October 2018 archive
Design social media images
How to Easily Design Social Media Images: 4 Free Tools
Andrew Kunesh October 3, 2018 https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-images-free-tools
Preview Text Styles With One Touch via Adobe Spark
- Adobe Spark is part of Adobe’s suite of creative products, bringing social media image and video creation to the web.
remove the Adobe Spark watermark with a paid Adobe Spark plan or Creative Cloud subscription, both starting at $9.99 a month.
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Design Basic Social Media Images Quickly With Pablo
Pablo by Buffer is a no-frills online image editor that lets you make basic social media images in seconds. So while it doesn’t have some of the features of other image editors on this list, it works in a pinch. This tool is free to use without registration, making it perfect for when you or your team needs to create a quick image. My note: not on mobiles yet, only desktop
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Design Automatically Resizable Social Media Images With Snappa
Snappa is a user-friendly online image maker that has templates for every social media network. In addition to social post templates, it offers banner, story, and infographic templates. This makes Snappa your one-stop shop for creating all sorts of social media content.
- Add Simple Data Visualization Charts to Social Media Images in CanvaCanva is a free online image editor with a huge library of free templates and royalty-free images. The app has built-in templates for all of the major social networks, and you can even post directly to your social media accounts from the app.
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more on social media images in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+media+images
schools in Estonia
Q&A: School success in Estonia
Rebecca Vukovic Oct 11, 2018
Use of students’ mobile phones during the lesson, when instructed properly, can be an effective tool when learning foreign languages and many other subjects.
Santiago, P., et al. (2016), OECD Reviews of School Resources: Estonia 2016, OECD Reviews of School Resources, OECD Publishing, Paris, http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264251731-en.
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more on Finland Phenomenon in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=finland+phenomenon
digital transformation online professional education
<h3 “>Sharpen the digital transformation
strategy for your business.Enroll today in Digital Transformation: From AI and IoT to Cloud, Blockchain, and Cybersecurity
https://professionalonline1.mit.edu/digital-transformation/index.php
PROGRAM FEES $2,300 STARTS ON November 28, 20182 months, online
6-8 hours per week
A Digital Revolution Is Underway.
In a rapidly expanding digital marketplace, legacy companies without a clear digital transformation strategy are being left behind. How can we stay on top of rapid—and sometimes radical—change? How can we position our organizations to take advantage of new technologies? How can we track and combat the security threats facing all of us as we are swept forward into the future?
Who is this Program for?
- Professionals in traditional companies poised to implement strategic change, as well as entrepreneurs seeking to harness the opportunities afforded by new technologies, will learn the fundamentals of digital transformation and secure the necessary tools to navigate their enterprise to a digital platform.
- Participants come from a wide range of industries and include C-suite executives, business consultants, corporate attorneys, risk officers, marketing, R&D, and innovation enablers.
<h3 “>Your Learning Journey
This online program takes you through the fundamentals of digital technologies transforming our world today. Led by MIT faculty at the forefront of data science, participants will learn the history and application of transformative technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IoT, and cybersecurity as well as the implications of employing—or ignoring—digitalization.
Brochure_MIT_PE_DigitalTransformation_17_Oct_18_V20-1w4qpjv
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WeChat and blog combining social media
Parallel running of two social media from different countries: WeChat and blog for international students
Our work with Chinese students from the Confucius Institute (CI) at St. Cloud State University (SCSU) shed light on an interesting development: in the last several years, the popular Chinese social media platform WeChat dominates the social life of Chinese people, Chinese students in particular.
WeChat, like WhatsApp in Europe, Vkontakte in Russia, Weibo in China, or before its 2014 Orkut in Brazil (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2014/07/05/social-media-orkut-the-and-of-an-era/ seeks to create its own users’ momentum, and no differently from Facebook, expand that membership momentum from the host country to a global dominance (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2017/08/06/psychology-of-social-networks/; more citation comes here).
Based on the WeChat affinity of the Chinese students at the SCSU CI program, the program organizers faced difficulty applying other social media platforms, as part of the curricula of the host country. Namely, blog, as one of the widely used SM platform for creative writing (citation comes here), was contemplated as a SM platform for the Chinese students to journal their experience at the SCSU CI program. Since WeChat behaves rather like Facebook and Snapchat, the lack of opportunity to utilize widely available platform for rather lengthy narration (versus SMS/texting abilitis of Twitter and WeChat) convince the SCSU CI program organizers to seek the buy in by Chinese students into the blog initiative.
Pang (2018) builds a theory based on Ellison (2007) theory of “maintained social capital,” namely the ability of individuals to maintain values of social ties when geographically disconnected. Ping (2018) further narrows her research on Chinese students in Germany using Li and Chen (2014) findings about Ellison’s theory on students in a foreign environment and the necessity for these students to build a new circle of friends in the host country. According to Basilisco an Cha (2015), such environment was provided for Filipino students by using Facebook and Twitter.
Bibliography:
productive difficult dialogs
Seven Bricks to Lay the Foundation for Productive Difficult Dialogues
OCTOBER 16TH, 2018 By: Annie Soisson EdD
There are three basic ways that I hear faculty talk about difficult dialogues-
in-class dialogues that were planned but did not go particularly well;
in-class hot moments that were not anticipated and that the faculty member did not feel equipped to handle; and difficult dialogues that happen
during office hours or outside of class.
- Think ahead about what topics you are teaching and whether hot moments might be triggered. Plan for structuring those moments intentionally. Are there readings that honor multiple perspectives on the issue? Are there opportunities to have students adopt perspectives that may not be their own? What skills do students need to be able to successfully engage in the discussion?
- Know and communicate the learning goals and the connection to the course overall for each potentially hot topic. What kinds of questions could you pose that would most effectively help students meet the learning goals? What conversational structure would best help you meet those goals? You will find many concrete suggestions for a variety of ways to conduct conversations in Brookfield and Preskill (2005).
- Build community, trust, and a supportive climate. Often overlooked is the understanding that the relationships students have in the classroom with each other and with you need to be created intentionally and nurtured. On the first day, introductions can be shaped to be a little more personal than just names and majors while not being intrusive. Depending on the size of the class, you may choose to have students talk in small groups, or as a whole group. Scaffold activities to foster relationships among students each week. Model the kinds of behaviors you would like to see.
- Have a statement on your syllabus about the environment you hope to create together. Describe your expectations and how you would like students to approach the class. For example: “I want to take a moment to clarify how I want you to approach the readings. The first rule is: Don’t take the readings as gospel. Just because something is printed doesn’t make it absolute truth. Be critical of what you are reading. I have chosen many readings precisely because they are provocative. If you find yourself strongly disagreeing with a reading, that’s fine. I encourage strong disagreement. However, if you disagree, you must clarify in your mind the reasons and evidence upon which you are basing your disagreement. At the same time, keep an open mind. Listen to what the readings have to say. Think about what other experiences you have had and readings you have done that might corroborate the course readings. Give yourself time to reflect on the information, insights, and perspectives offered in the readings” (Sulk and Keys, 2014).
- Create shared goals and guidelines for dialogue and post them. You may have a few of your own to add at the end, but let students generate their own list first. This gives them ownership, and the collective generation lets them discover shared values. One of my favorites to add is “look for the truth in what you oppose and the error in what you espouse” (Nash, 2008).
- Help students develop skills for productive conversation as part of the learning. Use active listening and perspective-taking exercises. In Western society, argument is often the mode of conversation. We frequently expect that students will be able to address challenging issues devoid of passion (and if you go to faculty meetings, you know that even we are not always good at this). Skills like paraphrasing, summarizing, and building on each other’s thoughts need to be consciously taught, modeled, and practiced in the classroom in order to support successful difficult dialogues.
- Start early in the course with lower-stakes conversations, and build to more difficult ones. This gives students the opportunity to build trust, and gives you time to help them develop their skills. Vary the types of questions—perhaps use some hypothetical questions like, “What would happen if…” “In a perfect world…” Or experience-based questions such as, “In your experience…?” Or opinion-based questions like, “What do you think about…?
References:
Online book: Start Talking: A Handbook for Engaging Difficult Dialogues in Higher Education http://www.uaa.alaska.edu/cafe/difficultdialogues/upload/Start-Talking-Handbookcomplete-version.pdf.
Brookfield, S.D., & Preskill, S. (2005). Discussion as a way of teaching: Tools and techniques for democratic classrooms. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Nash, R.J. (2008). How to Talk About Hot Topics on Campus. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sulk, G. and Keys, J. (2014). “Many students really don’t know how to behave!”: The syllabus as a tool for socialization. Teaching Sociology, 42 (2), 151-160.
Annie Soisson is associate director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning & Teaching (CELT) at Tufts University.
Rap hip-hop and physics
A Hip-Hop Experiment
JOHN LELAND NOV. 16, 2012 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/nyregion/columbia-professor-and-gza-aim-to-help-teach-science-through-hip-hop.html
Only 4 percent of African-American seniors nationally were proficient in sciences, compared with 27 percent of whites, according to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
GZA by bringing science into hip-hop; Dr. Emdin by bringing hip-hop into the science classroom.
the popular hip-hop lyrics Web siteRap Genius, will announce a pilot project to use hip-hop to teach science in 10 New York City public schools. The pilot is small, but its architects’ goals are not modest. Dr. Emdin, who has written a book called “Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation,”
hip-hop “cypher,” participants stand in a circle and take turns rapping, often supporting or playing off one another’s rhymes.
“All of those things that are happening in the hip-hop cypher are what should happen in an ideal classroom.”
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Students analyze rap lyrics with code in digital humanities class
Some teachers are finding a place for coding in English, music, science, math and social studies, too
by TARA GARCÍA MATHEWSON October 18, 2018
Fifteen states now require all high schools to offer computer science courses. Twenty-three states have created K-12 computer science standards. And 40 states plus the District of Columbia allow students to count computer science courses toward high school math or science graduation requirements. That’s up from 12 states in 2013, when Code.org launched, aiming to expand access to computer science in U.S. schools and increase participation among girls and underrepresented minorities in particular.
Nevada is the only state so far to embed math, science, English language arts and social studies into its computer science standards.
AI and VR for teaching learning
more on AI in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=artificial+intelligence
more on VR in this IMS blog
Microcredentials and Digital Badges in Higher Education
Join us in Savannah this November for our conference, Microcredentials and Digital Badges in Higher Education,
and learn the strategies and processes that other institutions have used to develop digital badge initiatives and programs. You’ll learn the different ways that badges can add value to the learner experience, key considerations for developing badges, and how to effectively connect learners to industry.
Your instructor panel for this event is an impressive lineup of experienced speakers, all from higher ed themselves, who have been immersed in this work and have likely seen and overcome the same challenges you have. Come ready to learn from the experts.
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more on microcredentialing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredentialing
Reimagining the Academic Library
Reimagining the Academic Library: A Peek Inside Payson Library
Daniel Fusch https://www.academicimpressions.com/reimagining-the-academic-library-a-peek-inside-payson-library/
three drivers for the renovation:
- We needed to create more study, learning, and research space in the library. Put simply, our library space was cramped. It was a nice-looking building but not terribly “user-friendly.”
- Additionally, the building itself was one of the oldest on campus…
- Finally, we wanted to create a more visionary learning space. We wanted to define what impactful spaces for our students would be, and examine how the academic library can support both emerging academic trends and social formation on campus.
We’ve created “living rooms” in the library: spaces with couches, softer seating, fireplaces—where students can go and plop down. That “plopping down” is important. The library has become a place where students go with some intentionality to rest, to check their phone, to read.
We’ve tried to create interesting “spots.” We have nicely appointed, contemporary-in-feel study spaces, with glass whiteboards and glassed walls. People can see in, people can see out; today’s students like to be seen, and they like to see in. This was very important in our focus groups. Also, on a practical level, students like to be able to see into study spaces to see if they’re occupied.
Special Collections used to be intimidating for a first or second-year student. We wanted an experience in which from the moment the student arrives, there are no barriers to exploration. We wanted to send the message that this is a place for inquiry and discovery, a place to learn more. There are no doors—just an open entrance to the wing.
the key with the Great Books Room is that it is glassed. Students can look in and see others deliberating about great books around an oval table, or participating in mentor-led discussions. And they see that this is a part of the experience they can have at college.
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more on academic library in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=academic+library