Class Email Announcements

June 4th, 2025

Tonight’s office hours are from 6 to 7 again. Same place here on Zoom. 

Activity reminders:

• Have fun and know you made it!

• Contribute to the Padlet and our weekly writing doc.

• Make sure your teaching philosophy represents you as best you can. 

• Get that portfolio finished 😊

• The class eval was mailed to you. Please complete it before you head out.

I had a thought the other day about our class site. I can make a copy of it and give anyone of you, “ownership” of it. Essentially, you can have a copy of that you can keep. I don’t plan on removing it or anything, but if you wish to have a copy, let me know. I’d need your personal Gmail address. 

I am also thinking of reformatting it a bit so it highlights your work on the homepage and all the tools explored better. Make it look less like a class and more like something an educator might learn something from. Ideas? 

June 2nd, 2025

Week Ten!

Wow. I hope you are all doing well and looking forward to summer! I know I am.

In the video this week I note that I felt absent last week. It was weird. I did do a bunch of biking and running and going places… I know I need to catch up on grading some things for you.  

I am excited for all of you!

For this class, for this week:

• Watch the video on the class home page. It is the one where I say, “I’m going to try to keep this to about two minutes” and I go on for almost seven…

• Share something celebratory on the Padlet. Or some hopes? Dreams?

• In a change from our usual reading, I am asking you to share something from your work or personal life that makes an impact in some way to being/living in a more open and inclusive way. Or one that champions the less privileged. Or something you believe is helping you better understand the meaning of diversity, equity, and inclusion.   

• Really look over your portfolio and make it do what you want it to. It should represent you.

As I noted, you will be asked to reflect on the work you have done in this class and give yourself a grade. I know it is hard to do, especially when you cannot point to a bunch of quizzes or final exams with numbers as grades. We didn’t have any of those in this class.

But you did start this class with some skills and experiences. You did create some things, share them, and have new experiences. Those are the “things” we are grading. Included in all of that is you and your effort. Only you can evaluate that, and perhaps it is the most valuable “stuff” you’ll ever really have.

By mid-week next week I’ll ask for a couple/few reflective paragraphs and a grade. If you have questions, let me know.

May 27th, 2025

Well, here we are in the second to last week! And the sunshine!

This week we are going to go a bit deeper into the delivery of information. These days information is everywhere, and the challenge is to deliver it in a meaningful way. A way that gets the “learners” involved and learn the stuff. Of course, you can lead a horse to water and all that, and yes, it really is up to the learner to do the learning, but that does not mean you just show them the information. To me, this is where the “art of teaching” comes in. It is part psychology, part design of experience, part inspiring others, and part storytelling. Probably a lot of other things too… 

Universal Design (UDL) is about that delivery of information and how it is represented in whatever format it is created in. It is also something that allows learners to express learning in a way that makes sense to them. This week we will look at some of the qualities of UDL and how we represent our efforts to help others in learning activities or simply expressing who we are so that others can see the fullest picture of us. 

To that end, our reding this week is about UDL. So are some podcasts I have included on the class homepage. There is a video and some more audio and an interactive quiz. All these latter elements are at the bottom of the homepage and are optional. But you can see just by looking at the page that there are various ways to experience the notion of UDL and ways to interact with that information. That is a part of Universal Design. 

Things to get completed this week:

• Visit the Padlet and share something and maybe comment on a classmate’s experiences. 

• Comment on the UDL reading.

• Finish your fourth explored tool

• Finish, or get close to finishing, your teaching philosophy

• Be editing/revising your portfolio

We have Office Hours again tomorrow at 6 pm if you can make it. 

The weather is so wonderful, and it is hard to stay inside. Just a couple more weeks! Keep on it!

May 19th, 2025

Welcome to Week Eight!

On Friday, Ko shared the page he has created for all of your capstone presentations and it has me thinking about video (again) and creating online spaces that help others learn. Think of all the good information you have shared in your projects and how he so beautifully captures your work. On a simple Google Site! You can do that too! You are doing that. Our class site also has so much good information.

This week we are going to look closely at the ISTE standards and wonder what we are already doing and where we can improve our digital capabilities. I can tell you after nearly twenty years of working with faculty that we have a long way to go 😊 And that is ok. We know some stuff and not other stuff... Everything is like that.

How do we chart a course forward in our learning? What can you learn that would be most beneficial to you and those you work with? One challenge is that sometimes the people we work with just aren’t aware of what is out there and what is possible. Certainly, in my work that is true. Faculty often are only familiar with email, PowerPoint, and Canvas. That is not where the world is today.

Week Eight

• Please watch the two videos at the top of the class homepage. You don’t need to watch the whole video on the left, but it is a great example of someone learning!

• Share some adventure or learning on the class Padlet.

• Read over the ISTE Standards and comment on at least two noting your strengths and where you can improve.

• Make sure you are keeping up in your class journal.

• You should be close to having four “Tools Explored” and they should be informative and awesome 😊

• Your teaching philosophy should be getting near completion and added to the class site.

• If you have not bumped into the Canva AI Assistant, you might check it out. See what I added to the bottom of the class homepage.

My friend Sian Proctor (she is the geology teacher I highlighted a couple weeks ago with a video she made) just gave a presentation at the United Nations! Wow.

May 14th, 2025

As a reminder, out office hours are tonight from 6 to 7 on Zoom at this link. 

Our classmate Chelsea Potter let me know that she had forgotten to add her name to one of the Tools pages she had created, and it inspired me to look at my Prezi account. But first, I think she did a wonderful job of creating two Prezi presentations last month. You can see them at the bottom of the page she created. Very nice. 

In my Prezi account, I was happy to see the example of the video below because it is so much nicer than the traditional static talking head and PPT slide behind I see in most tools today. Just a little motion makes the whole thing feel different. 

Also, as a reminder, this week you should be looking at the "Tools Explored" pages you created and making them look as informative as possible and, if possible, actually creating something with the tool that you can share. I realize not all tools let you do that. 

Share with us how you are doing, or what you are doing, on the Padlet and continue on with your projects, teaching philosophies, and if needed, getting a third or fourth "tool" added to our site. 

May 12th, 2025

For the moms out there, Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

Here we are, in week seven! Wow. Almost there!

This week we are going to turn our attention to the tool we explored and make sure they represent what we want others to see. Hopefully, each page gives a clear view into what the tool is and what it can do using examples when possible. By now you should have three tools that you explored and the fourth should be finished in a couple weeks. Plenty of time. 

You should be getting close to completing your teaching philosophy that includes language around technology and teaching. And you should see the end in sight for your portfolio. I hope we can say they are “finished” for the time being by the week before class ends. 

For this week: 

• Watch the two videos at the top of the class homepage. 

• Share some adventure on the Padlet

• Make sure you completed the reviews of your classmates’ projects

• Find and review your three tools and 1) make sure the paragraph font is Lato 11, and 2) add alt text to any images. And 3) make sure they represent that you want others to see. And make sure your name is on it. 

• Keep working on teaching philosophy and class project

My offer still stands around assisting with your capstone if I can. Let me know. 

I hope you had a nice weekend and please let me know if I can help with anything.  

May 5th, 2025

Week Six!

I am acting on the mid-quarter survey results by changing things up just a bit this week. I am not going to give you a rubric, but I am going to slow down a little and focus on the larger work you are all doing: your class project. Too that end, please review two classmates’ portfolios/projects and give them constructive feedback. You can email them the feedback if you wish. You can call them or text them. Well, maybe not a text message, but give them some ideas, some helpful hints, some things you are trying that they might want to try? I am not going to put any strict guidelines on this but do for them what you would like to have shared with you. 

Next week is simply taking that feedback and incorporating it into your project.

I randomly selected classmates for you to review. Here is who you got:

Bamy: Jessika, Chelsea Brock

Jessika: Liza, Annie

Chelsea Brock: Jonathan, Melissa

Liza: Lisa, Kelsey

Annie: Liz, Tricia

Jonathan: Delara, Chelsea

Melissa: Medha, Rachel

Lisa: Feliz, Anna

Kelsey: Christen, Bamy

Liz: Jessika, Chelsea Brock

Tricia: Liza, Annie

Delara: Jonathan, Melissa

Chelsea: Lisa, Kelsey

Medha: Liz, Tricia

Rachel: Delara, Chelsea

Feliz: Medha, Rachel

Anna: Feliz, Christen

Christen: Anna, Jonathan

For those looking at Lisa Howard’s project, you’ll need to create an account with the “Canvas Free for Teachers” space. Not a bad idea for anyone who may be teaching in the future. You can create Canvas courses there for free and it is a great way to learn how to use Canvas.

WEEK SIX:

• Participate in the Check in Padlet

• Please watch the three videos at the top of our Week Six Page.

• One is about changes this week and the peer reviewing we will do.

• The other is about some pretty interesting ways I created a song from the mid-quarter survey results.

• The last is a video I made about making sure our Class site and your portfolios meet accessibility standards.

And if you must, I dare you to listen to the song at the bottom of the page.

Our Office Hours will be on Wednesday from 6 to 7 again. Please show up if you can.

April 30th, 2025

Reminder that based on your feedback, we moved the Office Hours to Wednesday night from 6 to 7. 

I know I had shared a bit about Google NotebookLM earlier in a video, but I had this idea yesterday for a way to use it for class. What if I used the mid-quarter survery results and asked it to recommend ways I can improve the class for us all. Hmmm. The video below shared how that went and the audio clip under it is the "Audio Overview" that is generated. Remember, if you want to test it out, you have to be logged into your personal Google account. The UW account has it turned off. 

Additionally, here is the Faculty Focus article titled, "The Silent Crisis: Bullying Among Nurse Educators in Higher Education" link mentioned in the video. 

April 27th , 2025

It is amazing how much work you have done already! The many tools you have explored, the comments on the readings, the nice updates on Padlet! Not to mention all the variations of portfolios! Amazing. And the YouTube videos! Many of you did it!

The video on my channel with the most views is from 17 years ago. It is my daughter dancing for like 44 seconds 😊

This week, we wonder about how all the tools we have looked at and how they might be used in creating a learning experience. I created an example using Google Sites, Google NotebookLM, Quizlet, YouTube, and a Google Form (quiz). That is linked on the class homepage under the video I made while I made it. Interesting. The reading is about course structure and the videos at the bottom of the homepage are about student centered learning and student agency.

THIS WEEK

Please complete the mid-quarter survey (only half of you have done it)

Office Hours this week will be Wednesday from 6 to 7

Make sure you have met with me one on one. If you have not, email me and let me know when we can meet.

The reading this week is from Faculty Focus, a good resource for educators of all kinds

Make some progress on your projects

Stay connected and in touch! I am happy to help if you bump into trouble.

April 22nd , 2025

Happy Tuesday!

If you would like to stop by for office hours tonight, I’ll be on Zoom from 6 to 7. Here is the link: https://washington.zoom.us/my/toddconaway

For the remainder of the quarter, I can switch those up if needed. Please pick two days and times from this survey that may work best for your schedule. 

Speaking of surveys, I added a mid-quarter survey under the video on our class site and realized it may not be that visible, though a few people have already filled it out. Here is a link to the survey. 

Two surveys in one email. Sorry. They are both super short. 

If you have not made an appointment with me, please do so soon. And make sure your portfolio is linked on our projects page.

April 21th , 2025

Wow! Week Four. Look at how much all of you have done so far on our class site! Wow! It is wonderful to see.

Last week I was wondering what a user might learn from visiting our site for the first time and how they might learn from all our efforts. What would they learn from looking over the tools we have shared? What about our teaching philosophies? Would they learn anything from reding the articles and comments? What if they “read” our class site? I thought that an interesting notion. For me, as a teacher, I always try to put the students first. I try to do that both emotionally and how I structure course. For this class, I have tried to make you all the teachers as much as possible while giving you the opportunity to find activities that may be relevant to your work and your personal lives. We don’t have any long textbooks to read or long lectures to listen to, but we do have a great deal of work you all have contributed to the class! 

Today I am going to rework how all our “Tools Explored” are displayed. I am going to create three or four groups to add them to which will make two subpage sections. You can still drag them to the area you want to put them into and there will be some overlap and fuzziness in what goes where, but we can make it more useful than one really long menu.

We had one video on the Padlet this week! Way to go Liz!

For this week, we have the following.

Watch the two videos at the top of the Week Four page and maybe the two at the bottom.

• Add some progress report or exciting adventure to our Padlet

• Read and share some thoughts on the Maha Bali article

• You should have two tools added to our “Tools Explored” by now

• Continue to work on and update your project for the class

• Keep in mind your teaching philosophy should include the use of technology. It is due about week eight or nine. No hurry at this point.

Please let me know if there is anything I can do that might help with your capstone projects. Either on a technical level or just thinking about them. I am happy to help if I can.

April 13th , 2025

For week three, we're going to do some reading by the wonderful Audrey Watters. She has been an amazing ed-tech critic for many years and aside from her sometimes using a bit of foul language, she writes in a way that is easy to read, funny, and enlightening.

A few things for this week I would like everyone to accomplish.

One would be to make sure that when you're using Padlet, you are logged into your account. If you don't have one yet, go ahead and create one. It'll let us know who is posting what and that will be helpful.

This week I would like everyone to make sure that their class project, no matter what state it is in, is available for all of us to see and learn from. It doesn't matter if you are one of the people that is moving ahead quickly or somebody just getting started. We can all learn from each other.

I hope the same for the journals. If you could share it with everyone that would be helpful.

There is a kinda long video on the new Week Three homepage.

This week I dare you to make a video and upload it to YouTube and share the link with us on Padlet. Creating videos is something we should all be able to do these days.

April 8th

Hi all, just a reminder that we can meet online tonight from 6 to 7 here on Zoom. 

It is wonderful to see all of the tools you have explored! Remember, when you can, provide us with an example of what you have done with the tool. Make something in it and share it! If possible, make it relevant to your work or our class. For example, I was just checking out the Google Gemini AI app on my phone.  I recorded the screen here is what it looks like. 

I hope to see some of you tonight!

April 6th, 2025

Hi all, 

Well, we end Week One with some great work! The Padlet has some wonderful introductions and I love that you are getting right on the exploration of various technologies. I wonder, are any of them new to you? Maybe next time you will try something completely new? If you are able, please make sure to share an example of the tool with us. Maybe something we can participate in? Some things just are not built that way and that is fine, but for something that is potentially collaborative, let the class collaborate :) 

This evening I am going to move the page with the work for Week Twoo to be the "homepage" of our class site so that it will be the first thing you see when you land on the class. I am also pondering the options for the "Tools We Explored" as a dropdown menu with like 40 things is just way too long. I think a page more like our project page will better present that information. More on that next week. 

I have started a "gradebook" in Canvas so you will likely get some emails from Canvas. I am using it as a way to remind you of the work we are doing, not to punish you... I realize many of you are very busy and this is only the first week. So, don't panic, just be aware of the classwork. We do have assignments every week and I will absolutely accept late work. Just work hard, as I imagine you always do.

This week we will read a longer article by two very rebellious educators. They are both interested in students having a voice on the web and having agency in the course work they do. Obviously they have been inspired by the same educationalists I have been. It is important to me that you have the ability to direct your course of study and to create things useful to you. Ideally, to you and others in this world! The web is good at sharing, unless of course we contain the amazing work of students inside some LMS like Canvas. Don't get me wrong, there are very good uses for Canvas and other tools that keep content private. But I do think we all too often only use those tools in academia. Anyway, enough of Todd on the soapbox, you decide for yourself. 

Please be sure to add some comments on the article and raise questions, concerns, or agreements. There is no right way to comment, but giving some thought to what is being said and adding your own experience is super helpful to others. We learn a lot from the stories told by others.

I'll be holding office hours again on Tuesday evening from 6 to 7. I am very happy to connect with you any time you have questions. Please let me know if I can help! 

The video on the right side of the week two page is about Flickr. Have you ever used it? I hope you will create an account and add an image or three to the group and maybe share a thought in the group discussion there. It is a great space to share images of our world. 

This week is very similar to the first week in terms of the assignments. The Padlet, the article, your journal, working on your project are all things you'll need to complete.

April 4rd, 2025

Happy Friday all, 

The first week is always busy for all of us and there are usually lots of questions. For the reminder of the course I’ll send emails out at least twice a week. As always, if you have questions, let me know. 

I added the checklist below to your journals just so you can see what needs to be done this week. You can copy it for each week if that would help you know where you are in the class work.

Week One

I am adding a checklist like the one below to your journal so you can see what needs to be done. You can copy the one on my journal each week or modify as you see fit.

• Watched all of Todd’s videos on the class homepage

• Added to Class Padlet 

• Added image, link to journal, and maybe link to project on Our Projects page

• Read and commented on Neil Postman article

• Every two weeks - Explored a technology and added it as a page on our site under “Tools We Explored” 

• Looked over ISTE Standards

• Thought about your Teaching Philosophy

• Thought about Your Project

This email is also under the “Announcements” on the class site. I just added it to the navigation across the top of the page. You can copy the text there if you wish. 

We have had a few people add tools to the “Tools We Explored” section! Great work! Go check them out! Please add your name to the page if you created it so I know who has done what. Also, it would be really great if you could create an example of the tool to show us along with the “What it is” and “What it can do” sections. I added a Kahoot to the bottom of the Kahoot page. And I am going to add a couple examples of Notion Sites, one I was going to use for this class, to that page. 

That got me thinking that if you have comments or questions about those pages and the tools we look at, go ahead and add them to the bottom of the page. Why not? 

Please make sure you are visible in the class work. The Padlet, the reading, and the project page should all be places you have visited and contributed to by Sunday. Or earlier… Take a look at the bulleted list above and make sure you have checked off all the items. 

The weather looks pretty nice tomorrow and I hope you get out in the sun. Share an image of what you did with us on the Padlet!

April 3rd, 2025

Well, we are halfway through week one. More or less.

Here is six minutes of my thoughts about the class thus far, pondering a teaching philosophy, and how our readings and the ISTE standards might fit into one.

Happily, someone added a page about Kahoot to our site! It is a perfect example of what each of you will need to do four times over the next ten weeks. I did realize we need to add our names to the page so we know who did what…

I added an embedded example of a Kahoot on the page and it is my hope that when you add a tool to our site you can adda real life example. Ideally, one you made! And if possible, one we can all take part in!

As a reminder, these are the things we should have been working on this week.

• Visit the class site and go through what is on the homepage. 

• If you have specific topics or tools you’d like to explore, let us know on this Google Doc.

• Tomorrow from 6 pm to 7 pm I’ll be here on Zoom if you have questions or want to chat. 

• Create a Google Doc for you class journal and share it with me.

• If you have questions, email me or add them to this Google Doc. 

• Add your name and a photo to the Projects page. 

• Look over the Week One class page.

• Please say hi or share a recent adventure with us on the Padlet.

• Read the Neil Postman article and make a few comments. #2 here on this page.

• Read over the ISTE Standards and get a feel for what they are and how you already use them. And how you might use them.

• Think about a technology you might want to explore over the next couple of weeks and maybe get started exploring it. 

• Decide on which of the three projects you will create for the class. You have a couple weeks to think through this.

March 31st, 2025

Here we go!

In this class we will be doing a lot of work using the internet and you will have to create accounts with some of the tools you discover. Write down usernames and passwords. That is my advice 😊

We will also be creating some work in public spaces and if you are not comfortable using your name, you can use a pseudonym. But I need to know what they are, so I know who is who. Additionally, if you have concerns about doing that, please let me know. 

You will need your UW Google account activated to edit our class Google Site. I sent an email to those of you who were missing that, so if you got that email, please activate the account. You can login here and activate the Google account. OR – you can email me from your personal Google account, and we can use that. Either way is fine. 

I know many of you are here on campus on Fridays, but they are often long days for you. If any of you have a suggestion for some office hours during the week on campus, let me know. We can make that work. 

OUR WORK FOR WEEK ONE

Try to have these things completed by Sunday (4.6) evening. 

• Visit the class site and go through what is on the homepage. 

• If you have specific topics or tools you’d like to explore, let us know on this Google Doc.

• Tomorrow from 6 pm to 7 pm I’ll be here on Zoom if you have questions or want to chat. 

• Create a Google Doc for you class journal and share it with me.

• If you have questions, email me or add them to this Google Doc. 

• Add your name and a photo to the Projects page. 

• Look over the Week One class page.

• Please say hi or share a recent adventure with us on the Padlet.

• Read the Neil Postman article and make a few comments. #2 here on this page.

• Read over the ISTE Standards and get a feel for what they are and how you already use them. And how you might use them.

• Think about a technology you might want to explore over the next couple of weeks and maybe get started exploring it. 

• Decide on which of the three projects you will create for the class. You have a couple weeks to think through this.

Please let me know if you have questions,

Todd

March 27th, 2025

Hi all, and welcome to our pedagogy and technology class!

I realize this is a bit early, but I know that students often want to see what is coming. So, if you want to keep reading and get a head start, go ahead. Or you can wait till Monday or Tuesday. No hurry and pressure at all. I hope you are enjoying your break. I am literally at the beach as I write this 😊

I know that many of you have been working together for some time in other courses, so I am not going to ask you to introduce yourselves beyond maybe using the weekly check-in Padlet to say hello. If you have never added a video of yourself to Padlet, I dare you to learn how to do that and introduce yourself! If this group is like the class I taught last year, many of you are in your final quarter of grad school. Congratulations, if that is the case! 

A week or so ago I shared a document that asked you for topics you would like to pursue. I know some of you were not registered for the course at that point, so I offer it again. Please add anything you wish the class to look at here on this Google Doc.

Because this class is about modern technology and teaching, I am going to offer the class experiences via tools and digital places other than Canvas. For most of you, you will never use Canvas again after school. That is true of students as well. Unless they become college teachers, I suppose. Even then, you may have faculty like Ko Niitsu who teaches most of his classes out of a Google Site. Perhaps you have been in one of his courses? His students often share the work they do using Google Sites.

Or maybe you have had a class with Jody Early? She took a class to Sardinia, and they documented the class experience using a web editor called Weebly. You can check out what the class accomplished on this site. Or maybe you took a class with Mabel Ezeonwu? She takes classes to Guatemala, and this is what they documented in 2023. They used a web editor called Wix to create that site. 

In 2018, I helped a faculty here use WordPress to deliver this course. So you can see this is not a new idea. Way back in 2009, I delivered a similar course to this in a “blogging” platform called Blogspot. You can see all the work students created from the several times it was run over a couple years.

Anyway, we are going to create a class space that allows us to explore various tools and learn from one another. Ideally, all the things you create in the class will be valuable to you and sharable with classmates and colleagues. To that end, we will all be editors of this Google Site. You will get an email notification in your UW email alerting you to the addition and you will also find a link to the class. It is where the digital classwork will happen. If you have not yet activated your UW Google account, you can go to this site and, after logging in, change your account status to “active.” Then you will be able to edit the site. If you would like me to add you with a personal Google account, let me know and I’ll do that. Just send the Gmail address you want to use.

The course home page has several videos from me about how the class is set up and how to do things. I have made some small changes in the last few days, but it is about the same as described in the videos. And there are the four weekly assignments. I have tried to keep the class site understandable and easy to navigate. It is divided into a section with housekeeping information, a section of weekly work pages, a place where we can all see what each of us is working on, and a section to share our experiences with some tech tools. That sounds easy as I write it, but I know it never works out quite that simple. The site will evolve with the class.

By next Sunday, April 6th, you should have completed the following:

• Read and watched the content on the class homepage.

• Completed the work on the Week One page:

  • Contributed to the class Padlet.

  • Read and commented on the Neil Postman article.

  • Started to write ideas in your journal for your class project. That project being either a professional portfolio, a lesson of some kind, or an exploration of digital tools.

One thing to know is that when you click into the site you will be in edit mode and be able to make changes. You won’t really need to make any changes beyond adding pages for the tools you explore and adding an image and link to your project. To view it without all the editing features, you can select the “preview” icon from the top right menu items. It is the icon of a laptop and phone immediately to the left of the link icon. Or open the url (web address) in an incognito/private window.

We are using Google Docs initially for annotating and conversations around the articles we read. We will move to doing the same in Hypothe.is after the third week. Some of you may have used Hypothe.is in Canvas, but we will use the more common public version of the tool. 

Office Hours

For the first two weeks I will be available via Zoom on Tuesdays from 6pm to 7pm.
Here is the Zoom link: https://washington.zoom.us/my/toddconaway

Also, I am here to help. I invite you to call or text me (928.301.7351) or email me or stop by my office on campus in LBA 204. I am there five days a week. Just give me a bit of warning so I can be sure to be there. We can also Zoom if you wish. 

That is about it for now. 

Todd