Podcast #60: Low-Tech Alternatives

Edward and Doug discuss several low-tech alternatives to technology products they’ve discussed in earlier episodes of #edtechsummer. Laminated color-coded cards and Plickers let you poll your class without any student-held electronics. Atiyeh Showrai joins us from the USC French language program to talk about their experience creating an e-workbook using just Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. Then Quirine Ketterings (Cornell) shares the role-play game she plays at the end of term in her Whole Farm Nutrient Management class.

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Show Notes

0:00 ⏯ Intro

0:30 ⏯ Edtech Summer winds down.

4:25 ⏯ Some corrections and follow-through about economic games. It’s “economics-games.com” with two s’s, not “economic-games.com”. MobLab will help you randomly select a student to reward at the end of a game.

7:02 ⏯ Normalizing wrong answers. Pros and cons of low-tech alternatives to clickers: Hand-raising, letter cards, and Plickers.

15:17 ⏯ Atiyeh Showrai: French language faculty create their own e-workbook. Addressing student issues by bringing together learning activities around Camus’ novel The Stranger. Reducing ‘paper management’ issues. Using Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat.

23:30 ⏯ How the project changed over five years. Students became less enamored of printing pages. The digital version works best on a tablet.

28:47 ⏯ Combining a printed workbook with a customized publishing-on-demand textbook. “There isn’t one perfect answer.”

32:03 ⏯ Keeping costs down, meeting students’ needs, and being nimble.

38:06 ⏯ What good ed tech service does. When you should create your own digital textbook.

45:59 ⏯ Games and in-class simulations: Lynn Regan’s vendors and clients game.

48:28 ⏯ Quirine Ketterings teaches Nutrient Management. Students may actually manage a farm when they graduate. Thinking about the the bottom line and sustainability.

52:23 ⏯ The stakeholders in the farm-as-a-system.

56:10 ⏯ The actual in-class activity. Groups, roles, challenges. Preparing a case and using a debate format with a moderator.

1:03:10 ⏯ The closure at the end, and how students experience the exercise.

1:06:51 ⏯ When Doug did in-class simluations.

1:09:04 ⏯ Creating memorable moments in chemistry classes: Humans acting out gene expression with Clay Clark (U Texas, Arlington) and simulating enzyme catalytics with Matt Junker (Kutztown University).

1:09:49 ⏯ Previewing our next episode: the Future of Ed Tech.

1:11:07 ⏯ Signing off.