Tag: teachinghub

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Culturally Responsive Teaching

In reading this article it’s great to find out that by working toward providing learning experiences in a UDL-y way (Universal Design for Learning) it will also likely make you a more culturally responsive teacher. That’s like a Buy-One-Get-One Free deal!

Simply providing choice for students in terms of the input of information, or their own output, is a step toward a culturally responsive classroom, as is inherent in the guiding principles of UDL.

Gwen Bass, PhD, and Michael Lawrence-Riddell

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

The Tech Bank

It’s still a work in progress, but like the seemingly as-yet unfinished Death Star in Return of the Jedi, this thing is operational. The Fleming Digital Learning Technologies Inventory, aka the Tech Bank, is a space to get a quick and dirty run-down of which learning technologies are available to us (faculty and students), and to get a sense of how and why one might want to use it. Have a look at the Faculty category to see what’s there, and let us know what’s missing and/or how to make it as useful as possible!

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Your Own Terms and Conditions

From 5-6 pm on January 28th in room 253A (at Frost Campus), there is a free workshop for students to help work toward living your life on your own terms:

The STOP PUSHING MY BUTTONS! Workshop will help participants move away from reaction, defensiveness and blame towards understanding the power behind thoughts and feelings. Learn how to identify and deactivate your buttons with strategic tools and techniques.

It may take more than one hour to achieve this, so we’re thinking there may be some post-workshop stuff to do. Students can register at Health Services Rm 254 (at Frost).

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Policies & Procedures

In some instances, for some people, once in an occasional blue, waning moon, it can be a trifle dry to read up on policies and procedures. But some say they are an important part of running a tight ship, so we have a few here at Fleming. When you’re ready you can find them here. Let us know which is your favourite!

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Virtual Lunch n’ Learns from Ed-Tech Ontario

The ETC is a committee of ed-tech enthusiasts from all of Ontario’s colleges. One of the things that they do is run a series of webinars throughout the semester. And the new calendar is out! First up, on February 5th is a webinar entitled Listen Up: Podcasts as the new “Textbook” hosted by Audrey Wubbenhorst of Humber College. See the whole list here. Sounds intriguing!

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Wikipedia Edit-a-thon

Contrary to some beliefs, Wikipedia’s quite a reliable source of information (check out the myth busting section in this slide deck) and guess who can make it even better? This coming Open Education Week (March 2-6), think about joining us as we join a bunch of other colleges and unis in Ontario in a Wikepedia-Edit-a-thon. The overarching goal is to help reduce the gender gap on Wikipedia. It should be an engaging learning experience for all of us. Pop your name in here if you’re interested in learning more.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Tech Talk & Tacos Take Two

We will be hosting a lunch time virtual get-together every week: 12-1230 on Tuesdays in our WebEx Digital Meeting Room. This week, we will have a look at WebEx itself (so meta!). We can show everyone how it works, how we can use it, and how you might want to use it in your teaching or for your own learning. Email Terry for a calendar invite, if you’d like one.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Clubbin’

Students can get all their clubbing needs met on Tuesday, January 21st from 11-1 in the main foyer at Sutherland during Club Craze, hosted by the Student Administrative Council. And we don’t mean late-night-party clubbing; we mean student interest clubs! Clubs can be joined or new ones can be started! Maybe someone will start a Clubbin’ Club for late-night dancing enthusiasts.

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

There’s an App for… Us?

That’s right! There is a Fleming mobile app. It functions much like the myCampus portal, but instead of looking it up in a browser on your phone, you simply open the app! Saves you a few clicks! Find it on Google Play or on your iPhone.

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Winter 2020 Professional Development Week

The Learning Design & Support and Employee Success and Organizational Development teams are partnering to bring you an exciting week of professional development during Winter Week 8. Please feed us your ideas for how best to do this by filling out this survey. In doing you will not be entered in a contest to win anything, but we will give a slight nod of appreciation when we pass you in the hallways.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Give it Five Minutes

In this article, James M. Lang offers up some advice for using the first 5 minutes of class to shift everyone’s attention from the latest hot goss to, you know, course stuff. Next week, we’ll try to find an article on what to do in the second five minutes of class!

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Tech Talk & Tacos

Starting this week, and every week until we forget to keep doing it, we will be hosting a lunch time virtual get-together right dab in the middle of the week: 12-1 on Wednesdays in our Webex Digital Meeting Room. This week, we will have a look at Microsoft Teams, and specifically, the (newly renamed) Teacher’s Lounge Team that now has 40 members and growing! We can show everyone how it works, how we can use it, and how you might want to use it in your teaching. Contact Terry if you need any help getting set up.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

There’s Help

Guess what? We have no idea most of the time what our students are going through in their day-to-day lives. But we do want them to succeed, so it behooves us to let them know what help is available to them. Here’s a key piece of that help: good2talk.ca “Good2Talk is a free, confidential helpline providing professional counselling and information and referrals for mental health, addictions, and well-being to post-secondary students in Ontario, 24/7/365.” Let your students know it’s there for them when they need it.

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Free Stuff from IT!

Adobe Creative Cloud is full of powerful software for making cool stuff with your computer. And you can have it all for free at home, thanks to IT Services! Head to this page for directions on how to get it. Then it’s just a matter of figuring out how to use Photoshop and all that other cool stuff. Simple, right?

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

New Contract Faculty Experience

The new Contract Faculty Experience program includes four hours of online learning designed to support folks as they become familiar with their roles and responsibilities at Fleming College. Find it here: https://wpflemingcollege.com/cfex/. If you haven’t guessed by the name, the target audience for the experience is new contract faculty, but all are welcome to pop in for a refresher on a thing or two.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

A Lovely Swarm of Pedagogy Goodness

Let’s just ease into the new term with a simple way to share warm teaching thoughts. In just four words, many educators have been able to share wonderful teaching philosophies to the Twitter hashtag #4wordpedagogy. Have a scroll through some of the submissions and, if you’re feeling generous, pop yours into the comments at the bottom of the page.

Visualization of the over 3000 #4wordpedagogy tweets. The nodes are people. A lovely swarm of pedagogy goodness. 🙂 pic.twitter.com/ibPWEMMQsa

— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) May 1, 2016

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Join the Team

We would like the Teaching Hub to be more of an actual hub by making it easier to include everyone in the ongoing conversation about teaching and learning at Fleming, so we created a space (in Microsoft Teams) for us all to have an ongoing discussion. Click this link to join the Digital Learning at Fleming Teams Channel and see the beginnings of the conversation. You can go there to find advice, support, help, and maybe even a partner in crime or two for your next project!

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Getting Involved in Getting Involved

Q. How many opportunities do your students have to get involved in Student Life at Fleming?

A: A lot. Get involved in your students’ getting involved by nudging your students towards the Student Life tab in the portal.

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Support

Picture this scenario: You’re sitting in your office trying to come up with an icebreaker activity for your upcoming first class and are just plain stumped because you’ve already put so much mental effort into the rest of your lesson plan. Well, let us remind you that the ‘S’ in the LDS Team name stands for SUPPORT, and we have phones and computers that we are sitting by waiting for you to call (ext. 1216) or email (ldsteam@flemingcollege.ca). Or, you can join the aforementioned Microsoft Team and then we’ll respond saying you should try the “most boring thing about me” icebreaker because it is low stakes and hilarious.

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Nope

Professional Learning opportunities the same week you are launching all your new winter term courses? No, thank you! We’ll hit you up with some light learning opportunities next week. Have a great semester start!

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Video Tutorial

See below for a video demonstration of what we recommend you do this week, rather than think about your pedagogy. You do not need to view the entire 2 hours.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Let’s Talk About Tech, Baby

We would like to introduce a space for us all to have an ongoing discussion about how we go about our teaching and learning with technology here at Fleming College. This will be a glorious space that sidesteps your email inbox and all look to each other for quick help and advice. Click this link to join the Digital Learning at Fleming Teams Channel and see the beginnings of the conversation. You can read more about the potential of Microsoft Teams for collaboration here. (we can use the space to talk about non-techy stuff , too!)

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Holiday Closure

We all know it. This is not news. But let’s just revel in the fact that the college is closing for the holidays. You are not invited to be on College campuses between December 23 and January 1st. Stay away. Go somewhere else. See you next year.

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Boot Camp/Get It Together

After the new year, when you return all rested and content from your relaxing holiday break, the cold hard truth will hit you that you have work to do to get ready for the Winter semester! Let the Learning Design & Support Team help you! See here for details on our week zero (Jan. 2 and 3) offerings of the Teaching & Learning Bootcamp and Get It Together sessions at Frost and Sutherland.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Holiday Reading

The time is almost nigh in which you get the chance to catch up on some reading. Whether it’s about business or pleasure, what are you looking forward to reading over the holidays? Add yours to our group holiday reading list by clicking this link and then the + sign.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Tool Parade

Students in the University of Windsor Faculty of Education are building a cool website where they evaluate educational technology platforms and share the results. Especially appreciated is the consideration of not just usability, but privacy as well. They’ve even included last week’s learning tech suggestion PhET Simulation if you’d like an in-depth analysis of that tool along with the others. Stay tuned to their page for more in the future! Follow along to their Twitter hashtag as well.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Monday Matinee

Your students might need a reason to give their brains a little passive entertainment time and here is just such an opportunity: Monday Matinee Movie in the Pub! It’s put on by SAC from 2-4 every Monday afternoon in the Steele Centre. With two weeks to go until holiday break, we assume the next two movies are Home Alone and Home Alone 2.

UPDATE: we guessed wrong. It’s Elf.

https://twitter.com/FlemingSAC/status/1204100900811427840

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Entering Grades in Evolve

You have until noon on Tuesday the 17th to get your grades into their final resting place of Evolve. Here’s how:

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Not this week

We hereby refuse to offer you any more professional learning opportunities this week. Instead, use whatever extra head space you have this week to think about what shopping you still have to do, which must-see holiday movies you have yet to get to, or where to put that dang elf on the shelf tomorrow.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Open Up

This edition of The Teaching Hub is a day late because the author had the onerous task of attending the Open Education Global Conference last week. So why not use this week’s hub as a way to report back on what happened at the conference? Okay!

First off, what’s open education? As per usual in academia, its definition can be hotly debated, but in general, there are two parts: First are open educational resources (OER), which are learning materials free to access, keep, share, revise, and build upon. The other side of the coin is open educational practices, which are teaching and learning practices enabled by the open sharing of… teaching and learning practices! To be concise, open education is sharing.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Go fetch some of these PhET simulations

On day two of the conference there was a keynote that highlighted a fabulous set of the aforementioned Open Educational Resources. Award–winning ones at that! The talk was entitled “Advancing Science and Math Education Worldwide through OER: Lessons Learned from PhET Interactive Simulations“. They have a set of 153 freely available simulations that can help students master concepts and ideas in all kinds of science and math topics in a safe environment. For free. FREE! Each of them take PhET about 600 hours to create. Here’s a short video about the simulations if you’d like to see more.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Open Education Influencers

Your students might get warm fuzzies knowing that the Open Education Conference kicked off with a keynote by students discussing how Open Education has helped them and how they have helped influence the growth of Open Educational Practices at their own institutions. It was entitled “Students: Storytellers and Creators of Their Own Open Futures.” You can read their entire script here. They shared it because, you know, open education!

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

UNESCO Recommendation

This section is usually reserved for college-level inner workings, but today we share a new inner working for the whole world. UNESCO has a few different levels at which they can influence what goes on around the planet. Their top level is a ‘convention’ like the Geneva ones, but only one step down from there is a UNESCO recommendation. And just in time for the conference, UNESCO adopted the Recommendation on Open Educational Resources as a key step in achieving UN Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education for all. Seems like a pretty big deal!

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Virtually Connect to More of the Open Education Global Conference

If you’d like to see and hear a little more about what people were talking about at the conference, you can watch people talk about just that on this recording of a Virtually Connecting meeting from the conference. Also have a look at just how comfy lecture hall seats can be. If you watch this during lunch, you can call it a self-made lunch ‘n’ learn and add it to your professional learning journal!

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Cross The Road

Kristin Ritchey from Ball State University, in this article, tells you not to be a chicken about crossing the road with your students. Why is she provoking us like this? What does she mean? Go read the article to find out how you can help build the scaffolding that students use to climb the ivory tower of learning. There are a lot of analogies going on here, but it all works out in the end.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Grades

Of course you have your grade book in order. We all do. Of course. But if you know someone who could use some help making sure it’s built properly, using the feedback tools, or linking grade book items to quizzes & drop boxes, tell them to have a look here. Or contact us at LDSTeam@flemingcollege.ca for help. Also, make sure to check the Inner Workings section below for important info for how to help your grades grow up and move out of D2L.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Avoidance Development

Learning to avoid things is a fun skill to develop and the library would love to help students avoid one thing in particular: plagiarism. This week, there are a couple of offerings of the Avoiding Plagiarism Information Literacy Workshop. Shoot this link to your students so they know when it is and where to sign up.

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Grades Again!

As hinted above in the Learning Technology section, your final grades are not official until they are moved out of D2L and into Evolve. This is because the Records department are the ones who keep the official records, not us! We are just looking after the grades as they grow. A grade incubator, if you will. In order to help you get your final, adult grades to move out, you will receive some instructions via email, probably tagged “high Importance” and entitled “FINAL GRADES” from the Records department soon.

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Listen To These Failures

Last week a few Fleming representatives attended eCampusOntario’s #TESS2019 conference. Day two began with a panel of four Ontario educators discussing their experiences experimenting with technology in their teaching. It took a lot of courage for those panel members to go up in front of 200 of their peers and tell us all how it took a lot of failure in these efforts to get to the point where they are now, but it was lovely to hear and connect to their stories. If you’d like the chance to hear what they had to say, it’s all recorded here! We also heartily recommend listening to the keynote “The Anthropologist in the Machine”, by Dr. Donna Lanclos.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

Give it 3 Seconds

An article entitled “Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds” sounds like some serious click bait, but it worked on us! Take 3 seconds to click that link, and then like 3 more minutes to read the article because it really does sound like a small change that can make a big difference!

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

H5P

You may think that H5P sounds like a cross between steak sauce and a printer, but you would be absolutely wrong. It’s actually an open-source tool that allows you to make your course materials (or any online content) more engaging in a fairly simple way. H5P interactions can be added to WordPress pages like this, or in your D2L course. You can try it right here in this true/false question loaded with creator bias:

Have a look-see at all the different types of content you could play around with here. The possibilities are endless! If you’re interested in finding out more about how we could use H5P in our courses, let us know! Contact details are below.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Enacting some change

You’ve probably seen the Enactus logo on t-shirts and walls around the college, and maybe you’re not sure what it is. Simply put, it’s an organization that helps students use their entrepreneurial skills to enact some positive change in the world. Sounds like a good plan! Check out the Paper Planet Project that Fleming students are working on!

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Skating Party!

At President Maureen Adamson’s recent Listening Tour get-together at Sutherland, we heard tell of an upcoming announcement for a holiday skating party for staff and family! We have no details as to when and where yet, but we are guessing it’s somewhere with ice and it’ll be before Christmas. Stay tuned!

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

TESS on VoicEd Radio

This week, eCampusOntario is holding their annual get-together known as TESS (Technology + Education Seminar and Showcase). Even if you are not heading to the conference, you will have an opportunity to listen to the goings on through the magic of microphones and the Internet. #TESS2019 attendees will be interviewed on VoicEd Radio throughout the two days and all recordings will be available. Check out the show page here.

Engaging Teaching

Teaching tips & more!

UDL Navigators

Did you know that Jodie Black of the LDS Team is one half of the authoring team behind UDL Navigators in Higher Education with Eric J. Moore? We believe that they each wrote one word at a time and passed it back and forth for 5 years, which is one of the reasons it is a skinny book, otherwise they would have never finished. A huge bonus for us here at Fleming is that you can visit Jodie directly and ask her for UDL advice and at the same time get her to sign your copy.

Learning Technology

Using the technology without it using us.

Headsets and Webcams

It shouldn’t be about tools first in educational technology, but sometimes having that tool kit sitting around comes in handy and opens new doors without you noticing. For example, there are endless opportunities for live, connected, professional development being offered online in the form of webinars and other virtual get-togethers. But a barrier for you may just be that you do not have a headset, microphone, and web cam in order to join a virtual meeting from your desk. But guess what? If you go down to your friendly neighborhood IT desk, they’ll just give you headsets and webcams! They are loaded with them.

Trickle Down

Stuff to tell your students!

Random Acts of Green

Following in the tradition of random acts of kindness and random acts of pizza, we now have Random Acts of Green, thanks to local climate change advocate Jessica Corrrea. Come and find out how to be random in the best way possible on Wednesday, November 13th in the Steele Centre at noon.

Inner Workings

Helping you navigate the inner workings of the college

Got $20 and some time?

You likely have the former. Maybe not the latter. Even so, you should know that if you are an employee here, you can take one of our courses for 20 bucks! Check out the details here and the course catalogue to see what interests you as another peak to climb in your professional learning journey.

Keeping it Professional

Professional Learning Opportunities

Let’s put U in UDL!

If you’re interested in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), check out this UDL in Higher Education (un)Conference! It’s taking place at Mohawk College on April 30 and May 1, 2020. Highlights include an interactive keynote session with UDL leader Allison Posey about the brain, emotions, and learning, and participant-generated agendas to share and learn about what matters most to you. Discounts are available until December 20th, and groups of 4 or more receive an additional discount. Contact Jodie Black at jodie.black@flemingcollege.ca for more information.