{"id":378,"date":"2024-07-08T19:50:53","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T17:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/?p=378"},"modified":"2024-07-08T20:37:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T18:37:44","slug":"tools-are-not-systems-interactive-lectures-done-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/tools-are-not-systems-interactive-lectures-done-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Tools are not systems \u2013 interactive lectures done right"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post is my entry for Indie Web Carnival July 2024<\/a> with the theme \u2018tools\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a tool, as opposed to a machine or a system? One important property is that a tool leaves you, the tool-user, in full control. A good tool becomes an extension of yourself, increasing your capabilities without restricting you. It doesn’t make decisions on your behalf. It gets out of the way, allowing you to directly interact with whatever you’re using it for \u2013 disappearing into the background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I teach large scale lectures (dozens or hundreds of students), I want to be able to really interact<\/em> with students. This means not just running a poll or two, but having actual back-and-forth conversations around those polls and other questions. And I want to do that digitally, because relying on raised hands and students speaking up means I’d only ever be talking with a few usual suspects who are comfortable doing that in a large group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tool for live teacher-student interaction must<\/em> meet the criteria above. If it’s in the way, if there’s too much friction, limits, or distractions \u2013 either for me or for students \u2013 it just wouldn’t work. But every polling\/audience interaction app that I’ve looked at seems dead set at doing too much, too rigidly, and with too much fluff. They’re systems. They get in the way. Which makes them utterly inappropriate for use in teaching, in my view. Education is something you make together in the moment. It’s a creative act. Teaching must<\/em> be responsive and flexible \u2013 otherwise, why be in a room together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic, I built<\/s> hacked together my own online lecture platform<\/a>. It was wonderful. It allowed me to have super direct and free-flowing live interactions in lectures with hundreds of students, but without all the distractions and overhead this comes with in videoconferencing apps or on Twitch or YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A screenshot of me during an online lecture under lockdown in 2021, from the view of a student. Note the plain black background. No unnecessary distractions and other fluff.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This past year \u2013 back in meatspace \u2013 I’ve kept using my system for multiple-choice polls and many-to-one chat in my lectures. My own tool is so simple and direct that it does<\/em> allow me to feel like I’m actually having a conversation of sorts with hundreds of students at the same time. It’s fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo
Me on the stage of Delft University of Technology’s largest auditorium in September 2023, showing a PowerPoint slide with a multiple choice question, poll results, and an overlay showing one student’s reason for their answer. (Screenshot superimposed over the projection area for clarity.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Photo
What my laptop screen looks like during a lecture: PowerPoint presenter view on the left, OBS<\/a> on the right with the many-to-one chat and polling controls. I can see students’ names, but those are not show when I put one of their messages up on the projection screen. And they can also choose to be fully anonymous. (Photograph because OBS doesn’t fully show up in screenshots.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If I’m being honest, ‘simple’ might not be the best description. It’s basic, yes, but it requires hacking together some very amateurish PHP code with Powerpoint through OBS<\/a>, and it relies heavily on my input for stuff that could (for an actually competent programmer) be automated or otherwise simplified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even though it requires skill and concentration on my part, it really does function as a tool<\/em>. It gets out of the way. It doesn’t require any setup beforehand or shoehorning my questions into fixed formats like all those ‘proper’ polling apps do. I can use it to do what I planned to do, or I can decide \u2013 on the fly \u2013 to ask completely different questions. Students can ask me anything at any time without disrupting the flow of the class. And I can show those student questions and responses on the screen with the push of a button \u2013 if and when I<\/em> choose to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Ow, and this thing doesn’t require any sign-ups or cookie banners. After a lecture, all the data just disappears. Zero tracking.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think more apps should be tools in this sense. Especially in education. Ed-tech is often way too complex and frictionfull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If only I had better coding skills and more time to make this thing usable for others \ud83d\ude0b.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is my entry for Indie Web Carnival July 2024 with the theme \u2018tools\u2019. What is a tool, as opposed to a machine or a system? One important property is that a tool leaves you, the tool-user, in full control. A good tool becomes an extension of yourself, increasing your capabilities without restricting you. … Continue reading Tools are not systems \u2013 interactive lectures done right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[45,41,20],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","tag-ed-tech","tag-indie-web-carnival","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":390,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bobvanvliet.com\/notes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}