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Category Archives: ETMOOC
Just finished undermining my students learning
So another semester is finished and I submitted my grades. not sure if that is a good thing or not. My biggest quandary is what to do with a student that earned a B+ on his final worked on the collaborative exams but turned in very little class or home work. So his weighted average is a D-.
He showed that he understands the material but doesn’t want to put in the time or effort to get a good grade. Which is more important? the knowledge or the effort? How do you balance the two? I am reading both sides of the grading issue, but the fact is that I have to give him a grade.
Was this class worth it?
Well the end is near several of my students have already taken the final, and now I am depressed. While most of the students did better on the final than on the pretest (as they should) two have done worse(?)! Now I admit the final is tough, but still shouldn’t all the students gain some ground after spending a semester with me discussing statistics?
Yes, much of my course contains experimental learning practices. I “flip” the lectures, the students write the exams, we discuss any questions they may have. I include an essay in the final asking them to reflect on a question they created during the semester and try to make it better. All of the ones I have read so far only look to change an incorrect answer provided in the key and leaving the question alone.
Maybe I should go back to the boring lecture, homework, quiz model. It would be easier on me to prepare and grade and I wouldn’t feel I let my students down if they fail to learn something during our time together.
The Infographic Resume
So today I was reading the #ETMOOC Assignment 3, defining digital literacy, and stumbled upon Visualize.me. Thank you Doug Belhsaw, for providing a link on your site. Visualize.me creates an Infographic resume based upon your Linked.in profile. Now i think this may be the coolest thing I have seen all week, it would have been all month but I spent February Vacation in WDW with my kids.
Showing this around the office we see the potential demise of the standard written resume. When doing our Assistant Director search we received over 100 applications, imagine how much easier it would have been to be able to compare skill sets and level of expertise if every applicant submitted this kind of document.
Six songs of me
After reading Amy Burvall Six Story blog post I had to try the Six Songs of me site.
This project allows for great soul and memory searching . Thinking way back to the first song you ever purchased or what song do you what played at your funeral. Here is the playlist of my life. Looking at this list I see that I have very little in common with most people. Imagine that.
Digital Storytelling – Six Word Story
The Six Word Short Story by Ernest Hemingway?
ETMOOC has assigned digital storytelling a la ds106. And the first challenge I am accepting is the Six Word Story which is based on this possible Hemingway story While mine can not compare to his kind eloquence here they are:
News organization belittles American male audience
Travelling with family, happily all survived
Suprisingl, Educational Technolgy is not IT
Digital storytelling is harder than it looks
High school escape the final countdown
When doves cry, let’ s go crazy (I was listening to Prince at the time)
Well that is all for now. Catch you on the flip side!
Connected Learning and the Introverted MOOC-er
So I have been pondering my latest #ETMOOC blog challenge for almost 6 minutes now on Connected Learning.
If people are looking for ideas to write about, I’d like to take this opportunity to once again share the blog prompts that were mentioned in the Introduction to Connected Learning presentation. These included:
- What does my PLE/PLN look like? How can I share it?
- How important is connected learning? Why?
- Is it possible for our classrooms and institutions to support this kind of learning? If so, how?
- What skills and literacies are necessary for connected learning? How do we develop these?
- What are limits of openness in regards to privacy & vulnerability? Are we creating or worsening a digital divide?
- How do we expand this conversation?
I have always had an informal PLN,
- in high school and college – it was friends and classmates who would ask me how to do the homework (there was no Internet back then)
- in my work in education – it was my boss who wanted to discuss his doctoral research
- currently for education – it is my office mates, my Google+ must reads (Laura Gibbs, Anne Hole, PJ RosenBerg and George Station) and now my MOOC-er Circle (which is growing daily).
- for less educational portions of my life – http://comicbookrealm.com/ and http://www.chess.com/ are my go to spots
But I don’t post much, I am a LURKER, I read way too much of my Google+ stream, and will sometimes comment, +1 and share. But I seldom post original content. I think the K-12 education system broke me. As I was one of the smarter kids in school I usually did the work and knew the answers, so teachers would tire of calling on me, therefore I stopped participating. So by the time I got to college I was a bad student, never talked during class, afraid to voice an opinion, and continue to be that way today.
So while I enjoy listening to the recorded session and reading many of your blogs, participating by writing a blog is a very hard thing for me to do.
New iPass
So apple sent out this press release yesterday.
My initial reaction was “What a giant waste of money!!” I mean you can buy 4 Chromebooks and give them out to students.
I realize that a Chromebook doesn’t have a touchscreen (yet) or a Retina screen, but they do have USB ports, a real keyboard and 320 GB of storage. Plus did I mention you can get 4 of them for the price of the new iPad.
I am writing this post on one of my son’s NOOK tablet, I just downloaded the WP app. So far I am impressed, it types posts well, has a block quote feature, and can import pics from the gallery. Too bad the NOOK doesn’t have a camera.
So thanks for the product update Apple, but iPass.
Technology, How do I love thee …
Well to be honest I don’t always love tech.
I use it frequently to teach my class , train others to use it in their class, expect my student to use it for their assignments and exams, help others with their issues with it and even play with my kids with it.
I see and touch technology almost every working moment of my day. But no I do not love technology. I would like to have a day when I see no blinking screens, don’t have to answer my cell phone, do not type a message or blog post, or edit and upload a video to my channel.
I know that I probably couldn’t do it, My kids freaked out when the lights flickered during Hurricane Sandy, wondering what they would do without cable, Wii, and Club penguin to keep them entertained. But sometimes I do wish for the good old days, the days before smartphones, and the Internet, when we took Walter Cronkite at his word when he told us every night “‘And that’s the way it is.” We believed him because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. For a Connectivist learner that is bad, but for nostalgia it is the perfect way to end an evening.
But technology is a necessary ever changing evil. It is evolving so rapidly that one can not possible keep up with all the old apps and gadgets, never mind the latest and greatest. It makes me wonder who do you follow?
ETMOOC Introduction Assignment
OK so I am Sanford Arbogast. I work at Middlesex Community College and have been training faculty to teach online since 1999. I made this YouTube video telling you more about myself and what I do.
As for what I want to be when I grow up … that is best summarized by Nickelback.
Analyzing Educational Technology 
