Comments for Are We There Yet?

Comment on School Time by Jason Strickland

Jason Strickland — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:31:00 +0000

Skip, that was teaching done right. 20+ years later and I still think of that class. One of the things that stuck with me was how you went about teaching. You started class with a song (1814 we took a little trip…) to get us engaged and to help wake up our groggy minds. You let us pick projects that had meaning to us (but still had context in the greater syllabus), making the lesson plans more engaging and personal.

Constantly challenging us to do better, grow as students / people, and all in all arming us with the power of critical thinking and the ability to analyze problems. Know that for some of us, your teaching didn’t end with the class, but has followed us throughout our lives.

Comment on Ptolemaic Schools – Why Reform Won’t Work by Skip

Skip — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 15:53:18 +0000

Of even more concern to me is the way that we change how schools work according to political ideology and not educational policy. We swing between NCLB and Race to the Top and whatever “reform o’ the day” happens to suit a political need at the time. It’s unfortunately quite true, as you mention, that vested interests hold considerable sway over our politicians, and that’s a bad proposition all around.

Comment on Ptolemaic Schools – Why Reform Won’t Work by philhart

philhart — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:57:48 +0000

Yes, it is too much to ask while vested interests maintain that the Industrial (=Ptolemaic) model is the only valid model, i.e. the one that suits them.

Comment on School Time by Skip

Skip — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:54:36 +0000

In reply to @kkemp70. Very nice solution. We should compile all of these somewhere...

Comment on School Time by @kkemp70

@kkemp70 — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:33:10 +0000

I love the forbidden questions! In my class, I have the forbidden comment: “I don’t get it”. They soon learn to say “could I please have some help?”. Saying you don’t get it is just complaining – they need to problem solve and self advocate.

Comment on School Time by Richard Byrne

Richard Byrne — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:32:52 +0000

Skip,
I get that same question from high school students. My response is usually, “eventually.” Then I explain how the task I’ve asked them to do will lead into larger graded assessment. The first month of school that’s confusing for students, after that they get it.

Comment on School Time by Skip

Skip — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 04:41:58 +0000

🙂 I occasionally get “Are we getting graded on this?” from my post-secondary students. We’ve trained them well.

Comment on School Time by wmchamberlain

wmchamberlain — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 00:54:41 +0000

You should add, “What am I supposed to do?” as another forbidden question. That seems to be a favorite of my students.

Comment on The Tyranny of the Vertical by bp

bp — Sun, 30 May 2010 23:31:45 +0000

Thank you for this discussion. I’ve been a long-time user of Bb and I’ve also found it very limiting. I don’t find the forums very conducive to a discussion– even if we can subscribe to posts. Bb just seems very artificial– from forum discussions to blogs to wikis to even the useless calendar. Most of my students are comfortable with list-servs, etc. and discussion over email is much more lively. At the moment, I create a Google Site linked to a Google Group and a Google calendar for each class I teach. This set up means that it’s much more integrated into my and my students’ workflow– they can email from smartphones, etc. BTW in terms of privacy, I usually set these as private sites to protect my students and there’s been no problems. The only thing I use Bb for are the exams and I’ve started to play with the idea of moving my exams to Google docs…

Comment on The Tyranny of the Vertical by Skip

Skip — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:35:13 +0000

Hi Frank;

You can save courses semester to semester in BB, but BB’s assignment structure can’t be copied without duplicating the entire course–members and all. If you don’t exactly duplicate your course, you have to rebuild assignments for each new iteration of the course.

I think the entry level requirements for students and teachers are quite reasonable. BB has a point and click (and click and click and click) interface that, while tedious at times, is easy to use. An hour long introduction is all that is probably required to get something up and running on Blackboard. However, the deeper functions–using the grading center effectively, embedding media, etc.–require more training and experience. The biggest issue we face with training isn’t how to provide it–it’s getting faculty to avail themselves of it.