Teaching in Higher Ed

My Modern Professional Learner’s Toolkit

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My Professional Learner's Toolkit

Each year, I participate in Jane Hart’s Top 100 Tools for Learning survey. In recent years, she broke the list out into three categories:

My 2017 votes included tools that fit into each of those three categories.

After publishing this year’s list, Jane Hart developed A Modern Professional Learner’s Toolkit for 2018. These are tools that pursue and support lifelong learning, such as social networks, web course platforms, news and curation tools, and communication and collaboration tools.

In this post, I share my professional learner’s toolkit, with links to the tools I use. At the conclusion of this blog, links to others’ posts with their own toolkits will be shared.

My Professional Learner’s Toolkit

Learning is central to my work and sense of purpose. I enjoy finding tools that help me locate resources that will contribute to my growth, synthesize and organize that learning in such a way as to have it be useful to me now and in the future, and then be able to share what I am learning with others.

Trusted Set of Resources for Problem Solving and Inspiration

The majority of my time taking in new information is spent within my preferred podcasting app: Overcast (iOS). I find podcasts to be an ideal way to learn, since I can take them with me wherever I go. My favorite podcasts are ones that I look forward to listening to each chance I get.

Wikipedia, YouTube, and TED Talks are other sources for inspiration.

Social Networks to Build a Diverse Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Twitter represents the majority of my personal learning network (PLN) connections. It is staggering to me how much I have learned from being in community on this platform. I also enjoy the opportunities to keep up with professional connections and former students on LinkedIn. Instagram is great fun for compelling photographs (like these from National Geographic and these that were #shotoniPhone). Pinterest is fun for ideas for our kids, as well as recipes that I never use (#aspirational). Facebook gets less and less valuable for me, though I am glad to be able to reach out to people when I have lost track of their email address.

Web Browser and Search Engine to Make the Most of the Web

I browse primarily on the Google Chrome browser. It tends to be the most compatible with the web tools I use. However, it is worth mentioning that the Apple Safari browser keeps coming out with cool new features that make me wonder if I should check it out. Google meets my needs as far as search goes, though I know this is an area I should explore more.

News and Curation Tools to Discover New Resources, Store, and Share

I have written and spoken extensively about my personal knowledge management (PKM) system. This post describes my PKM tools, including Feedly, Instapaper, and Pinboard. Recently, I have started reading more on Apple News. I am also getting tempted by the RSS reader Innoreader as a possible replacement for Feedly. Since it supports subscribing to students’ blogs and bringing them into a common feed, as described by Laura Gibbs on her Innoreader post.

Smart Devices for Ubiquitous Access to Content and People

Browsing content on my iPad is incredibly easy. I spend about an hour a day reading on the iPad, usually just before bed. My iPhone and Apple Watch are good companions, particularly for listening to podcasts. The AirPods represent one of my all-time favorite gadgets in recent years, as they make listening to content via my iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch even easier.

Blogging and Website Tools to Share Ideas and Thinking

My blog is a self-hosted WordPress site on the FlyWheel web hosting service. Buffer helps me spread out content that I want to share on social media. On “good weeks,” I spend about an hour setting content up to be shared throughout the week.

Productivity Tools to Help Work Effectively

I have also shared quite a bit about my productivity systems over the years. Most essential to my productivity systems are my task manager (OmniFocus), my calendar (Fantastical), and my email “assistant” that moves unimportant emails out of my inbox (SaneBox).

Web Course Platforms to Acquire Knowledge and Skills in a Formal Way

Lynda.com has content for learning software, business, and creative skills. This link will let you try Lynda.com for ten days. If you wind up signing up, we receive a small referral. I am also really enjoying the course I am finishing with CreativeLive on storytelling through podcasting, with Alex Blumberg. You can get $15 off your first class using this link. I’m also taking Katie Linder’s The Academic Book Promotion Toolkit course, which is fantastic.

Personal Information System to Store Web Clippings, Experiences and Ideas, and Track Professional Development

Evernote is my tool of choice for when what I want to save is better being kept private. Otherwise, Pinboard is what I use under the News and Curation Tools (above). Evernote is also where I track my goals, and professional development pursuits.

Office Tools to Create Documents, Presentations, and Spreadsheets

I primarily use Office 365 applications for creating documents (Microsoft Word), presentations (PowerPoint), and spreadsheets (Excel). Most of my blog posts start out in a text-based, Mac writing app called Ulysses. That’s also where each podcast episode’s show notes begin, until they get moved over to WordPress.

Communication an Collaboration Tools to Interact, Share, and Learn with Others

At my recent keynote for the DET/CHE 2017 conference, I asked people what their favorite collaboration tools were. The web conferencing tool, Zoom, was given more than any other answer (by a lot). I’m a huge fan, as well. My second go-to collaboration tool (particularly when it comes to sharing) is Dropbox. However, Google Docs is a stand-out for it’s ease of use when wanting to collaborate on a document.

Other Posts on Professional Learning Toolkits

After Jane Hart's original post about her professional learning toolkit, many others have followed suit. Here are some of the posts that resonated with me and inspired me to share my toolkit:

Your Turn

What tools did I not mention that are stand-outs in supporting your learning?

Advice for Presenters

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advice for presenters
The “do not click” is in reference to Alan Levine's Net Narratives class.

I wrapped up my last keynote for the year at the DET/CHE conference. The event didn't require extensive travel. It took me less time to get there than it does for me to drive to work. I got to meet Michelle Pacansky-Brock in person for the first time – and get photo bombed by a new friend in the process.

If you have been reading my recent blog posts, you know that we are looking to start an end-of-year book club. One of the possible books on our list was Confessions of a Public Speaker. Since I knew it was highly unlikely that it was going to make the top spot on everyone's priorities (based on the surveys that had been submitted by that time), I decided to read it on my own.

The biggest piece of advice Burken (the author) has for his readers is the importance of practice. All too often, we futz with our slides until the wee hours of the night, to the detriment of investing time in rehearsal. Burken is heavy on stories and a bit lighter on the promised practical advice. From memory, a few other recommendations he makes include:

  1. Don't picture your audience naked
  2. Tell stories
  3. Use a slide remote that has a timer built in (I prefer setting alarms on my Apple Watch)
  4. Ask people to move to the front of the room, if your audience is sparse

Advice for Presenters

As I wind down from my recent speaking adventures, I thought I would share some of my advice on presenting.

  1. Invest in a wireless clicker to advance your slides, so you aren't tied to the podium.
  2. Use Nancy Duarte's advice in Slideology – and have your slides enhance your presentation, not deliver it.
  3. Involve your audience in some way – I used Glisser a lot this Fall to take questions, pose questions, and allow people to tweet out my slides as I was presenting.
  4. Make your presentation more memorable by thinking like a storyteller.
  5. Build a resources page for after your presentation, to help people take their learning even further.
  6. Use SlideShare to convert your slides to a presentation that can be viewed/embedded online (instead of people needing to download your slides, if they just want to take a peek). Here are my slides over on SlideShare from the FIU Online conference, which are then embedded on that event's resources page.
  7. To the extent that it is at all possible, avoid commenting about any technical or other difficulties you are experiencing. The people who are attending your presentation want to get to experience it without having to lose confidence in you, or the event's tech team, due to behind-the-scenes challenges. At one of my recent keynotes, the music for my course trailer example didn't play when the video started. Instead of mentioning that fact, I waited a few seconds and then started humming the best version of Indiana Jones music I could muster. The audience seemed to enjoy it even better than if the music had played. The tech team was then able to restore the sound by the time we got to the next clip. Some may have even thought I planned it this way (though I didn't indicate that).
  8. Have a backup plan for when you experience severe technical difficulties. If there's no way for you to display your slides, be sure you have a hard copy of them with you, preferably printed with multiple slides on one page. Here's what I had with me in my bag during my most recent keynote, just in case of any unforeseen issues with projecting the slides during the event. As a side note, I have never had this happen during a keynote talk, but it does happen periodically when I am teaching regular classes.
  9. Pause during your talk. Count – one, two… and give the audience a moment to catch up / come back. Silence can be an incredible attention-grabber, if used well. Used poorly, it can be boring – at best – or really awkward.
  10. Don't read from notes. If you know your material to be asked to speak on a topic, it is likely that you don't require notes to be able to talk about it. If you follow Duarte's and Garr's advice to only have one idea per slide, you won't have to worry about forgetting one of your points, because you will only have one thing you are talking about per slide.

Dave and I talk more about tools we use in teaching / presenting during episode 88.  Now it is your turn.

What is your advice for presenters? 

 

End of 2017 Reading

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I am continuing to work toward my goal of having read 20 books in 2017. My progress gets tracked on Goodreads, which provides a fun way to see what friends (and partners) are reading, not to mention what others who are strangers, but who have similar tastes as me, are reading.

If you have been listening to the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast for a while now, you know that guests often recommend books. The list of books I want to read is long – and getting longer all the time.

I thought I would list the top ten books I want to read in order to see if there are any members of the Teaching in Higher Ed community who are also interested in reading them. We could put together an informal book club, maybe on the Teaching in Higher Ed Slack Group, to try to tackle one or two during the upcoming holiday break. Or, we could schedule a time or two to connect via a virtual conference to discuss a book or two.

In no particular order, here are ten books I am interested in reading:

  1. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences, by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
  2. Ignorance: How it Drives Science, by Stuart Firestein
  3. The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis
  4. Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea, by Mark Kurlansky and the Dalai Lama
  5. The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander and Cornel West
  6. Emotional Intelligence 2.0, by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
  7. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, by Jane McGonigal
  8. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein
  9. Confessions of a Public Speaker, by Scott Berkun
  10. Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother, by Sonia Nazario

If you would like to participate in an informal book club with others in the Teaching in Higher Ed community, please complete this brief survey.

2017 Books

  • Choose up to three books you would be interested in reading with members of the Teaching in Higher Ed Community.
  • Which of the following ways would you like to use to participate in a discussion about the book(s)?
  • Which option best represents the number of books you would be interested in reading in late Dec / early January with the Teaching in Higher Ed community?
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If the survey does not show up on your email client, you can respond on this blog post's page.

If at least ten people show interest, I commit to exploring the feasibility of pulling something together in late December / early January. Otherwise, I will enjoy some solitary reading and to hearing what you wind up reading over the break. Speaking of which…

What book(s) are on your list to read in the near future?

Leveraging the Benefits of a Current Projects List

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current projects list

Our university is embarking on a prioritization initiative, based off of Dickeson’s (2010) Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services: Reallocating Resources to Achieve Strategic Balance. For those who have not participated in an undertaking like this, to say it is time-intensive would be an understatement…

I have been asked to be a part of the team that evaluates the administrative programs and services. While I will confess to being a bit disappointed to see some of the priorities I have been working on be put on the back burner for a season, I am pleased to be collaborating with such a competent and dedicated group of people.

Importance of a Current Projects List

As we begin this process, I am more thankful than usual that I have a continually updated list of projects that I am working on. In Getting Things Done (2015), Allen considers a project anything that takes more than one action to bring about a desired outcome.

Here are just a few of the reasons I have found that a current projects list can be useful:

  • An unexpected commitment (like my recent involvement with the prioritization initiative at my institution) can be viewed in context with other projects
  • When formulating goals, projects can be used as a starting point for reflecting on desired outcomes (Robert Talbert’s post on The Trimesterly Review is worth referencing regarding goal setting, as well)
  • The weekly review can be enhanced by having a current list of projects, or even to nudge us in realizing that our list is out of date (Reference Robert Talbert’s post on planning)
  • Each project can be brought that much closer to reaching the desired outcome by reflecting on what the next action is to get it to that point

It really makes a tremendous different to have a list of projects that is always being worked on to remain current.

Current projects list
The numbers on this current projects list correspond with the numbers in the written text (#)

Structure of the Current Projects List

I use a Mac app called OmniFocus for my project and task management. It is a good tool for those people who really want to dig into the possibilities for what a task manager can do, but not for those who do not enjoy that kind of exploration.

As you will see from my current projects list, I have two types of lists I keep:

Admin lists (1): Those tasks that only have one step to complete and are associated with the various roles I play in my life (mother, professor, Director of Teaching Excellence and Digital Pedagogy, etc.)

An example of a task I would put on my family-admin (2) task list would be to set a doctor’s appointment for our daughter. Please pause for a moment while my husband laughs out loud, since he is unable to remember a time when I have ever done that. Let’s just say he is the one who typically makes appointments like that for our kids, but I was working on an easy example of what goes on admin lists.

Project lists (3): Anything that requires more than one step to complete ideally becomes a project.

My family member with dementia now needs to be transitioned over to a new facility, since she has faced a significant health decline this past month. At first, I needed to make contact with the placement person who helped us the last time around went in my Family-admin (2) list. However, as I realized that we would need to (at a bare minimum):

  • Contact the placement person
  • Receive recommendations of possible facilities
  • Schedule tours of facilities
  • Decide on a place and put down a deposit
  • Give 30 days notice at the current facility
  • Pack her things
  • Arrange for disposal or donation of items not moving to the new place

You get the idea (and now, so do I, since I had not yet started to write some of this stuff down). All of those tasks being listed under the general Family-admin (2) list would have started to get bogged down in there, mixed in with a bunch of other unrelated tasks.

OmniFocus does allow me to assign contexts to each task, so that all the calls that I need to make come up in a single list, even if they are otherwise unrelated. If I went to my @phone context, it shows me every task that can only be completed if I have a phone with me and am in a place where I can use it.

Projects can also be deferred (put off) until a future date in OmniFocus. The list of projects you see in the image are not reflective of all the projects I have identified. In fact, I know that with the addition of the prioritization work to my responsibilities, I need to go in and refine my current list of projects to have them represent ones I can realistically move forward in some way in the next 3-4 months.

Tips for Making a Current Projects List Most Useful

When creating a list of current projects, it can be helpful to structure them in such a way as to be able to quickly discern the kind of list being referenced and the desired outcome.

To that end, the following are tips for making your current projects list most useful:

  • Name [admin lists] (single item tasks) (4) with square brackets, in order to quickly distinguish them from multi-step projects.
  • Start all other project names with the verb that best describe your desired outcome for that item.

I have a project called Rollout: arc media (5). Once arc media is introduced to our faculty, they have had training on it, and we have transitioned over to regular maintenance and help desk support, we will have successfully rolled it out and this project will be marked complete.

Recruit: More faculty to use Canvas (6) – is a project that aims to have 95% of our faculty using Canvas in their classes. Once we achieve that aim, the project will be checked off.

  • Keep projects on the list until every task associated with them has reached completion.

I recently attended the Digital Media and Learning (DML) (7) and OpenEd2017 (8) conferences. While the “attending” part of the project is over (which was my main goal for the project), I am still waiting to be reimbursed for the registration fees and other expenses. Once I receive those checks, each of these projects will be considered done.

  • Include dates for items that have firm completion dates in parenthesis.

I did quite a bit of keynote speaking and workshop facilitation this Fall. Some of the events have already been marked as complete and do not show up on this current list of projects. As I was preparing for the talks and otherwise engaging with collaborators, it started to get really confusing as to when different conferences were taking place.

While the events were entered in my calendar, I then had to switch over to my calendar each time I was looking at dates for each of the tasks associated with these events. It made it much easier once I included all the dates in with the conferences and rearranged them in chronological order.

Get Started

If you do not have a current list of projects, but would like to experience some of the benefits described above, just start. Spend some time getting a list of projects together that you are aware of and reference it regularly over the next week or two, as you discover more multi-step projects that you are responsible for. Reflect on what the end goal is for each of the projects and name them using a verb that represents that desired outcome.

Your Turn

How do you manage your projects and tasks? What tools do you find most useful in these endeavors?

Sharing Their Stories

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Sharing Their Stories

As I mentioned in last week's post about finding good partners, one of my doctoral students posed some intriguing questions to me that I have been carrying with me these past two weeks. In this post, I share more of her specific questions and give my second of several recommendations.

Sharing Online

One of the individuals in the class shared a powerful way in which she was feeling inspired to communicate online. However, she had concerns about some of the dangers of doing this kind of sharing online.

I gave her a few suggestions right away, but suggested that she follow up with me with an email, as there was a lot more I could say on the topics. Her emails have been edited to protect her (and her students’) identity, as well as for context.

The Questions

How do I blog about controversial topics safely online?

For example, I work in an urban school where a lot of teacher abuse from students occur.  How can I create a safe atmosphere for others to discuss these experiences without being judged or shamed by others who don't understand what it is to support students who have been identified as traumatized?

In addition, to the societal view that you must be a “bad” teacher or doing something wrong if you don't have classroom management or positive relationships with others.

I am also interested in developing powerful dialogues and relationships amongst parents and teachers.  A partnership that will create collaboration and supports for students, specifically in the areas of special education, (moderate to serve and emotional/behavioral disorders).  Again, pertaining to parents in urban areas (i.e. uneducated, multiple jobs, single parents, foster parents, grandparents, etc.)”

Sharing Their Stories

One of the most powerful ways you could have an impact is to share the stories of those you are looking to serve. When Clint Smith was on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast on episode 141, he shared about the dangers of silence and how important our voices are. He spoke so proudly of his students and their capabilities and capacity.

The Ear Hustle podcast is another tremendous example of sharing context for people who want to learn more about life inside of a prison's walls. An episode that made me laugh was episode six, entitled “The Boom Boom Room,” about conjugal visits. Episode nine made me weep, as they shared about death and dying in the prison.

Jesse Stommel is another person who regularly challenges us to respect our students. As Jesse explains why he no longer grades, he stresses the importance of starting by trusting our students. Even though the main topic of episode 57, when Jesse was a guest, was about Twitter, the thread that went throughout the entire episode was regarding the importance of kindness in our teaching.

On episode #148, Bronwyn Harris shared about her book, Literally Unbelievable. Despite describing incredibly challenging situations, Bronwyn displays a profound respect for her students, their families, and the people who seek to improve such devastating circumstances. The Deeper Learning podcast, produced by the Orange County Department of Education, is another example of powerful storytelling about people making a difference in the educational community.

One of the common characteristics about all the examples of exquisite storytelling is that there is no place for venting about frustrations regarding students. Anger over the difficult environment that they have to navigate? Yes. But, venting about any challenges related directly to the people that they serve is off limits.

An empathetic voice is present throughout all of these wide-ranging stories. The more empathy we can create toward those we are trying to serve, the more we can do the difficult work of coming up with sustainable solutions.

Getting Started

One of the biggest pieces of advice I have for you, as you reflect even more on your digital identity, is to determine who your work will be targeted toward.

Are you creating content to help other teachers have greater empathy for their students? Or, do you want to tell stories and provide resources to help families better navigate their children's educational paths? 

Once you have a narrow focus on who you are going to be talking to, finding stories to share becomes a lot easier.

One of the best resources I have found for storytelling, recently, is the Power Your Podcast with Storytelling course by Alex Blumberg for the CreativeLive site. If you are interested in taking the course, use this link to get $15 off (and I will also get $15 for the referral).

Alex used to be a producer for the This American Life podcast and is one of the most phenomenal storytellers I know. The episode of his StartUp podcast called Shadowed Qualities was one of the most poignant examples of the “stuff” we bring into our work communities I have ever heard.

I am thrilled that you are asking these questions and look forward to seeing where this all heads, as you create more content in the coming weeks on your blog.