A practical-minded and lucid instruction manual for teaching online.
Cohn and Greer offer a comprehensive guidebook for designing effective online learning experiences.
Constructing an effective online learning experience is notoriously difficult, and, as the authors observe, a live online course “can often feel uninspired and, frankly, boring.” However, they assert, an online learning experience is also filled with promise—one can customize it to serve the specific needs of the students in question in a manner that emphasizes their agency, putting “learners in the driver’s seat.” To create an “individualized learning experience,” one needs to adopt an “experience design model” that interprets learning as an active affair demanding the engaged participation of the learner. The teacher, therefore, must discover as much as possible about the needs of the learners, to the extent of conducting research through targeted surveys and focus groups. Being an effective learning designer requires the teacher to remain flexible and responsive to an ever-changing environment: “You have a unique set of skills as a learning designer. You have to create an experience that is structured and easy for users to understand, while also being responsive to different learners’ needs and interests as you encounter them.” Following this guide, a teacher proceeds in reverse, using “backward design” that organizes the course around well-defined goals. With great clarity and helpful specificity, Cohn and Greer cover a remarkable swath of territory, discussing learner engagement, the writing of a course text, and the production of videos and webinars. The thoroughness of the book is impressive—it is hard to imagine another single-volume work, especially one so concise, illuminating so many different topics. The authors practice what they preach, writing only in the plainest and most accessible language. The reader may tire of the gratuitous use of euphemisms—for example, the employment of the awkward “learning designer” in place of “teacher” is as silly as it is pointless. Regardless, this is a valuable resource for anyone who teaches online courses.
A practical-minded and lucid instruction manual for teaching online.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781959029168
Page Count: 222
Publisher: Rosenfeld Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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