In the domain of computer nerds, there is a prophetic maxim that states:
“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Dubbed “Linus’s Law”, it first appeared at a Linux convention in 1997 but would gain fame in the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar two years later. It’s a salient reminder that proprietary software is very likely to have mistakes. But open source software, which is audited by hundreds or thousands of people, is typically more secure and robust.
Just yesterday I had a student email me and let me know I had included the wrong image in one of the labs I created for the class. It was a very subtle mistake. So subtle that in six previous semesters no one had caught it. Turns out I just needed more eyeballs.
This event brought me back to a few of the conversations I was fortunate enough to be included in during the CTL summit on January 21. I’d love to share three wonderful examples I heard (and their pedagogical soundness):
HYPOTHES.IS
Hypothes.is is a social annotating tool; it lets people collectively share their thoughts right on a document (PDF, PowerPoint, your syllabus, or even an item or page in Blackboard). As a user, you can elect to have your annotations private, shared with a group (like the class), or shared publicly. Have you ever bought a used textbook and discovered the previous owner made highlights and comments? Yeah. Hypothes.is is the modern equivalent of that.
There was a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education a few years ago that discussed why Hypothes.is is freakin’ amazing. You can get ideas of how to use Hypothes.is from their teacher resource center. FLCC has access to Hypothes.is, and it lives right in Blackboard! It’s almost frictionless for both teachers and students.
It’s a wonderful tool to leverage with your class because it showcases the swathe of perspectives across your students. Students can see how their peers interpret passages in a reading. Or different ways of solving a math problem. Or different measurements in an experiment. Hypothes.is shows the collective wisdom of the crowd. It helps students broadcast their work.
At FLCC, Curt has been a champion of Hypothes.is for years and is a fountain of information.
TRELLO
Trello is a web-based list-making tool that adopts the Kanban style. There are different lists, and each list is composed of cards that have an idea on them (cards can also have checklists, tasks, images, and other information). Cards can be dragged between lists (for instance, in project management the lists might be “To Do”, “Pending”, and “Completed”). While Trello does lend itself to project management and group work, one byproduct is that the boards can be public so others can see (and, when configured, vote on items or leave comments).
If you have group projects, introducing Trello is a great resource for each team (so they can see the status of tasks), for the other teams (so they can look at the Trello boards of other teams and gauge their progress), and for you (so you can see a snapshot at any given time). Students can show not only their work, but also their progress. There is public accounting.
One interesting way to use Trello is to twist it into a dipstick measurement. Have different lists relate to assignments in the class. Have students add cards in each list saying how they felt about the assignment. What was hard? What was easy? Where are the opportunities to get derailed? Students who can see that they are not the only ones struggling might find this comforting.
At FLCC, Aaron has been using Trello in incredibly innovative ways and I was blown away listening to the ways that he uses it.
VOICETHREAD
VoiceThread (also free for FLCC!) makes it easy for teachers (and students!) to add video and audio comments on artifacts in Blackboard. Liz uses VoiceThread to comment on student submissions – and everyone in the class can see! This is so freakin’ amazing because one of the ways to leverage examples is to provide more than one example. What Liz is doing is helping students – collectively – learn from other students. Not only does every student have the opportunity to see the art from everyone else in the class, but they can start to see patterns in feedback and begin to construct an abstract model of the work.
If you ask me, the best part of showing your work is helping students recognize that they aren’t alone. Everyone has struggles, successes, fears, ambitions, and strengths. It’s a normalizing experience. And it exposes the truth that no one is perfect. We’re all growing. We’re all learning.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
