Summer is just around the corner and our minds are beginning to wander. It can be tempting to daydream, especially after the past four frosty months, but we need to stay focused. Now is the time to reinforce the lessons taught throughout the term and confirm that your students are capable of applying them. We’ve spoken with some instructors at Macomb Community College and they have provided a few tips on how they manage to keep engagement and retention high through the end of the semester.
It’s past midterms, it’s right before spring break. Even your best students are card-carrying members of the Apathy Club and come to think of it … you’ve started your own count down to the end of the semester.
Well, SNAP OUT OF IT! Or better yet find a guest speaker. Bringing in a guest speaker can change-up the pace and add insights or knowledge that differ from your own. Thanks to technology, your guest doesn’t have to travel at all or you can record their one time talk and use it over again next semester or for online.
Through the magic of technology, Professor Steinborn is able to interview speakers from Switzerland, Germany, and France while his students were here in the Detroit Metro-area. How perfect for an international business course! Think of the possibilities of Skyping with peers in Mexico or Egypt for language courses. Interviewing the author of the course textbook. Artists, CEO’s, Scientists, even your Grandmother in Florida, who know what stories and experiences are out there to share!
Cools tools to use:
Need to find someone? Check out these options
For tips on this subject check out this website: http://www.glencoe.com/ps/teachingtoday/weeklytips.phtml/42
Need help setting up the tools to connect with your guest speaker, let us know. Have you brought in a guest speaker into your class? How did it go? Let us know in the comments.
On Thursday, March 3rd, educator and community activist Geoffrey Canada will speak at Wayne State’s Campus sharing his vision about improving education in urban communities.
As President and CEO of the revolutionary Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, Geoffrey Canada has dedicated the past 20 years of his life to helping the most impoverished, at-risk youth beat the odds. Radically ambitious and startlingly simple, Canada’s programs are on the cutting edge of preventing youth violence and fostering community development. He is also featured in the movie Waiting for Superman.
If you visit the Harlem Children’s Zone website you will see the organization’s mission statement, Doing whatever it takes to educate children and strengthen community. Cananda is committed to just that, whatever it takes… and that means rethinking not just education but the community as a whole. “It takes a village to raise a child, so that means to save the child–one child– we have to start with the village, ” he explains.
Listen to the story about Canada’s comprehensive vision of education in Baby College from NPR’s “This American Life.”
Today,the topic of Instructional Technology is taking a back seat to something more important. Please read on.
We have hungry students attending classes at Macomb, and probably more than you think. In fact, we have homeless students among us. Can you image sitting through hours of lecture, then leaving campus wondering if you’ll be able to have a warm meal that night? I can’t imagine that. And we think our lives are stressful?!
The Macomb Community College Student Life and Leadership Office (formerly Student Activities) has teamed up with Gleaner’s Food bank to create the Food for Thought Student Food Pantry, and your contributions are needed!
Canvas Status Teaching with Technology Teaching & Learning Free Technology for Teachers Online Learning Insights