Stories from Chicago- Michael Griffith

1. Stories from Chicago- Michael Griffith

2. WebCT Conference Chicago July 10-14 Pre-conference Workshops attended: Leveraging the Grade Book:Next Level WebCT Making the Most of Discussions: Next Level WebCT Creative Ways to Engage and Inspire Learners General Sessions Attended: Welcome to the New Blackboard- Michael Chasen/ Matthew Pitinsky Re-thinking Knowledge: Everything is Miscellaneous- Dr David Weinberger ePortfolios: Digital Stories of Deep Learning- Dr. Helen Barrett- University of Alaska- Anchorage

3. WebCT Conference Chicago July 10-14 Conference Sessions Attended: UCF: Best Practices, Strategies, and Assessment – Pedagogy that Works! staff from University of Florida: lsfutch@mail.ucf.edu Supplementing Your Site with Free Online Services: What, Why and How- Douglas Mills: dmills@uiuc.edu Designing for Universal Accessibility- Alan Dooley: profdooley@yahoo.co Next-level e-Learning: From Increasing Adoption to Increasing Effectiveness- Sharon Pitt: Sharon_pitt@ncsu.edu Beyond Eye Candy: Wikis for Collaborative Student Presentation Web Sites - Bonita Bray- bonita.bray@ualberta.ca & Bob Boufford bob.boufford@ualberta.ca OOPs: How to Obtain, Organize, and Place Images in WebCT – William Keith: wkeith@accd.edu & Tim Jones: zatt@earthlink.net Merlot & WebCT – The Next Generation –Sorel Reisman: sreisman@calstate.edu Leveraging Online Technology to Teach Very Large Classes – Alfred Weiss: awweiss@uiuc.edu & Kostas Yfantis kny@ad.uiuc.edu Using Small-group Threaded Discussion: Research on What “Works”- Valerie Scott Massimo- scottymassimo@ramapo.edu Creating Communities- Building Learning Communities On and Off Campus with WebCT -John Wager jwager@triton.edu and Terri Fencel tertri@aol.com

4. WebCT with LiveJournal • Core Idea: LiveJournal Blogging Tool adds a vital dimension to WebCT. It creates space for independent and collaborative creativity and builds community across courses and colleges. • Preliminary Thinking presented at the September 2005 WebCT Asia Pacific Users Conference:http://www.webct.com/asiapacific05/viewpage?name=asiapacific05_presentations Despite new technologies, educators and software designers are still driven by old top-down educational paradigms. “If we regard truth as something handed down from authorities on high, the classroom will look like a dictatorship…. If we regard truth as emerging from a complex process of mutual enquiry, the classroom will look like a resourceful and interdependent community” • Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, Jossey-Bass, 1998 http://www.miracosta.cc.ca.us/home/gfloren/palmer.htm Associate Professor Michael Griffith, Australian Catholic University, Sydney

5. WebCT with LiveJournal • The Importance of WebCT as Interactive Framework. • Examples of Current Teaching (with WebCT) and how LiveJournal is built inside WebCT.http://webct.acu.edu.au/webct/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct • A sampler of student LiveJournal sites: • Marie Backo http://reejecktedyouth.livejournal.com • Timb Hoswell http://dr-mindbender82.livejournal.com/ • Bianca Tsimnadis http://beeancat.livejournal.com/ • Noelle Zeitouni http://noelle-zeitouni.livejournal.com/ • Marc DeLaconzi http://ghettoman7.livejournal.com/ • Neill Morgan http://neillmorgan.livejournal.com/ • Josh Pentecost http://www.livejournal.com/users/joshpentecost/ • Shaun Farlow http://shaunfarlow.livejournal.com • Young Jang http://youngjang.livejournal.com • Rosemary Pritchard http://rosepritchard1.livejournal.co • Sonya Honey http://sonya-tells.livejournal.com/ • Anissa Chatthttp://anissa-c.livejournal.com/ • Cameron Nashhttp://camheartsamber.livejournal.com/ “I dont know where I would be today without live journal. It has become a part of my life.”

6. WebCT with LiveJournal • What I was looking for in addition to the many tools offered in WebCT and what LiveJournal helped to provide: • A space where students could discover the joy of writing without constraint, thus enhancing basic writing and thinking skills. • A space that connected students with others outside their particular course and even outside their college. • A place that students could truly call their own where they could write creatively in response to their literature reading and where they could interact with and comment on each other’s work. • This was, in fact, a place where their truth could appear… less strictly under my tutelage, more directly in response to the community of their peers and in their often less academic but more vital language and imagery.

7. WebCT with LiveJournal • What I found was this and much more. Let me list a few of the surprises. In LiveJournal there appeared: • a space for learners who I had judged as passive and unimaginative to find an expressive voice that evoked the praise of their peers. • A kind of learning that was less constrained by academic protocol, more open to discovery, especially of the relevance of literature to everyday experience. • A catalytic environment that turned sceptics of poetry into accomplished creators and critics, discovering the subtle nature of poetic language through creative practice and through critiquing the work of their peers. • The emergence of a creativity beyond the wildest dreams of a literature specialist: here in LiveJournal students were blending text with image, and were exploring the amazing creative possibilities of hypertext and of text and image animation. This new wave of increasingly computer-savvy students is pushing me into deeper creative exploration of the powers of this new medium of expression. • http://petetucker.livejournal.com/ “Ode to the Norton” May 19th Marvell’s “The Garden” May 11th • http://josh-m.livejournal.com/ Hopkins May 25,26 • http://sweetpea_7.livejournal.com/ “The Glory Box” June 6th • http://daniel-gleeson.livejournal.com/ “ Cigmund Droid” etc June 3,11 • http://reejecktedyouth.livejournal.com/ “Smell of Rain” May 25, 23 comments, 21: Hypertext/poetry

8. WebCT with LiveJournal • Some student comments on these processes • Jaymie Holmes-Newsome http://jayhn.livejournal.com/ 26th & 25th May • Marie Backo http://reejecktedyouth.livejournal.com 23rd May • Karyn Farrell http://karyn-lee.livejournal.com/ • LiveJournal has greatly supported my learning in Literature for a range of reasons including reflective, creative and analytical thinking…I am also a student who does not speak too much in class and I find the entries a good way to present my progress. • Joshua Moodyhttp://josh-m.livejournal.com/ • ... i have the ability with LJ to create more feeling with my responses through the use of colour text, images and the option of writing informally; opening the possibilities of language…the ideas that i put down in my LJ are very spontaneous, they provide a window into my true feelings at the time, there is no fear in my responses... It gave me a way to post my poetry to those others who would apprieciate it, sorta opened the floodgates in a way cos befor i didnt think ppl would relate to my words...I bleieve that LJ is a great learning resource, it allows students to be who they are, and express their true feelings without the restraint of formality…

9. WebCT with LiveJournal student comments on these processes continued Sonya Honeyhttp://sonya-tells.livejournal.com/ I have plenty of restrictions in my life with family  and work commitments so with the use LJ I am able to share my thoughts and feelings with a group of fellow students and others, without having the distractions  and time restrictions of a normal classroom. With the freedom of LJ I have been able to pour out my thoughts without feeling self conscious or nervous as I would sometimes feel within a group, face to face. I can discuss further, issues with other LJ members about writers such as Shakespeare and expand my thoughts and knowledge by conversing on line. Katie Simonianhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/katie_simo Live Journal is a safe space in which I can write what's expected of me and what is not expected. I sometimes suprise myself….As soon as I click on "update journal" button I'm allowing my peers to have a window into my life, as vulnerable as that may be it's a thrill for a nerd like me. Clare Granthamhttp://clarebear-g.livejournal.com/ LiveJournal poemMay 16 2006

10. WebCT with LiveJournal • Continuing the list of what I found as result of implementing LiveJournal within WebCT: • An amazing array of visually appealing and original LiveJournal sites that truly display the individuality and talents of each student. • Far more than just social interaction this is fast becoming a space that is producing creative communities in which students are spurred to guide and help each other in the search for their expressive voice and in which they are supporting each other across the boundaries of courses. • It has also recently become a space where students have been interacting with and supporting a group of “homeless” students engaged in a course (Catalyst for Renewal) sponsored by Australian Catholic University that may provide the basis for tertiary education and re-entry into the work force. For these marginalized “homeless” LiveJournal -also within WebCT- has become a space for reflection and personal renewal.

11. WebCT with LiveJournal • Extraordinarily students have increasingly been seeing this space as “safe” and have begun to use it as a place for intense personal reflection allowing entry into -as one student put it- “portions of people’s minds and souls”. It is fast becoming a space where students feel able to express their innermost feelings. • Last but not least it gives me direct, immediate contact with my students’ lives & it has allowed me as teacher the freedom to express more informally what I think about topics covered in lectures; in harmony with my students, their freedom has encouraged mine and typically I will go to my LiveJournal after lectures to embellish and deepen lecture content, often interweaving it with aspects of my personal life. So while my students have all got to know each other much better through this medium I too have become more known.

12. WebCT with LiveJournal • Some Key Illustrations of the Above Claims. • Creative Communities • http://carolyngiblin.livejournal.com/May 30 • http://neillmorgan.livejournal.com/June 21 • Prize winning poem: June 8 • Cross Course Interaction • http://moshi-mosh.livejournal.com/May 21 “ All the World’s a Stage” Shakespeare • http://joshpentecost.livejournal.com/May 18 “We Live in an Age of Surfaces” Wilde • Communities now set up in addition to individual LiveJournals: • http://community.livejournal.com/poetrywcom/ • http://community.livejournal.com/bookrc/ • http://community.livejournal.com/acudiscuss/

13. WebCT with LiveJournal • Some Key Illustrations of the Above Claims. • “Homeless Students” interacting through WebCT via LiveJournal with on-campus students: • John Van Gulick http://johannes123.livejournal.com/April 25 • Anissa Chatt http://anissa-c.livejournal.com/April 13 • Rhani Hanson-Fretterhttp://rhanihf.livejournal.com June 2

14. WebCT with LiveJournal • Some Key Illustrations of the Above Claims. • Live Journal as a safe space to discuss innermost feelings. • Letter to Tolstoy: http://carolyngiblin.livejournal.com/29 April (and comments) • Linda Frankham http://llucius.livejournal.com/ April 17 • Karla Treeveshttp://karliefarlie.livejournal.com/April 16 • …. to express what I think Live Journal has done for me. Well, not really directly, but by facilitating conversation and by giving the opportunity to see what other people think and feel, I think you have done a lot for me my technologically created friend. • Reading other people's blogs, has affected my in many ways. They amuse me, they enlighten me, they make me think about things, they are good for when I am procrastinating or when I'm just bored, but mostly, they give me the chance to appreciate my friends in a totally new light. • I don't just love my friends because they are wonderful people, but I can appreciate their great writing and artistic abilities - I feel like I've been privileged enough to be able to see tiny portions of people's minds and souls. I hope that doesn't sound insane. I'm not sure how to express it though? I just feel like I respect these people on a greater level because I'm able to see the amazing things they think and express.

15. WebCT with LiveJournal • LiveJournal clearly has become a catalyst for breaking barriers and for enhancing relationships and deepening learning in the community as a whole. • Here I will finally show my own LJ through which I maintain contact with my students on a number of levels: http://michaelgriffith.livejournal.com Parker Palmer again: “… to teach is to create a space in which the community of truth is practiced…. I need to spend less time filling the space with data and my own thoughts and more time opening a space where students can have a conversation with the subject and with each other…” The Courage To Teach (120).

16. WebCT with LiveJournal Thank You