills; the visual literacy skills used with the technology in our media projects can be applied to other mediums - photography, print, and other digital presentation formats, for example. Another big change in technology is the growth of mobile learning and the need to make educational content easily accessible on cell phones and tablets. Many software products do not display well on mobile devices which limits their future usability.