Seymour Papert, who wrote about teaching children thinking and thought deeply about how learning works, notably said that “You can’t think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something.” This is a place where we can all think about thinking about teaching.
The day to day life of the community college professor can be a blur of classes, grading, student meetings, and college service. This will be a place where we can stop and contemplate the deeper ideas that lie behind what goes on in our teaching in and out of the classroom. The theme this year will be things that encourage student engagement. Please feel free to join in the conversation through the comment section, or email me, or come by and see me.
I keep meaning to look into tools for getting quick anonymous student feedback to questions in class, to help them avoid having to speak up in class (and possibly get something wrong). Have people used this sort of technology, and what dis/advantages have you noticed?
There are a lot of student response systems that are good. Most of the newest work with a quick download to a phone. I haven’t picked a “best”, but I can run you through some of the options.
Hi Paul, I’ve had good results with PollEverywhere (https://www.polleverywhere.com/). It’s pretty straightforward and allows for anonymous responses in real time. I’ve used it to get students to talk about things that might be scary to reveal in public, like stereotypes and ideas about privilege. I’d be happy to talk more about it if you’re interested.