Intentional Tech Slow Read Week 2

The slow read of my book Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching continues next week (the week of January 29th) as we read chapter two together. Here's the teaching principle for chapter two:

Principle: To learn new skills, students need practice applying those skills and to receive feedback on that practice.

And here are the discussion questions for chapter two on using technology for practice and feedback:

1. What are some of the particular intellectual moves your students need to practice in your courses? Where do they currently get the chance to practice those moves?
2. In what ways do the physical designs of our classrooms make it easier or harder for students to receive feedback (from you or from their peers) on their in-class practice?
3. What kinds of practice do your students engage in outside of class that might be useful to bring into the group learning space? And how might you use technology to help all students engage in that practice?
4. In this chapter, we read about Humberto Garcia, an English professor who has his students write and comment on a course blog as a form of practice and feedback. Are blogs still a useful technology for this purpose in 2024? What other technologies might be a better fit to today's students?
5. Most of this chapter deals with synchronous learning experiences, especially in-person classes. How have you seen technology help students engage in practice and feedback in asynchronous online courses?

You are invited to discuss these questions wherever you'd like, but especially on the Intentional Teaching Patreon. Becoming a Patreon supporter is just $3 US per month, and it helps defray costs for the Intentional Teaching podcast and newsletter.

Game Design as Learning Design with Matteo Menapace

Also on the Patreon you'll find a new resource during each week of the slow read connected to the week's chapter!

This week for chapter one on creating "times for telling" with technology, I shared a new interview with Matteo Menapace, game designer and educator. Part of the chapter focuses on the use of games, both digital and analog, as learning experiences. Matteo is the co-designer of Daybreak, a cooperative board game about fighting the effects of climate change. (Daybreak's other designer is Matt Leacock, who designed a board game you might have heard of: Pandemic.)

In the interview, Matteo and I talk about the game and its design, as well as some of the ways that designing games is like designing learning experiences. Whether you teach about climate change and might use Daybreak in your courses or you're looking for a deeper understanding of how learning experiences can be designed, I think you'll find our conversation interesting.

​You can listen to the interview with Matteo Menapace on Patreon. And for more information on Matteo and his work, see Matteo's website or the Daybreak website.

Teaching with Audio Assignments

Back in October 2022, when I launched the Intentional Teaching Patreon, I wanted to have some Patreon-exclusive teaching resources. The first such resource was a guide to teaching with audio assignments that leveraged my experience running a course podcast where students produced the podcast episodes, as well as my work with other instructors experimenting with audio assignments.

Now that I have a variety of other Patreon-exclusive teaching resources, I'm happy to make that guide on teaching with audio assignments more freely available. Starting this week, anyone who signs up for the Intentional Teaching newsletter will get a PDF copy of the guide for free. I don't want to leave out current newsletter subscribers, so here's a link to that audio assignment teaching guide for you, too!

To whet your appetite, here's the guide's introduction:

If you find the guide useful or you have questions about teaching with audio assignments, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!

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