Your Students Are Waiting for You!

This week, I and some of my colleagues at Touro Law Center had the pleasure of spending some time with guest coach/mentor/speaker Paula Lustbader from Seattle U. School of Law. Paula came to talk to us about 1L orientation programs that ease students from their role as student-only to their role as member of a profession. One of the things she shared with us that she tells students is that their clients are waiting for them. Right now. They're just waiting for the students to learn what they need to learn to that the now-student/then-lawyer can help the waiting client. I liked that.

And it applies to us, too. Our now-elementary-students/then-law-students are waiting for us. They're in their elementary school classrooms as I write and you read. They're learning how to add, subtract, group, and estimate -- all skills that form the basis for the logical thought processes law school requires. They're learning how to get along with others in groups and pairs and how to work through a problem on their own -- all skills that form the basis for the relational and learning processes law school requires. They're being told that if they work hard, make good grades, and keep their rooms clean, then the sky is the limit. Some of those children have already decided: "I want to be a lawyer." Right now, we're imagining each other. Us, their future professors; them, our future students.

And they're doing some exciting things to prepare for their futures. Here is a great blog post with pictures about a collaborating writing exercise accomplished by students in different locations using Google Docs and Skype. Both applications are free, and they're so easy that . . . well . . . even a kid can do it. Spend some time today imagining one of those kids in the pictures 10 or 15 years from now sitting in your classroom, waiting expectantly for all the education they've known to move to a higher level.

Your students are waiting for you.

GoogleDocs Tutorial

Atomic Learning has a free Google Docs video tutorial available for a limited time. It's broken down into small pieces, so you don't have to sit through a tutorial of everything at once.

"Should professors be on Facebook?"

Dear Millennial Law Prof:

I read the New York Times article, Professor as Open Book; it seems like a lot has been written lately on whether professors should be on sites like MySpace and Facebook. What do you think?

Millennials have an affinity for their parents and other authority figures that previous generations did not share. However, they also have a strong affinity for one another. They're on Facebook to network with each other, not with you. So while I don't think they care whether or not you have a Facebook page, I'm not sure they necessarily want you on theirs all time.

Remember that Facebook is online social networking. And I think it's analogous to offline social networking, i.e., parties, and similar rules apply.

Faculty Only: There are some parties that are just for faculty. Obviously, professors should attend those; it's inappropriate for students to crash.

Students Only: There are some parties that are just for students. Not only is it inappropriate for faculty to crash these, it's creepy.

All Skate: There are some parties that start out as "all skate" parties, i.e., both students and faculty are invited. Those are usually the functions that faculty attend "to be supportive." I'm thinking of the law review banquet, the honors dinners, the "proms." However, after a certain hour, they often revert to a student-only party. I think faculty should attend to be supportive and leave when (or before) it becomes clear that the reversion has occurred.

Celebrations: There are some parties that are for students, but relevant faculty are invited. Sometimes students will have a section party, end-of-year party, or thank-god-the-brief-is-finished party. And sometimes they invite relevant faculty (the profesors who taught their section or the course for which the assignment was just due). These are like the proms (see above), but it takes substantially less time to register our support. Go for 30 minutes; then head out.

The Internet is like a huge hotel with many ballrooms, each of which is hosting a different party. Just because you don't need an invitation to get into each party doesn't mean that crashing is okay with the hosts. I think that social networking and blog sites that are clearly intended to be "faculty only" or "student only" shouldn't be "crashed" by folks in the other group even though you can clearly wander in undetected. If you do wander in undetected, you probably shoudn't assume the privileges of an invited guest. In other words, just because students can read what's on faculty sites and vice versa doesn't mean you should feel free to participate and comment. If you don't think you can read a site that's clearly not intended for you without commenting, don't read it.

So is Facebook a party, or is Facebook a hotel? I think Facebook is now a hotel. When Facebook was restricted to students with a .edu address from a member school, it was clearly a party. However, now that pretty much anyone can be on Facebook and MySpace (which started out as a networking site for musical artists), it's a hotel. So you can go in to Facebook regardless of which party (page) you're going to. Specific Facebook pages, though, are still parties. So this raises two questions:

• Should professors host a party (have a Facebook page)?
• Should professors attend parties (participate in others' Facebook pages)?

Ray Ulmer of TargetX, a college recruiting blog, has this to say:

Millennials want to know the real you — blemishes and all. That
means being less of a control freak, being comfortable with student-generated
content, using communications tools like blogs and social networks, learning to find and tell good stories, identifying the intangibles that differentiate you from your competitors, and other practices that help students know the real you — so they can decide if your school is the right place for them.

I think this is what professors are afraid of, that we have to be on social networking sites to be relevant. But if that's not the real you, then Millennials understand that.

In response to a piece on the Chronicle's Wired Campus, several students commented:

Social media is about people coming to you and making people want to do that. Having a Facebook because you think students might want you to have a Facebook is not going to work because you’re not being “honest,” you’re trying to fit into what you think they want. Having a Facebook because you like the interface and can connect with people builds your own identity and doesn’t base that identity on who you think your students are.

Use it for YOU first, and if it works you won’t be disappointed. If it doesn’t work for you, drop it. Simple. Social spaces in and of themselves are not restricted to age groups or other demographics, but I tend to think of them like partitioned spaces with defined but permeable walls. You can always take a peak, but bear in mind you may not be welcome in the sandbox, biker bar, or frat party.

Sp if you like Facebook or want to try it out, go ahead.

Here's some good advice from Bridget Crawford at Feminist Law Profs:

Professors in cyberspace are receiving some unflattering attention, but being a prof on Facebook and other social networking sites does not automatically put one in the Faculty Who Share Too Much Information category. I find Facebook an easy way to keep in touch with alumni, and I’ve discovered some interesting groups Like “Feminist Bloggers Unite!” and the International Association for Feminist Economics.

And even more good advice from Millennial Professor for those who want to participate in Facebook on a personal level but not to be visible to students:

I have a facebook profile that is private (my students cannot search for me). This profile affords me several benefits: (a) I can communicate with friends from my college years, (b) I can conduct research on facebook with students from other institutions, and (c) I am able to post pictures of family/friends without having undergraduates viewing them.

Be ready to use your good party manners; be prepared for others not to use theirs; and let us know how it goes!

Using Cell Phones as Clickers

I wrote a while back about the use of cell phones in class. My first response to that idea was that there are some frontiers even the most tech-savvy among us are not willing to explore. But then I was coaxed into it by the folks at Poll Everywhere who shared with me that they had polling software that could be used with students' cell phones. So there's yet another alternative to the expensive clicker systems.

It works using text messaging. WAIT! DON'T STOP READING! If you don't already know how to text, it's actually pretty easy. For sure, it's no more difficult than making a phone call or sending an e-mail. The first step is to go to the Poll Everwhere site and create the poll, including the options that participants can choose. Then the site generates the text message that students will submit for each option. As students start weighing in, the results show up in real time on a slide that you can view from the site or that you can download into PowerPoint. If you don't want students to see the results until everyone has weighed in (and the site will tell you how many responses you've received), then you don't have to reveal the screen until then.

Below is the trial poll I did. The results are based on the 8 friends of mine who responded. Four said they wouldn't use cell phone polling; one said she would; and 3 want to wait and see what happens. The other 7 people I sent it to either didn't want to spend the money on the text message or couldn't figure out how to text message (or didn't want to serve as my teaching technology guinea pigs . . .). Obviously, that's not representative of our Millennial student population, but -- since it was a sample composed entirely of law professors -- I think it does say something about how many law professors are likely to use this.



Obviously, you can tell from the Poll Everwhere site that it's a company, not a non-profit like CALI just thinking of as much cool stuff as possible to share for free. However, the pricing on Poll Everwhere is still dramatically less than the pricing on the clicker systems. If you have a class of 30 or fewer students, then you can use it for free (for up to 1,000 responses, I think). So for those of us who teach small sections, it's free. For larger sections, the pricing starts at $9.99 per month.

There is the matter of the cost of text messaging to the student. However, with more and more cell phone plans offering unlimited text messaging, this becomes less of an issue, maybe even a non-issue. Granted, all students may not have cell phones, and all students certainly may not have the pricey plans that include unlimited texting. Poll Everywhere does offer an option for responding from a laptop. And the days when no student has either a cell phone for text messaging or a laptop are dwindling quickly.

So if you're feeling adventurous, give it a try!

More on Twitter

I'm fascinated almost to the point of obsession with Twitter, the way I was about GoogleDocs about a month ago.

Here's a description of what it is and what it does from TechLearning:

Question: What is Twitter, and why are my students so obsessed with it?


The IT Guy says:Twitter is one of those ingenious ideas that is kind of hard to explain. That's not going to stop me from trying, of course!

Twitter is a combination of several different popular technologies, including phone text messaging and online instant messaging. You start by setting up an account at the previously-mentioned website. After you create the basic login name and password, it will offer to look though your email address book for friends who have also created Twitter accounts, but if you aren't comfortable with that (goodness knows I'm not), there is a teeny little "skip" option in the upper right-hand corner.

After that, you can start by filling in the large box that appears on the screen labeled "What are you doing?" You have 140 characters to use, so it has to be short and to the point. Then anyone can go to www.twitter.com/[your login name] and see what you have entered.

Ok, so it's short and to the point, but what is the point of doing this? The attraction is in the details. First off, once you have an account, any of your friends who also have accounts can "follow" you, which means your individual postings (which are called "tweets"—really, I'm not kidding) will show up on their page. Of course, you can choose to follow others and get their tweets on your page. And to take it to the next obsessive level, you can set up your account so that you can post your tweets from your cell phone, and receive a text message every time someone you are following posts a tweet. That's part of the powerful draw of it—you can use it with a computer or a cell phone, which means most of our students have constant access to it.

It ends up working like a slow-motion online chat, and the more people you are following or who are following you, the more entertaining it becomes. And like any powerful technology tool, it is being transformed into uses nobody would have imagined. Some professional groups are starting to use it to set up the equivalent of private news networks, sharing breaking information and rumors. One Macintosh website used it to broadcast the content from Steve Job's keynote at Macworld. It's limited only by users' imaginations.

It's also something to be very aware of in our schools. Students will of course be bugged when it's blocked on school computers, and it makes the use of the cell phone in school all that more attractive. It also allows much faster spreading of rumors. Instead of someone having to text message or call twenty friends one at a time, they can post a tweet and everyone gets it at once. If they all forward the information through their tweets, you can see how blindingly fast information (true or not) can be disseminated.

I imagine hundreds of professors sitting in sessions at some academic conference or another (but definitely NOT the one that you're currently organizing), Twittering to each other about what's going on in each session. Slowly, like a natural phenomenon, you see people back out of whatever session they're in to assemble at the most interesting of the sessions in the "tweets." I think that's one of our dirty little secrets: when we catch on to the technology, we're every bit as incorrigible as our students.

I set up a Twitter account, and my software-engineer husband agreed to do the same so I could check it out. I thought Twitter was goofy, until I got the first tweet from my husband. It was an inane detail of his daily work life, yet I was immediately hooked by how quickly I could get the information and how easy it was to share.

Are you ready to incorporate student cell phones into the classroom?

I think the answer for the vast majority of us would have to be a resounding, "hell no!"

However, David Socol, Michigan State University College of Education's special education technology scholar, scoffs at the idea of continuing to use clicker technology in classrooms, especially when most -- if not all -- students already have a device capable of doing what clickers do, and so much more:

"Everything a clicker can do, can, of course, simply be done by embracing the mobile phone and text message capabilities almost all students carry with them. This kind of sophisticated classroom interaction via the mobile phone is in use in many nations. ..."
And, Socol added, the cell phone technology can do so much more, "allowing things other than guessed multiple choice answers to be transmitted. Short answers, even
mini-essays, math solutions, all easily flow through text messaging."

Where on earth, you might ask, have teachers actually done this successfully? Saskatchewan, of course! The Star Phoenix reports that a Saskatchewan high school principal and teacher have implemented a pilot project using students' cell phones:

"These are tools and there's no use burying our heads in the sand and not taking advantage of them," said Taylor. "We're preparing these kids for the world and people in business are carrying cells as tools for communication."

The idea began with a group of frustrated teachers on a Friday in early January. They were discussing how cellphones were disturbing class, which sparked the idea of using the cells as classroom aids. Taylor then approached Dolman to get the idea rolling.

From that point, the students were involved in the program development, said Dolman. "Some of the kids were saying, 'Are you sure you want to do this Mrs. Dolman? Isn't this just going to be one other thing you'll have to control with us?' " she said. "But I'm happy to report, I've only had positive results."

The class has used the phones as part of a recent book study, which involved students sending responses to their teacher's questions in video and audio formats.

Students have also started using the calendar and alarm features as agenda alternatives, which Dolman said has increased productivity drastically. Taylor said there have been mixed reviews from other teachers and parents. Critics say it may just represent another distraction in class, a further breakdown of proper English or a tech-dependency nightmare.

"I think the way people learn has changed since a generation ago," said Taylor. "People were saying similar things about calculators when I got out of university."

And lest you think that this is an idea that only a Canadian could love, American professors report using the cell phones, particularly in conjunction with Twitter:

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, says he was reluctant to try the technology. Mr. Parry's first instinct was that Twittering would encourage students to speak in sound bites and self-obsess. But now he calls it "the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I've ever done teaching."

Last semester he required the 20 students in his "Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication" course to sign up for Twitter and to send a few messages each week as part of a writing assignment. He also invited his students to follow his own Twitter feed, in which he sometimes writes several short thoughts — not necessarily profound ones — each day. One morning, for instance, he sent out a message that read: "Reading, prepping for grad class, putting off running until it warms up a bit." The week before, one of his messages included a link to a Web site he wanted his students to check out.

The posts from students also mixed the mundane with the useful. One student Twittered that she just bought a pet rabbit. Another noted that a topic from the class was being discussed on a TV-news report.

The immediacy of the messages helped the students feel more like a community, Mr. Parry says. "It really broke down that barrier between inside the classroom walls and outside the classroom walls."

Twitter limits messages to 140 characters. Writing professors at the college level have even used it for in-class writing exercises as a way to force students to write concisely.

Parry's statement that using Twitter has "really broke down that barrier between inside the classroom walls and outside the classroom walls" raises a question, though:

Is that something we want? I don't want to be on call 24/7 anymore than my students want to have to think about my class 24/7. Twitter, in particular, raises a question about discretion. Shouldn't there have to be some lag time between the moment I think something and the moment I send it out to 40 people? Professors have already noticed a lack of filtering between what Xers and Millennials think and what they say; I would hate for that to get continuously worse. However, if they are going to lose their filter entirely, I like that what they say is going to be restricted to 140 characters.

Millennials Expect Distance Learning

The Appleton, Wisconsin, Post-Crescent reports on the use of "virtual schools" in K-12 education. Virtual schools differ from home-schooling in that virtual schools are actually part of the public education system and must follow public education requirements. And virtual schooling is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Students are allowed to supplement their traditional public school experience with virtual classes.

The reasons families choose to enroll in virtual schools are varied.

"I always tell people I have 300 and some kids and 300 reasons why they are here," said Michelle Mueller, WCA principal.

"A lot of reasons are religious. Families want to know exactly what their child receives for an education. Something new I'm hearing is safety, with everything in the news."

About 50 percent of WCA's 390 pupils come from families who would otherwise home school privately.

Their parents want accountability, curriculum and a certified teacher, said Mueller. Her students take all the state standardized tests kids in traditional public schools take.

Connie Radtke, eSchool online learning program leader, said teens choosing online courses include traveling athletes and models, kids with cancer and kids who have been expelled.

Some take courses not available at their school, or have a class scheduling conflict.
They retake a class online to improve their grade, or just want the online experience.

Part-time virtual school student Devon Lehr, 17, of Grand Chute, is a full-time student at Appleton West High School, where she is a junior. She has supplemented her public-school education with virtual school since freshman summer when she signed up for health, her first online course. Personal financial management, creative writing and a world history honors class followed.

At 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lehr opened her laptop at home and checked that day's assignment for an online bioethics course she takes through Appleton eSchool.

"There are people from all over the world in my class," she said, "so it's really exciting."

Lehr, who plans a career in broadcasting, chose to take online courses so she could fit
other classes into her schedule.

Lehr said she loves everything about taking courses online.

"You can do it in the car, on the couch, at school. It's so flexible and all you need is time and a computer."

With virtual schools operating in 42 states, it seems like a safe bet that we'll all have students accustomed to distance learning in our classrooms very soon if we don't already. Within the next decade, we'll have students in our law school classrooms who have incorporated distance learning into their traditional education for as long as they've been in school.

Colleges already have sophisticated offerings in distance learning, and many state bar associations offer online CLE courses. To remain relevant to Millennials -- who are being encouraged to select schools based on "fit" rather than on ranking and reputation -- law schools should increase their distance learning options.

Some law schools already use distance learning; at this point, though, distance learning offerings are often largely faculty-specific, meaning that if the one person who's tech-savvy enough to offer distance learning leaves, there go the law school's distance learning opportunities. Of course, as Xer faculty become a larger segment of law school faculties, and as Millennial faculty begin filtering in (within the next 5 years or so), the ability to offer effective online courses will expand. Law schools should also consider mining those international summer abroad program relationships to offer cross-cultural, international opportunities for all students, not just those who can afford the time and money for a summer abroad. Online courses seem like they would appeal to law school administrators, always looking for a way to offer more with fewer resources.

The Future of Distance Learning

In the future (read, "this coming fall"), students can attend classes from their iPhone. Read more about it here.

If you only watch one YouTube video this month . . .

. . . watch this one. Poignant and powerful. I'm interested to hear others' reactions to it.

Via Millennial Professor.

Mashup

I'm on a technology kick right now.

It started at the end of last semester when I was researching some technology for the AALS panels on Millennials and on laptops in the classroom. I was trying to find things that you can use with a student's laptop in the classroom -- something that keeps them engaged enough to stay away from the Internets. As usual, I discovered that I, as a law professor, was pretty much the last to know. By the time law schools get to something, it's more table knife than cutting edge. So I've been "researching" (i.e., surfing the web when I should be doing other things) what technology is being used in elementary and secondary schools as well as colleges and universities.

A recent post from Campus Technology summarizes a report on what the cutting edge will be over the next five years. I haven't decided for myself yet at what point I just give up and decide thast I know all the technology I'm ever going to know, but I'm thinking it might be before I have to say "Today in class, we'll be using a mashup" with a straight face. Here's what the future looks like:

In the near term--that is, in the timeframe of about a year or less--the technologies that will have a significant impact on education include grassroots video and collaborative Web technologies. Grassroots video is, simply, user-generated video created on inexpensive consumer electronics devices and edited and encoded using free or inexpensive consumer- or prosumer-grade NLEs. Internet-based services supporting the sharing of these videos have allowed institutions to mingle their content with consumer content and "will fuel rapid growth among learning-focused organizations who want their content to be where the viewers are," according to the report. The second near-term trend, collaborative Web technology, is already in wide use in education at all levels. The complete report provides further details.

In the mid-term, mobile broadband and data mashups will make their mark on education. Mashups, according to the report, will largely impact the way education institutions represent information. "While most current examples are focused on the integration of maps with a variety of data," the report said, "it is not difficult to picture broad educational and scholarly applications for mashups." Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, and the University of Minnesota are examples of higher education institutions using mashups for learning resources and other projects. Mobile broadband too is in the early stages of adoption for educational purposes, from project-based learning activities to virtual field trips.

Further down the road, according to the report, come "collective intelligence" and "social operating systems." Collective intelligence includes wikis and community tagging. A social operating system is "the essential ingredient of next generation social networking" and "will support whole new categories of applications that weave through the implicit connections and clues we leave everywhere as we go about our lives, and use them to organize our work and our thinking around the people we know," according to the report. The time to adoption for these last two will be four to five years, the report said.