Garry Brand

MCCVLC Webinar Series - Online Developmental Education

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:40:00 +0000

I've been attending a great monthly webinar series sponsored by the Michigan Community College Association's "Virtual Learning Collaborative." Hosted by XLENTS.COM , the webinar featured two experienced online educators (Barry Dahl and Donna Gaudet) who shared "good practices" in online developmental education.

Ronda Edwards (Executive Director of the MCCVLC) shared the following resources from their presentations:

Link to archived webinar - http://www.mccvlc.org/~staff/content.cfm?m=86&id=86&startRow=1&mm=0

Link to Donna’s Prezi - http://prezi.com/pmdrq48dzqi1/teaching-pre-college-math-online/

Link to Barry’s Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/barrydahl/mccvlc-webinar-good-practices-in-online-delivery-of-developmental-ed

The ITC eLearning 2012 Conference, held in Long Beach California from February 18 through 21, 2012, will include Donna’s pre-conference workshop “Can Developmental Math be Taught Online?”. A favorite of the conference is the Great Debate and this year’s topic, featuring Donna Gaudet, is “Developmental Students Can’t Succeed Online.”

This webinar series, the ITC Conference, and the two presenters are worth following! In fact, you'll find Donna (@donagee) and Barry (@barrydahl) on Twitter.

Speeding up the Grade Center

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 10:24:00 +0000

Advanced Blackboard Tip #1

Do you have other tips? Please share them in the comments!

Reflections on Lessons Learned

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

I'm attending a retreat at GRCC today. We are reflecting on lessons learned. Our prompt is this poem by Gary Snyder:

"WHAT HAVE I LEARNED

What have I learned but
the proper use for several tools?

The moments
between hard pleasant tasks

To sit silent, drink wine,
and think my own kind
of dry crusty thoughts.

-the first Calochortus flowers
and in all the land,
it's spring.
I point them out:
the yellow petals, the golden hairs
to Gen.

Seeing in silence:
never the same twice,
but when you get it right,
you pass it on."

One thing I learned from my father is a hard "work ethic." Some say you should work smarter, not harder. He always worked harder and smarter! When I reflect on the lessons I've learned, I think about what I will pass along to my son. Two things come to mind:

1. Work hard and play hard!
2. Resist your temptation and the world's influence to focus on yourself.

There's a whole lot of focus on "sitting at the feet of your own life" (Polly Berrien Berends) and I disagree with it. Don't get me wrong ... I see value in reflection. I just don't see a lot of value in esteeming yourself!

Learn, make memories, love and serve others. I certainly haven't got this right, but I'm working hard.

Chapter 24

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:40:00 +0000

Chapter 23

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:48:00 +0000

Chapter 18

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:32:00 +0000

Chapter 17 - Part B

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:24:00 +0000

Group Discussions, Camtasia Relay and Blackboard

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:48:00 +0000

Many of the lecture capture discussions I hear involve making content available to students who missed (or want to review) class. I have to admit that I was first drawn to Camtasia Relay because I wanted to make my classroom lectures available to my online students.

Once I decided to view Relay as a potential solution to "instructional challenges", I began to see measurable results. My challenge came in the form of poor performance on an essay assessment. Students would attend my lecture and then fail to apply what they were learning to the scenarios or cases I gave them. In short, my lectures were taking up all the class time and leaving little time to work directly with them to improve their critical thinking skills.

For several semesters, I have moved to delivering the lecture for this activity through Blackboard® and meeting with small groups to go over the scenarios. This leaves me with much more time to interact with each student, both teaching and assessing learning. With the help of our IT area (especially Szymon Machajewski), I'm able to pull my Camtasia Relay videos directly into Blackboard with a "mashup tool."

Students have been consistently performing 20-30% better on this assessment. While that's great news (that addressed my instructional challenge), my group discussion today made me change my thinking even more! Rather than just seeing a challenge, I really got to see how instructional technology could help my students be successful. A group came in today and added their own presentation to the discussion. They used the whiteboard and a handout to share their group solutions. It dawned on me that Blackboard and Relay are not only giving me more time to work with students, but it's actually giving them more time to prepare and share their learning!

Chapter 17 - Part A

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 16:11:00 +0000

Chapter 13 - Part B (Consumer Law)

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:14:00 +0000

Warranties and Product Liability

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:19:00 +0000

Contracts (Part 3)

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:32:00 +0000

Contracts (Part 2)

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:39:00 +0000

Contracts (Part 1)

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:25:00 +0000

Criminal Law

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Negligence, Strict Liability and Cybertorts

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:10:00 +0000

Chapter 4

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:09:00 +0000

Course Customization

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 10:26:00 +0000

Chapter 3

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Chapter 1

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:41:00 +0000

ZoomIt - A Useful Presentation Tool

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:50:00 +0000

I'm trying to get the creative juices flowing for a presentation on instructional technology! It's been a long time since I blogged here. I spend most of my time in Blackboard, Facebook, Wimba Pronto and Twitter these days. While surfing/procrastinating, I saw "ZoomIt." According to Mark Russinovich's post on Microsoft TechNet, it's a "screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image." I tried it and it's great! It would be perfect for Tablet PCs.

Simple Conversion of Powerpoint with Audio

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 18:12:00 +0000

I'm a strong supporter of Camtasia Studio and Relay. My online and campus students really appreciate embedded slide presentations with audio. When I train faculty, they sometimes have slides that already have audio embedded via Powerpoint. Rather than capturing the presentation again, I've wanted a converter than can turn the narrrated ppt file into Flash with a click. Enter iSpring Converter! Here's what to do:

1. Download the free converter here.
2. Open Powerpoint and find the new add-in ("iSpring Converter tab in the 2007 ribbon).
3. Open the ppt file with embedded audio and click on the "publish" button.

You have the option of publishing to their free hosting site - slideboom.com. It's a lot like slideshare.net and other hosting services, but it has a nice "secret URL" feature. In fact, you can skip the whole software download and just upload the ppt to the service. It will do the conversion on the fly. Anybody know of other solutions that do a quick conversion of annotated slides?

New Directions for Communicating with Students (Part 2)

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

Using Flowgram for Presentations

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:15:00 +0000

I used Flowgram to prepare a Deans Council presentation (below). It allows you to add webpages, slides, images (from Flickr), annotate with voice or notes, and share via Facebook or blog. It's a web-based beta that reminds me of my favorite Camtasia products (Studio, Relay and Jing).

Here's some resources I used during the presentation:

GRCC Facebook Page (not required to be a member to view)
http://www.tinyurl.com/grccfacebook

GRCC YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/grcc

Educause Learning Initiative: Collaboration Tools
http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3020.pdf

The Chronicle of Higher Education: "E-mail is for Old People"
http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i07/07a02701.htm

Pew Internet & American Life Study: Teens and Technology
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Tech_July2005web.pdf

Confessions of a Trans-classroom Professor

gbrand@grcc.edu (Garret Brand) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:34:00 +0000

I was recently reading an article about "The Trans-Classroom Teacher in the Age of the Internet." Susan Lowes writes that:

"online and face-to-face courses are often viewed and studied as two distinct worlds, but the social field of the teacher who teaches them may well include both, and both the teacher and the courses he or she teaches may be transformed by the movement from one environment to the other."

In the article, she addresses two questions: Do teachers who move between face-to-face and online classrooms transfer ideas, strategies, and practices from one to the other? If so, which strategies and practices do they transfer?

Lowes coined the term "trans-classroom teacher" based on transnationals (those who engage in social relations and practices that cross borders as a regular feature of everyday life). As I read this article, it dawned on me - I'm a trans-classroom professor! I teach online, on campus and I share my instructional content and learning across borders. In fact, here's a full confession:

I feel like I'm using technology to break down the notions of a traditional classroom and students. I also feel that I'm using my online teaching experiences to promote learning college principles (e.g. helping the learner to become more responsible for their own learning).