Learners, teachers and YouTube

Viral video, copyright thoughts, learning assessment, and thoughts about the Bell curve caught my interest this week. My Web2.0 pick is a sticky note place for sharing and organizing. Enjoy!

• Profs on YouTube: It's easy to forget that everyone seems to be toting a camera these days and, with the popularity and ease of sharing videos via YouTube, it's equally easy to "go viral". In case you're not up on the buzzwords, viral indicates a YourTube video that spreads everywhere. Examples? How about this guy enforcing his "no cell phones in class" policy? [Link to video] And remember, students know how to edit for impact! [Link to video]. Even at your "coolest", you may not want world-wide visibility. [Link to video][Link to video]
  
• Copyright? What copyright? According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, educators are not exactly well informed when it comes to copyright. All those photocopies, digital chapters and electronic reserves that we think are covered by fair use allowances [Link to official definition] may be breaking the law. [Link to article] [Link to debate on WiredCampus]
• Learning assessment - If you have even scanned the recently released report "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education" (a.k.a. the Spellings Report) [Link to report] you are aware that accountability and learning assessment are expected to receive microscopic scrutiny in the near future. Take a peek at the learning objectives you post in your syllabii. Are you assessing the stated learning objectives and are those objectives declarative or procedural? Are the assessments fairly weighted? Too often we place inordinate weight on tests, which can efficiently measure declarative objective outcomes, but don't tell us much about how well students can perform procedural objectives. I learned a lot about this from Patti Shank's e-Learning Guild - Avoiding Assessment Mistakes [Link to article] Also, wcet.info has an e-topic on outcomes based assessment where there is a nice list of resources [Link to e-topic]
• Mastery of learning - I can't remember a time when I haven't at least heard about "the curve" when it comes to grades. As an instructor, I couldn't help but wonder if I employed fractured grading policies as my students, in general, tended to get very high grades. Aha! Maybe it's not grade inflation! As Becky pointed out in her blog posting [Link to posting] with more elaboration in Dr. Beutner's Personal Philosophy on Teaching and Learning [Link to paper], I have to agree that Bloom's Learning for Mastery concept is a "no duh" for me. If a learner learns in my class, then OF COURSE they should get a higher grade than a statistical norm would predict. What do you think, honored community college educator? Is there validity in forcing class grades to a statistical curve?
• Web 2.0 - stikkit.com is a virtual replacement for all of those sticky notes all around your computer monitor. Sign up is free and easy. You create stikkits and set them up to remind you by e-mail or text message. Stikkits can also be used collaboratively (hey .. what if you had your class group projects use them as status and to-do documentation?) [Link to stikkit.com]
  
• Ponder this - "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea". Antoine De Saint-Exupery