Thursday, November 16, 2017

Free Rice Directions for Service for CLC

FREE RICE (freerice.com) is an fun way to help combat world hunger.

Here's a simple and quick way you can contribute to helping those in need.  There are certainly a lot of different ways to get involved, but this particular program is one I've used in my classes for several years now.  This program is called freerice.com and it is sponsored by the United Nation's World Food Programme.

You "play" for free by answering trivia questions, and each correct answer provides 10 grains of rice to be distributed to an area in need.  I hope you check it out and come back to it often.  You can pick different categories (or reset them if they get too hard).  Please follow the directions below to get an account and to play for the group "Service for CLC" that way we can see how we are all coming together to make a difference.  Please make sure you always see "Service for CLC" above the wooden bowl on your screen, if you don't see it, it probably means the program accidentally kicked you out of the group--so just search for the group again and hit "play" from that group.  

Good luck, have fun, and please help our class (and school) make a difference in this small way in the fight against hunger.

Directions:
  1. Go to www.freerice.com and sign up for a free account using a special user name: 
    A.   If you're in my Interpersonal Class, use “IP before your first name and initial of last name  (so mine would be "IPKariF")
    B.   If you're in my Intercultural class. Use “IC” in front of your first name and initial of last name  (so mine would be "ICKariF")
    C.   If you’re a personal friend or family member of mine please use a “PF” in front of your first name and initial of last name (so an example of my friend’s might be “PFEthelH”.
    D.   And if you have family or friend of one of my students please us “PF” in front of your family/friends username followed by your initials. So if Bob Jones asked Liz Smith to play for his Interpersonal class, Liz’s recommended user name would be PFIPBobJLS.
  2. They will send you an email confirmation.  You will have to go back to your email and verify this new free rice account through your email before you can start to play.
  3. Go to: http://freerice.com/content-group/service-clc which will automatically put you in the “Groups” created for us which is titled “Service for CLC”.
  4. If you are returning to this site you will have to go to the upper right hand corner to "login". 
  5. From that profile page, click on “Service for CLC” and then “Play”.  (The first time you may have to hit "join" or something like that so it associates you as a member of the "Service for CLC" group. Once it shows up on your Group membership you should be able to click on and then hit the "play", pick your category and your off!!!
  6. Make sure you do this first so the totals go towards our group. It should show on the top of the page.  If it accidentally kicks you out of the group, please re-enter so that totals go towards our CLC group.
  7. I have set it up so you have a choice of 4 different categories: English Vocabulary, English Grammar, World landmarks, Identify Countries on the Map, World Capitals, Flags of the world, Famous Quotations and the general category of World Hunger.  You can pick which you’d like to use (and can switch categories or levels anytime. If questions get too tough, go back to an easier level!)
  8. Answer as many trivia questions as you can as often as you can.  I encourage you to try and earn a minimum of 1000 grains of rice.  (You earn 10 grains for each question you answer correctly.  For all you non-math majors, that means answering a minimum of 100 questions.)  
  9. Let's see if we can't do even better than that.  This is a fun, easy way to make a difference in short chunks of time.  So play often.
  10. Share these directions with your family and friends. Let's make a difference!
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Sunday, January 29, 2017

Featured Articles, Interviews, and Published Quotes

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Wired In edition Special Report Section on Technology and Online Education: “Professor Kari Frisch is maintaining 95 percent retention rates in her online courses at Central Lakes College through innovative methods” by Jamaal Abdul-Alim 4-24-14
Hard copy publication Volume 31, No. 6
and also online at www.diverseeducation.com

Also published with ReadPeriodicals 4-26-14
“Professor Makes Sure There’s No Disconnect in Her Online Program”

Republished online with Diverse Issues in Higher Education on 5-5-2014 “Professor  Makes Sure There’s No Disconnect in Her Online Program”

Published online in Educational Technology News 5-9-2014
“Professor  Makes Sure There’s No Disconnect in Her Online Program” http://edtechnews.tumblr.com/post/85225884977/professor-makes-sure-theres-no-disconnect-in-her


World University Consortium: Creative Solutions for Global Higher Education
“E-interview with Prof. Kari Frisch”

Online Cl@ssroom: Ideas for Effective Online Instruction Magna Publications June 12, 2012 Volume 12, No. 6 Faculty Focus: Kari Frisch
“Instructor Strategies to Improve Online Student Retention”, by Rob Kelly


Republished online by Augusta Technical College, Augusta Georgia
June 2012

Republished Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications, 10-1-2013
Faculty Focus: Kari Frisch
“Instructor Strategies to Improve Online Student Retention”, by Rob Kelly


Online Cl@ssroom: Ideas for Effective Online Instruction Magna Publications June 2012 Volume 12, No. 6
“Tips from the Pros: Save Time by Modifying Assignments”

Republished online by Augusta Technical College, Augusta Georgia
June 2012
“Tips from the Pros: Save Time by Modifying Assignments”



Academic Partnerships 4-22-2014 Faculty ecommons article on Kari Frisch presentation at Sloan C-Merlot Conference in Dallas, TX
“How’d You Do That? Tips and Tricks That Might Account for My 95 Percent Retention Rate”

Articles Where I’m quoted

Edudemic: Connecting Education & Technology, 3-6-2015
“4 Proven Ways to Turn Distracted Students into Engaged Learners” by Rony Zarom

Republished GlobalDigitalCitizen 3-9-2015

Republished by Center for Digital Learning & Policy, Alliance for Excellent Education: Digital Learning Day
“#EdTech Perspectives: 4 Proven Ways to Turn Distracted Students into Engaged Learners” Rony Zarom, Center for http://www.digitallearningday.org//site/Default.aspx?PageID=381


Online Colleges, Inside Online Learning
“9 Ideas to Keep Your Online Course Interesting” by Melissa Venable http://www.onlinecolleges.net/9-ideas-to-keep-your-online-course-interesting/

Mind Tickle
“Questions Your Business Should Consider for More Effective Training” by Mohit Garg

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Kari Frisch Bio (Copy from a D2L Conference Request)

Kari Frisch is an online Communication Instructor at Central Lakes College in Brainerd, MN. She was hired in 2001 and quickly became one of the first instructors to teach online at the campus. She has been highly involved in online development ever since. She helped develop an online course peer-review process for her school, ran the school’s Center for Teaching & Learning, chairs the Online Instruction & Technology Committee, and works as a campus representative for the System Office Campus Academic Technology Team (CATT). She is very involved at the state and international level.  She was appointed to the Minnesota State College (MnSCU) Faculty’s State Technology & eLearning Committee and the MnSCU State Captioning Assessment Project Ad Hoc group after working with her campus Disabilities Coordinator and LMS Coordinator in designing and developing a closed-captioning process for her campus. Besides having a Quality Matters certified course, she has also completed the course to be a national reviewer. For the last 5 years she has also served on the international Steering Committee for D2L Brightspace’s Global Fusion Conference and was appointed this year to the Instructional Technology Council’s (ITC) eLearning Conference Committee. In July of 2016, she was named the eLearning Coordinator for the CLC campus.

Kari has been a keynote presenter, has done several featured presentations across the United States and has conducted several webinars for both ITC and D2L Brightspace. Her most popular presentation topics are digital storytelling, digital footprints/citizenship, and of course student success and eLearning tips on her high retention. For several years her retention rate has averaged around 95%. That sparked some media recognition including an article on her in a special edition on technology and online education published by the Diverse Issues in Higher Education Journal.  In 2009 she was awarded the MnSCU Outstanding Educator Award. Desire2Learn appointed her to their EduFan Council for distinguished eLearning innovators/pioneers. And she was awarded the 2015 ITC Distinguished eLearning Educator award and the Award for Excellence in eLearning: Outstanding eLearning Faculty.  


For more information see her eLearning interactive portfolio poster at: http://kfrisch.edu.glogster.com/elearning-portfolio

Unexpected Discoveries Part 2: The Other Side of the Story

The following is a series of correspondences from the Spring of 2016.

From: Ben McGrath
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 10:55 AM
To: Kari Frisch
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Hi Professor Frisch,

I'm writing about someone I believe we both met, several years apart.  In your case, he was canoeing down the Mississippi--and I believe you met him at or near Blanchard Dam?  In my case, he was canoeing down the Hudson River, and I met him more or less in front of my house, 15 miles north of New York City, on Labor Day, 2014.  In both cases, I'd guess he was wearing denim overalls...  his name was Dick Conant.

The sad news is that a few months after I met Dick, I got a phone call from a wildlife officer in North Carolina, who was investigating an overturned canoe.  There was no body, but all of his belongings were still there, suspended in bags beneath the boat.  A piece of paper with my phone number was one of the first legible documents they turned up, which is how they got to calling me.

In any event, I'm now writing a book about Dick's life of adventure, and I wonder if you'd mind sharing your recollections of your brief encounter with him.  I came across your name while working my way through his voluminous notes and archives, which the remaining Conant siblings have been letting me look through.  I'd be happy to show you what Dick wrote about his meeting with you, but I figure it's probably better not to plant memories first...

Thanks for taking a look, and sorry to be the bearer of unhappy news.

Ben McGrath
Staff Writer
The New Yorker


From: Kari Frisch
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 11:03 AM
To: Ben McGrath
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Oh my gosh!  I can't tell you the number of times I've thought about him.  Such terrible news. I would love to visit with you and stay in contact with you regarding your project. Please share and I will do so gladly in return. Thanks for looking me up and for telling his story.

Kari Frisch
Central Lakes College

From: Ben McGrath
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 11:34 AM
To: Kari Frisch
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

here is an excerpt from his manuscript where you come in:  [please forgive formatting. I'm just cutting and pasting from his document]

11AUG09 – I am in Elk River, MN. Last night I camped at Monticello, MN, near the town park. I continue my narrative: During the start of my third stage of portage at Blanchard Dam, and after my visit with the friendly retired couple, I met a young woman named Kari Frisch (pronounced, car’-ee frish). She is an educator in the fields of theatre arts and cultural communications at a two year junior college in nearby Brainerd, MN, (Central Tech. Community College?). We enjoyed an excellent conversation for the next two hours while she assisted me with two trips over this third stage. We took little rest periods in between. Our talk ranged widely and so I much enjoyed her company. She cohabits with her girlfriend and has no children. She is happy in life and is dedicated to her students. She found it odd and disconcerting to find modern texting methods employed by one of her students in a submitted term paper. She thought it was gibberish though the student found it highly intelligible. I thought it was hilarious and though I am texting illiterate; I cited it as perhaps an example of our ever evolving language and lexicon. Who nowadays can in fact read Beowulf in the original old English? This same student missed an entire week of summer school classes and Kari was forced to set her back. Sad but true. Kari also told me about a recent tour she completed in Egypt. She said the main reason for taking the tour was to spend some time viewing the pyramids. She was annoyed because despite the overall quality of the tour, her group spent at most fifteen minutes actually walking about the pyramid site before the tour guides hurried them off to the next attraction. She lamented with emotion, “That was the main reason for crossing the Atlantic Ocean!” Her group also visited Karnak and the Valley of the Kings. I mentioned I had spent some months in the Persian Gulf and offered my take on what it is that Al Quaida wants. Kari is completing a year’s sabbatical after ten years and more of teaching. She is the senior faculty member of her department, the equivalent of department head. Before we said so long I told her about Neal Moore and his adventure and gave her his blog address. (The next time I saw Neal he said that she had been in contact with him and sent me her greetings.) This was another delightful visit. She was a good lady and I greatly appreciated the assistance she gave in helping me haul my goods. Many hands make light work, especially on a hot, sunny afternoon. Eventually she left and I continued with my chore. After portage I set up a lean-to on the beach below the dam and cooked myself a satisfying meal of noodles, beans and pickled sausage sautéed in oil and soy sauce. It was good. I then visited with a married couple about my age, Bill and Carol, who are from Fargo, ND. They were scooting around in the river bottom looking for small, nickel-sized geological formations common to this area. I saw a few specimens of these gray rocks that sported little natural sculptures resembling Maltese crosses. They are interesting and found in the riverbank in the bottom clay. I remarked about the common effort exerted last winter in Fargo to save the city from the ravages of the flooding Red River. The fellow, Bill, agreed, and just then another man and his brother arrived and proceeded to steal the conversation. One was a firefighter from St. Cloud and was affable enough. These two men were on a geo-cache hunt and were finishing up a short, canoe day trip. The older of the two was the more talkative and got out his chart of the river for this area. He showed it to me and I found it helpful. He informed me that the dam at St. Cloud was the last portage for me in this part of the country. The remaining downstream dams were equipped with locks. Since I was paddling a recreational vessel I was permitted to take advantage of this old, tried and true technology. It was a great relief to hear this. I am damn blasted tired of portaging. I have had four in the past week and they get old. Despite the welcome help at Blanchard it was still a difficult portage and close to a mile in length. My new friends soon continued on their respective ways and I went to bed.


From: Kari Frisch
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 12:28 PM
To: Ben McGrath
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Wow.  So crazy.  I'm actually in tears right now as I just re-read my recollection of my meeting with Dick, which you can read here: http://www.brainerdcommunityinternet.org/community_journalism/story_detail.php?permalink=http://ncicsj.blogspot.com/2009/08/unexpected-discovery-along-soo-bike.html 


Please keep me posted with your project. 
Kari


From: Ben McGrath
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 12:52 PM
To: Kari Frisch
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Hey, that's neat, and I love those photos.  I can assure you that you are far from the first person I've been in touch with who has mentioned tears.  Also, I've been in touch with Neal Moore, and he wrote me a long and moving note about all the things he learned from Dick, and how he believes Dick's wisdom ended up saving his life.  In fact, I think Neal may be planning another canoe trip, involving Ellis Island or somewhere out east, later this year, inspired by Dick's memory.

This is more reading than you may be bargaining for right now, but if you're interested, here's the first little story I wrote about Dick:


And then here's a longer follow-up I published a few months ago:


But there's still so much more to tell and explore, and so I'm pushing ahead with the book.

I have some other photos I can send you, too, but first I have to meet with a contractor...

for now
Ben


From: Kari Frisch
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 12:54 PM
To: Ben McGrath
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Thanks!  I look forward to the read.  Do you mind if I link out to those articles in my class as a follow-up to the article I wrote? I'd also like to share the email you sent me within my confined (and secured) classes if that would be ok with you.  Let me know.  Thanks.
Kari  




From: Ben McGrath
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 1:02 PM
To: Kari Frisch
Subject: dick conant, canoeist


sure, by all means.  I'd love to hear what the students think!


From: Kari Frisch
Sent: Monday, April 4, 2016 12:54 PM
To: Ben McGrath
Subject: dick conant, canoeist

Great thanks!
Kari

APRIL 4/5
For the next several hours (well really days), I really struggled because I kept thinking about my encounter with Dick and the news I had received about him. The context was so sad for me. How could a stranger have such an effect on me.  Our paths had crossed, but I never expected to hear from or about him again, although of course I always wondered, especially each semester when I came to this assignment.  I’m sure when I left him that day, I didn’t even know I’d be turning my meeting with him into an assignment that I’d end up using for years, or that at some point fate would intersect us again for a life reflection (and a second assignment). 


On the other hand, even though it was terrible news, I was able to get a gift from it as well.  I was able to connect with Ben.  I was able to share my story and soon I’ll be able to hear other stories of Dick and people’s encounters with him.   I was also able to hear his perspective on our time together.  We so rarely get to see that other perspective of a conversation with a stranger as we only see and experience moments from our own eyes.  So many thoughts, ideas, emotions, and overwhelming ideas of life, death and connections swirled through me.  I felt a great desire, no need, to honor Dick and this unexpected discovery.  And so, here’s what I wrote and shared first with family and friends, and now with you, my students as I continue the ripple effect by developing this into “Unexpected Discoveries—Part 2: The other side of the story” J

Kari Frisch
April 5, 2016

So I've had kind of a heavy heart which I can't quite shake since yesterday morning when I was contacted by a staff writer at the New Yorker who was emailing me about a gentleman, Dick, whom I had met 7 years earlier and was in most ways a complete stranger to me. Within the first two lines of the email I knew exactly whom he was referencing and a mass of positive memories quickly came to mind.

Dick was on a quest to paddle the entire Mississippi. I had met him while he was portaging across the bike trail that I was pedaling that day. I helped him portage his canoe and belongings as he was by himself and I was somehow drawn to him and his story. We had a great conversation, and I spent more time visiting with him than biking that day, but it was all very gratifying and unexpected, so much so that I wrote about it and have used that piece as a basis for an interpersonal communication assignment in every class I've conducted since meeting him--yes, 7 years worth of students!

Unfortunately, the journalist from the New Yorker went on to say how sorry he was to be the bearer of bad news. Turns out that in 2014, after completing his journey of the Mississippi and pursing other canoe quests, DIck's canoe was found overturned in a river in North Carolina. No body was found but all the belongings were still carefully attached to the canoe. Ben had met Dick a few months earlier on Dick's Hudson River adventure, and like me, had an engaging and memorable conversation. The journalist, Ben, had been contacted because his name and phone number was in a bound and bit water-logged journal found in one of the plastic bags.

Over the last couple of years Ben has been wondering about Dick and with the family's blessing has been going through Dick's journals, notes and archives. He was contacting me because I was in Dick's journal and he wanted to share what was written about me and he wanted to hear about my recollections (not knowing I had written something about it). He also shared that he was writing a book about "Dick's life of adventure".

With a flood of different emotions and questions, I had to respond. So I sent a brief email reply saying how sorry I was to hear such sad news and that I remembered Dick well. I told him to please share and I would gladly do so in return, ending with a word of thanks for taking on Dick's story. Before I could complete the task I had originally been working on when first interrupted, Ben had responded back with the sweet words Dick had written about that day and how much he too had enjoyed our conversation. He wrote a whole section about that day. And although we only had crossed each other's lives for a matter of two hours, what stood out to me the most was that in the mist of all he noted about our conversation, he had also written this, "She is happy in life and is dedicated to her students." Again a flood of emotions.

I sent Ben the link to the article I wrote after meeting Dick and explained how I might have to change this to a two-part assignment in class seeing as how I now had the other side of the same story.
It's odd how our stories re-merged yesterday and yet also continue to move forward together, even in his passing. I'm happy Ben is telling Dick's story seeing how many lives Dick surprisingly touched on his "solo" adventures. So to honor Dick and the legacy he left. Here's my original story about him. Stay tuned for others.