{"id":1427,"date":"2015-01-27T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/?p=1427"},"modified":"2015-01-27T07:00:47","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T15:00:47","slug":"communication-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/2015\/01\/27\/communication-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"Testing out a new communication tool"},"content":{"rendered":"

As anyone who has been listening to the podcast or reading this blog for a while knows, I'm a big fan of Remind<\/a> for keeping in touch with students.<\/p>\n

One of its strong points is that it is almost entirely a one-way communication channel from you to your students, with the exception of those students who have downloaded the Remind App<\/a> and who respond with a thumbs up, or a question mark.<\/p>\n

\"COMMUNICATION\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I was so inspired by Bethany Usher in episode 27<\/a>\u00a0to get my students doing some research and\/or service learning projects.<\/p>\n

I decided that my business ethics students are\u00a0a good group to try something new out with this semester, since they are juniors and seniors and I know almost all of them from prior classes. However, having a good communication tool is paramount for something like this.<\/p>\n

While we are still using Remind<\/a> for messages that only need to come from me, we have decided to try out Slack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What is Slack?<\/h2>\n

Slack<\/a> is a cloud-based tool that is aspiring to take the place of email and keeps communication all in one place.<\/p>\n

\"slack1\"<\/a>It is somewhat like a chat board, but easily lets you attach files, include images, and categorize your talk around what they call channels. If you want to hear how a sandwich company uses Slack, you can check out their promotional video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Our class now has the two channels that Slack<\/a> sets up by default (#general and #random) and I also set up a channel for them to begin brainstorming their research and service learning projects.<\/p>\n

Once a group determines what their project is going to be, I set up a channel for the group. That way, students only have to be engaged in conversations that are relevant to their work in the class, but I can check in to monitor their progress and make suggestions along the way.<\/p>\n

Another powerful aspect of Slack<\/a> is its ability to integrate with other services many of us use. I've already set it up with Dropbox<\/a> and that's working seamlessly.<\/p>\n

A couple of the students in the class are going to be planning our ethics competition event for the end of the semester. They will be using Slack<\/a> for chats, but the project management piece will be taken care of by the online project planning site\u00a0Asana<\/a>, which fortunately integrates with Slack, too.<\/p>\n

Besides my business ethics class, I also have my teaching assistant on both Slack<\/a> and Asana<\/a>. She says she likes how Slack<\/a> organizes our messages by channel (as opposed to if we just texted to each other). I especially like how I can track when stuff gets done, through the Asana<\/a> integration.<\/p>\n

[reminder]Are you trying out any new communication tools this semester?[\/reminder]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As anyone who has been listening to the podcast or reading this blog for a while knows, I’m a big fan of Remind for keeping in touch with students. One of its strong points is that it is almost entirely a one-way communication channel from you to your students, with the exception of those students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[35,68],"coauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-educational-technology","8":"tag-communication","9":"tag-edtech","10":"entry","11":"gs-1","12":"gs-odd","13":"gs-even","14":"gs-featured-content-entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1427"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachinginhighered.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}