May 07 2012
Interesting, but not ideal
In my searches last week for web material, I got lost in the TED lectures, listening to quite a few that interested me. I also got lost in NPR, This I Believe, and youtube, looking at author interviews. It was all fascinating to me–yet not exactly what I want for my students. I think lots of interactive content is great, and I’m certainly not in the mood to reinvent the wheel, yet too much material that is interesting but not targeted to our course objectives won’t really enhance the course. I’ll keep searching, of course, but I’d really like to keep my content tightly connected to my textbooks and our course objectives, and I fear that introducing too many other ideas/perspectives might not really add to their learning, but rather muddle it.
I do like to use author interviews for essays we’re reading. Even if the writer is talking about something else, it helps that person become alive to them. I think I might end up making more of my own narrated videos or presentations that stick more closely to our course content.
Finding just the right content on the web can be a real challenge. In some fields it can be difficult to narrow the topic down so that you can find valid and appropriate resources, as you point out.
Taking it another direction — perhaps you might consider bringing in a guest speaker? If you have an author or expert that you know and that you’d like students to interact with, we can set up an interactive web conference that would allow them to speak to your students just as they might do in a face-to-face classroom. We can record the session and have it available for those who might not be able to attend at that time. Alternatively, your guest might agree to participate in a discussion board for one week during the class. This also gives students a chance to interact with an expert in the field.
Sometimes, these popular kinds of sources can work as attention getters for more academically challenging content, as well.
Also, did you happen to check into the open education resource repositories, such as Merlot.org and OERcommons.org?
Yeah, I know this
. I’vo got the same when I see TED first time…