Friday Fragments, Nov. 6th
An Audible splurge, Studying 101 for students, and teaching with Zoom.
What I’m reading…
I’ll be honest, my “reading” this week has mostly involved flipping tabs to check election results. If you like data more than talking heads, this open-source site displays changes in vote differentials, which might be more or less stressful than flipping channels.
Out of a small user error, I ended up with five Audible credits that I needed to use before cancelling my subscription (so as not to continue to rack up credits-to-be-used…) I make extensive use of the pubic library’s audio book catalog, so I really wanted to use these credits to, first, support authors whose work I really admire, and, second, purchase books not available in the library. I was delighted to purchase the following five titles:
Lower Ed: The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World in Flux by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn and The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World In Flux by Cathy N. Davidson
James M. Lang’s Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning and his newly published book on student distraction, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It.
Studying 101 by Blake Harvard is written for a student audience, and outlines why effective studying habits are important, and what to do. It’s a great article to share with our students, and I plan to incorporate it into my “welcome to the course” materials for spring to complement the time management activities that we already do.
You should be doing the studying. You are the person who should be doing the thinking and working with the material. The person doing the thinking is doing the learning. This may seem extremely obvious, but it needs to be stated. If you are not working with the material, using the information, applying the knowledge (more on all of this in the ‘how’ section), you are not using your time as wisely as possible.
Zoom to the Next Level: Active Learning in the Virtual Classroom by Digital Education Programs and Initiatives at Indiana University is extremely practical and practitioner-oriented, with ideas for activities with step-by-step instructions and technical guides paired with the activities for just-in-time technical explanations. They focus on Zoom, as the title suggests, and categorize their activities into icebreakers, presentations, discussions, and projects.