Tanya Crenshaw with Tech Talk Hosts
Dr. Tanya Crenshaw, Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Shiley School of Engineering, talked with us recently about her passion for making videos for use in the classroom and for UP’s GreenDot program. Dr. Crenshaw favors a creative approach to video making including the use of props (like a box of toys) and her own freestyle drawings. In the podcast, she talks about the value-add for her students from her use of carefully selected online videos and tutorials as well as her own creations to free up some class time for more interaction.
To me technology in the classroom isn’t about how do I put more computers in there. It’s about how do I leverage the technology around me so I can talk to people more. — Tanya Crenshaw
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From our conversation:
Dr. Crenshaw: So, there’s ways that I do not use technology that seem like, well why not? And then there’s ways that I do use technology. So, I don’t use the clickers, I don’t care. I just learn their names and I have cards with their names on them, and whenever I want to call on someone, I randomly draw a card from the stack. So, there’s these sort of Luddite moves that I do in the classroom because I assume the clickers will break, and I don’t want to spend anytime debugging the clickers. I don’t know if that’s true, but…
Maria: Does that surprise your students when you pull out cards and things like that?
Dr. Crenshaw: I think they’ve been inundated with cards from their previous CS faculty. I think we all sort of used the card system because we’re a band of people that professionally we have to debug technology all the time and we don’t want to do it more if it doesn’t serve a purpose that something like piece of paper also serves. The way that I do use technology in the classroom, is I think it’s, it might be outside of the classroom. I am super excited, I am super excited about online classroom technology, because there are certain topics that I just don’t want to talk about anymore, and if a student can go watch an 8 minute video introducing the thing that I’ve introduced 500 million thousand times then that’s going to free up 8 minutes of our lecture to do an in class activity or talk to each other, and look at each others faces and get to know each other better, and learn about the human component in the classroom…
Sam: Nice.
Maria: That’s really interesting, especially coming from CS faculty.
Dr. Crenshaw: I know.
Maria: I think that most people don’t have that perspective. And it’s really interesting that you do.
Sam: And do you use a combination, so you talk about finding stuff. Is it a combination of found things on the Internet like videos and other things and stuff that you create as well?
Dr. Crenshaw: So it’s a mixture. So for one of my courses, I will like, I will make the online video, and I will say go watch this video, and I know, I put exactly what I need in that video because I really need that 8 minutes to really serve a full 8 minutes, because it’s for like the sophomores, and I really want to get like everything out of those 8 minutes. With my upper division courses like software engineering right now, we’re learning 17 things. So like JavaScript and Git and CSS and HTML, and like all of these things and I, half of them did that last summer for their job internship and the other half have never seen it in their lives. And so, I use things like Code School, which is a really nice online learning website, to say alright go watch this 11 minute video on Git, do the tutorial, and now let’s all try to get the same starting line. So that I know that you know like, this base thing that I can trust that you all know.
Complete transcript of our podcast Tanya Crenshaw podcast transcript
Show Notes
Tanya Crenshaw’s website http://beta.shiftf8.org/
UP’s Green Dot program http://up.edu/greendot/
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