The plan going into today’s class was to spend the first 45 minutes working through new problems and the last 15 minutes introducing Stata, the software we’ll be using to actually analyze data. The problem solving went well. My handwriting is showing slight signs of improvement, and I’m getting better at managing my workspace. One key is to leave space on slides when I know I’ll be making notes or doing math.
Kindergarteners, middle schoolers, high schoolers, and college students are different animals. They live in different environments and even have very different brains. To do a great job, teachers need to take account of these differences. That said, I also believe there are many universal truths about teaching. That’s why I follow as many K-12 folks as higher-ed folks on Twitter.
By popular demand, I’ve added the ability to subscribe to Teach Better by email. Just scroll to the bottom of any page, fill in your email address, and press the “Follow this site via email” button. Blogtrottr will send you a confirmation message, and then you’ll get every new article emailed to you within an hour of it going live. If you prefer, you can still subscribe to the site’s RSS feed or follow me on Twitter for updates.
I am very happy to report that the two biggest problems I had on Monday have been solved. The quizzes we put together for each of the class modules to test engagement with the videos are now working flawlessly. I don’t know why we couldn’t correct mistakes before, but Instructure did something to their servers to fix the problem. Hopefully we’ve seen the last of it.
This summer I’m teaching undergraduate econometrics as a small online class in Yale Summer Session. The overall structure of class is mix of recorded video lectures and live interactive video sessions. I did this last year, but this time around I’ll be trying lots of new technology and new methods. I’ll be sharing what I learn here. Today was our first live session of the term, and while there is plenty of room for improvement, I’d say it was an overall success.
Two years ago I taught undergraduate Econometrics and Data Analysis (Econ 131) for the first time, and just used the same textbook as the instructor before me did without much consideration for alternatives. In the short term, this saved me time, but the book turned out to be a poor fit for my class and my students mostly hated it. This summer I’m teaching the class for the fourth time, and I finally made a serious search for a good replacement. Here’s what I learned about textbook selection during the process:
One of the smartest people I read on the web is Fraser Speirs. He’s best known for implementing the first ever true 1:1 deployment of iPads in a school. On his blog and in his podcast he shares big ideas about the future of technology and K-12 education as well as his take on the “little” stuff that really matters. He’s currently on Part 15 of a sequence of podcasts dedicated to helping schools build their own 1:1 iPad program and the attention to detail is frightening.
I spend the vast majority of my classroom time running the show. I’m either lecturing, guiding discussion, or overseeing small group activities. This morning I attended class as a student for the first time in almost ten years, and I found it useful to observe someone else’s teaching approach as well as get a firsthand refresher on the student experience.
As I’ve written before, when I teach online, it’s about as far from a MOOC as you can get. The biggest difference is that all Yale Summer Session online classes include a large live component. Imagine the instructor is in a Google Hangout for big chunks of time with their 15 students scattered around the world. Of course the devil is in the details, and we don’t use Google Hangouts since they only support up to 10 participants. As far as I know, only two companies go over 15 simultaneous users: Watchitoo (up to 25) and Zoom (up to 100!). I used Watchitoo last year with mixed results, and this year we’re trying Zoom.