You, too, can be a nerd

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Tech for Journalists workshop on Tuesday night. Here’s an overview of what was covered for people who attended and are looking for links or for people who want to see what they missed. You can also find my presentation slides here.

Why keep up with technology?.

1) Editors love tech story pitches.
2) Knowing how to use a new obscure social search engine could be the difference between calling everyone by the last name of the source you’re trying to get in touch with in the White Pages and finding their contact information online in two seconds.
3) It’s easy, so why not?

It’s easy thanks to tech blogs. A tech blogger’s job is to find out what’s significant, interesting and new in tech and tell you about it. I keep up with tech news by following just one blog – Read Write Web. You could also read Mashable or Tech Crunch. Read a few posts and decide which one you like best. I also highly recommend Mindy McAdams’ blog Teaching Online Journalism because it’s aimed at journalists and journalism students. If you think you’ll have trouble remembering to go to the websites regularly, you have a few options:

- Follow them on Twitter. Read their tweets and only click the link if you think the post will be relevant to you. Here are their Twitter handles: @macloo @rww @mashable @TechCrunch
- Subscribe to a daily or weekly summary newsletter. Set your Gmail to send them directly to a folder called “newsletters.” Read them when you have time and mark them as read if they get too backlogged. Here’s how to use Gmail filters.
- Subscribe to their RSS feeds in Google Reader. I explain how to do that in this blog’s first post.

Blogs are also great for finding out what people are talking about in any niche topic you might be writing a story about. Here are some ways to do blog searches:

- Delicious: A site that lets you see what other people are bookmarking. If other people are bookmarking it, it’s probably useful and popular.
- Post Rank: Finds blogs by topic and ranks posts by user interaction such as comments.
- Google blog search
- Blog rolls, where bloggers link to other blogs they read and blogs on the same topic

Blogs are great, but sometimes you need to get specific when you’re looking for sources. Let’s say you’re looking for someone trying to buy a house for the first time in Ottawa.

- They might be tweeting, blogging, or writing about it on Facebook. OneRiot pulls real time results from a variety of social media. Not only will this find people who are talking about what you’re looking for, you’ll have a way to contact them through whatever social network they’re using.
- They might be talking to other people in the housing market through a forum or message board. Omgili searches obscure forums.
- Once you’ve found a potential source, you’ll want to know more about them. Run their name through Pipl to dig up a creepy amount of dirt.
- Find out what other social networks they belong to with People Search
- Amy Dempsey’s never-fail patent-pending method for finding people’s phone numbers: Using quotes, do a Google search for “firstname lastname” 123, where 123 is the area code. For example, if you're looking for John Smith’s phone number and you know he lives in Toronto, search “john smith” 416.

Finally, here are the links to the Firefox extensions I talked about at the workshop.

- Scrapbook: Save web sites exactly how they were when you first saw them and add notes and highlights. I have no idea how I ever lived without it.
- Quicknote: Take notes on web pages without awkwardly switching from word processor to browser and back.
- Add to search bar and Drag & DropZones: When you use the two together, you can highlight text and drag it into any search engine you add. A new tab with your search result will open.
- Delicious: Makes tagging and searching your bookmarks much more convenient.

Collecting student feedback

Here are some tips on collecting mid term feedback from Marlene Haley, director of the TA Mentor program

Mid-term is a good time to obtain feedback from students. This feedback allows you to address problems and difficulties while there is still time to make adjustments. Two or three questions, presented as survey questions on paper, on Web CT, or on an anonymous survey tool such as https://www.toofast.ca/ can do the trick. Or, you can devote 15 minutes of class time for discussion using the questions below as a framework for feedback. Your TA mentor can assist you by being present to facilitate the discussion and relay the feedback to you, or you can designate students as note takers and have them sum up the feedback to pass on to you. (you’ll need to leave the room so students feel comfortable) More information on small group feedback can be found on the EDC website here. The EDC can also assist you if you wish to use the small group assessment method.

Some questions you might ask are:

* What do you like best about...lectures/assignments/tutorials /labs/group work?
* What do you dislike most about... lectures/assignments/tutorials/labs/group work?

Or worded differently:

· “List the major strengths in this [course/PA session, discussion group, lab*]. (What is helping you learn in the course?) Please explain briefly or give an example for each strength.”

· “List changes that could be made in [the course] to assist you in learning. Please explain how suggested changes could be made.” Or “What suggestions can you offer that would make this a better learning experience?"

(* if you use the word “course,” students may comment on the course in general. This can be good also if you feel comfortable sharing this feedback with the professor. )


I’ve got feedback, what do I do with it?

Before or after you have solicited mid-term feedback, I encourage you to read the following advice from a mailing list sponsored by the Stanford Center for Teaching Learning.

· Although one student's suggestion can seem especially insightful or interesting, be aware of investing too much significance in any single opinion. Concentrate on the issues that seem problematic for large number of students or for a subset of students with particular needs. Try especially hard not to take it to heart if only one or two students are particularly critical. Every class has such students at some time or other, and the reasons for their discontent may lie more with them than with you. The one exception is if only one or two students are brave enough to tell you that you are making racist or gender-discriminatory remarks. This kind of feedback must always be taken seriously.

· Don't go it alone unless you have already established a successful record for interpreting and acting upon your student feedback. Instead, [consult your TA mentor], a peer, [the EDC], the professor. Check with them before you invest large chunks of your time in significant changes to your course.

· Take the tinkering approach (Stevens, 1987). Make small, modest changes and don't abandon a change the first time it doesn't seem successful. Tinker with it, making little adjustments, and see if it can be made successful after all.

· Start conversations with your colleagues about how they handle difficult situations that you're struggling with. You don't have to confess that something is a problem for you; just ask them, for example, how they know whether or not students are following them or whatever else you suspect may be hard for you.

You can read more here: http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/postings/313.html

Classroom Assessment Techniques

Finally, if you don’t collect mid-term feedback on the course you are TAing, you can still get excellent feedback on your teaching every week by using simple Classroom Assessment Techniques(CATs). Here’s one example: in the last 5 minutes of class, ask the students to write down one thing they learned in class, or one thing they are confused about. There are many more great ideas in this article from the National Teaching and Learning Forum: http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/assess.htm