Blogging on the Brain

Okay. At Gardner’s suggestion, I’m going to post my teaching statement. Please please please criticize it!

Throughout my time as a graduate student, I have gained much more teaching experience than I had expected. Even more surprising, I found I enjoyed teaching as much, and sometimes even more, than research. After receiving my masters degree in December of 2007, I began teaching classes for Tarleton State University (part of the Texas A&M system). The first semester I taught Animal Behavior, a senior-level psychology course. I had never taken a formal animal behavior course before, and I was given no materials for the course other than a textbook. It was bumpy at first, as I had never designed a course or written real lectures or exams before. Surprisingly, however, about halfway through the semester, I realized that I loved teaching. It was far more stressful than working with animals in my lab, but I found it to be incredibly rewarding and fulfilling.

During my time with Tarleton State I was approached by Dr. Gardner Campbell, the director of Baylor University’s Academy for Teaching and Learning (ATL), who invited me to become the first Graduate Fellow for the ATL. I jumped at the chance to work with Dr. Campbell, as it promised a unique opportunity to focus on my burgeoning love of teaching. My responsibilities at the ATL have included blogging about neuroscience, teaching, and learning (www.hillaryblakeley.net), giving Seminars for Excellence in Teaching, consulting with other departments regarding improvement of courses, and collaborating with other graduate students around the University. Largely due to these experiences, I began to refine my “teaching philosophy.”

Among my favorite aspects of teaching college classes is that I can treat my students as adults. Students seem to respond well when treated with respect, and in my experience, they tend to rise to whatever standard the instructor has established. In a discipline like neuroscience, where there is still so much to discover, it seems important to initiate undergraduate students into the field by sharing our questions with them and inviting them to think creatively about problems they may one day solve. It seems more important to engage students in the mystery of the unknown than to maintain a false semblance of omniscience.

I have become increasingly convinced that use of emerging technology has the potential to transform higher education. Students are already actively creating content online; they are active participants in a virtual community, as evidenced by the fact that some of the most visited sites on the internet, like YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia, are entirely comprised of user-generated content. I believe it would be a tragic loss to overlook the possibilities inherent for deeper student involvement through use of these tools. These technologies can be used in any number of ways: I have set up a wiki page for a reading group, attended a conference in SecondLife, and I plan to start a Facebook group for students in my lab course this semester.  As I mentioned earlier, I have also been blogging for almost two years, and my blog has become an incredibly useful record of my thoughts, experiences, and activities during that time. Blogging can be a useful way for students to keep a course journal, can also encourage students to process course material outside of the classroom, and can facilitate out-of-class discussions between students.

Participation in the learning process is also important in my teaching philosophy. Cognitive neuroscience tells us that passive listening is far less effective for long-term learning than meaningful engagement with information. Whenever possible, I try to engage students in group work, class discussion, or projects. I give my Adaptive Psychology students a project early in the semester that requires them to apply the principles we are learning to everyday life. They go somewhere to observe people, like a coffee shop, bar, or playground and note behaviors applicable to principles learned in class. They always come back brimming with excitement, saying that they watched two women fighting over a man at a bar (intrasexual aggression), or simply saw jealousy induction in a sit-com. There is nothing like the feeling of transferring passion for your subject to a student.

My ultimate goal as a teacher is not only to impart information, but also to help students manipulate it in such a way that they can carry that content with them outside of the classroom. I am lucky to teach such a fascinating subject, and I want my students to be as excited about neuroscience as I am. There is still so much we have yet to learn about the brain, and I am invested in both researching it myself and also helping to bring up the next generation of scientists.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a session of Baylor’s Summer Faculty Institute, a program dedicated to the discussion and improvement of teaching practices at Baylor. This particular day, we heard Gardner Campbell speak about Information Communication Technologies (ICT) including the iphone, web2.0, delicious, twitter, blogging, kindles, ipads, etc. For those of you who may know Gardner, it was, as would be expected, a delightful look at the possiblities these technologies hold for us as teachers (and continual learners, for that matter). It was, however, very interesting to be in this room as at least some of the SFI participants were hearing about and seeing these things for the first time.

I was recently in their position; I had never used twitter or blogged before I began to work with the ATL, and just like my experience, there was quite a variety of  reactions. The position I resonated the most with was one that at least a couple of people spoke up about in the room – pretty strong skepticism. Before I got to know these technologies, I was pretty skeptical about their use for me personally as well as in the classroom (”don’t let kids have their laptops – or, God forbid, phones out during class, they’ll just mess around!”). Over the last year and a half, though, I’ve come to look at things very differently. While some may argue that the fast-paced nature of the internet/texting/etc. keeps you from slowing down or reflecting, I would argue that I’ve never reflected so much on anything as I have since I started blogging. As far as isolation, I actually came across a quote today (thank you, google quote-of-the day) that I think makes a pretty valid point about internet use:

“The Internet is like alcohol in some sense. It accentuates what you would do anyway. If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone. If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.” ~Esther Dyson

While it was a little hard to hold my tongue when people flatly objected to the use of these new technologies, I think that if they at least give these tools a chance and really look at the potential good they could accomplish, they’ll come around eventually. I think Gardner gave us a beautiful example of what the internet can provide when he showed us a youtube video of a “virtual choir” – 185 participants from 12 countries all made videos of themselves singing their part in the same piece of music while watching a video of the director. The videos were then all compiled to make the final product – a tribute, I think, to the incredible power that the internet has to bring us closer together and allow people to participate in something beautiful that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

My husband recently sent me a link to a very thought-provoking review of an article about college students struggling with an “addiction” to the internet (I’ll admit to having not read the actual research article yet, just this review of it). Apparently in this study, students gave up all forms of media (TV, internet, phones, etc.) for 24 hours. Many of these students (not very surprisingly) reported feelings like cravings and anxiety in the absence of their most common link to the outside world, as well as most of their entertainment.

To some, this reaction suggests that we should begin to think of internet overuse as a diagnosable disorder, something like drug or alcohol addictions. I think, however, this overlooks maybe the most fundamental part of the definition of an addiction: something that is significantly disruptive to your life, and negatively impacts quality of life. Now, just like most other things (food, alcohol, etc.) of course there’s something to be said for moderation, and I think in some cases, people probably rely on the internet/cell phones too much, but overall, I think you could argue for media – especially through the internet – improving subjective quality of life.

That being said, I do find it a tiny bit worrisome that these kids couldn’t go a day without media. I mean, if you can’t take a 24-hour time-out and go for a walk or read a book, that’s probably not so good either.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the keynote luncheon at Baylor’s Educational Technology Showcase. The keynote speaker was Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium. In addition to his impressive background in education, Dr. Johnson is also, apparently, quite a talented photographer and used many of his own photographs as a part of his presentation, which I quite enjoyed.

His talk was entitled “Seven Channels of Change,” and it outlined seven ways that we’ll see computing/technology change in the coming years. Dr. Johnson could be considered an expert in this area, as he – with the NMC – have recently published their 14th edition of the Horizon Report, which outlines emerging technologies in education (and is currently being translated into 10 languages!). As an introduction to his talk, he used two photographs he had taken to illustrate what he wanted to get at.

Both were pictures of water, one of a small waterfall taken in 1/5000th of a second, the other a 5-second time-lapse of the stream that waterfall was a part of. He said that at any given point, the image we have of technology is like the short shutter-speed waterfall – it’s hard to tell what’s happening, what direction things are going it, and what the nature of the water is really like at all. He then said that what you can see over time (as in the long shutter-speed photograph of the stream) is how the water moves, how it gets around obstacles, and where it’s heading. I really enjoyed that analogy, and I think it also served to put us non-tech people at ease by showing us something that we could easily understand.

So here are his seven channels of change:

7. Computing in Three Dimensions: this allows for a level of precision in manufacturing, etc. that would be unattainable using any other method.

6. Games are Reality: He made the point that games have been used for centuries as tools for learning (he used the example of mancala, a very old game that essentially teaches how to count quickly), and we’re just talking about changing the method of delivery

5. Keyboards are for Old People: A very good point – keyboards really aren’t necessary for computing, we’ve just adapted to them because we were already used to the typewriter.  We’re already moving away from it with new interfaces like the iPhone/iPad that’s totally dependent on gestures. (Check out these videos of a new interface called sixthsense – crazy stuff!)

4. Users ARE the Content: This one is becoming more and more evident all the time (consider Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) He also showed us all the options you can use on Google Maps (which I had previously been unaware of – look at the “more” tab in the window) which is entirely user-generated content.

3. Collective Intelligence is the New Knowledge: This is related to #4 above, in that we don’t do things like read critics’ reviews of restaurants anymore, we read reviews of “normal people” that have been there.In addition, a lot of us “hear things first” through social networking sites like facebook or twitter, not the news.

2. The Network is Everywhere: As seen from space, the area of cell-phone (and therefore internet) coverage is actually more encompassing that the electrical grid, which is pretty impressive.

1. The People are the Network: The internet really isn’t about connecting to files or folders or printers anymore as much as it’s about people connecting with other people.

So overall it was a very enlightening and very enjoyable presentation! Today is the second day of the Showcase, and Ashley and I will be giving a presentation on blogging, which I’ll be sure to blog about later!

Phoebe Prince

I saw an article in the New York Times yesterday that 9 teens have been charged with a variety of felony charges in the suicide case of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year-old high school student who hung herself in January after being subjected to serious harassment by her classmates. Apparently Phoebe had just transferred to the school (in Massachusetts) from Ireland that fall, and after briefly dating a popular senior at the school, several students started taunting her, threatening her, and spreading rumors about her. The day of her suicide was particularly bad, with a car of students following her home, calling her names, and even throwing a soda can at her. From what I heard around the actual time of her death, the students involved didn’t even show any remorse when interviewed about her death by the police.

I, for one, am glad that legal action is being taken. I understand that there are a lot of issues to deal with here (free speech vs. harassment, etc.), but I think someone needs to take responsibility for the actions those students took – and apparently their parents were either unaware or unconcerned with their behavior. The article also mentions that there were several teachers/administrators aware of the situation at the school, but nobody reported anything or tried to do anything about it.

It should be noted that much of the harassment was in the form of text messaging, which again makes me wonder if these kids were being monitored at all by their parents (I don’t have kids, so I’m unaware of how involved parents generally are in the texting/social network lives of their children). The NYT article also links to another article, where it is reported that the average American teenager sends and receives approximately 80 text messages a day. I just can’t imagine anything terrible good can come from teenagers spending that much time texting.

Anyway, as far as the Phoebe Prince case goes, I’m pleased that a precedent is being set for legal action in these cases of extreme bullying in schools. I think it was probably a necessary step to take now that bullying doesn’t necessarily just take place at school, but now, with texting and social networking, can literally be inescapable.

Link to the DA’s statement on Phoebe’s Death

Day 2 of ELI started with a replacement keynote speaker, Gary Marrer, from Glendale Community College. His talk was entitled “Strategic Analysis: A Typical Community College Wondering How to Take Advantage of mLearning.” (For those of you who, like me, aren’t familiar with “mLearning,” it means “mobile learning,” which is different from “e-learning.”) My primary take-away from the presentation was that we need to be sensitive to the demographics and financial restraints of our particular academic setting. For instance, Gary mentioned that very, very few of the students at GCC have smartphones, and if they do, they generally don’t use the internet access because of the cost. On the other hand, here at Baylor, I think I’m about the only person left on campus that doesn’t have an iPhone. Interesting to think about, but I didn’t really get any more than that out of his presentation.

The last presentation I attended was entitled “Mobile Collaboration: Redefining the Classroom,” from William Rankin and Kyle Dickson of Abilene Christian University. They were essentially asking how teaching/learning/formal education would change once every student has a computer in his or her pocket. They went on to talk about some interesting projects they’re starting at ACU, but at this point I started on a mental tangent that unfortunately kept me from paying full attention to their presentation. So I’ll tell you about my little train of thought instead.

So, I get the revolutionary effect of e-learning, that we now have access to way more information than we can ever take in, and communication from wherever, whenever, but I’m really not getting the difference between that and m-learning. Does the learning qualitatively change because I get the info in my pocket instead of at my desk? In a park instead of my home? I guess I don’t understand why the mobile part is so important/revolutionary. In addition, I’m definitely one of those people that likes to check things off my list; when I’m done I’m done. I work at school and relax at home. So what is mobile learning going to do to that type of lifestyle? What if I want to be away from my class/work/etc. (or at least have the right to be)? I’m not saying I think mLearning is a terrible idea, I’m just saying I don’t want my professors texting me. Maybe I’m in the minority, or maybe I just don’t understand why the m- is so different from the e-learning (just to clarify, I’m totally on board with the e-learning), but there it is.

I arrived late for the first session of the ELI Online Spring Focus session, but the portion of the first presentation I caught was very interesting. Judy Brown was addressing the differences between e-learning and mobile learning. Obviously there are a lot of similarities, but from what I caught, the main differences are, obvious, the mobility of the technology available now, and along with that, the sort of all-access all the time approach to learning. She also talked about using a shortened format that would most likely be more useful as a mobile application (she gave the example of hairdressers, who most likely would have access to smart phones, but not computers, and information would be more useful in short, concise bursts).

I missed whatever application this may have in more formal teaching/learning/classroom situations, but the kinds of learning she talked about were really exciting – she mentioned a service called “text4baby.org” which is a free mobile info service. You register by texting in “baby,” then you’ll get free text messages timed to your own pregnancy/birth about nutrition, what’s happening developmentally at that point, etc., which I thought was remarkably cool!

Towards the end of her talk (which accelerated quite a bit as she began to run out of time!), she got to a slide that she referred to as her “take home” message. She said that this mobile revolution is not about the devices, it’s about their (and our) capacity; it’s not about the technology, but the experience. I always feel myself relax a little in these settings when people acknowledge that technology is not inherently good, it’s about how we use it.

The second session was given by a Aaron Wasserman, a senior at Stanford University, who was one of the leaders in the “iStanford” project. The project entailed the production of an app for the iphone that does, well, everything a student would need, really. It integrates an interactive campus map (with real-time bus route updates), course information/registration, directories, and even information about sports and other on-campus activities. It looked really, really useful – and it made me wish that either I went to Stanford, or that Aaron Wasserman went to Baylor.

After showing us the app, several questions came up in reference to the use of this app in the classroom. He said that they wanted to start with more basic stuff (which is where they are now) and get that working, but that he saw real potential for this to expand as a teaching/learning tool in the future. At this point, he apparently kept getting questions about it, effectively giving the impression that if it doesn’t directly impact the classroom, why should we care? I got a little irritated at this point for a couple of reasons (not the least of which is that this guy is maybe 22, has come up with a pretty revolutionary program, and you want to judge? Really?). I feel like maybe some of the faculty are missing the bigger picture with something like this. As a student, even the idea that my University was actively trying to integrate those technologies/trying to make my life easier, encourages a feeling of community (generally it feels here like the administration, etc. is trying to get us to do the most work for the fewest benefits/least pay they can) or at the very least, a feeling that the admins might care even a little bit about my time/resources. Too often (especially at large schools) students feel literally and figuratively lost when they arrive, this is a way for them to integrate much more easily into campus life. In addition, it should lead to a huge time-save for both students and administrators, leading to more time for the “important stuff.” So anyway, there’s my gripe for the day. I thought the presentation was great.

I’ll be attending a couple of sessions tomorrow too; stay tuned for more updates!

Today was the first meeting of my Oliver Sacks reading group, and I actually think it went pretty well! We’re reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which is one of my ALL-TIME favorite books. It was actually recently listed as one of Discovery Magazine’s 25 Greatest Science Books of All Time – a list that includes people like Darwin, Galileo, Einstein, and Aristotle (Freud didn’t even make the list – he was an honorable mention!). Not that we need a list to tell us this book is good, but still. It can’t hurt.

We have a great group of participants (several grad students from the neuroscience program, one from church-state studies, one from sociology, one from English, and the manager of the History department!) and they all seemed to be pretty excited about the book! Most of them had only read the preface and introduction (although several admitted to not being able to keep themselves from reading the first case – a good sign!), but really that’s all it takes to get a feel for the depth and genius of Dr. Sacks.

I’m also trying something brand new (for me) with this group: a wiki! That’s right, I actually set it up myself and invited members and hopefully they’ll get in there soon and start playing around. This is very exciting for me. As with most technology, I’m completely terrified to try it, but when I finally do, I realize it’s really  not all that difficult, and the rewards far outweigh the work it takes to learn it – oh, and thanks to all the super-smart programmers out there that actually make this stuff user-friendly!

So here’s to a semester of wonderful reading and (hopefully) great discussion!

I was recently given the task of writing a summary report for my work this last year at the ATL – a somewhat daunting task, given a 2-page limit. Anyway, I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on my experiences in 2009, helped along greatly by this blog. I think blogging has actually come to be the most useful tool I’ve learned to use in the last year – it serves many purposes for me:

1. I think most importantly, it allows me to organize my thoughts, and forces me to look critically at experiences I’ve had and try to make that into a narrative, or something like it, that another person could follow. This is something that I don’t normally do – especially if the experience happens to be difficult or painful for me (see posts on the NCORE conference). I very much appreciate the sort of therapeutic value of sitting down and making myself think about things.

2. I like the feeling of putting myself out into the electronic abyss – something I was originally terrified of. After doing this for a while, however, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions; first of all, seriously what is the worst that could happen? Someone disagrees with me? Thinks I’m a bad writer? Okay, well, that’s going to happen anyway, so why worry about it here, where at least you aren’t confronted physically to your face? Second, I’ve been very thankful for all the kind and encouraging comments I’ve gotten from readers – they aren’t terribly frequent, but they remind me that at least a few people “out there” think my thoughts are worth reading and considering, which is gratifying and humbling.

3. I love, love, love having a record of the last year! This was a benefit I didn’t even consider when I started, but now, when I’m being asked to write a review of my year with the ATL, I have the perfect place to go to remind me not only what I did, but how I felt about things, how they challenged me, etc. It reminds me of when my grandparents took me and my older sister to Europe after we graduated from High School – they bought us each a journal and told us we should really write in it every night to remember what we did. So, being a good granddaughter, I did as they said, even though I was exhausted most nights and didn’t really enjoy the process of writing that much, and let me tell you, I couldn’t be happier that I did! I wouldn’t have remembered a quarter of what we did that two weeks if I hadn’t written about it! (For instance, I was proposed to by a very friendly waiter in Brussels one evening!) So I’m beginning to feel very much that way about blogging. Often I don’t feel like it’s something I want to do, but I’m always glad once I have.

From my favorite web comic, xkcd - note the "blogipelago" at the bottom left...

The day start off with what turned out to be one of my favorite presentations of the conference – a talk by Steven Greenlaw of University of Mary Washington. He walked us through a course he taught last year on the 2008 financial crisis. The crux of the presentation was challenging us to think about (1) what learning environments should look/be like today, and (2) the possibility that we should be teaching the way we practice our disciplines. He spent this course (a seminar in international finance) teaching only a little bit, and mostly having students read on their own, then come into class to teach, interact, and discuss. Grades were based on engagement and insight, and some of the students agreed to continue the class project through the summer – after they had graduated! – so that they could produce the final outcome of the project (availiable at www.financialcrisis2008.umwblogs.org). Awesome stuff.

So my initial response (other than very much enjoying the presentation) was, as usual, something to the effect of “that’s great, but would it work in the sciences?” I think that it could, if not in the exact same format it was carried out in the economics class. There were several features of this class that I think we’d do well to apply to more of our courses regardless of the content:

1. Working on a current issue in the field (for economics, the recession was great; for neuroscience, maybe we could spend time working on a class project looking into the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of using fMRI “lie detection” as evidence in court cases)

2. Running class more like training for practitioners.

3. Creating a genuine product as the driving force for the class

There are some potential issues as well, including:

1. Assessment

2. Covering course content

3. Varying student motivation (especially in a community college setting)

But overall, this presentation actually gave me something I could consider implementing in my own courses! Yay!

Next up was the session I thought I’d like the best, entitled Computational Thinking, by Jeannette Wing, the asst. director of CISE and NSF, as well as faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. First of all, for a person as smart as she is, she was remarkably personable and clear, and, even better, she spoke with a lot of enthusiasm about a topic that could certainly have turned out to be dull as toast. Anyway, her “grand vision” is that by the end of the 21st century, essentially everyone will be engaged in what she refers to as “computational thinking.” She went on to (thankfully) give us some definitions; she defined “computing” as the automation of abstractions, and “computational thinking” as “the process of abstraction.” This all sounded, well, very abstract to me, but after lots of examples about computational thinking in other disciplines, I felt like I was getting it. Unfortunately, when I was asked about it later that evening, I found I had sort of lost it. Oh well.

So overall – favorite session of Wednesday: the Card Sort task (which I’ll most likely try to use/write about again in more detail at some point); favorite session of Thursday: Steven Greenlaw’s presentation I talked about above. I really enjoyed the time I was able to spend down there and all the lovely people I met!

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