talkingDigital

English: Classroom in SIM University. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been teaching at Colorado Mesa University for almost six years. What began as a co-adjunct position teaching a Desktop Publishing course, evolved into a full-time instructor position in which I teach five courses per semester and covering 10 total course titles. I am also the faculty adviser to the student magazine and co-adviser to the school’s chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists. I keep busy, and I love it.

My first full year as an adjunct, I began teaching a course called “Web Content Development.” The previous instructor had primarily taught basic web design, but I felt teaching communication majors about web design was a little like teaching journalists how to fix the printing press.

Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of HTML, file management, and FTP clients, I redesigned the course to focus on social media as a communication medium. Facebook was about three years into its proliferation into the mainstream and Tumblr was brand new.

In order to get the students to use social media, I made it mandatory for all students to join a class Facebook group. Only four students in the class were on Facebook and one was on Twitter (but never used it). One or two students claimed that they had some sort of moral/ethical objection to joining Facebook, so I gave them a pass. Less than four weeks into the class every one of the students had joined – even those who had originally objected.

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by Adam Cochran

The Hooding of the Doctorates (Photo credit: Michael Buck)

I worked in radio during the transition from CDs, carts, and LPs to computer automated programming and music traffic. My job was to sleep on the floor of the studio and listen for the alarm to indicate dead air. At which point, I was to wake-up and type a couple of commands into the prompt to restart the software. – D.J.s protested but maintained that people wouldn’t listen to an automated radio station. Most radio stations are now completely automated. If they have live on-air people, it is generally only during drive times.

I worked for the Walmart empire as Amazon.com and eBay were just beginning to appear as viable retail options. Walmart was one of the few retailers that didn’t scoff at the concept of people buying the day-to-day necessities online. Read the rest of this entry →

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the days before break, whether it be summer, winter, spring or Columbus Day, teachers and students are hit with an anxiousness that detracts from ultimate productivity. Teachers don’t want to grade, students don’t want to sit in class.

The solution: busy work. Multiple-choice quizzes, word searches, crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank worksheets, etc. The argument for these types of assignments is that they provide exposure to the material in a fun or easy format. In reality they are popular because they keep students busy working on something and they are easy to grade. They are better than watching a movie – right? Not necessarily. Read the rest of this entry →