A BLOG ABOUT TEACHING ONLINE FOR THE CCSF COMMUNITY FEBRUARY 2022
Welcome to the new blog from your Distance Education Co-Coordinator.
This platform is a space to showcase the great work of our colleagues across the college, provide practical digital classroom tools, and share links to media related to online education and community events, as well as wellness resources.
I'd love to highlight your creative work at the college. For questions or comments please email me, Dayamudra Dennehy, at adennehy@ccsf.edu.
Our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence. -bell hooks
Featured Educator
Michele McKenzie, CCSF’s Media Librarian
Michele McKenzie has many leadership roles at the college. She is the Subject Liaison for African-American Studies, Broadcast Electronic Media Arts, Cinema, Dance, Film, Media, and Physical Education. She also creates digital library Tutorials and Tools, is Faculty Advisor for The Student Film Club, and is active with the CCSF City Shorts Student Film Fest, where she twice served as a juror. Michele credits CCSF Librarian, Olive Thurman Wong (1927-2012) with first suggesting that she consider librarianship as a career.
Michele is an award winning archival producer and educator who has devoted her career to the research, preservation, and curation of film, television, and photography collections that tell diverse stories of the American experience. Her documentary production credits include Gil Scott Heron (currently in post-production); Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo (2017); Free Angela & All Political Prisoners (2012); Malcom X: Make It Plain (1994); Black Is, Black Ain’t (1993).
Michele contributed to the library’s Emory Douglas and the Black Panther Party Resources page, documenting the October 2021 dialogue between the artist and social justice leader Emory Douglas with our CCSF colleague, the educator, scholar, and performer, Aliyah Dunn-Salahuddin, in a talk co-hosted by SFMOMA and City College of San Francisco.
Michele is a valuable resource for all of us teaching remotely and fully-online at the college. She has created a Faculty Guide to Streaming Video, which provides an overview of online streaming video collections available through the CCSF Library and Learning Resources. Faculty and staff can use this guide to learn more about streaming video, captioning and copyright, as well as tips on embedding video in Canvas.
This month Michele has curated the library’s African American History Month Resource Guide, and she is staying fit in her free time leading Black History Month nature walks in the East Bay, where she lives. Michele's contact information: mmmckenzie@ccsf.edu
Teaching Tools: Making Videos
Fabiola Torres
Glendale Community College and @ONE educator Fabiola Torres shares examples of brief, imperfect, captioned videos that help students sense there is a caring person on the other side of the screen and encourage them to lean in. She also considers the important topic of managing a public digital identity when using instructional videos.
OLET Resources: Canvas Studio
The Onliner Lounge has a whole module on Canvas Studio Essentials. Studio is an integrated video sharing platform that allows faculty to create their own videos and students to submit video assignments. (The Onliner Lounge is restricted to trained online faculty teaching at CCSF.)
Here is a 7-minute video I made for my online class using Canvas Studio. I uploaded it to Youtube to share here, but Canvas Studio gives you a link that you can share directly with students in your Canvas course. Canvas Studio can also generate captioning, which you can edit for accuracy.
More resources for CCSF faculty teaching remote and online classes is in the Faculty Resource Center. (Only CCSF teaching faculty have access to the Resource Center located in Canvas.)
Office of STUDENT Equity
The mission of the Office of Student Equity is to eradicate the opportunity gap among all students at CCSF. Take a look at all the services they offer students, faculty, and staff.
Spring 2022 Equity Talk Speaker Series
Equity Talks is a monthly speaker series, presented by the Office of Student Equity, that invites innovative activists, educators, and thought leaders to CCSF to facilitate conversations about topics relating to educational equity. The 2022 Equity Talks' theme is "Health, Healing, and Wellbeing in Stressful Times."
February Equity Talk
The February 22nd Equity Talk, from 10:30 to noon, is "Demystifying, Decolonizing, and Designing Mindfulness", with Sonia Russell, CEO at BlackFullness. "In this session, we will demystify, decolonize, and design mindfulness in a way that is relevant, inclusive, and gives specific takeaway tools and resources that support people in reducing stress and living their best lives. Stress is real, but so is inner peace. Come. Get. Some."
Accomplice and Allyship Training Program
These workshops provide detailed trainings offered by the CCSF C.A.R.E Collective (Community, Advocacy, Resources, and Empowerment). The Student Equity Office invites you to explore and engage with concepts of cultural humility and engagement through these accompliceship trainings being offered for faculty, staff, administrators, and students launched in Fall 2021. The CARE Collective is led by center coordinators and trained peer educators, jointly focused on broadening the social justice perspectives of attendees through a set of equity centered trainings, focused on equitable cultural impact, anti-racism and personal empowerment both inside and outside the classroom. More detailed information is available on the Equity website.
EDUCATOR PODCASTS
Maritez Apigo
In "Online Learning Equitable Practices", Maritez describes how to create an equitable online learning environment. Maritez Apigo holds an Online Network of Educators (@ONE) Certificate in Online Teaching and Design and an @ONE Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles. She is the Distance Education Coordinator, the Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator, and an online and hybrid English Professor at Contra Costa College. Maritez trains faculty in online teaching pedagogy at the college, district, and state levels. She is an @ONE Online Course Facilitator of 4 courses and an Online Course Reviewer.
Geneva Gay
In "There's No Such Thing as Universal Good Teaching", Dr. Gay discusses Critical Race Theory and Culturally Responsive Teaching. Dr. Geneva Gay, Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Washington-Seattle, is a nationally and internationally known for her scholarship in multicultural education and culturally responsive teaching related to curriculum design, staff development, classroom instruction, and intersections of culture, race, ethnicity, teaching, and learning.
Jennifer Gonzalez
In "6 Ed Tech Tools to Try", Cult of Pedagogy's Jennifer Gonzalez gives a tour of the 2022 8th edition of Teacher’s Guide to Tech, an encyclopedia of over 500 tech tools, with more than 50 different categories covering all subjects, along with tools for classroom management, assessment, and feedback. There are resources for social justice and anti-racism, as well as a makerspace section that includes coding, electronics, and robotics, tools for video editing, podcasting, media and news literacy, and social and emotional learning. There are pictures of each tool and a link to a video showing how it works. Cult of Pedagogy is "run by a team of people committed to making you more awesome in the classroom."
Digital Education in the Media
What is the view from the ground on the digital divide, including grassroots efforts to address this issue? What else can be done to address this ongoing problem in a region where the computer industry was born? This program looks at these topics with several California leaders working on the issue.
Jessa Lingel discusses her book "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom". In its early days, the internet appeared to hold the promise of a new form of communication not driven by the profit motive. Instead, Lingel argues, a process took place — similar to the gentrification of our cities — in which those with wealth and power displaced myriad sites and communities of experimentation and dissent. She also discusses the still untapped potential of dark fibre optic cables right below our feet.
Community Wealth
Here are some special events & exhibits happening around town.
MOAD
Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, is the premier museum solo exhibition for Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo. The show is a presentation of over 20 works created between 2018-2021. Soul of Black Folks is a timely exploration into the varying strategies that Boafo employs within his practice to capture the essence of the Black figure. Variables such as COVID-19, the constant resistance against systemic oppression, and the commodification of Black bodies in the media are some of the issues that heighten this exhibition’s urgency. These concerns invite the questions – where can Black people find a respite from society’s ills? Furthermore, how can Boafo’s work inspire and teach us about Black life and humanity?
Asian Art Museum
Emiko Omori's elegiac video poem is a meditation on personal memories and generational trauma, on the anniversary of the signing of the order that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. “In 2022, I commemorate the 80th anniversary of my incarceration at the age of one by my government, the United States of America.” — Filmmaker Emiko Omori
San Francisco Public Library
Photographer Li Ju travelled the entire route of the Transcontinental Railroad seven times to chronicle the historic achievement of uniting the United States from East to West with the construction of the railroad. In this 30-panel exhibition, Li Ju places his contemporary photos next to the historic photos to show the tremendous accomplishments of the largely anonymous 12,000–20,000 Chinese workers who built the railroad.
Zaccho: Aerial Dance in Grace Cathedral
A 4-day performance installation, February 11 -18, 2022, at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. Each performance will be presented in 1-hour cycles repeated over 3 hours, during which the audience may move freely within the Cathedral. With over 90-foot ceilings, stained glass, and multiple chambers, Grace Cathedral will provide a multifaceted platform of many vantage points for the audience.
Wellness
As educators we are all spending more time than ever on our computers. What are you doing to stay active and healthy?
Here is a great local podcast on staying hydrated and my favorite way to exercise, dancing in my own living room.
Rose Aguilar: Your Call Radio
Some doctors say 75 percent of people living in the US are dehydrated. Living in a chronic state of dehydration can cause many problems, including fatigue, headaches, poor sleep, and even Alzheimer's. What are the best ways to stay hydrated? Can proper hydration help fend off infection from Covid-19 and other diseases?
Vicki Virk: Dholrhythms
Looking for a fun way to get some exercise while learning something positive and cultural? Try one of Vicki's Bhangra classes. As She says on the Dholrhythms website, "Bhangra is one of the happiest, most vibrant, beautiful and energetic folk dances of Punjab, India. It's a joyful release that will get your heart pumping, shoulders bouncing, smiling ear to ear while breaking a sweat. It is a happy workout!"
About Dayamudra
I am Dr. Dayamudra Dennehy, ESL Faculty and OLET's new Distance Education Co-Coordinator with Ying Liu. I love teaching and learning online. I have an Online Network of Educators (@ONE) Certificate in Online Teaching and Design, an @ONE Advanced Certificate in Online Teaching Principles, and CCSF's IOTL certification. I am passionate about building the most robust, inclusive, and equity-minded Distance Education program to serve all of our students, especially those traditionally-excluded from a community college education.
My Co-Coordinator Ying Liu teaches microbiology, human biology and genetics at CCSF and her online journey started when she took IOTL training in 2018. Ying says that she enjoyed the IOTL and the subsequent AOTL trainings because the feedback she received was beneficial for not just her online course design, but her overall teaching pedagogy. As one of the new DE coordinators, Ying looks forward to working with the OLET team to help the college improve and expand our online offerings to serve the needs of more students.
I am delighted that together Ying and I will be representing STEM and the Humanities in our shared role. We want to hear from you! What is working in your online program, whether it's fully asynchronous or remote instruction? How can we serve you? Send your inspirations to me at: adennehy@ccsf.edu