Monday, March 10, 2014

Week 7: class conferences & retreat!

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Over the break, finish up anything that still needs to be done: hard copies, electronic stuff sent, logbooks, etc.

And bring 4 things back next time we meet:
=what we should read
=the collective project you are doing
=the individual stuff to come (logbook)
=how to continue as Movement after the class

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THIS WEEK: CLASS CONFERENCES & RETREAT! 
6 weeks MOOC (now done) +1 (where we are today), + SpringB, + 8 wks class

WEEK SEVEN: 11 & 12 MAR: 
•T 4-6:30 (WDS 2101C): Tuesday class conference! 
•W 1-3:30 (WDS 2101C): Wednesday retreat & con! 
•W 4-5:30 (12 Mar at the fireplace area across from THE COMMON, UMUC) 

RETURN HERE FOR WEEK EIGHT SCHEDULES @ UMD! Click HERE for Davidson's MetaMOOC around which this course currently revolves. Come to see how we put things together so far, as we plan for the rest of the term. 

A one-time unique experimental course for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and all! Customizable for level, credit, schedule, forms of presence! Contact Katie King (katking@umd.edu) for details! 

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All class members: be sure to bring to class 1) a hard copy of Logbook 2 (NOTE TWO) to turn in this week in class! 2) your poster synthesizing everything we have done and thought about so far as you see it: an ambitious analysis in poster format (see below for guidelines). 3) a creatively presented section of your Field Notes to share with all of us. 4) Also email an electronic version of the logbook, your digital pic of poster you bring to class conference, and pics and/or text version of Field Notes you are sharing this week too to katiekin@gmail.com (NOTE: "kin" not king! it will go to the wrong person!) please use subject header YRLASTNAME EFL whatitis on email, and the same for the file name (I should be able to download the file and know it is from you, in this class, what it is, without opening the file and without it being confused with someone else's work). 

Community members are welcome and appreciated!

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What are we doing this week? 
It will look something like this (an event from 2012):



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Posters are opportunities to synthesize the thinking and sharing you have done so far in the class, bringing together in some interactive way what has happened in the MetaMOOC, your feeling things out in Field Notes, and the ways in which we now become a MOVEMENT.

Posters have long been a staple of conferences in the sciences, sometimes in the social sciences, and increasingly today, in the humanities, especially in the digital humanities. Humanities style posters are still in development, and digital humanities posters are often unusually creative, with an eye to data analytics and visualizations. NO POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT. However Powerpoint is actually often used as a kind of graphics manager to create the single slides that become a poster. There are lots of ideas for all this online. One especially useful resource is Leeann Hunter’s slideshow, with great examples, guidelines, and explanations of the cognitive impact of such poster-ing: http://multimodal.wsu.edu/blog/?p=97  See also her additional resources here: http://www.leeannhunter.com/teaching/poster-assignments/   



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Over the break, finish up anything that still needs to be done: hard copies, electronic stuff sent, logbooks, etc.

And bring 4 things back next time we meet:
=what we should read
=the collective project you are doing
=the individual stuff to come (logbook)
=how to continue as Movement after the class

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Message from Davidson, as MOOC ends:


Dear Colleagues,

It has been an inspiring experience being part of your wonderful dialogues and debates on the history and future of higher education over the past six weeks. Although this MOOC is now over, I hope those of you who are committed to the explicit mission of this MOOC--transforming higher education for the world we live in now--will continue to contribute your ideas and your successes in order to inspire others, too.

Not everyone shares the explicit goal of this course to move from a MOOC to a movement on behalf of higher education reform. For those who do not, I hope you were able to find something of value in this MOOC too. For those who do believe the systems of education we have inherited from the Industrial Age need significant rethinking and redesigning, then I want to invite you to continue on this quest now that the course is over.

There are many ways to contribute, of course, but one way is through the HASTAC network dedicated to “Changing the Way We Teach and Learn.” HASTAC is part of a movement, worldwide, dedicated to connected, diverse, interest-driven, interdisciplinary, interactive, student-led and student-empowered learning. HASTAC is dedicated to finding better ways of assessing all the ways we learn and achieve than the current mania for high-stakes, summative end-of-course testing. We are not against testing. Quite the opposite. Most people interested in connected learning believe tests and challenges that offer real-time feedback are excellent at motivating learning, not just measuring how well one takes standardized tests.

HASTAC is an open, free, online community we began in 2002 that now has over 13,000 network members worldwide. There are no requirements for membership and, once a member, you can contribute content, announcements, ideas, blogs. You can even use the website to create and organize entire interest groups or even classes, with either public or private settings for what you do in your group. So long as you are contributing ideas about the future of learning and learning institutions, and following our community rules about civil discourse, you are invited. You can find out more here:http://www.hastac.org/about

I hope you enjoyed the course and I thank you all for your interest in higher education and your dedication to lifelong learning in all its forms.

Best wishes,

Cathy N. Davidson
Co-Director, PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge, John Hope Franklin Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English, Duke University
cathydavidson.com
@CathyNDavidson

AND the #FutureEd Team: Barry, Elizabeth, Kaysi, Malina and Rebecca

For information about Duke's online education initiatives, see online.duke.edu.
For regular information about the university, follow Duke on Twitter @DukeU.
For more information about the virtual learning network HASTAC, seehastac.org/about.

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