Online Education - Good Habits

What I really liked about this video is the subject; educators being comfortable enough to try new pedagogical practices and experiments in their courses. I'm not one to settle on my instruction habits, so this video quickly caught my eye and was great to watch. The instructor shown, Carla Zembal-Saul, speaks of several ways of overcoming the fear of trying new instructional practices; grouping teachers together to collaboratively brainstorm and discuss different perspectives about the mild risks their taking, informing your students that you are trying something new, and using a formative assessment approach to your new instructional activities. Afterwards, it turns out her and I share a common need to try new stuff in the classroom. Every year I tend to try a new method of content/instruction delivery, or incorporate a new technology for my or the student's use. This year I've wirelessly connected my tablet to my projector, which projects to the back wall so students can see my "whiteboard" from every angle of the room. Now I'm no longer attached to the projector and can freely roam around the room with my tablet/classroom whiteboard in my hand. Very cool.

Also new this year, and not necessarily my idea, are 8th graders with iPads. I've also begun to incorporate their use into my classroom routines. So far students:

• Save important classroom documents as PDFs for future use.
• Complete music theory assignments using Noteflight (online music notation editor).
• Take pics of the important stuff I present to them.

iPad integration into the curriculum took some time (about 3 weeks overall), but the students are now getting the hang of using them in their music class.

Yes, I've told them not to put the iPad on the music stand. Happily, they no longer due this :-)


References:
PSU World Campus Faculty Development (2010). Fear of Failure -- Zembal-Saul. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbzD_wBLO8w