Geetha Nehemia

Student Voices

Geetha Nehemia — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 21:17:15 +0000

I am a big fan of Professor Michael Wesch, a Cultural Anthropology professor at Kansas State University. He has produced some excellent faculty focused viewpoint videos that I have utilized as part of my courses, specifically Web 2.0 … The Machines is Us/ing Us. The video elicits wonderful thoughtful responses from my students in each of my courses.

I am particularly intrigued by Professor Wesch’s latest call to all students to submit videos from their viewpoint. Specifically about what students see in the media-centric environment they live in.

It is an intriguing concept and I applaud him for conducting his research in this fashion. As an instructor it will teach me a lot of what students are experiencing and expecting.

Filed under: Michael Wesch, teaching

Geetha Nehemia — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:00:08 +0000

I just began a course on ePortfolios for the local Workforce development board. It is a dynamic class full of interested individuals looking for work and different ways to market themselves. They will be creating ePortfolios. We discussed LinkedIn briefly in our last class and I want to revisit this issue. I think LinkedIn is very useful but I have not tapped into the strength of LinkedIn. One of my students shared this ebook, How to Really Use LinkedIn, with me that I am reading through now to reap the benefits of LinkedIn. I have created a group in LinkedIn for this course and I think that the participants and myself will find it useful to keep our discussions going.

Networking, the author discusses, works for both people involved. Both parties need to get something from the relationship, so we need to offer something in return for a job lead to the other person. Asking indirect questions was also an excellent point. I am always struggling with how to network and do it well and the author gives some excellent examples of questions to ask when looking for work. In my brief perusal this book seems like it has a lot to offer. I will write more as I read more….

Filed under: BT Workforce, LinkedIn Tagged: LinkedIn

Lessons learned Professional Development workshop

Geetha Nehemia — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:46:18 +0000

I completed a day long workshop with local high school teachers last week. It went well but I didn’t have time to make a detailed handout and that was one thing that the teachers wanted. I did complete a 21 page introductory guide on WordPress which was sent to them electronically this week so it should help them to move through the software quickly. Usually I am ambitious and this day was no exception, I planned to cover a lot of ground but we didn’t quite get there. If I could do it again I would have the teachers review the handout before the workshop and have them begin creating their portfolios before the first meeting. The workshops should be half day sessions since many teachers were overwhelmed with the all day sessions. We are planning a refresher course which I think will be helpful for the teachers and myself to get their reactions and thoughts about the software.

Creating an ePortfolio is not a one day event, it takes time, weeks, months, depending on what you find and what you want to write about. With that in mind I think it would be best to give the teachers time to create it on their own, have an initial session and then a second session a month or two later with the intention that the teachers will be working on their portfolios in the interim. I think this also gets the teachers thinking about the reflective process involved in ePortfolios for themselves and their students.

Overall the teachers were enthusiastic about the concept of eportfolios with regard to career planning and personal branding. They liked the concept of student work being online to market to employers. There were some issues discussed about privacy in WordPress but I think I figured out a work around. If WordPress is installed or hosted for the institution there are some additional privacy options that can be implemented. I have been happy with WordPress and the teachers enjoyed using it as well.

Filed under: BIT 106, eportfolio, HS teachers

Review of HS teachers workshop

Geetha Nehemia — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:42:25 +0000

The workshop with the high school teachers went well yesterday. I should have created a detailed handout but I think showing them and having them utilize various features within WordPress was a great start. They loved the student presentations. Next time I would like to start with a student presentation and have the workshop be two half days with a two-week break in between. This will give the participants time to play with the software, read up about writing reflections, review the course syllabus, and create a working portfolio at their own pace. Overall the questions were great and the audience was really engaged. My new colleague, Bren Price did an excellent job with the library overview section and the two students, James McQueen and Theresa Hogan gave excellent presentations. I thank Ginny Amato of Career Pathways for organizing the event. I look forward to teaching the refresher course to the high school teachers soon.

Filed under: BIT 106, HS teachers, reflection, teaching

ePortfolio workshop for High School Educators

Geetha Nehemia — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 19:25:30 +0000

As I prepare for the workshop I think about how I can combine pedagogy with technology. I am not sure if my audience wants more technology or more pedagogy. I will find out soon since the workshop is on Thursday. It has been good to work on WordPress because it gives me ideas of how I will teach the Spring semester’s courses in this platform. I have also reflected on my own portfolio as it lacks multimedia. Voice and visuals are the best combination and I find that I need more voice enhanced videos. What sparked this reflection? Well I clicked on a link from Helen Barrett’s site of how an elementary school teacher is using VoiceThread as a Digital Portfolio for her students. I saw one of the videos and I realized that voice coupled with visuals are so powerful. I am actually planning on using VoiceThread this semester with my online students. I hope I have as much success as the elementary school teacher.

As I was reading in elearnmag “Why Should Educators Blog? Reflective Writing Can Positively Affect Teaching”, I agree with Michelle Everson that if I don’t blog I forget what worked and what didn’t work. So as part of my blog I will keep an online journal of my teaching methods to all constituents to help me remember my best practices.

Filed under: reflection, teaching Tagged: VoiceThread

Assessment

Geetha Nehemia — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 20:36:41 +0000

We have made tremendous progress this year with ePortfolios at BCC. The Business Information Technology department has adopted ePortfolios for first year students, which is the course I teach. In addition BIT will be adding a senior ePortfolio course and will begin to use it for assessment. After returning from the AAEEBL 2010 conference I advocated using ePortfolios for assessment purposes and the Chair of BIT has decided to utilize it starting this year. We will be in our early stages so I am sure it will take a while before the assessment goes smoothly but I am glad that ePortfolios will be used for assessment. Last year when I was thinking about it I thought using ePortfolios for assessment will take away from student centered learning but after hearing others using it at the AAEEBL 2010 conference I realized it can help students with curriculum maps as well as let them decide how they fulfilled specific learning outcomes. In short, assessment can be student focused depending on how it is carried out.

Filed under: assessment, BCC, BIT, eportfolio

Evolving selves

Geetha Nehemia — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:21:43 +0000

I have been thinking about how my own life has changed throughout the years and have always believed that we are not static or stagnant but constantly changing, in flux. As a theme of my portfolio I decided to post frequently to the blog section since it reflects the different ideas, and experiences I have that make me unique from others. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of integrating the blog with the portfolio but I will give it a try and see if I like it and introduce the idea to the students in my courses as well. I will let you know how it goes. I remember the novels I enjoyed the most were Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hess. The themes revolved around reflection, personal journeys and the search for meaning. As someone recently told me that career paths are personal journeys and I liked the analogy. Students and many career seekers are looking for work and for a position that satisfies them in a variety of ways. My goal is to introduce students to the plethora of tools and show them some possible paths to pursue and they will mash up all the information they have to create their own unique path. ePortfolios need to be in flux to reflect our ever evolving selves.

Filed under: eportfolio, evolving

Spring 2011

Geetha Nehemia — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:20:38 +0000

I am looking forward to the spring semester. The Technology Careers Office will be doing a workshop for High School teachers on 1/6/2011 and then implementing a non-credit course for unemployed workers from Broome Tioga Workforce from 1/11/11 to 1/27/11. It will be a busy January but I am looking forward to it. I am developing the WordPress portion now and I am finding the platform to be very versatile. This fall semester went by so quickly. The students I had in my ePortfolio course did such a good job. I have some new student samples to showcase. I found that adding the textbook, Portfolios for Technical and Professional Communicators, was very helpful both for the students and me. It helped the students put the portfolio into a context. The students had to focus on theme, voice and audience, which are all elements of a good paper. I find that writing is analogous to creating a portfolio.

Filed under: BCC, BIT 106, eportfolio

WordPress as a platform for ePortfolios

Geetha Nehemia — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 21:10:10 +0000

I decided to try WordPress.com for my BIT 106 ePortfolio course at Broome Community College. I think it will be fun! It is not optimized for pages but I thought I would integrate my posts and my pages and see how it looks. I love trying the different themes and widgets that I did not have in the previous software we were using but I find that sometimes the themes are limiting. Well, I hope to find more insight on how to use WordPress better and perhaps keep up this blog!

Filed under: BCC, BIT 106, eportfolio