What’s the problem with social security?

Millions of Americans were forced to invest in a government sponsored retirement program. They contributed to it with every paycheck they received. The federal government was supposed to invest this money to provide retirement income for american workers but instead raided it to pay for their big spending projects. Politicians now are saying things like “social security is broken” but the real problem is their willingness to pay. Don’t take my word for a bit of this. Investigate it and find out for yourself. What do you think we should do?

My freshmen students will be asked to watch this video and then participate in a discussion forum to answer the question above. I expected some lively debate and creative ideas given this is an election year.

“Adult learners have a variety of experiences of life which represent the richest resource for learning. These experiences however are imbued with bias and presupposition.”

Jimi Hendrix asks “Are you experienced?” and the answer is yes. We are all experienced. Everyone on campus has years of rich experiences but they aren’t the same from one individual to another. This is what makes us unique.

Our experiential diversity makes us valuable to society. We learn from each other through open discourse. Of course our experiences are shaded by learned bias and presupposition but the process of sharing with others allows us to peel away our biases like the skin of an onion. It works because we of our vast commonalities. George Carlin did a comedy skit about our common experiences.

We laugh at Carlin’s jokes because of they ring true. We’ll miss him even though his comedy could be a bit crude at times.

Experiences are powerful because they are anchored into our personality. We can remember better when we make connections between new information and past experience. This is called grounding. A wise instructor looks for ways to ground new information into the common experiences of mankind.

One way to help students ground new information is to explain how it applies to their aspirations. For instance, you might want to tell computer programming students that professionals work together to make their software products better by performing a structured walk-through before discussing the process itself. This way learners understand the significance of the new information in their desired profession.

Another technique is to use an analogy. You can describe the structured walk-through as a group of programming students helping each other by presenting their code to peers at dinner. We actually did this back in the old days at Lansing Community College. Students may more easily identify with the scenario because it connects with their experience. The skills and process are the same. Once they understand you can reveal the process as a professional practice rather than a study group activity.

Metaphors can also be powerful tools for grounding new information. I often talk about my stereo system and the nature of its components as a warm up to teaching the concept of modular programming and functional cohesion. We move through the metaphor as though we were having a personal conversation and naturally slide right into the new information to be learned. The students get it every time! When component stereo systems will be out of memory I’ll shift to the roles of baseball players. All it takes to use a metaphor is a little imagination and an understanding of the nature of material presented.

The trick of helping students ground is to have an understanding of their world. This takes work but it can be a lot of fun. Hang out with your students. Listen to their music. Learn about their concerns. Listen to them and observe their behavior. Get to know them as a group. Show you are concerned for them and never be judgemental.

A little self-deprecating humor can help too!

CSC475 Machine Organization teaches students how the machinery inside the black box works. Students learn how the system works. Focus is placed on the design trade-offs computer designers are confronted with and the challenges they face. It is also a first exposure to machine language.

I’m using a speech by Bill Gates on the advent of his retirement from the helm at Microsoft Corporation. The speech was given to the community of scholars at Carnegie Mellon University. It gives a vision of the future by someone viewing it from a unique perspective.

CSC460 is designed for students to use self-initiative to master JavaScript. Mount Marty College students are typically first-generation college students from small communities in the rural western United States. They come from small town schools with small student populations. Their rural backgrounds are shared by their K-12 teachers. A larger than normal percentage of them are home-schooled. They are good people who know more about cattle ranches than business offices so they typically have more ground to cover their peers. I need to get them fired up about mastering the subject.

Motivation can be problematic for these students in high-tech courses. So I am beginning the new semester with a brief talk by Tony Robbins. Robbins has been a highly successful motivational speaker for decades.

Motivation may be even more important this fall as I am considering inviting them to work on a service learning project with high visibility.

The spirit of this exercise is to motivate students to participate in a discussion board forum. There are no incorrect entries into the forum as long as the students respect one another. The idea is to get students used to expressing themselves in an online environment.

Students will be asked to video the program before entering the forum. Once there they are presented with a question to respond to.

“Was the war wage against Iraq by the United States legal? If so, why? In not, who is guilty?”

The point of these forums is not to persuade students to any point of view. It is designed to get them engaging one another and with the faculty in intelligent discourse. By doing so online they can learn the unique skills required to communicate online.

Gmail is quickly becoming the standard email software for power users. Since my students are enrolled in computer science courses they might as well start using it now. Besides its full of benefits and features from the folks at Google.

Click here to learn how to sign up.

If you are in my class you should create your gmail account right away.

We are going to try something fun this semester with collaborative writing.

There are many types of collaborative writing projects. Eric Clapton & George Harrison collaborated on writing the song Badge. I believe they had some success on that project. Listen and see what you think.

Another famous songwriting collaboration consisted of John Lennon & Paul McCartney. Together they wrote nearly every song the Beatles ever recorded. Collaborative writing obviously worked well for them as the Beatles are one of the most successful rock bands in history.

Not only do musicians collaborate on writing music but the nature of a rock band is all about collaboration. Rockers even collaborate by sharing their music with other bands. Joe Cocker enjoys a highly successful career singing mostly covers of other songwriters. Listen as he sings one of the Beatles greatest songs at Woodstock.

You have heard of Woodstock haven’t you?

Collaboration is a large part of doing business today. Teams of engineers work together to design, build, and test new products. Actors, writers, and directors collaborate to create new films. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare specialists work together to help keep us healthy. Collaboration is nothing new. Its all around us. However it has been getting a lot more exposure lately. Consider how Wikipedia works.

Wikipedia couldn’t exist without collaborative writing.

Collaborative writing is simply a process of people working together to make a writing project as good as it can be. Its easy. Its a natural process. Even children do it! Watch how children from diverse schools work together using Web 2.0 applications to create stories. The software tools used by participants in the Harris Burdick Collaborative Writing Project were Google docs and Skype. Google docs was the writing tool while face-to-face communication between divergent geographic points was accomplished with Skype.

“Valuable 21st century tools came into play during this project. Communication and collaboration were key to the students success with the story.”

Yes. You did see Mac-users and PC-users collaborating successfully. Imagine that!

The following video gives us a slightly different viewpoint on collaborative writing. These students share time and space so they don’t need to use email or Skype to communicate. We get to see a bit of the creative process and well as samples of the end product.

So at this point I hope everyone is excited about collaborative writing. I know I am. So let’s have a brief look at Google docs to see what my students will be using this semester.

You are probably wondering if each student in a group will receive the same grade on a writing assignment. The answer is NO. Its not fair for one student to carry another so students will be awarded points based upon their level of participation as documented throughout the revisions. I think this is fairer than merely having each member of the group rate their peers.

For my students only. Your first assignment is to go to create a gmail account for yourself. Once you have your account send me an email telling me a bit about yourself. I’m interested mostly in four questions. What you like to do with computers? What you do for fun? Why did you select Mount Marty College? And what you expect to get out of this course? Please write this in gmail and send it to me at mark.winegar@gmail.com. Be sure to copy yourself and include your full name and section number in the text.

So let’s have fun!

A brave few will soon be facing their first day of teaching. Its an exciting and terrifying time. The excitement comes from feeling like you are about to do something that matters. The terror comes from the fear of failure. So we listen to the voices of the past. Hopefully they’re saying “just be yourself.”

I remember my first college teaching job as if it were yesterday. My mentor kept telling me to make an example of a student as early in the semester as possible to set the tone of the class and I admit trying it a few times. It worked with the tougher sections who needed discipline but there is one thing every section needs more than a disciplinarian and that is someone who cares. If students believe you really care for them they will worked harder in your class.

So relax rookie. Just be yourself and get on with teaching. You know your stuff. Now go in there and show it to the students.

Do you remember those hot summer days at camp? Can you still feel the cold water hitting your skin as you dove head first into the lake? Do you remember your swimming counselor’s cardinal rule? Yes, stay with your buddy.

Every year thousands of freshman dive into the cold waters of higher education. It feels good. They are beginning to experience new degrees of freedom but far too often they miss the fact they also have new degrees of responsibility. Mom and Dad aren’t there to check on their homework so they have to learn to manage their own time. Unfortunately many fail.

I think creating an academic buddy system may be a productive way to reinforce positive behaviors in college and better prepare students for a modern world of work. I personally cannot create a buddy system for the entire freshman experience but I can do so for my general education class. Success can be assessed by analyzing student comments about their impressions of the buddy system.

My general education course introduces freshman to the use of Microsoft Office and the Modern Language Association’s style guide. The course goals are to equip them with the software skills necessary for success as undergraduate students. Focus is placed on Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The skills are important but Microsoft offers weak support for collaborative activity. What is really needed is something that enables students to closely collaborate with their buddies. Google docs offers an interesting alternative.

Google is all about collaboration. It provides a free email system called Gmail which serves as a jump off point to a variety of digital activities. Gmail can gather email from multiple accounts in one place so my students ought to be able to receive email from their college accounts there. It provides a convenient calendar to support time management and students can personalize their home pages with graphic themes and RSS feeds to their favorite blogs. These home pages provide a direct link to Google docs.

The key concept of Google docs is to provide a virtual work space where collaborators can work on word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in real time without regard of space or time. Files are stored on Google’s servers so they can be accessed anywhere you find a computer connected to the World Wide Web. Files are secure because access is password protected and routine backups are performed. Google docs are Microsoft compatible too!

Is Google docs an appropriate software suite to teach? Many major corporations and research universities have turned to Google docs over Microsoft Office because of the advantages it offers so it is a viable alternative. The skills learned in my course are word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation graphics. These skills are universal amongst alternative productivity software suites so there isn’t an issue of drastically changing the content of the course. The strategic advantage is offers is its rich support of collaborative activity.

I’ve visited with a few of my peers about this and they said “Go for it!” so I am diving in head first with Google as my buddy. Keep tuned in to see how it goes.

Today was the annual kick-off meeting on my campus. We began with a plea to touch our students hearts with the pain of the world. Our speaker proposed pain as the essential ingredient necessary in producing caring adults ready to meet earth’s challenges. He challenged us all to honor our Catholic heritage by teaching our students to care for the lives of others. This lead to a lively discussion of how we might be able to reach this new generation of college students. I sat back and wondered, “why not use podcasts?” I waited for just one of my colleagues to mention it but no one did. I obviously have more work to do.

This podcast uses the song We Are The World and still photographs to call attention to the genicide happening today in Darfur. You see a child dying of starvation, refugees in camp, the wounded and murdered, and the desperation of mothers with no where to turn for help and justice. This podcast will touch many hearts yet it falls far short of showing the true horror and pain of Darfur.

This sample shows us stark contrast between the life of a typical American student and the youth of Darfur. There are action video clips and a hip hop theme song. It shows the same sort of stills of victims. It calls for specific action. Personally I think it is more compelling than the previous podcast.

This final video is a lengthy (0:45:50) documentary on the crisis in Darfur. It tells the stories of the people. You can see them and hear them. You sense the humanity of the victims. They become more real to us than a still photograph. Its hard to ignore their pain. Most importantly it offers hope for the future as well as a call to action.

Yes, I believe podcasts can bring the world into your students’ lives. It can put them in touch with the pain of others and light the lamp of understanding.

There is no shortage of human issues and tragedies to bring to the awareness of our students. Pick any one and then search for podcasts about it. I found all three of these on youtube.com by searching on Darfur. There are many more.