Archive for category technology
Using social media to support FYE
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, online tools, social media, technology, university on March 19, 2013
Ah, “FYE” … the new acronym in my life!
It stands for First Year Experience, and now that I’m the FYE Coordinator for my Faculty, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
As a school teacher, the role reminds me a LOT of being a Year Advisor, but with one difference. Instead of staying with my year group and looking after them until they graduate, at the end of the year I send my group off to second year, and prepare to look after the FYE of a new cohort.
My FYE jobs
This is my first year in the role, and one of my ‘big jobs’ is to consult with unit coordinators to identify students in need of help with academic literacy. Students have a raft of assignments due around weeks 4-6 and using those we can make early recommendations for study skill support.
I’m also one of the main points of contact for first year students, and I get to go to many (very interesting, seriously) meetings about student engagement and improving campus life. My personal engagement project is a knitting club that I am launching for Education students in Week 5 of semester 
Enter Twitter
Something else I am trying this year is the establishment of a Twitter account (1styear_edu) to communicate messages relevant to students in first year Education. I’ve stated nice and clearly in the bio that I am behind the tweets, and the profile pic is a shot of our lovely main admin building at Kelvin Grove campus. I’m not following students back (yet), but am following things that I think they would like, or that I would want to retweet from.
So far I’m up to 93 followers, out of a potential 650 (ish). It’s Monday of week 4, out of 13 week semester, and on the whole, I am happy!
Yes, yes, some things I already know:
- Almost all first year students use Facebook, with only about 10% entering our courses using Twitter. We know this from a student survey. I think this is great, because it means most of them are up to date with the digital literacy skill needed to use Twitter, and just need some guidance to transfer those practices.
- Not many students like Twitter when they first join it. I know this anecdotally, but I don’t see this as a reason not to persist with the service. In fact, I think it’s good to put students out of their learning ‘comfort zone’ … especially students that are trying to become teachers!
- Most students won’t go to Twitter regularly for announcements. That’s OK! They should be going to the institution’s ‘Blackboard’ (or other LMS) for essential announcements. Although I do repeat some key announcements on Twitter, it would be inequitable to announce important stuff there without also placing it on Blackboard. Twitter is for engagement, tips, and social study support.
- Students don’t use their social media for learning. Well, I know that some already do, actually – you should meet them! But I sincerely hope that by the time the others graduate from a year (or four) at QUT that their attitude to Personal Learning Environments will have changed! Using Twitter is just one thing I can do to help them over this threshold.
What is to come?
I hope that students will increase their take-up of Twitter for crowdsourced note taking. I’ve attempted to lead some tweeting using the unit codes #EDB006 (for ‘Learning Networks’, the only core unit that first year students share) and #CLB320 (a unit on ‘Studies in Language’ that about half the cohort undertakes).
I also want to show other teachers the power of using tools such as Storify to collect tweets about a topic that can be used later as a teaching aid. For example, here is my collection of tweets from the start of EDB006:
http://storify.com/kmcg2375/edb006-tweets-and-media-weeks-1-and-2
Other than that, I think I’m just hoping for some more discussion between students … but I don’t mind if that doesn’t really kick in until later in their degrees. For now I’m just stoked to have seen any interaction at all!
93 followers, baby … how long will it take me to double it? I’ll be sure to report back when we hit 186 
Making content posters for my classroom walls
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, technology, university on February 13, 2013
Over the years I have seen many creative and high utility wall displays in other people’s classrooms. Imelda Judge for example is wizard with cardboard and hot glue – sharing a classroom with her in 2009 was a wild apprenticeship in classroom decoration!
I say ‘other people’s classrooms’ because I haven’t had a lot of success with this kind of thing!
2008: One time, I thought I had made a pretty successful poster of quotes from King Lear for my Year 12s…but they never seemed to look at it:
2009: Far more successful displays have tended to come out of students’ own work being put up, such as this display of lines of poetry after a lesson with Year 10:
2011: And the ‘tree of knowledge’ inspired display I’ve had in my uni teaching for the past 18 months was wrongly positioned at the back of the room, and a little haphazard to boot:
Today: When I saw Bianca’s tweet today with a picture of her classroom wall painted with blackboard paint, I thought ‘how cool is that!?’
…which motivated me to start designing some posters to add to my classroom this semester.
I’m going for a digital look, rather than getting all crafty with the glitter and paint. I plan to print them out in colour A3 and get the students to decide where they think they should be put up in the room. Here is the first one – two of the key concepts I focus on in my English Curriculum Studies unit:
by me, Kelli McGraw (CC-BY-SA) free-to-use
Mind you, the room I teach in has been a blu-tak free zone for the past two years, because it got a new paint job. This has been severely limiting. While it’s lovely on one hand to teach in a clean and modern space, it’s hard to use a room when you can’t put things up where you want. Teachers who don’t have a ‘home room’ will know the feeling!
The display I have been using so far, however, has been taking up one of the big green write-on groupwork boards in the room (to avoid having to blu-tak the wall). I don’t think I can keep using that board – I need it in my class, and other teachers must too.
So walls, you’ve had two years…the blu-tak is now a-comin
If anyone else has electronic copies of pedagogy-inspired posters that they would be happy to share, I would love to see some more designs. And if you have any ideas for what else you think I should be flagging for 2nd year preservice English teachers, tell me all about that too!
Twitter #hashtags for English teachers to follow
Posted by kmcg2375 in technology, social media, online tools, education, learning community on February 5, 2013
Are you a teacher? An English teacher, perhaps? Trying to find where the good chats are on Twitter? Look no further! Start by searching for these three English-curriculum-related hashtags and you’ll be on your way to finding and conversing with other teachers just like you!
#ozengchat (weekly)
If you search for this hashtag on Tuesday nights, you’ll find Australian English teachers talking about their craft, ideas and resources.
The #ozengchat group also has a page on Edmodo, which is where voting for the weekly topic takes place (a group code for Edmodo can be obtained by tweeting @vivimat78). Vivian, who convenes the chat, also collects our chat tweets in a weekly online storyline using ‘Storify’.
#ozengchat officially takes place on Tuesday from 8.30pm – 9.30pm, Australian EDST (i.e. GMT +11)
australia-map-flag-olga – Flickr image by lednichenkoolga (CC-BY-2.0)
#engchat (weekly)
As well as a special hashtag for Australian folk, there is also a more general #engchat hashtag that is coordinated for a more global chat.
Currently the #engchat tag seems to be heavily used by teachers in the US – as a result you can see some interesting discussion taking place there now about the implementation of ‘Common Core Standards’ across their states. And of course also a lot of resources being shared that we otherwise might not stumble across through our own local networks!
#engchat takes place at 7pm in the States (EST) every Monday, which is 10am – 12pm on Tuesdays in Australia (Eastern time).
The Globe (78 / 365) – Flickr image by somegeekintn (CC-BY-2.0)
#literacies (bi-monthly)
You can follow the #literacies hashtag on the 1st and 3rd Thursday every month. The convenors are based in the US, so the chat happens on Thursday night for them, which is Friday lunch-time in Australia.
This chat is supported by a very up-to-date and informative blog, where a record is kept of the chats and upcoming topics.
The #literacies tag can be added to your tweets at any time, but Friday 12pm – 1pm (Eastern time) is when you’ll see it live in Australia (i.e. Thursday night 8-9pm in the US).
Literacy mountain – Flickr image by dougbelshaw (CC-BY-2.0)
A tip for non-tweeters:
If you want to check out these tags, but don’t really want to get involved in Twitter or create your own account, never fear!
You can search for these tags any time by going to the Twitter homepage and typing the hashtag (complete with its ‘#’ at the start) into the search bubble. You will need to make your own account to reply with your own tweets, but until then there’s no harm in lurking and learning from afar
Coming to Voice
Posted by kmcg2375 in digital storytelling, education, english, technology on September 23, 2012
Looks like the theme for this blog at the moment is VOICE!
A little while ago I was alerted to this excellent production of student work from South Western Sydney, and I’d like to share it with everyone here on the blog.
Coming to Voice is a collection of ‘literary videos’ from students at Sir Joseph Banks High School. The video production by Westside is 5 minutes long, and showcases an innovative layering of student stories, voices, and animation:
Coming to Voice from BYDS on Vimeo.
From the press release:
Thirteen students from year 7 worked with the Chief Editor of Westside Publications, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, to develop writing that was then animated by 2012 SHORTCUTS film festival winner Vinh Nguyen.
The literary video, called ‘Coming to Voice’ will be screened at an assembly at Sir Joseph Banks High School and will also be launched on the BYDS website as a new web series on August 23rd.
Digital stories, literary videos etc.
BYDS (Bankstown Youth Development Services) seems to have a range of resources relating to the local community on their website: http://www.byds.org.au/ including oral history and photomedia materials. I’m so glad that these kinds of digital arts-based resources are flourishing!
When I talk about ‘digital stories’ or ‘digital narrative’ with teachers, it can be hard to explain the possibilities for the genre. There is of course the Daniel Meadows school of thought that advocates for 2 minute, 12 frame, voice-only digital biographies. The digital storytelling project at QUT uses a similar form.
I think the folks at BYDS have cleverly carved out a different kind of genre here for what they’ve produced – a “literary video”. As the students are reading their POETRY, the production is not quite of STORYTELLING. Could they have called them “digital poems”? Perhaps. But that might distract from the multimedia nature of the production, and the way that animation and video shots add meaning to the piece.
Literary videos… I like it! Thanks for sharing Mariam!
TeachMeet Brisbane
Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, education, learning community, social media, technology on January 23, 2012
During 2011 a range of TeachMeets were held throughout Sydney. A central wiki was set up to coordinate the events and the hashtag #TMSydney ran hot during the meets.
The events were great successes, described by participants as welcoming, supporting and positive. This is not surprising, when you consider that the ethos behind the event is that it is strictly free professional development run ‘for teachers, by teachers’. What I thought was most attractive about the TeachMeet structure was the short presentations – either a 2 minute ‘nano-presentation or a 7 minute micro-presentation (or Pecha Kucha). It sounds like an ideal way to hear a little bit from a lot of people.
You can therefore imagine how stoked I was to hear that someone was organising the first ever TeachMeet in BRISBANE!
#TMBrisbane
TEACHMEET BRISBANE will be held from 4-6pm at Moreton Bay Boys’ College on Thursday 1st March 2012.
If you would like to register or get more information, you can visit and join the TMBrisbane wiki: http://tmbrisbane.wikispaces.com/
Of course, I was so excited to see the event come to Brissie that I had to volunteer to present. It will also be a great chance for me to refine my pecha kucha style!
(I also look forward to the #TMBrisbane hastag drawing together more of the Brisbane edu-community)
Pass it on
If you would like to be involved in TeachMeet Brisbane, or to support the event, take a look at the flyer available for download on the wiki.
In the Twittershpere you can participate in the backchannel from anywhere (not just Brisbane!) on March 1st by adding #TMBrisbane to your tweets.
Finally, this video about TeachMeets made for Sydney West is a great one to pass around to folk who are new to the TeachMeet concept…enjoy!
A transformative digital literacies pedagogy: Thomas (2011)
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, Lit_Review, online tools, research, social media, technology, university on November 17, 2011
Thanks to @malynmawby @benpaddlejones and @Vormamim for engaging in tweety-chat today about play-based learning and transformational play.
There was an article that I wanted to post the full reference to – this one by Angela Thomas (@anyaixchel)
Thomas, A. (2011) Towards a transformational digital literacies pedagogy. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy. Vol. 6 pp. 89-101
You can see the abstract for the paper with my own annotations, above.
In it she argues that there are:
a number of significant characteristics of digital literacy that are imperative to include in a pedagogy of digital literacy in order to make it a transformational pedagogy. These include: explicit understandings of multimodality, opportunities for play and experimentation, participating within communities of practice, and critical engagement with text.
I had picked this article up to read Angela’s findings about digital pedagogy, but it was a timely read. I am a big fan of the work of Paulo Freire, and of his work to empower communities through literacy. By bringing in Freire’s notion of ‘transformative pedagogies’ this article reaffirmed the need for critical, participatory and dialogic practices to be woven into the digital learning landscape.
I’d love to hear of other readings and resources along these lines, if you know of any…?
Use #etaq21c to ask me things tomorrow!
Posted by kmcg2375 in conferences, education, english, learning community, online tools, personal, social media, technology on August 19, 2011
More specifically, use #etaq21c to ask me questions about Digital Literacy and electronic text practices in English curriculum. The conference theme says it all: “English and Generation Next”
ETAQ’s Annual State Conference will be held atLourdes Hill College on Saturday 20 August. The theme is “English and Generation Next”.
The program will feature a keynote address by Professor Peter Holbrook from the University of Queensland’s School of English, Media Studies and Art History, a Q & A style panel session [that's where I'm presenting!!], and a range of supporting workshops. Professor Holbrook’s address is entitled “Literature, Literacy, the Imagination, Freedom”.
So, if you are an English teacher, or if you are interested in digital texts and the future of the book, please, shoot some questions our way! You can post them here as a comment, but if you use Twitter then posting a comment or question there with the hashtag #etaq21c would Really Make My Day
I am soooo looking forward to this panel presentation! The full list of people in the panel session are:
- Professor Catherine Beavis (Griffith University and ETAQ Patron)
- Professor Peter Holbrook (University of Queensland)
- Kelli McGraw (Lecturer, QUT)
- Janina Drazek (Executive Director, Teaching and Learning, Education Queensland)
I’ll be talking about ‘acts of reading and writing’ and ‘digital pedagogy’.
JOLT: Balancing Quality and Workload in Asynchronous Online Discussions
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, Lit_Review, online tools, research, social media, technology, university on August 17, 2011
Of interest to teachers struggling to keep up with online discussions with their students!
Goldman, Zvi (2011) ‘Balancing Quality and Workload in Asynchronous Online Discussions: A Win-Win Approach for Students and Instructors’. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 7:2 pp.313-323
ABSTRACT: The challenge addressed in this article is how to achieve a win-win balance between quality and workload for students and instructors participating in asynchronous online discussions. A Discussion Guideline document including minimum requirements and best practices was developed to address this need. The approach covers three phases: design and development, setting up expectations, and launch and management. The goals of the approach, based on a commitment shared by all full time and adjunct faculty, are high quality of education as well as retention of both students and qualified instructors.
Further explanation of the research challenge from the introduction: “When discussions are regarded as critical components of learning, and administered as such, they impose a significant workload on both students and instructors. In applicable programs targeting practitioner adults, discussion sessions, during which much of the evidence-based learning and experience sharing occur, can easily consume half the course workload (Goldman, 2010). The reality is that neither students nor instructors can afford to dedicate an unlimited amount of time to fulfill course requirements or teach a course. Therefore, as a matter of practicality, discussion sessions should be carefully implemented to balance pedagogic quality and workload for students and instructors alike.”
Gamification and Behaviourism
Posted by kmcg2375 in education, politics, research, technology, video games on August 12, 2011
I dig gamification. I also dig Games Based Learning (GBL).
But sometimes when I’m watching these concepts get promoted, big alarms go off in my head.
Take a look at this list of some key elements of gamification:
- Points
- Badges
- Levels
- Challenges
- Leaderboards
- Rewards
- Onboarding
Doesn’t this remind you of anything? Add that together with our enthusiastic embrace of digital and electronic teaching, and the ‘games & machines’ motif becomes really familiar. I’m thinking Skinner, and Behaviourism, and Pavlov’s dog…which means that we need to think about the ethics of gamification, stat.
Foucault THAT.
Posted by kmcg2375 in books, education, english, learning community, Lit_Review, online tools, politics, reflections, research, social media, technology, university on July 28, 2011
I have a confession to make.
Lately, I’ve been cheating on my blog. (In a good way, I promise!)
A colleague at my university, Clare O’Farrell, has an established Ning that is home to members of the Poststructuralist Theory ‘Special Interest Group’ of AARE. Established it so well, in fact, that it is one of the few Nings I know of (along with the English Companion) that continued to have happy users after stupid-Ning made its stupid-serivce un-free. Hmph.
Anyway, I use my space and profile on the ‘Ed Theory Ning’ to brain-vomit about (on?) theory that I don’t understand yet.
And it’s proven #very illuminating.
Increasing my activity in various groups on the Ning has also proven fruitful. Particularly in the ‘Daily Writing Club’ (we have to do exactly as it says…!) and now also from browsing the ‘Foucault reading group’.
That’s where I was reminded to check out Clare’s actual blog, Refracted Input, which I hadn’t done for ages. This month she is discussing a quote by Foucault about ‘race and colonialism’, and in it I can see a relationship to contemporary discourses around changing technologies.
The term ‘folklore’ is nothing but a hypocrisy of the ‘civilised’ who won’t take part in the game, and who want to hide their refusal to make contact under the mantle of respect for the picturesque…
Man is irrevocably a stranger to dawn. It needed our colonial way of thinking to believe that man could have remained faithful to his beginnings and that there was any place in the world where he could encounter the essence of the ‘primitive’. (trans. Clare O’Farrell)Michel Foucault, (1994) [1963] ‘Veilleur de la nuit des hommes’ In Dits et Ecrits vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, p. 232.
You see, I’ve been worrying about the ethics of what could be seen as meddling with teachers or students who are comfotable in their print-material ways, trying to prod them along to explore new technologies. I have wondered, ‘am I being selfish?’, ‘what if they have it right?’, ‘what if I’m destroying something important?’, and ‘am I wrong to advocate for my view, should I just wait and see what happens instead?’. But then, Clare’s wise words:
One cannot buy into the romanticism of the primitive – which is assumed to be so much closer to pure truth and ‘nature’. Conversely one cannot make the colonial assumption that one civilisation or one period of history (now) is more advanced and more evolved than another.
That’s right. I don’t need to worry about whether I’ll ‘wreck’ anything, unless I’m thinking of the people I’m meddling with as OTHER. And I was using pronouns to construct myself in opposition to other through all those damn self-doubts. I don’t need to do that. FOUCAULT THAT!
*Sigh of relief*
NB: Clare also curates a website on Michel Foucault, which includes a glossary of KEY CONCEPTS and other wonderful gems (thanks Clare!).
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