Sandbox

You can use this Sandbox to try out things with the Amara tool.

The video that is primarily streaming here is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2kyr9jRkg , which is completely blank. But you can go to the URLs tab to add the URL of another video and make it primary.

Please remember to download your subtitles if you want to keep them, as they will get deleted - and the streaming URL reverted to the blank video if you changed it - after a week or two,

so the discussion boards are a very

important part of the course it's a way

for you to interact with each other to

help teach yourself and others the

material and to interact with me and

learn things from me get clarifications

from me and and also helped me learn as

well so the discussion boards are

something that I really enjoy and what

I've decided to do this semester is to

make them much more student-led than

they've been in the past in the past

I've largely led the discussion boards

but I've found that I'm not really able

to respond or interact with as many of

the comments on the discussion board as

I would like to optimally so this

semester what I'm doing is having

students essentially act as the leads or

the curators for the discussion I'll

still participate but I want you all to

get the opportunity and the experience

of leading a discussion helping to

answer questions and curating different

directions in a discussion board I think

it's good practice for you and I think

it'll enable me to better interact with

what's going on on the discussion board

by freeing up my time to be able to

really focus on posting responses I have

a full-time job outside of this teaching

engagement and there's also a lot of

work behind the scenes during the

semester to keep the course running and

that all really limits the amount of

time that I can spend actually on the

discussion board so I want to make sure

that you feel you're getting really good

feedback and having a really engage time

in the discussion board and and as such

I don't want that to have to rely on on

me being available to make sure that

that's going on so I'm empowering you

all to really ensure that we have an

active and vigorous discussion this

semester so what the way this is going

to work because of the number of

students we have about 20 students in

the class is that I'm going to divide

everyone up each week into two separate

groups

you'll be randomly assigned to a group

so it'll rotate around and that'll give

you the chance to engage with different

people

it'll make sure that your discussion pod

does not stagnate at any point in the

past I've taught two sections

this class simultaneously and it's been

really interesting to see how each

section operates as a really independent

organism the discussion boards end up

looking very different and by moving you

all around from week to week I think

it'll encourage a variety of different

styles and and and different directions

in the discussion to emerge and you'll

still get to know each other because

you'll probably be together for you know

an average about half of the discussions

since it's random so I'll divide you up

into two groups of ten into two

different discussion boards and in these

two discussion boards that's where

you'll spend most of the week chatting

with your classmates and interacting

with me and each week there will be a

lead for each of the discussion boards

everyone in the class participates in

one of the two discussion boards and

what I'll do is post the name of the

participants in each of these sub boards

on the front page of that board like I

mentioned each board has a lead and that

name will will go out in advance so you

know on a schedule when you're leading

the discussion each week in these boards

should really be related to the material

in the class so the things that are in

the lecture video are the things that

are in the book you can ask questions

about the material if there's something

you don't quite understand if there was

something you found interesting I

encourage you to bring information from

outside of the class into the discussion

can be personal information or perhaps

new scientific findings or things that

are going on outside of the class that

are relevant to that week's topic please

do bring it in it really makes it very

stimulating and and you all will be

grading each other's so the participants

each week will grade the lead of that

week and the lead will grade the

participants each week and over time

your discussion and participation score

will be cumulatively based on these

grades that you receive for these two

roles in the class so each week towards

the end of the week the curators are

leads of each of these weekly discussion

boards so the two people assigned to

lead these discussion boards in a

particular week

at the end of the week they'll sum up

the discussion and their board and then

post it on a third board that'll be

higher level and which everyone in the

entire class can look at so not just the

two subgroups but actually all twenty

students and it's expected that you'll

look at this and it should be

interesting to see the the different

summaries of what the two groups talked

about at that point you can have some

discussion about the summaries or other

topics that you want to bring up in the

the whole class forum and in general you

know most of the discussion should take

place the week in which it's most

relevant but it's fine you know for

things to continue into the the

following week especially you know on

this whole class board where the

summaries make you up some questions for

me or questions from you or other points

you want to add the summary should be

fewer than 500 words and it should be

posted on Tuesday this as the syllabus

says the class resets every Wednesday

and goes goes on to the next week's

material everyone in the class should be

familiar with what's on the whole class

discussion board and like I mentioned

all the students can participate in

comment in addition there may be some

weeks where there will be a topical

discussion a particular topic that I

thought the whole class would find

interesting and the intention is for

everyone to be engaged with that special

topic and to post on it and have

discussions on it not every week will

have this but some weeks will and if

you're interested in the grading process

there's a lot of detail in the syllabus

about this I'm not going to go into it

here except to say that the course

engagement score is is the the total

grade for course engagement is worth

quite a bit of your total grade in the

class and a lot of that grade is

determined through the peer grading

process so the discussion board is

really important

you really should participate as much as

possible and it should not be quantity

of participation it's really the quality

that matters and there are some

parameters in the syllabus to help the

participants grade the

and the leads grade the participants so

I encourage you to look through them I

don't want to go through them in this

video because they're already written

out and I think they're fairly

straightforward but this is how the

discussion boards are gonna work I think

it'll really help you get much more

timely feedback and much more voluminous

feedback it'll help me really focus on

what to respond to and be able to spend

my time interacting with your ideas

instead of sort of keeping track of your

performance on the boards and I think

overall it's a win-win for everyone so

I'm really excited to see how this works

and and and and thank you for doing the

experiment with me if you have any

questions about this please post them in

the discussion board for general

syllabus or general class questions that

you might have thanks