Model Lesson 1 Think Aloud Demonstration

ISTE MODEL LESSON

ready-to-go mini lesson

LESSON 1
“Think Aloud” Demonstration

Time: 10-15 minutes as follows:

• 5 minutes think aloud
• 5 minutes search as individuals
• 5 minutes collect findings

Materials:

• http://www.genochoice.com/
• computers, one with a projector
• whiteboard or Red Flag Chart

It may be helpful to create a Red Flag Chart with three columns: Accused | Suspicious | Acquited (or similar terms). The findings in this mini lesson will all likely go in the Suspicious column. However, Red Flags may travel from one category to another as a result of investigative activity. Furthermore, students may not agree on where to place a Red Flag, which makes for a good discussion starter.

Think Aloud
This lesson takes place in the context of a science course where DNA, genetics and “designer babies” is the topic. It is used here for demonstration purposes–any topic could be used and substitute an appropriate “questionable” result.

Among results for “designer babies” is this Genochoice.com

Use this site to demonstrate how an investigative searcher might approach the material. Students need to see an example of good searching in practice. Focus on Authorship in this instance. Open the page and browse to find information about who wrote this or is responsible for its content. As you search, note the credits link on the page.

Click this and point out information about the credits: Virgil Wong. Also note that this is not what you expected to find: a medical site written or designed by an artist and performance credits for several other people. Point out that now you have some good keywords to fact check. Proper nouns make good fact checking terms because they are so specific, so unique.

Start a list of things you find out about Virgil Wong. We have one Red Flag (he’s an artist, not a medical expert?) Then have the students try fact checking Virgil Wong to discover “as much as they can” about this person. Everyone is free to search for information about Virgil–the more eyes looking for information the better.

After five minutes, call an end to searching and begin to collect information from the students. This may be done on a whiteboard, sticky notes or any online app that is made for group collaboration. Or you could call on students to report what they found, trying to get as complete a picture of Virgil Wong as possible.

Among the findings possible, he is:

• a web designer
• featured in a TED vdeo
• a PhD candidate in cognitive science
• an artist
• a keynote speaker at medical conferences
• a pregnant man
• etc.

Discuss
Is thisreally the profile of a person you think would be the author of a credible site on “designer babies?” Why? Why not? (answers to Why Not are “Red Flags”).

If we start to find Red Flags associated with online information, we need to be skeptical and not believe claims on the site without checking them out. More about Red Flags

Encourage students to do this type of investigative searching on other sites they come across while doing research.

What Schools Can Learn From Google, IDEO, and Pixar | Jeff Piontek wants to know your thoughts

Synopsis

The country’s strongest innovators embrace creativity, play, and collaboration – values that also inform their physical spaces.

This article is co-authored by Steve Turckes and Melanie Kahl.

A community about to build or rehab a school often creates checklists of best practices, looks for furniture that matches its mascot, and orders shiny new lockers to line its corridors. These are all fine steps, but the process of planning and designing a new school requires both looking outward (to the future, to the community, to innovative corporate powerhouses) as well as inward (to the playfulness and creativity that are at the core of learning).

In many ways, what makes the Googles of the world exceptional begins in the childhood classroom — an embrace of creativity, play, and collaboration. It was just one year ago that 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the number-one leadership competency in our complex global marketplace. We can no longer afford to teach our kids or design their schoolhouses the way we used to if we’re to maintain a competitive edge. In looking at various exemplary workplaces such as IDEO, Google, and Pixar, we can glean valuable lessons about effective educational approaches and the spaces that support them.

Learning from IDEO: A transparent space where projects take the spotlight
The design and innovation firm IDEO tacitly understands how office environments help or hinder the creative process. Every decision made in its Chicago design office reveals and nurtures its culture, with an open layout that spurs collaboration. Here, team project rooms frame an open studio for the interdisciplinary work of designers, business strategists, and programmers. A café/forum area, prototyping workshop, Chicago-gazing roof deck, and community garden support the studio’s evolving life, without being too prescriptive.

[Photos by Steve Hall]

What would it mean for schools to have a culture centered on design thinking and interdisciplinary projects instead of siloed subjects? What if the process of education were as intentionally crafted as the products of education (i.e., we always think about the book report or the final project, but not the path to get there). What if teachers were treated as designers?

There are some schools out there that are doing just that, including High Tech High, an innovative collection of charter schools in Southern California led by lawyer-cum-carpenter-cum-education innovator Larry Rosenstock and a diverse team of adult learners. The model is deeply rooted in project-based learning (PBL), whereby students learn academic knowledge while picking up real-life skills such as collaboration and critical thinking. With this pedagogical foundation and supportive spaces, students can produce meaningful and integrated projects — from a conservation book series on the San Diego Bay to a bilingual cookbook. Such interdisciplinary work is supported by a thoughtful facility design that displays flexibility, ownership, transparency, and originality. On its website, High Tech High notes that guests “remark that it looks and feels more like a high-performance workplace than a school.”

 

The Blue Valley Schools Center for Advanced Professional Studies (BVCAPS) takes a similar approach. This district-wide program for 11th- and 12th-graders is an example of what happens when educational curricula and spaces are designed in tandem by a powerful team of community and business partners. A 2011 Edison Award winner, BVCAPS structures real-world training around four high-growth industries in Overland Park, Kansas. With lessons devised by partners such as Garmin and Cisco, BVCAPS is anything but a typical school. Its instructors are more like program managers and its curriculum is created through a patented rapid-prototyping process. Next year, it will even launch a business accelerator, prompted by four patent-seeking students.

[Photo by James Steinkamp]

BVCAPS left some space raw in their new building, with the notion that its purpose would be determined by the activity and interest of its students. The poise, enthusiasm, and maturity of the students testify to the benefits of an environment where students take ownership over projects and spaces.

Playing with Pixar: The art and science of spontaneity and story
Pixar, arguably the greatest digital storyteller of our time, is an easy source of school-environment inspiration: Its studio is a place where magic results from a potent blend of art and science, work and play, digital and analog. In Melena Ryzik’s tour of Pixar Studios for The New York Times, one catches a glimpse of the whimsy, transparency, recreation, and technology on campus. But listening to Steve Jobs’s philosophy behind the design reveals something deeper — that its layout was designed to foster “forced collisions of people,” because “the best meetings were meetings that happened spontaneously in the hallway.”

Imagine what could happen if the advanced physics student and the photography student had meaningful collisions in the average American high school. What if they did by design — if their classwork wove together diverse content and skills intentionally and elegantly? What would young people see as possible? They might come to understand that the lines between music, math, physics, and art are much blurrier than textbooks make them appear. Schools could be the breeding ground for a new millennium of Renaissance young men and women where creating something trumps memorizing it.

Ogling Google: Holistic environments and a playful culture
This $30 billion game-changing technological company realizes that valuable innovations are born from serious play, deep teamwork, and a holistically engaged (and cared for) staff. A tour of Google’s Chicago office we took with a group of educators and educational architects revealed many things, such as the power of allowing employees to control their spaces and expressing local character in a global company.

A playful strain runs through Google’s office culture. In particular, we remember “Bloxes,” a type of giant interlocking cardboard boxes used to stimulate brainstorms and create ad hoc work spaces. The solo software engineer holed up in a cubicle has been replaced by an affable crew of makers of digital software and physical sculpture. In fact, Bloxes were the product of an art project by the Apple innovator Jef Raskin.

Imagine what might happen if students had this same power to edit and make their own spaces within the school environment. A tree fort in younger years might be the precursor to a dorm room venture, entrepreneurial hub, or Bloxes project room.

The work of play and the play of work
There is much to learn from our innovative corporate giants, and some schools are already taking note. But ironically, the true genius of these work spaces is how they’ve been inspired by lessons from children. (The ability of top executives to incorporate playfulness and internal strategy has even become a topic of discussion for major corporations.) Yes, school designers and leaders should make learning environments that reflect dynamic workplaces. But school leaders would be remiss if they didn’t critically re-examine (and support) the power of play and creative arts that these leaders have gleaned from them.

As we’ve learned from some of our most innovative companies, the creation of new spaces is truly an exploration of culture. What are the school environments in your community telling you? Telling your young people? It is time to re-imagine and invest in schools and spaces ripe for creativity and cross-pollination.

Steven Turckes leads Perkins+Will’s global K–12 practice and is the director of the K–12 Education Group for the Chicago office. In Steven’s 24-year career, he has focused on the programming, master planning, and implementation of nearly $1 billion of K–12 projects across the nation and abroad. An avid reader and strategic thinker about the evolving nature of our global society and economy, Steven often assists schools in navigating change to create flexible environments that help to prepare students for success.

Melanie Kahl is an educational design researcher and knowledge manager in Perkins+Will’s global K–12 Practice with a background in social policy and organizational development. She tweets at the intersection of design and learning at @perkinswill_edu and is a contributor for The Creativity Post. 

Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking | Jeff Piontek wants to know your thoughts

1.      You are creative. The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identityand set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don’t. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.

2.      Creative thinking is work. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

3.      You must go through the motions of being creative. When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4.      Your brain is not a computer. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.

5.      There is no one right answer. Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas,  do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.

6.      Never stop with your first good idea. Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as  they said the telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market for it. Silver didn’t discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M employee, was singing in the church’s choir when his page marker fell out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver’s adhesive and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images recorded).

7.      Expect the experts to be negative. The more expert and specialized a person becomes,  the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas,  their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all. This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done it long ago.

8.      Trust your instincts. Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would recommend him. One professor said Einstein was “the laziest dog” the university ever had. Beethoven’s parents were told he was too stupid to be a music composer. Charles Darwin’s colleagues called him a fool and what he was doing “fool’s experiments” when he worked on his theory of biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a newspaper because “he lacked imagination.” Thomas Edison had only two years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most famous inventor in the history of the U.S.

9.      There is no such thing as failure. Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a  mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

10.   You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are. Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison why he didn’t give up. “After all,” he said, “you have failed 5000 times.” Edison looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand what the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, “I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work.” You construct your own reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

11.   Always approach a problem on its own terms. Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it, how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

12.   Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain.  These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

10 Things that Should be Obsolete in a classroom | Your thoughts? Jeff Piontek wants to know

So much about how and where kids learn has changed over the years, but the physical structure of schools has not. Looking around most school facilities — even those that aren’t old and crumbling –  it’s obvious that so much of it is obsolete today, and yet still in wide use.

Does Social Media Improve Education? by Jeff Piontek

In a new paper written by Darrell M. West, the Vice President and Director of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, How Blogs, Social Media, and Video Games Improve Education, looks at the effect of collaboration on education when students can use tools such as wikis, blogs, social media, and video games.

The author, Darrell West, cites Alan Daly of the University of California at San Diego who believes that education “is moving away from large-scale prescriptive approaches to more individualized, tailored, differentiated approaches.”

In considering the effect of social media on education West asks a series of questions:

• How do these technologies affect students, teachers, parents, and administrators?
• Do they enable new approaches to learning and help students master substantive information?
• In what ways have schools incorporated electronic communications in the learning process and messages to external audiences?

Blogs

Blogs represent a rapidly growing medium that encourages students and teachers to participate in their education. Currently, Nielsen estimates that there are over 156 million blogs on the Internet. Blogs are one of the most prevalent and accessible modes of communication. Many people feel that blogs have democratized the flow of information. They are also used in the classroom as a way for students to collaborate and communicate with other schools.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of schools that do not encourage two-way communications, students collaboration, or global networking within the school. Alan November of November Learning suggests that students need to be globally empathetic to become a global citizen.

There are a number of blogs that deal with the skills of education so teachers and administrators can work with their colleagues and share ideas on finance, assessment, standards and many other topics.

Wikis

A Wiki is a website in which a variety of people can participate and collaborate on constructing the material of the site. Once somebody has started the site other people can edit and make additions. The interactions are a type of collaboration called “crowd-sourcing” which is a term created by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine.  Wikis have been created by both corporations and schools to help develop creative ideas and design.

Social Media and Mobile Devices

Social media basically includes anything that allows people to communicate in discrete groups over collective interests. People have the opportunity to express themselves and react to what other people have said and have people respond to what they have written. It allows for a variety of people from all over the country and other countries to share ideas and share information. The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey reports that Facebook is a major source of discussion. Twenty two percent of its users comment daily on somebody else’s post.

There are many K-12 schools and colleges that utilize social media to extend the classroom walls. Education becomes 24/7. In some situations the social media is open to people from other countries and a wider set of comments and opinions are expressed. The knowledge of the community becomes vital.

Video Games

Video games are one of the largest consumer items in the commercial world. They are one of the most popular forms of mass entertainment. They bring in hover billion-dollars a year. The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey of American teenagers revealed the eight most popular game genres:

For example, in the game, World of Warcraft, there are some 12 million users who have logged over 50 billion hours playing the game.

Many video games are made for both the entertainment and the education world. There are many skills and concepts that can become clearer through the game medium. Games have been used in the education areas of geography, science, mathematics, English, and logic. According to the scientists at the National Research Council, games “enable learners to see and interact with representations of natural phenomena that would otherwise be impossible to observe – a process that helps them to formulate scientifically correct explanations of these phenomena.”

Conclusion

The authors conclude: “Digital tools represent new ways for participation, engagement, and collaboration to take place. Through digital communications, students, teachers, parents, and administrators can share insights and reactions and develop a better understanding of instructional activities.”

Use Of Smartphones And Tablets In The Classroom: [Infographic] Jeff Piontek wants to know what you think

Undoubtedly, everyone understands the importance of projectors and  PowerPoint presentation in the classrooms, but this time, all these stuffs seem little obsolete. As the modern technology advances, the format of classrooms are also changing. A survey conducted by Australian-based online course company “Open Colleges” has reported the top three reasons why teachers are relying on mobile technology; first, due to diverse learning style, second, boost students motivation and thirdly, enhanced material being taught.

In the U.S., 91% of teachers have computer in the classrooms and astoundingly, 1 in 5 teachers accepted that the classroom have right level of technology. In addition to these, 81% of teachers showed off their interest in enrich Tablet classroom learning, while 86% of students (during survey) said that learning on Tablet is quite effective.

1 in 5 students are using mobile apps to organize their course book, while 59% of students are more likely to use their own mobile devices to enhance learning. Almost one-third of all colleges in the U.S. are offering at least online courses; online enrollment saw 21% year-over-year growth, while on other hand, overall higher education growth in the country is just 2%.

Moreover, integration of social networking sites also plays crucial role in education. 4 out of 10 students believe that ‘integration of social networks in the classrooms’ would benefit their education.

See the infographic for further information:

Practice versus theory: Is teacher education headed for a revolution? | Jeff Piontek wants to know

Should colleges that train teachers focus on educational theory, instructing future educators in how children develop and how the brain learns? Or should they focus on the more practical skills teachers need to run classrooms and teach children algebra? Is it possible for training programs to do both well?

Addicted to Social media????? Jeff Piontek wants to know….

Nine out of 10 teens text and use social media sites — a good chunk of them daily — but they still prefer communicating face to face, according to a survey.

Many U.S. teens say they are addicted to social media and texting and often want to unplug. But they feel positive overall about how social media sites such as Facebook and text messaging have helped them connect with friends and family.

The mixed feelings that teens have about digital communication sheds new light on a population growing up immersed in online technology. Research is scant on the behavioral and developmental effects of technology on youth.

A national survey of more than 1,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17 by the child advocacy group Common Sense Media shows how pervasive mobile communications has become for that age group.

“Today’s 13- to 17-year-olds are the first generation to go through their entire teen years with such an array of digital devices and platforms,” said Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer. “This report reads like a primer for parents to teens and tweens — to help them understand how their kids are engaging with technology and to highlight any impact it might be having on their social and emotional well being.”

Text messaging is still the favored application of teens for communicating.

Two-thirds of respondents said they text every day and half said they visit social networking sites daily. One-quarter of teens use at least two different types of social media a day.

Facebook, which is considering lowering its age minimum, dominates teens, with seven out of 10 people surveyed saying they have an account compared to 6 percent for Twitter and 1 percent for GooglePlus and MySpace.

In the report called “Social Media, Social Life: How Teens View Their Digital Lives,” Common Sense Media found that their adolescent respondents felt social media was beneficial.

Half of teens said they feel social networks have helped their friendships, while only 4 percent said the platforms have hurt relationships.

Three out of 10 teens said social networks made them feel more outgoing, compared to 5 percent who said they felt more introverted.

Still, half of all respondents said real-life communication is the most fun and fruitful for their relationships. Only 4 percent prefer to talk on the phone.
What do you think….let me know.

6 Tips to Being a Successful Online Teacher–One Story

After two decades in online teaching in both the corporate world and higher education, I regret to report that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side of the network connection. While online teaching offers many rewards for instructors, it takes a special set of skills and attitudes to excel at it. And these are emphatically not the same skills and attitudes that make an exceptional classroom teacher. Here’s the mindset it takes to be a successful online teacher:

1. Forget Constant Validation
While it may be heretical to say it, many teachers are attracted to the profession by all the ego-stroking they hope to receive. They remember the worshipful glances that they bestowed on their own favorite classroom teachers, and now they want their share. But there is a world of difference between a warm face-to-face encounter and an e-mail–no matter how appreciative it might be. While there has been much discussion about how e-mail or even video interaction might not meet students’ emotional and security needs, the emotional vacuum on the teacher’s side has gone largely unnoticed.

Online teaching actually requires a much higher level of emotional security and confidence in one’s own professional competence. This is especially true at the middle-school and high-school levels. These students are socialized to think of computer technology as a reliable appliance, like a refrigerator. Online teachers must work hard to humanize their approach and not be turned into a robotic extension of such an appliance by their students.

2. Know Thy Students
It’s hardly news that a great deal of human communication is nonverbal–anyone who’s sat through a long phone conference can tell you that. Now remove the verbal component from the equation and the chances of misunderstanding increase exponentially. It takes a great deal of time and effort on the part of online teachers to make sure they are really clear in their own communications, as well as to understand who they are teaching, what students are trying to tell them, and how well their students are succeeding in each course.

In my online classes, I find myself constantly at risk of wildly misjudging both people and their situations. I have had students whom I have mentally pigeonholed as headed for the dustbin–lacking both ability and enthusiasm–only to discover that they are top-notch performers who simply took a while to get the hang of the online process.

Several semesters ago, I was strongly tempted to ease one particular student out of the program. Her native language was Chinese, and I had concluded from her written work that she did not understand English well enough to pass. She soon taught me that reading comprehension and writing skill grow at dramatically different rates. Today, she is a stay-at-home mother making a good living by remotely providing webmaster services to three small colleges.

3. Lose Complete Control
Many classroom teachers thrive in the emotional sphere I call “command mentality.” Like an orchestra conductor, they love the sense of control that comes with being in charge. They take this responsibility very seriously, and work like demons to get it right. They make sure all students are crystal clear on what is expected of them and the consequences of failing to meet those expectations. These are the instructors who adore the grading rubrics that have become so much a part of classroom teaching in the age of accountability.

For better or worse, fully online instruction can never provide the level of control they crave. To a great extent, online education operates on the honor system. You never know who is really doing the work on the other end of the wire. There is no combination of tightly timed tests, double-password protection systems, or retina-scanning identification gizmos that can change this reality.

The knee-jerk reaction to this observation is to point out that students cheat in regular classroom courses, too. That’s true, but not nearly as easily and, quite possibly, not nearly as frequently. College students may understand the importance of acquiring marketable skills in their classes, as well as good grades. K-12 students are far more likely to just be searching for the shortest path to a grade by any means handy.

If you are confident that you can make a compelling case to your students about the satisfaction and benefits that derive from completing their courses legitimately, you have a future in online education. If you are comfortable only with more coercive methods of extracting effort from students, you need to rethink your game for this new environment.

4. Collaboration Resistance
The dominant educational approach of the last several decades has been constructivism, which puts a high value on collaboration. Many teachers new to online see its vast potential as a vehicle for group work, but my graduate students loathe it. They want to do their own assignments in their own way and don’t appreciate collective responsibility for anyone else’s limitations. All K-12 teachers know how group work can go wrong–the wallflowers, the “alpha dog” dominators, and all the rest. This can happen even when collaboration is attempted in the conventional classroom setting. The challenges of collaboration are multiplied in the less controllable environment of online.

5. Get to Work…Really
Quality classroom teachers succeed by absorbing oral and visual feedback from each class session as it unfolds, and making moment-to-moment adjustments in response. Except for a small minority of instructors working with expensive synchronous learning systems that provide continuous 1-to-1 visual and auditory communication, online teachers don’t have the luxury of making real-time modifications to their instructional strategies. Their teaching must be accurate, complete, and spot-on right out of the chute.

Most of my graduate courses require that I make about 16 hours of technology-demonstration movies. Because I know my students so well, I never settle for the often-perfunctory movies that come with the textbooks. Instead, I tailor my movies to the specific interests of my students and to my ever-emerging understanding of where they are likely to stumble and fall. To do so involves a lot of work: It takes me at least 20 to 30 hours of effort to create one hour of video.

And most of this work has to be done before the course even gets under way. Some of my students live in towns so small that they might have just a couple of traffic lights. They have dicey internet service and personal hardware, which make downloading hourlong movies problematic.

To overcome this, I mail each student a DVD a week before school starts, which means that I have to complete my preparations for the entire semester before it even begins. Between preparation, correspondence, and time-consuming troubleshooting of student problems, I estimate that I put in 50 percent more effort in teaching technical courses online than I would teaching the same material in person.

6. It’s Not Just a Day Job
Teaching online is less a job than a lifestyle. Committed online instructors find it hard to set reasonable boundaries on the workday. When students run into trouble, the instinct is to help them as soon as you can. This tends to happen between 10 p.m. and midnight.

Infographics Are EXPLODING!!!!

Let’s face it, the infographics industry is exploding and now we’re seeing some new tools to help us easily create or generate simple infographics. Currently, infographics agencies charge between $2k and $5k to research, design and promote a fantastic infographic.

The following tools, will make development of your infographics a lot less costly, easier to design and publish, and some include reporting modules to see how well the infographics are distributed and promoted.

Easel.ly – create and share visual ideas online. You may want to visit Visual.ly after creating your infographic to publish and share it with others.

Venngage – Venngage helps you create and publish custom infographics, engage your viewers, and track your results. Venngage is the most powerful infographics publishing platform ever for marketers and publishers

Infogram – We work with marvelous designers to bring you the best components and themes for your infographics. Simply pick whatever you like to build your own.

Piktochart – Piktochart is among the first online web applications to autonomize the creation of infographics. Its vision is to allow non-designers/programmers to create interactive infographics to promote their cause/brand and educate in a fun and engaging manner”

Do you know of any other  online infographics creators or generators which are not included in the list? Feel free to share them with us through the comments below.