Classroom SalonClassroom Salon is one of a kind learning tool. Designed around the concept of a salon, it elegantly combines the groups, documents, videos and users into a vibrant learning community. Salon is the most complete commenting system ever developed. Salon is built on the principles of social cognitive theory that we learn best by observing what others do and not do. It is the only tool that taps into the collective intelligence of a group like no other. Salon is the best tool for implementing flipped classrooms Salon Help Index
Getting StartedSTEP 1 - Requesting Access:Classroom Salon is free to not-for-profit education community (if you are interested in licensing salon technology send email to : classroom-salon@andrew.cmu.edu). Request an invite code to join Classroom Salon community. Watch the short video Click Here to View the Video STEP 2 - Joining a Salon: If you are an instructor or salon moderator, you may want to create a new salon. Otherwise, your instructor or salon moderator may have shared a salon link with you. Simply click on the link and join. If the salon is private, you will have to wait for the approval. If the salon is public you will be immediately enrolled into Salon. Watch the short video. Click Here to View the Video STEP 3 - Participating in a Salon: Salon is about community participation. You participate in Salons through documents or videos that are posted to your salon. You highlight documents, comment on specific sections, respond to other comments, join a discussion etc. You can also respond to global questions and "like" someone's answer to a question. No matter how big or how small your contribution is, it is *important* for each person to participate and create knowledge. Then we all will benefit from the collective intelligence of our salon and its users. Watch the short video. Click Here to View the Video STEP 4 - Viewing Comments: Salon is about transparency. If we all do our part (say 10 minutes of commenting) then collectively we have accomplished a lot. Viewing document hotspots (where most people pay attention) and reading comments from specific users is a novel aspect in salon. We learn a lot by watching what others do and do not do. This is the promise of Salon view mode. Watch the short video. Click Here to View the Video STEP 5 - Using the Dashboard: Salon dashboard is unique. It is one place you can see a summary of all annotations, most active users in salon, the timeline of comments and views, who got the most helpful votes etc. Dashboard allows you to find others you may find knowledgable. "following" the people you respect intellectually can help you grow. Watch the short video. Click Here to View the Video STEP 6 - Using Discussion Navigator: Salon sends a 2-hour digest to when comments are made by salon users. With the digest you can access discussion navigator(DN). Discussion navigator is carefully designed to support "deep" discussions in the context of the document. Click Here to View the Video How to Use Salon
Salon Modes ExplainedEach document in Salon can be accessed from one of 4 modes
Student ResourcesThe following resources can be helpful for students using salon
Instructor ResourcesSTEP 1 - Why should you use Salon?: Salon is different. It is not a course management system or a google doc or a WIKI. But it does combine some of the best features those products have to offer. Instructors use Salon, because they are looking for ways to improve instruction by creating better communication channels that allows them to assess what students know or don't know. By using salon for reading and annotation activities, instructors get to understand where students actually need help, individually or collectively. Salon is also an ideal platform to "flip the classroom". In a flipped class students are responsible for reading text and watching videos to prepare for class. But how do you know they actually do that? Or what parts of the content they are having trouble with? Salon has a rich analytics engine that allows you to quickly access all of that is needed to understand your students, individually and collectively. Salon is very flexible. Thousands of instructors and s tudents use Salon for many reasons. Whether it'd be document review, pre and post lecture reading, crowd sourcing homework or just designing activities to get to know your students, Salon can help. Request a teacher account (classroom-salon@andrew.cmu.edu) and you can manage your students and see the dashboard for each student. There is no need to change your course management system.All salon activities can be SHARED by using its activity URL (just like a google doc). All students do is to click and participate in the activity ONE OTHER THING. You can take salons, documents and annotations from semester to semester, allowing a document to "grow" as many of your students interpret the document. or critique the video. Find our which content is worth keeping and which content are worth discarding or editing. Watch the short video (COMING SOON) STEP 2 - Deciding how to get Started: You will be amazed at what Salon can do for you. But you want to keep it *simple* to start with. You are introducing a new concept, you are encouring students to be more transparent. There can be push back from students. But you want to emphasize the value of Salon. The mantra, is that salon is about "collective intelligence" that can raise the standards of all your students. The best way to get started is to pick an activity that currently does not work well at all. For example, we all assign reading but have no way to keeping students accountable. With Salon, you know which students actually read, what they read, where they have questions. If you keep the "view" mode of the activitty open, students can also see what others are reading, or where they are having problems. Another activity that might work well is asking students to watch a video and make comments and/or respond to your questions at specific parts of the video. Before you go to class, you know which part of the video students find useful or have questions. "Hot spots" from documents and videos can be the basis for your class discussion. You can design learning activities using participate mode (students only get to comments), view mode(students get to see others comments) and discussion navigator (students are able to take a discussion manay levels down, yet find an easy way to navigate there these discussion threads) Watch the short video (COMING SOON) STEP 3 - Using the Dashboard: Each student is accountable for some contribution. Once students have annotated a document or watched the video, simply visit the view mode to see where students are paying attention (hotspots), or hwat they are saying. Filter by users to see where one or more users highlight and comment on. Filter by tags (eg: this passage confuses me, discuss in class etc..) to see where you should focus on. You can use the dashboard to decide what to cover. Watch the short video (COMING SOON) STEP 4 - Export the Grade book: Salon provide easy to use tools to analyze your student comments. You can generate tables to grade your students on participation, and contributions. You can analyze them quantitatively or qualitatively. You can see how by clicking here watch the short video(COMING SOON) Videos
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Technical HelpHow to get Technical helpWe only provide email support. We also do our best to respond to all emails within 24-hours sometimes within a few hours. To get technical help, please email: classroom-salon@andrew.cmu.edu. In your email, be sure to provide the following information. |