Movie Clips in the Classroom

The start of a new semester is always inspiring.  What will you do to tweak your class this spring?  I'm going to add a few movie clips to my lectures, just to spice things up a bit. 

There are a number of ways to get movie clips.  One way is to buy the DVD and then play the clip you have found.  Another way is to use your Netflix account and pull up the movie, if available, via online streaming.  You might also use movie trailers, available on many websites.  I recently discovered an even easier way to find and use movie clips, and that's through the website movieclips.com.

The good folks at Movieclips have dissected over 1700 movies and have provided over 12,000 clips.  Going through the clips would be a daunting tast, but because Movieclips has attached categories to each clip, it's a breeze to find the one that would work in your classroom.  You can search the movie clips by movie, mood, theme, actor, director, or 25 other categories.  Once you find the movie clip you want to use in class, you can embed it into your PowerPoint or Prezi presentation, or share the clip through e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.  As with many cool online sites, this one is helpful, but can be a time-waster! 

Here's a good one for the start of the teaching semester, even though it's related more to high school than college.  Click on the link, and move the curser at the bottom of the video to :45 seconds into the clip to start the feel-good video of the day.   I am a Teacher!  (Note:  The movie clip isn't embedded here because it's now allowed by Blogger.)

Movieclips provides a great service, but with any use of movie clips in the classroom, you need to follow a few general guidelines.  Make sure the movie clip is introduced properly.  It should be closely tied into the class topic.  Test the clips prior to class to make sure they will work properly when you need them to work!  Finally, don't overuse movie clips; they lose their effectiveness if used too often.

Questions? Comments?  Please comment below or e-mail me a jrudnick@epcc.edu.  See you next week!

Using Prezi in Your Classroom

PowerPoint has been a staple in college classrooms for more than a decade.  The slide-by-slide bulleted lists are familiar to students everywhere.  PowerPoint can be effective, but it can also get a little stale.  If you want a change in your presentational repertoire, there's a fairly new free presentation program online that can be used to add a little more pizazz to your lectures.

Prezi is a zooming presentational tool that is great for both linear and nonlinear information. As Denna Jones in her guest column in Professionally Speaking stated, "Think of it [Prezi] as a dynamic canvas that can move in a multitude of directions, and not (as with PowerPoint) just forwards and backwards."  Prezi is a way to present information in a nonlinear way.  The following Prezi presentation by Adam Somlai-Fischer shows the dynamic capabilities of using this program.

Why should you move beyond slides? on Prezi

Moving back and forth from one idea to another is one of Prezi's strengths. Unfortunately, if you move too quickly, your audience could become seasick, so layers and smaller movements are recommended. It's easy to add media to your presentation, too.

If you're interested in trying something new this semester, take a look at Prezi. Their website has all the information you need, including presentations that others have created to share. Give it a try!

Class Participation

When I was in graduate school, one of my professors had "Participation" as part of the grading criteria.  He was a well-known book author and expert in his field and I was very intimidated.  I remember answering a question and watching him open his notebook and jot something down.  I puffed up a little, sure that I had received high participation points for my answer.  Unfortunately, I never found out whether my answers received any points or if the participation points actually counted for anything in the final grade.

At the beginning of the semester, it's a good time to take a look at what we are requesting of our students.  Does your syllabus have a graded "Participation" section?  There is nothing wrong with grading class participation, but it is one area that is often left unexplained.  How do the students get graded for the participation?  Exactly what is participation? 

Educator Chrisopher Willard has discussed class participation in his article "Reconsidering Grading Students on Class Participation."   In his article, Willard states, "I thought that a student’s verbal participation was a matter of just trying and I would call on them in my attempt to help."  It didn't turn out that way.  He further states, "The significant question that arises is this: If I am grading on participation, what am I doing to teach this skill? Or contrarily, how can I grade what I do not teach?"

Some educators have been more specific about teaching and evaluating class participation.  Martha L. Maznevski, when at the University of Virginia, wrote an article titled "Grading Class Participation" for a Teaching Resource Center publication.  She said that in work situations, the way to "evaluate performance on the job is to develop a set of behavioral indicators of good performance specific for a given job."  Giving credit for classroom participation should be no different.  In her article, she provides a scale that can be used for students' participation, which might be helpful to you.  The top score requires that the student sythesize and evaluate, part of Bloom's taxonomy of learning objectives.  By providing behavioral indicators, students are aware of what they need to do to receive certain points.

To some extent, our college classrooms have become what James Ricky Cox calls the "youth soccer phenomenon."  Like children receiving a trophy for trying, our students may think they deserve higher grades simply because they've attended class or said one or two things while in class.  If class participation is not defined and no specific rating system is given, our students may fight for a higher grade simply because of the vagueness of the situation. 

It's something to think about as you begin your semester.

Learning Styles: The Debate Begins

There have been many discussions about learning styles. Information about different styles and can easily be found on the Internet. Some of the learning styles include Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligence, the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, and Dunn & Dunn’s Learning Style Assessment. Although the specifics of each type of learning style assessment differ, the basic idea is that there are basic differences in the ways people perceive and learn.

According to Terry O’Connor in the article “Using Learning Styles to Adapt Technology for Higher Education,” although the theories differ somewhat, there are five conclusions that seem to be constant:

            • Students will learn better when using preferences in which
                  they're successful
            • Students will be better learners when they can expand
                    their preferences
            • When teaching accommodates various preferences, more
                    students will be successful.
            • Teachers can construct activities that include specific
                    (& multiple) learning preferences
            • This can be done by adding alternatives or, completing
                    learning cycles that  incorporate all styles or, by
                    utilizing wholistic, complex tasks.

So do we change the way we teach? Do we need to change the way we teach? According to Daniel T Willingham, in the article “Do Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Learners Need Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic Instruction?” in the online publication of American Educator, instruction in the various learning styles is not necessary for the following reason:

             Because the vast majority of educational content is stored in
             terms of meaning and does not rely on visual, auditory,
             or kinesthetic memory, it is not surprising that researchers
             have found very little support for the idea that offering
             instruction in a child’s best modality will have a
             positive effect on his learning.

I have always tried to get my students to adapt their own learning to their Intelligence, often without success. I also try to change the way I teach, and have succeeded to some extent some days, but have failed miserably on others. I think we tend to be a lecture-listen society, reverting back to the way we were taught.  We as college instructors may find it difficult to change our approaches to meet the style of our students.
We may also believe that changing our style to fit our students' learning styles is not necessary.

What’s your opinion? Let’s discuss this issue either in the comments area below, or on the EPCC Faculty Development Facebook page.

See you next week!