[Music]
falling today guys so my students know
I’m quite clumsy so thank you guys for
not putting stuff up here so my name is
dr. Jamie Goodall and that is a change
that I am still embracing I just
graduated officially with my PhD May of
last year so thank you so when the idea
of embracing change came up for this TED
talk I thought what in the world could I
talk about and one of the things that I
thought that I could talk about is the
fact that my background and the amount
of times that I’ve had to embrace change
in my life has affected my pedagogy and
how I interact with my students and
since we have mostly students in here I
thought it would be a good idea to talk
about how I come up with my pedagogy in
such a way that maybe you guys will
understand where some of your faculty
members might be coming from I just want
to say thank you to everyone who has
come before today because they made this
look so easy it’s not so one thing when
I’m in my classroom because I feel like
you know I just look at the back and
nobody’s there but it’s a lot of people
here today
so why should you listen to me first of
all y’all don’t know this about me but I
am the queen of snapchat so for
everybody who’s been talking about
snapchat today I’m the competition but
technology informs pretty much
everything that I have decided to do as
far as my teaching is concerned I know
that my students are growing up in a
digital age and there’s a lot of myths
about what that means and so in order to
kind of talk about how I got to this
point maybe you should know a little bit
about Who I am I am a first-generation
college student neither of my parents
went to college in fact my father had to
drop out of high school at one point to
help care for his family going back for
a GED when he joined the Navy and so
being a Navy brat I moved around a lot I
was forced to embrace change whether I
wanted to or not and to make new friends
and in that process I learned that
embracing change didn’t necessarily have
to be a bad thing
and that you don’t have to embrace
change simply for the sake of embracing
change so this was my little bubble for
about 15 years or so after my dad got
out of the Navy I was about 8 or 9 years
old and we settled in North Carolina you
can’t really tell the difference between
the star colors but the little red star
there in the Piedmont region that’s
where we settled Statesville North
Carolina just north of Charlotte and my
family was lower middle-class to put it
mildly and I was made fun of a lot in
school I grew up in a single-wide
trailer so you can imagine the the jokes
that students would play and it was not
expected that I would go to college my
parents of course always told me I could
do anything I wanted to they told me I
was smart and that I could achieve
anything but the fact was even though
many of my classmates did go on to
college it wasn’t a foregone conclusion
that that’s where we would go
it was totally acceptable in it as it
should be to just stay where we were and
to work locally that you didn’t have to
go to college but I said no I’m going to
go to college and my mom helped me
scrape together $50 to put in one
college application so this was all or
nothing and if I got rejected how was it
there was there was nothing else as till
we got that application in and I got in
I was accepted to Appalachian State the
little yellow star there in the
mountains and I what should have been
that happiest moment of my life the
opportunity to embrace new change going
to college was actually devastating
because I got the note saying that I had
to put down three hundred dollar deposit
to secure my spot how was I going to
come up with three hundred dollars in
two weeks when I had barely gotten $50
together for an application my AP
English teacher found me skipping lunch
as I often did because you know free and
reduced lunch only goes so far
and I was crying and he was like what
what is wrong what’s going on there’s
nothing we can’t fix let’s talk about it
and I explained to him my situation I
said
this is such an exciting opportunity but
I’m just not going to be able to do it
I’m going to be stuck here I’m going to
you know work paycheck to paycheck
direct deposit to direct deposit just
like my parents were doing and they
worked really hard but it felt like a
cycle I would never get out of and I put
it out of my mind continue my classes a
couple weeks later I get a note saying
congratulations we’re excited to have
you here
here’s your orientation information and
these are the dorm options for you and I
was like what uh mom what did you do
she’s still at Oregon out there and I
didn’t know about it she was like I
didn’t do anything what are you talking
about and I don’t know you know this is
we’re talking ten ish years later I’m
losing track I’m getting old guys um I
don’t know if I’ve made this memory up
if I’ve altered this memory in some way
in my mind but I am pretty confident
that that AP English teacher paid that
deposit without telling me and I was
able to go to college because somebody
decided that it was worth a chance and
so I did I embrace change I went and did
my bachelor’s degree and I’m here to
tell you if you get to college and you
have no idea what you want to do that’s
totally fine because if you think for a
moment that that moment meant I was
going to be a teacher sorry to
disappoint you guys I I had no idea what
I wanted to do I had no idea what my
passion was because for so long coming
from a fairly impoverished background
the only thing I could think of is I
want a job that’s going to make me a lot
of money because I don’t want to live
like this and I was going to be a
medical doctor or you know some CEO
banker or something I don’t know but I
didn’t know what I was passionate about
and I realized that I left history and
my mom had all these time-life books and
I thought I’ll do something related to
history but history’s not gonna make you
a lot of money and in my mind for
whatever reason I thought archeology
would make me money it won’t
it won’t um but I was going to live out
my fantasy life as Indiana Jones and I
did my archeological dig which was
required for my bachelor’s degree and I
found out very quickly you can’t see in
this photograph of me here with our
suite set up but that’s me in a back
brace because I herniated three disks in
my back the first week of field school
because you can imagine you’re like
hunched over all this stuff and you’re
digging you got your little you know
brush trying to brush stuff off and yeah
my back said no I get that you’re only
19 but that’s not going to last for long
so I thought crap well there goes that
idea but I was too far into it I
graduated with my bachelor’s degree in
archeology and I was like well what else
could I possibly do so it was time to
embrace change again and I said alright
well I know how the whole student loan
thing works now so I’m going to get a
master’s degree because why not more
money and I decided I could blend my
love of archeology and my love of
history into a profitable field and
again let me tell you sorry P hist folks
you’re not going to make that much money
but I loved it and I was starting to
embrace the idea that I could do
something that I loved and get through
it even if I wasn’t going to make a lot
of money so I did my master’s degree in
public history with a concentration in
Museum Studies and that’s me with my
youngest brother there back when emo
thing was still good he’s going to kill
me for this later but I did my
internship and for me that internship
was the most boring thing I had ever
done in my entire life and let me tell
you I sat through a lot of dental
appointments so I know what boring is
and I was like I just Here I am I am
embracing change I keep doing it why
can’t I figure this out everybody else
has it figured out all of my colleagues
knew what they were gonna do and I was
like nearing graduation and I was like I
I’m gonna graduate my masters and I’m
going to end up in something I hate what
do I do and so I was talking with one of
my professors dr. Sheila Phipps
I took her her women’s history class and
she was like well what is it that you’ve
really enjoyed while you’ve been working
on your master’s degree and that’s when
it hit me it took me a little bit longer
to figure this out but being a TA a
teaching assistant getting to design
assignments alongside the professor’s
getting to grade those assignments yeah
I’m the weird one who likes to grade
mostly because I use it as a distraction
from other things but I loved grading I
loved helping students figure out the
things that I didn’t have somebody
helping me figure out as a
first-generation college student all of
my colleagues knew what office is to go
to and who to talk to you and what
letters of recommendation were and what
a CV was or what a resume was and I
didn’t know any of those things
I felt so far behind so I thought I love
helping students do that so I decided to
get a PhD in history because then I
could teach and I could teach at the
college level and help those students
but boy not only did I learn a lot about
history in that ph.d program but I
learned that apparently people in the
ph.d program hate it but that they still
expect you to do it right and there were
all of these you know complaints that I
heard over and over again you know even
from my own advisors that you’re never
going to get a job in the field because
it’s so competitive you’re you know
teaching online is awful all those
online classes are terrible and you know
that you get your degree but you’re
gonna be thousands of dollars in debt
and you know it’s the job markets not
good and so I hear all these
lamentations and you know hearing my
professors complain about students and
their tech addictions and how technology
in the classroom is a terrible idea none
of my professors use PowerPoint because
they hated it and I thought why are we
so afraid of technology in the classroom
I get it technology is distracting you
know I always tell my students my
students can confirm this when I tell
them not to use their cell phones in
class unless it’s an emergency that
nobody looks down at their lap and
smiles unless they have a problem so I
know when you’re texting
all right I know when you’re texting I
know when you’re on Facebook and I’m not
going to call you out on it and I get it
there are distractions but those
distractions don’t have to be
distractions we can incorporate that
into the classroom and I bought into
these complaints for a long time because
who is I as a lowly PhD student to
disagree with all of the experts who
came before me all of these people who
were advising me and even the literature
would seem to agree with them Stewart
Butler who works for the well-respected
Brookings Institute in 2013 had said
that the traditional brick-and-mortar
college should die essentially that it
didn’t hold a place anymore that the
core business function of the contractor
college which he said should replace the
traditional institution would be
assembly and quality control rather than
running an institution and hiring
faculty or holding classes some of my
students might be like yeah sounds like
a great idea I love this this is
basically an idea in which a student
would pick and choose classes from a
variety of places and create sort of a
you know package deal
and in theory I think it sounds really
good but it also feeds into what dr.
Alex Hope said on his blog about the
future academic in which he said that
the academic of the future will not be
tied to an institution sorry dr. hope I
actually love being tied to my
institution but that they will be
thought leaders and communicators and
they will teach a range of things and
they will engage in a variety of things
and they will do so on a freelance model
that’s called an adjunct and we already
treat them poor enough those adjuncts
are brilliant
they’re great educators and this feeds
into the idea that we should continue to
treat them as they are and I
wholeheartedly disagree with him because
not only am I tied to my institution
that doesn’t mean that I’m not a thought
leader it doesn’t mean that I’m not a
good communicator or undertaking a
variety of things and imparting that to
my students and so I thought you know
reading about colleges who had banned
laptops from their
classrooms and those sorts of things how
could I talk to my peers my fellow
educators about embracing this change
not for the sake of just embracing
change right you shouldn’t embrace
technology in the classroom just to do
it it has to serve a purpose and so it
helped to inform my pedagogical
principles these four things here are
the foundation of what I believe as far
as teaching is concerned that teaching
and learning should be about passion
creativity fostering independence and
providing clarity and you can do that
with technology in meaningful ways and
so today my examples are based on my
experiences I am in history I’m in the
humanities and these examples might work
better in that format but it is not to
say that it can’t work in STEM fields or
others and it’s not to say again that
you do it just for the sake of doing it
I wanted my students to understand
because the number one thing I hear from
students is that they hate history
nobody hates history they just feel that
they’re bad at it and nobody’s bad at it
they’ve just been taught that history is
rote memorization of names dates places
and events and the reality is that
doesn’t have to be that way and by using
technology I’m helping them to see that
they can relate history to their fields
and I think part of the reason that
digital technology in the classroom
hasn’t been nearly as successful as it
could be is because a as educators were
not taught how to do it right and then
also we assume that our students are
already well-versed in the digital world
this myth of the digital native and this
myth has been well explored by experts
in the past like Kathy Davidson and
others but our very own dr. amanda la
castro in the english program who is the
professor of digital rhetoric has
explored this myth of the digital native
and helping us to understand why those
assumptions are creating a situation in
which our assignment or
course design based around technology
has not been as successful as it could
be in part because we assume students
already understand multimedia that they
know what a folks anomic element is if I
said that word folks anomic element do
you have any idea what I’m talking about
if I said tag you know what a tag is
right you know what it is and in some
cases there are people who are better at
using it than others my husband has a
hash tag that he’ll use it’s the only
one he’ll use in social media that says
hash tag Jamie uses too many hash tags
doesn’t matter what he’s posting that’s
what he puts because I include quite a
lot of tags on my digital postings and
then also we assume they already know
about digital writing because they’re
posting on Facebook or Twitter or
whatever the reality is they’re not well
versed in this necessarily and neither
are we
and so we need to create our assignments
and scaffold them in such a way that we
build digital literacy practices into
those assignments and then it has to be
done with careful attention to the
rhetoric we use in the assignment design
and providing intentional instruction
and so for some examples of some
projects that my students have done for
me is I tell them to pick a topic that
most interests them depending on the
survey that we’re in world history
American history or whatever and this is
a work in progress for me because I am
learning the problems with the digital
native myth and the fact that I have to
be ever explicit in my instructions and
so these are some of the examples the
first this Twitter pair they tweet it
back and forth at each other as
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
I don’t know if you can see their
handles but you got at you boy TGIF 1776
so he’s a little more creative than his
partner at a Hamilton 1776 but I found
that they had fairly similar digital
literacy and that it wasn’t great they
did fine for the assignment but the the
fact is the only tag they used was the
one I gave them which linked it to our
class and there were no
hi media elements to their postings
whatsoever and so this was a learning
process for me that this is something I
have to teach them I have to build it in
I had another Twitter pair with mixed
levels of digital literacy and so you
have to be cautious when you have
students where one is very proficient
and one isn’t because that’s going to
affect the outcome of that group project
I can only show you the one because the
Scotch villany go the Scotchman he he
turned that into his personal Twitter
page and you don’t want to see that but
uh in my piracy class they tweeted at
each other as if they were a colonial
governor and a pirate and they used a
little bit more in terms of those pokes
anomic elements you can see that they
included a video at one point but very
little of that and so I learned with
these Twitter projects that you know I
have to work with them to teach them
these things and it even though they got
a lot out of it there’s still more that
they could get out of it and I think by
embracing this change we can engage our
students in ways that are more appealing
in different ways I also learn stuff by
doing these digital projects because I
allow them to operate on a multitude of
platforms in this case one of my African
American history students created a trip
line I had never heard of this before
and now that I have I just want to use
it all the time but basically you can
create your own road trip and in this
case she did it by pinpointing key plots
along of the Freedom Riders throughout
the civil rights movement and she
created what would be a road trip for
anybody who wanted to take that Freedom
Ride and understand what that meant and
it’s not just a map she had to go into
each of those spots and create little
plot points and she included images and
she included quotes and primary sources
and she taught me a lot about how
digital applications could be effective
as a learning tool and so this was one
of the highlights of this this process
I allow my students to use PowerPoint
it’s my least favorite form of allowing
students to create digital projects just
because I feel like the assumption is
that it’s easy and then when students do
it they don’t put in nearly as much
effort as they might on others but I
force them to treat the PowerPoint not
as a PowerPoint but as a digital
representation of a museum exhibit and
in this case I’ve learned that by
providing them with those explicit
instructions on how to do that in ways
that are effective I’m getting very
interesting project so in this case she
literally found a theme that looks like
you’re walking through a museum it looks
like it has a floor and she made it look
like those are actual sculptures and she
learned through the process how to
balance text with images and creating
space in a way that is visually not only
appealing but keeps the audience’s
attention and so the vast majority these
students are not public history majors
they’re majoring in all kinds of
different things right and it’s
important because in digital
presentations especially I find that
students use a ton of text they treat
the visual and digital as if it were a
paper because that’s traditionally what
they associate with history and so by
using this digital model and working
with them to figure out how to balance
those elements out they’re learning that
history can be different you can do
blogs in my class as your project this
student decided that for her topic about
the Persian Empire she was going to
create a blog and educate all of tumblr
so this is public anybody who’s on
tumblr has access to her project and who
knows who she’s going to reach right and
you could see that Shirdi had a bit of
digital literacy before I worked with
her because she was already using tags
and links and images and so I had other
students whose blogs had nothing but
text and I don’t know if you’ve ever
tried to read a blog that has nothing
but text but it’s boring you lose
interest very quickly and you’re going
to go to the next page you’re going to
go somewhere else
and so by learning how to incorporate
these digital elements she was able to
keep her audience’s attention long
another one that I had never heard of is
TE Toki it is an interactive timeline
piece timelines are traditional they are
a traditional mode of doing history but
this student took it and made it modern
and she used it in such a way to
integrate digital technology into our
classroom and so with te Toki you
created timeline for an event she
actually used this as part of something
from her major she was like a finance
major or something along those lines she
decided that she was going to talk about
financial structures in the colonization
period not to get into the history part
but she figured out a way to break it up
into pieces and to incorporate who would
think that you would incorporate images
and and that sort of thing in Sue’s
financial structures and Cologne you
know the colonial era but she managed to
do it with the slave receipts when she
starts talking about the slave trade she
found images of 17th and 18th century
slavery seats she found images from
Francis Drake’s narrative and she found
ways to incorporate those and so I just
want to kind of leave you those are some
examples but leave you with some
conclusions that you can try to
incorporate whether in anybody in here
as an educator maybe you’re going to go
off into K through 12 education or even
thinking about your own work ways that
you can incorporate the digital into
your world is to not assume that tech is
useless or too complicated right I know
a lot of my older colleagues always say
well it’s just too much I don’t feel
like figuring it out and those are you
know that’s valid it can be tricky but
there are tons and tons and tons of
resources out there and guess what my
grandparents are on Facebook it’s a
little creepy sometimes my grandmother
will go on likings fries and I always
know that she’s a little bored but tech
is never so complicated that it can’t be
used in some way that is beneficial much
like any other skills students are going
to have varying proficiency with this
digital technology and if it’s something
you want to incorporate as a meaningful
component to your classroom or if your
professor is incorporating this
talk to them about your proficiency
level and say look I’m not you know
maybe they assume you’re already
proficient in this and you could say
yeah maybe I snapchat 150 times a day
but that doesn’t mean I’m great at
blogging right or maybe I have a blog
but I don’t you know I don’t know how to
create a timeline and so your
proficiency level will vary and that’s
okay
right it’s a learning process it’s about
growing in this technology and so for
professors but anybody really you want
to think about scaffolding these
assignments to target specific skills
that you want your students to get out
of it for me I know that the vast
majority of students that I encounter
are not history majors they’re not going
into the history field I’m you know I I
might get fired for this I don’t care if
you walk away from my class
remembering that the Ottoman Empire was
the most powerful and long-lasting of
the Islamic empires in the world history
era like that’s great if you do walk
away remembering that but as a nursing
student maybe you’re like I don’t care
but what I do care that you walk away
from my classroom with is the ability to
think critically and to make use of the
resources and skills that I work with
you to develop and use that in your
field and so you want to make sure if
you’re designing assignment or even
taking on an assignment as a student
that you’re making sure that those
skills are specific and targeting
specific goals I don’t do these digital
projects of my history students just for
the fun of it although I think some of
them think that that’s what it is I’m
doing it because there are specific
skills that I want them to get out of it
if you routinely incorporate digital
technology into your daily life or your
classroom it becomes a natural extension
of your pedagogy or of your experience
and so it becomes something that is
easier to do over time right and then
you want to harness your students
reliance on digital devices or you as
students you want to make use of that if
professors want to call students tech
addicts that’s fine that’s their
prerogative but the reality is that
doesn’t have to be a bad thing
right that technology can be useful in
the classroom so harness their social
media usage harness their tech addiction
harness their skills that maybe they
have and use that in a way that is
meaningful to the classroom and let
digitally based assignments serve as
teachable moments regarding digital
presence in particular I told you I
didn’t show you the scotchman’s Twitter
thing because he made it personal but we
did have a teachable moment about the
fact that it was still public and he was
putting a lot of stuff out there he
shouldn’t write you guys hear this all
the time right that your digital
presence is important but when students
create digitally based assignments
sometimes they don’t always recognize
that that you know that’s still part of
their digital presence your Facebook
might be set to the greatest privacy
settings of all time but that
information can still get out there and
if you create a publicly based
assignment that has your name on it as
most of my students do they go and
search that it could pull up your other
social media stuff and so I often use
this as an opportunity to talk to my
students about their digital presence
and about how embracing this change in
pedagogy can be very beneficial not only
to the educator but to the students
because it brings new life to the
classroom and it helps to marry our
traditional models of lecturing and
exams and quizzes which I know my
students love my quizzes you’re not in
my class thing where you don’t show but
marrying those things that are
traditional and show the traditional
learning with things that bring
excitement and show other avenues of
learning my students think critically
but maybe the exam isn’t the best place
for them to show me that they’re
thinking critically maybe the quiz isn’t
the best place to show me that they did
the reading right so this was kind of my
way of bridging what I learned over time
and my own personal experiences as a
student and my connection with my
students today so thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
Thank You dr. Goodall let’s give another
round of applause
all right so this technically concludes
TEDx Stevenson you but um before we go I
just want to say um give a couple shout
outs one to Dan for allowing this event
to happen let’s give him a round of
applause
[Applause]
falling today guys so my students know
I’m quite clumsy so thank you guys for
not putting stuff up here so my name is
dr. Jamie Goodall and that is a change
that I am still embracing I just
graduated officially with my PhD May of
last year so thank you so when the idea
of embracing change came up for this TED
talk I thought what in the world could I
talk about and one of the things that I
thought that I could talk about is the
fact that my background and the amount
of times that I’ve had to embrace change
in my life has affected my pedagogy and
how I interact with my students and
since we have mostly students in here I
thought it would be a good idea to talk
about how I come up with my pedagogy in
such a way that maybe you guys will
understand where some of your faculty
members might be coming from I just want
to say thank you to everyone who has
come before today because they made this
look so easy it’s not so one thing when
I’m in my classroom because I feel like
you know I just look at the back and
nobody’s there but it’s a lot of people
here today
so why should you listen to me first of
all y’all don’t know this about me but I
am the queen of snapchat so for
everybody who’s been talking about
snapchat today I’m the competition but
technology informs pretty much
everything that I have decided to do as
far as my teaching is concerned I know
that my students are growing up in a
digital age and there’s a lot of myths
about what that means and so in order to
kind of talk about how I got to this
point maybe you should know a little bit
about Who I am I am a first-generation
college student neither of my parents
went to college in fact my father had to
drop out of high school at one point to
help care for his family going back for
a GED when he joined the Navy and so
being a Navy brat I moved around a lot I
was forced to embrace change whether I
wanted to or not and to make new friends
and in that process I learned that
embracing change didn’t necessarily have
to be a bad thing
and that you don’t have to embrace
change simply for the sake of embracing
change so this was my little bubble for
about 15 years or so after my dad got
out of the Navy I was about 8 or 9 years
old and we settled in North Carolina you
can’t really tell the difference between
the star colors but the little red star
there in the Piedmont region that’s
where we settled Statesville North
Carolina just north of Charlotte and my
family was lower middle-class to put it
mildly and I was made fun of a lot in
school I grew up in a single-wide
trailer so you can imagine the the jokes
that students would play and it was not
expected that I would go to college my
parents of course always told me I could
do anything I wanted to they told me I
was smart and that I could achieve
anything but the fact was even though
many of my classmates did go on to
college it wasn’t a foregone conclusion
that that’s where we would go
it was totally acceptable in it as it
should be to just stay where we were and
to work locally that you didn’t have to
go to college but I said no I’m going to
go to college and my mom helped me
scrape together $50 to put in one
college application so this was all or
nothing and if I got rejected how was it
there was there was nothing else as till
we got that application in and I got in
I was accepted to Appalachian State the
little yellow star there in the
mountains and I what should have been
that happiest moment of my life the
opportunity to embrace new change going
to college was actually devastating
because I got the note saying that I had
to put down three hundred dollar deposit
to secure my spot how was I going to
come up with three hundred dollars in
two weeks when I had barely gotten $50
together for an application my AP
English teacher found me skipping lunch
as I often did because you know free and
reduced lunch only goes so far
and I was crying and he was like what
what is wrong what’s going on there’s
nothing we can’t fix let’s talk about it
and I explained to him my situation I
said
this is such an exciting opportunity but
I’m just not going to be able to do it
I’m going to be stuck here I’m going to
you know work paycheck to paycheck
direct deposit to direct deposit just
like my parents were doing and they
worked really hard but it felt like a
cycle I would never get out of and I put
it out of my mind continue my classes a
couple weeks later I get a note saying
congratulations we’re excited to have
you here
here’s your orientation information and
these are the dorm options for you and I
was like what uh mom what did you do
she’s still at Oregon out there and I
didn’t know about it she was like I
didn’t do anything what are you talking
about and I don’t know you know this is
we’re talking ten ish years later I’m
losing track I’m getting old guys um I
don’t know if I’ve made this memory up
if I’ve altered this memory in some way
in my mind but I am pretty confident
that that AP English teacher paid that
deposit without telling me and I was
able to go to college because somebody
decided that it was worth a chance and
so I did I embrace change I went and did
my bachelor’s degree and I’m here to
tell you if you get to college and you
have no idea what you want to do that’s
totally fine because if you think for a
moment that that moment meant I was
going to be a teacher sorry to
disappoint you guys I I had no idea what
I wanted to do I had no idea what my
passion was because for so long coming
from a fairly impoverished background
the only thing I could think of is I
want a job that’s going to make me a lot
of money because I don’t want to live
like this and I was going to be a
medical doctor or you know some CEO
banker or something I don’t know but I
didn’t know what I was passionate about
and I realized that I left history and
my mom had all these time-life books and
I thought I’ll do something related to
history but history’s not gonna make you
a lot of money and in my mind for
whatever reason I thought archeology
would make me money it won’t
it won’t um but I was going to live out
my fantasy life as Indiana Jones and I
did my archeological dig which was
required for my bachelor’s degree and I
found out very quickly you can’t see in
this photograph of me here with our
suite set up but that’s me in a back
brace because I herniated three disks in
my back the first week of field school
because you can imagine you’re like
hunched over all this stuff and you’re
digging you got your little you know
brush trying to brush stuff off and yeah
my back said no I get that you’re only
19 but that’s not going to last for long
so I thought crap well there goes that
idea but I was too far into it I
graduated with my bachelor’s degree in
archeology and I was like well what else
could I possibly do so it was time to
embrace change again and I said alright
well I know how the whole student loan
thing works now so I’m going to get a
master’s degree because why not more
money and I decided I could blend my
love of archeology and my love of
history into a profitable field and
again let me tell you sorry P hist folks
you’re not going to make that much money
but I loved it and I was starting to
embrace the idea that I could do
something that I loved and get through
it even if I wasn’t going to make a lot
of money so I did my master’s degree in
public history with a concentration in
Museum Studies and that’s me with my
youngest brother there back when emo
thing was still good he’s going to kill
me for this later but I did my
internship and for me that internship
was the most boring thing I had ever
done in my entire life and let me tell
you I sat through a lot of dental
appointments so I know what boring is
and I was like I just Here I am I am
embracing change I keep doing it why
can’t I figure this out everybody else
has it figured out all of my colleagues
knew what they were gonna do and I was
like nearing graduation and I was like I
I’m gonna graduate my masters and I’m
going to end up in something I hate what
do I do and so I was talking with one of
my professors dr. Sheila Phipps
I took her her women’s history class and
she was like well what is it that you’ve
really enjoyed while you’ve been working
on your master’s degree and that’s when
it hit me it took me a little bit longer
to figure this out but being a TA a
teaching assistant getting to design
assignments alongside the professor’s
getting to grade those assignments yeah
I’m the weird one who likes to grade
mostly because I use it as a distraction
from other things but I loved grading I
loved helping students figure out the
things that I didn’t have somebody
helping me figure out as a
first-generation college student all of
my colleagues knew what office is to go
to and who to talk to you and what
letters of recommendation were and what
a CV was or what a resume was and I
didn’t know any of those things
I felt so far behind so I thought I love
helping students do that so I decided to
get a PhD in history because then I
could teach and I could teach at the
college level and help those students
but boy not only did I learn a lot about
history in that ph.d program but I
learned that apparently people in the
ph.d program hate it but that they still
expect you to do it right and there were
all of these you know complaints that I
heard over and over again you know even
from my own advisors that you’re never
going to get a job in the field because
it’s so competitive you’re you know
teaching online is awful all those
online classes are terrible and you know
that you get your degree but you’re
gonna be thousands of dollars in debt
and you know it’s the job markets not
good and so I hear all these
lamentations and you know hearing my
professors complain about students and
their tech addictions and how technology
in the classroom is a terrible idea none
of my professors use PowerPoint because
they hated it and I thought why are we
so afraid of technology in the classroom
I get it technology is distracting you
know I always tell my students my
students can confirm this when I tell
them not to use their cell phones in
class unless it’s an emergency that
nobody looks down at their lap and
smiles unless they have a problem so I
know when you’re texting
all right I know when you’re texting I
know when you’re on Facebook and I’m not
going to call you out on it and I get it
there are distractions but those
distractions don’t have to be
distractions we can incorporate that
into the classroom and I bought into
these complaints for a long time because
who is I as a lowly PhD student to
disagree with all of the experts who
came before me all of these people who
were advising me and even the literature
would seem to agree with them Stewart
Butler who works for the well-respected
Brookings Institute in 2013 had said
that the traditional brick-and-mortar
college should die essentially that it
didn’t hold a place anymore that the
core business function of the contractor
college which he said should replace the
traditional institution would be
assembly and quality control rather than
running an institution and hiring
faculty or holding classes some of my
students might be like yeah sounds like
a great idea I love this this is
basically an idea in which a student
would pick and choose classes from a
variety of places and create sort of a
you know package deal
and in theory I think it sounds really
good but it also feeds into what dr.
Alex Hope said on his blog about the
future academic in which he said that
the academic of the future will not be
tied to an institution sorry dr. hope I
actually love being tied to my
institution but that they will be
thought leaders and communicators and
they will teach a range of things and
they will engage in a variety of things
and they will do so on a freelance model
that’s called an adjunct and we already
treat them poor enough those adjuncts
are brilliant
they’re great educators and this feeds
into the idea that we should continue to
treat them as they are and I
wholeheartedly disagree with him because
not only am I tied to my institution
that doesn’t mean that I’m not a thought
leader it doesn’t mean that I’m not a
good communicator or undertaking a
variety of things and imparting that to
my students and so I thought you know
reading about colleges who had banned
laptops from their
classrooms and those sorts of things how
could I talk to my peers my fellow
educators about embracing this change
not for the sake of just embracing
change right you shouldn’t embrace
technology in the classroom just to do
it it has to serve a purpose and so it
helped to inform my pedagogical
principles these four things here are
the foundation of what I believe as far
as teaching is concerned that teaching
and learning should be about passion
creativity fostering independence and
providing clarity and you can do that
with technology in meaningful ways and
so today my examples are based on my
experiences I am in history I’m in the
humanities and these examples might work
better in that format but it is not to
say that it can’t work in STEM fields or
others and it’s not to say again that
you do it just for the sake of doing it
I wanted my students to understand
because the number one thing I hear from
students is that they hate history
nobody hates history they just feel that
they’re bad at it and nobody’s bad at it
they’ve just been taught that history is
rote memorization of names dates places
and events and the reality is that
doesn’t have to be that way and by using
technology I’m helping them to see that
they can relate history to their fields
and I think part of the reason that
digital technology in the classroom
hasn’t been nearly as successful as it
could be is because a as educators were
not taught how to do it right and then
also we assume that our students are
already well-versed in the digital world
this myth of the digital native and this
myth has been well explored by experts
in the past like Kathy Davidson and
others but our very own dr. amanda la
castro in the english program who is the
professor of digital rhetoric has
explored this myth of the digital native
and helping us to understand why those
assumptions are creating a situation in
which our assignment or
course design based around technology
has not been as successful as it could
be in part because we assume students
already understand multimedia that they
know what a folks anomic element is if I
said that word folks anomic element do
you have any idea what I’m talking about
if I said tag you know what a tag is
right you know what it is and in some
cases there are people who are better at
using it than others my husband has a
hash tag that he’ll use it’s the only
one he’ll use in social media that says
hash tag Jamie uses too many hash tags
doesn’t matter what he’s posting that’s
what he puts because I include quite a
lot of tags on my digital postings and
then also we assume they already know
about digital writing because they’re
posting on Facebook or Twitter or
whatever the reality is they’re not well
versed in this necessarily and neither
are we
and so we need to create our assignments
and scaffold them in such a way that we
build digital literacy practices into
those assignments and then it has to be
done with careful attention to the
rhetoric we use in the assignment design
and providing intentional instruction
and so for some examples of some
projects that my students have done for
me is I tell them to pick a topic that
most interests them depending on the
survey that we’re in world history
American history or whatever and this is
a work in progress for me because I am
learning the problems with the digital
native myth and the fact that I have to
be ever explicit in my instructions and
so these are some of the examples the
first this Twitter pair they tweet it
back and forth at each other as
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
I don’t know if you can see their
handles but you got at you boy TGIF 1776
so he’s a little more creative than his
partner at a Hamilton 1776 but I found
that they had fairly similar digital
literacy and that it wasn’t great they
did fine for the assignment but the the
fact is the only tag they used was the
one I gave them which linked it to our
class and there were no
hi media elements to their postings
whatsoever and so this was a learning
process for me that this is something I
have to teach them I have to build it in
I had another Twitter pair with mixed
levels of digital literacy and so you
have to be cautious when you have
students where one is very proficient
and one isn’t because that’s going to
affect the outcome of that group project
I can only show you the one because the
Scotch villany go the Scotchman he he
turned that into his personal Twitter
page and you don’t want to see that but
uh in my piracy class they tweeted at
each other as if they were a colonial
governor and a pirate and they used a
little bit more in terms of those pokes
anomic elements you can see that they
included a video at one point but very
little of that and so I learned with
these Twitter projects that you know I
have to work with them to teach them
these things and it even though they got
a lot out of it there’s still more that
they could get out of it and I think by
embracing this change we can engage our
students in ways that are more appealing
in different ways I also learn stuff by
doing these digital projects because I
allow them to operate on a multitude of
platforms in this case one of my African
American history students created a trip
line I had never heard of this before
and now that I have I just want to use
it all the time but basically you can
create your own road trip and in this
case she did it by pinpointing key plots
along of the Freedom Riders throughout
the civil rights movement and she
created what would be a road trip for
anybody who wanted to take that Freedom
Ride and understand what that meant and
it’s not just a map she had to go into
each of those spots and create little
plot points and she included images and
she included quotes and primary sources
and she taught me a lot about how
digital applications could be effective
as a learning tool and so this was one
of the highlights of this this process
I allow my students to use PowerPoint
it’s my least favorite form of allowing
students to create digital projects just
because I feel like the assumption is
that it’s easy and then when students do
it they don’t put in nearly as much
effort as they might on others but I
force them to treat the PowerPoint not
as a PowerPoint but as a digital
representation of a museum exhibit and
in this case I’ve learned that by
providing them with those explicit
instructions on how to do that in ways
that are effective I’m getting very
interesting project so in this case she
literally found a theme that looks like
you’re walking through a museum it looks
like it has a floor and she made it look
like those are actual sculptures and she
learned through the process how to
balance text with images and creating
space in a way that is visually not only
appealing but keeps the audience’s
attention and so the vast majority these
students are not public history majors
they’re majoring in all kinds of
different things right and it’s
important because in digital
presentations especially I find that
students use a ton of text they treat
the visual and digital as if it were a
paper because that’s traditionally what
they associate with history and so by
using this digital model and working
with them to figure out how to balance
those elements out they’re learning that
history can be different you can do
blogs in my class as your project this
student decided that for her topic about
the Persian Empire she was going to
create a blog and educate all of tumblr
so this is public anybody who’s on
tumblr has access to her project and who
knows who she’s going to reach right and
you could see that Shirdi had a bit of
digital literacy before I worked with
her because she was already using tags
and links and images and so I had other
students whose blogs had nothing but
text and I don’t know if you’ve ever
tried to read a blog that has nothing
but text but it’s boring you lose
interest very quickly and you’re going
to go to the next page you’re going to
go somewhere else
and so by learning how to incorporate
these digital elements she was able to
keep her audience’s attention long
another one that I had never heard of is
TE Toki it is an interactive timeline
piece timelines are traditional they are
a traditional mode of doing history but
this student took it and made it modern
and she used it in such a way to
integrate digital technology into our
classroom and so with te Toki you
created timeline for an event she
actually used this as part of something
from her major she was like a finance
major or something along those lines she
decided that she was going to talk about
financial structures in the colonization
period not to get into the history part
but she figured out a way to break it up
into pieces and to incorporate who would
think that you would incorporate images
and and that sort of thing in Sue’s
financial structures and Cologne you
know the colonial era but she managed to
do it with the slave receipts when she
starts talking about the slave trade she
found images of 17th and 18th century
slavery seats she found images from
Francis Drake’s narrative and she found
ways to incorporate those and so I just
want to kind of leave you those are some
examples but leave you with some
conclusions that you can try to
incorporate whether in anybody in here
as an educator maybe you’re going to go
off into K through 12 education or even
thinking about your own work ways that
you can incorporate the digital into
your world is to not assume that tech is
useless or too complicated right I know
a lot of my older colleagues always say
well it’s just too much I don’t feel
like figuring it out and those are you
know that’s valid it can be tricky but
there are tons and tons and tons of
resources out there and guess what my
grandparents are on Facebook it’s a
little creepy sometimes my grandmother
will go on likings fries and I always
know that she’s a little bored but tech
is never so complicated that it can’t be
used in some way that is beneficial much
like any other skills students are going
to have varying proficiency with this
digital technology and if it’s something
you want to incorporate as a meaningful
component to your classroom or if your
professor is incorporating this
talk to them about your proficiency
level and say look I’m not you know
maybe they assume you’re already
proficient in this and you could say
yeah maybe I snapchat 150 times a day
but that doesn’t mean I’m great at
blogging right or maybe I have a blog
but I don’t you know I don’t know how to
create a timeline and so your
proficiency level will vary and that’s
okay
right it’s a learning process it’s about
growing in this technology and so for
professors but anybody really you want
to think about scaffolding these
assignments to target specific skills
that you want your students to get out
of it for me I know that the vast
majority of students that I encounter
are not history majors they’re not going
into the history field I’m you know I I
might get fired for this I don’t care if
you walk away from my class
remembering that the Ottoman Empire was
the most powerful and long-lasting of
the Islamic empires in the world history
era like that’s great if you do walk
away remembering that but as a nursing
student maybe you’re like I don’t care
but what I do care that you walk away
from my classroom with is the ability to
think critically and to make use of the
resources and skills that I work with
you to develop and use that in your
field and so you want to make sure if
you’re designing assignment or even
taking on an assignment as a student
that you’re making sure that those
skills are specific and targeting
specific goals I don’t do these digital
projects of my history students just for
the fun of it although I think some of
them think that that’s what it is I’m
doing it because there are specific
skills that I want them to get out of it
if you routinely incorporate digital
technology into your daily life or your
classroom it becomes a natural extension
of your pedagogy or of your experience
and so it becomes something that is
easier to do over time right and then
you want to harness your students
reliance on digital devices or you as
students you want to make use of that if
professors want to call students tech
addicts that’s fine that’s their
prerogative but the reality is that
doesn’t have to be a bad thing
right that technology can be useful in
the classroom so harness their social
media usage harness their tech addiction
harness their skills that maybe they
have and use that in a way that is
meaningful to the classroom and let
digitally based assignments serve as
teachable moments regarding digital
presence in particular I told you I
didn’t show you the scotchman’s Twitter
thing because he made it personal but we
did have a teachable moment about the
fact that it was still public and he was
putting a lot of stuff out there he
shouldn’t write you guys hear this all
the time right that your digital
presence is important but when students
create digitally based assignments
sometimes they don’t always recognize
that that you know that’s still part of
their digital presence your Facebook
might be set to the greatest privacy
settings of all time but that
information can still get out there and
if you create a publicly based
assignment that has your name on it as
most of my students do they go and
search that it could pull up your other
social media stuff and so I often use
this as an opportunity to talk to my
students about their digital presence
and about how embracing this change in
pedagogy can be very beneficial not only
to the educator but to the students
because it brings new life to the
classroom and it helps to marry our
traditional models of lecturing and
exams and quizzes which I know my
students love my quizzes you’re not in
my class thing where you don’t show but
marrying those things that are
traditional and show the traditional
learning with things that bring
excitement and show other avenues of
learning my students think critically
but maybe the exam isn’t the best place
for them to show me that they’re
thinking critically maybe the quiz isn’t
the best place to show me that they did
the reading right so this was kind of my
way of bridging what I learned over time
and my own personal experiences as a
student and my connection with my
students today so thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
Thank You dr. Goodall let’s give another
round of applause
all right so this technically concludes
TEDx Stevenson you but um before we go I
just want to say um give a couple shout
outs one to Dan for allowing this event
to happen let’s give him a round of
applause
[Applause]
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