College faculty NOT preparing students with Web skills.

Lisa's (Online) Teaching Blog of 12/25/11 investigates a study by Pearson and Babson Research, published in April 2011, which reports that “over 90% of all faculty are using social media in courses they’re teaching or for their professional careers outside class”.  Are faculty really so involved in Web use?  By delving into the study, Lisa found Figure 15, which shows that less than 10% of faculty require their students to actually create content on the Web.  Students are not being given practice in Web skills that employers will find useful - ability to create & post video to YouTube, maintain a blog to involve customers or clients of employer, etc.

Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals

Many have asked why a Women's Studies program should include a course teaching computer skills and Web tools.  Aren't today's students already familiar with Microsoft Office and masters of the Web?  While students are definitely adept users of Facebook, most seem to lack experience with web tools more relevant to their future employment.  Few of my students have heard of, let alone know how to use, web tools such as:

• Blogs - used by many nonprofits, advocacy groups, and businesses
• Social bookmarking sites like Delicious - a handy research and networking tool
• RSS Readers or Start Pages -  to aggregate recent articles and blog entries in specified topics, very useful for keeping up-to-date with latest developments in your field
• Social media like Facebook and Twitter -  for professional networking and the promotion of social causes

While all students regularly use Word to compose essay assignments, few know how to use Heading Styles to provide a handy navigation aid for a long report (think of preparing quarterly sales reports or annual summaries of activities at a nonprofit agency).  All have prepared PowerPoints for class, but few have a clue about avoiding "death by PowerPoint" (avoid the same boring Microsoft templates, more single images & less bulleted text).

With so few job openings and so many candidates, students who can demonstrate some of the above skills provide added value to employers and are more likely to be successful in their job search. 

The skills described above are also useful for active citizenship, whether students only desire to be well-informed voters or intend to be participants in advocacy groups, political parties or trade unions.

It is not only WS majors who would profit from acquiring these computer and web skills; they are equally relevant for gerontology students, aspiring social workers, sociology and other liberal arts majors.  Perhaps social service programs and liberal arts departments should consider combining to offer a "Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals" course to their students.

Resources and Examples:

• Delicious and Social Bookmarking - a Common Craft video
• About RSS Readers - a Common Craft video 
• Start Pages - Go to www.protopage.com/wscomputers to see  how one can access headlines from favorite blogs, bookmark useful web sites, display latest video on subject of interest, etc. Click on double down-arrow extreme right near top to view more pages – some directed to educators, some to non-profit organizations, some to Women’s Studies. 
• Using Heading Styles to Organize Notes in Microsoft Word 
• PowerPoint:  "Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book" - be sure to click to display Speaker Notes  
• PowerPoint:  Corvida Raven: Geek Girl Storybook - use of images, musical background, converted to video.

Demise of Women & Computers course

I will no longer be teaching the Women and Computers course at my university; it has been dropped from the Women's Studies Major.  The WS Program wanted to strengthen its international perspectives and decided to require all majors to complete a course in Transnational Feminism.  There is a practical limit to the number of required courses, so something had to be dropped.  Certainly we would not want to drop Feminist Theory or Research Methods, so Women and Computers was eliminated.  Hard to argue with prioritizing Transnational Feminism over Women and Computers, although I believe the skills taught are a valuable addition to a student's future employment and activist tool kit.

I haven't yet decided exactly what I will do instead.  For the present, I will continue this blog, expanding the coverage somewhat to encompass computer and web skills in the classroom, web tools for activists, and gender perspectives on computing.

Final Projects: Intersexuality using GoAnimate

Another student had done a lot of research on intersexuality, but wanted to present the information in a non-academic manner that might reach more of a general audience.  She chose to use GoAnimate.com to create her "movies."  Since free movies are limited to under 2 minutes at GoAnimate, she had to create two movies to cover all the material.


GoAnimate.com: Intersexuality Part I by ashleemoz23

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Intersexuality Part 2

GoAnimate.com: Intersexuality Part II by ashleemoz23

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Final Projects: "Hooking Up" at Xtranormal

For their final projects, students were asked to create something of use beyond the classroom.  Many chose to create educational projects using visual media.  One student explored the phenomenon of "hooking up" using Xtranormal.com's free movie making facility  (pictorial backgrounds and characters provided, you add the dialog via typing).

Here I have used the Embed Code from Xtranormal.com, but one can also upload the "movies" one creates at Xtranormal to YouTube - useful on websites that only embed YouTube videos.

What is hooking up?
by: ware0701

Sex Trafficking in Nepal via GoAnimate

Students have been experimenting with many different Web tools, including XtraNormal.com and GoAnimate.com - both of which allow you to create "videos" by choosing from the backgrounds and characters they provide.  You type the text you want the characters to speak.

There are limitations on what you can do with the free tool.  At Go Animate, length is severely limited so student has to make 3 separate videos.  I discovered that I could combine them into one movie using the free Debut Video Capture which I downloaded and installed.  Then I could capture each of the student's videos while they were playing and use Windows Movie Maker to combine them into one movie, which I then uploaded to YouTube.

A Sad Commentary on our Schools

This poster from The Jose Vilson Blog dramatizes the lock-step, rote education that is only being made worse by No Child Left Behind.

A third grade teacher from Oregon explains in detail why all the recent budget cuts, teach to test pressures, etc. have driven her to retire. This article, while long, explains clearly the evolution of her creative, learning-inspiring, classroom to the daily drudgery of rote learning and how are schools are becoming even worse, educationally speaking.