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What have I been up to lately? Settling at my new job and designing two new workshops:

Technology Design for Humans: The Tech in Ed Edition (6 hr)

• This workshop focuses on paper prototyping web, tablet, and mobile technologies for use in Education or for educating. Non-techies will learn repeatable ways to create prototypes of their technology ideas so that they can test, explain, and pitch their concepts to investors, partners, and developers ... fast and on the cheap! It teaches design methods that are both human centered and human friendly. No super human technology skills required!
• Min 10; Max 40
• $500/pp (ask about Educators/Non-Profits price)

Technology Design for Humans: Paper-to-Clickable Prototypes (3 hr)

• This workshop continues the 6 hour Technology design for humans. We'll take our tested paper prototypes to the next level using simple tools to create clickable prototypes. Clickable prototypes are great for continuing testing your ideas and presenting them to investors, partners, and developers. If you can use basic drawing tools on your computer, you can do this. No super human technology skills required!
• Min 10; Max 20
• $250/pp (ask about Educators/Non-Profits price)
• Software: ~$200
• Pre-req: any Technology Design for Humans 6 hr wokshop

Presentation Make Over -- Before & After

One of the things I enjoy from time to time is a good make over.  Move over Paulo, Tyra and Ru.  I'm taking this presentation and making it glamorous, bold, compelling, and exciting for one lucky winner of my free make over extravaganza!  

Would really enjoy comments on this one.  :)  Thanks!

Before

Doing Business Globally Before

View more presentations from susannette.

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After

Doing Business Globally After

View more presentations from susannette.

Blogs for Learning

Wondering how to connect with your learning audience through blogs?  Many of the principles of good news, marketing, or customer service blogs can apply to your blog.  Although good journalistic writing is a plus, that alone isn't going to make you a trusted blog superstar. 

You have to work on your writing skills as well as create community and trust.   Trust  and credibility aren't  just about credentials.  It is also about your personality.  Think of it this way: Professors Snape and McGonagall in Harry Potter both have excellent credentials.  If they each had a blog, which would be more credible?  To pump up your credibility, be very responsive and use video or audio to help establish a good relationship with your audience.  Make sure you use positive body language and tone in your multimedia. 

This how to article gives some very good advice that will also lead to good credibility:

1. Be authentic

2. Be transparent

3. Get inside your readers’ minds

4. Solicit feedback

5. Don’t be offensive or take big public risks

Click here to check out Buzz about the above blog post.  If you think that blogs are not great learning tools, check this out: the blog serves as a thought prompt, and the community members are sharing their own experience and perspectives with each other in response to the blog.  In a learning environment, you may want to require and assess comments for relevance and quality.  "Hey.  Nice tips!" isn't going help anyone learn very much.

The conversation after this blog is an example of exploration or informal learning.  Following up with a formal activity for learners like creating guidelines for a good blog and assessing three very different blogs can be a great way of teaching the new media literacy skill of judgment and modeling good blogging.

I've used blogs for teaching good research practices in art history.  Blogs have feeds, and I can send all the feeds to one tab in my Google Reader -- which is nice for me.  Peer support teams can subscribe to feeds where ever they like -- which is nice for them.

Blogs as an open or closed journaling tool allow students to ask meaningful questions of their peers or for the instructor to offer resources the student may want to consider.  Students can blog from their email, phones, or on the blog web site, which is very flexible.  They can text notes from the library or copy links into a new post.  Make sure to answer the "what's in it for me?" question.  You'll need to include links to possible blog tools and instructions for sharing their feed with you and their peers.

I've included a bit of text from one of my assignments that uses blogs to help students learn good research habits and think about one issue over time (instead of the night before the paper is due).

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Research Blog and Literature Review

Collect information about possible sources for your midterm research paper and write a literature review summarizing at least ten citations from the current literature.  

Your blog for this course is a research journal and collaboration tool that helps you:

1) manage your research data and time,

2) receive feedback and suggestions from your instructor and peers, and

3) practice using your new knowledge and vocabulary each week through writing about a subject you choose.

What's a blog?  Check out this video: 

1) Blog your research activities during Weeks 2-6 of the semester with at least two entries and three resource citations per week.

2) In each entry, include a brief summary of the quality, content, and value of resources.  Include careful citations according to the Chicago Manual of Style for the Humanities. 

3) Use your topics and vocabulary for each week to discuss your research topic in one brief paragraph.

4) Compose a Literature Review (summary) of at least ten of the top sources that you intend to use for the Midterm Research Paper.

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Teach Code & Music with Code Organ

Code Organ is a really fun tool, but what can we teach with it?

Heck, we'll teach with a spatula and a second hand LA Dodgers ball cap, if pressed (and public school teachers are!)

One of the things I love about this tool is the unexpectedness of the output -- sticky! The novelty of Code Organ will create interest when you introduce young students to code.  Students will draw connections between web page code, patterns, and math through the exploration of the Code Organ.com tool. A lesson might include experimentation with a couple sites, some kind of pattern & output activity based on the Code Organ "About" section, and a project to create a similar tool -- paper based or techie.  This is thinkering at its best. 

The other great thing about Code Organ is that it can use multiple intelligences to teach code. For example, you can introduce code to learners who have lower mathematical intelligences but high musical intelligences -- and vice versa.

I used MI theory to help with my Intro to Music History course in college.  Contrary to popular belief, I have a low musical intelligence. But, my visual intelligence is off the charts.  My strategy? Match a painting to my audio identification piece.  I chose pairs based on the theme of the music or that had the same year/region.  I improved my results in the course at least one letter grade.  

According to Marcus Buckingham, we have the most potential to grow in our strengths areas, not in our weaknesses. Use one to supplement the other, and we create more successes. 

Click here to hear my site.  

Click here to take a MI assessment quiz.

Thank You, Mashable for sharing Code Organ.