10/01/2009 • 10:10 am 0
Google Docs Become More Student-Friendly.
Follow the link to read about the addition of math equation tools to Google Docs. In addition to enabling students to write with these tools, this gives faculty another tool for grading online–gotta save those trees and the printer ink!
Here’s my lame English major attempt to use the equation editor:
google equation editor
Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, hypertext, online learning, open source, technology , google
06/24/2009 • 1:24 pm 0
An interesting experiment I heard about on Twitter, of course, from Gardner Campbell at Baylor (http://www.twitter.com/GardnerCampbell). Here’s his blog commentary and a few other responses to the experiment:
“Twitter in the history class, and the ‘uni’ in ‘university’”: http://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=840
“The Twitter Experiment: Bringing Twitter to the Classroom at UT Dallas”: http://kesmit3.blogspot.com/2009/04/twitter-experiment-bringing-twitter-to.html
Comments on the experiment from Monica Rankin: http://www.utdallas.edu/~mrankin/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm
Derek Bruff’s discussion of the project on Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/?p=250
Filed under: blogging, communication, digital literacy, education, free stuff, instant messsaging, social network, teaching, technology
06/12/2009 • 2:51 pm 0
Do you agree with this list of the Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies? The table shows former rankings of items from 2007 and 2008, providing an interesting view of how some have jumped radically into prominence and others have fallen away. PowerPoint still ranks high at #10–I was surprised by that. Look through the list and notice how many of the tools are free and web-based, even though a number of proprietary software tools, like Adobe Connect, Camtasia Studio, and Photoshop are still indispensible.
Filed under: digital literacy, document delivery, education, free stuff, learning, open source, software, teaching, technology
02/09/2009 • 6:17 pm 0
It’s been a year since I first posted about Twitter. I was harsh, unkind, suggesting that we were twits, me included. Yet, I gave it a long chance to become part of my daily technology-reading routine, alongside reading RSS blog feeds, online news, email, calendar agenda.
During that time, I thought a lot about whether it could usefully be an educational tool, and I think that it has developed into one, not limited to a prescribed use, but open to your imagination.
Twitter is a tool for microblogging. Micro, because you are limited to 140 characters. Go over and get a warning, meet the 140 exactly and you’ve created a twoosh. Blogging, because you are publishing, and if I must remind you again, a blog is not a discussion board. You publish for your own reasons and replies are gravy. On Twitter, you may get a reply, a re-tweet when someone wants to let more people know what you said, a direct message that is not public, or you may get nothing at all. On occasion, your tweet will create a ruckus and it will spread like a virus, but virality is not something you can control.
I use it personally and professionally by carefully picking people to follow whom I know personally and/or professionally or would like to know. I follow around a hundred and that’s plenty for me, because I like to keep up with what they are saying, and that’s not as hard as it sounds because there are a host of applications and plugins that make it easy to stay connected. I often have both Tweetdeck and Twhirl open, or might go to the Twitter web page, using the Firefox plugin Power Twitter, because it shows pix and videos inline. Another Firefox plugin, Twitterfox, pops up with new Tweets from the browser status bar. You can have Twitter update your Facebook status through a Facebook app, and you can install a Twitter gadget alongside your Gmail.
Professionally, I benefit from hearing about new technology, following links to neat blogs and articles and videos about technology, as well as hearing appeals for answers to complicated technology problems, or news about successes. And along the way, these professional voices become a community I belong to, not one that is all work and no play.
What can you use it for in your classes? Well, I hear that it can work as a classroom response system if all your students are equipped with computers or web-enabled mobiles. You would “collect” the responses on the Twitter web page if you wanted to display it.
Although I’m not a fan of using Twitter to create threads, hash-mark tagging (#your keyword) allows you to see all the comments with the same tag. So, you can create a tag for your group or class and then see them all on the Twitter search page. You might allow students to create what’s referred to as a backchannel in the class, an ongoing Twitter discussion of participants (students)–such use of Twitter is now common at conferences and large meetings, or at national events like the recent election or last night’s Grammy Awards.
I’ve gone way over my 140 character limit. Give it a try, a good long try, and let me know what you think.
Filed under: blogging, collaboration, communication, free stuff, social network
11/21/2008 • 1:00 pm 0
You’re all familiar with college pilots of technologies that are being considered for campus-wide adoption–those are the pilots with a capital P that seem to drag out over a good portion of a year, all with the best intentions, not necessarily in this order:
I’m surely leaving something out, but you know the process. Such a process is necessary for contracted technologies that are going to cost a pretty penny to implement.
Then there are the pilots that you might be implementing on your own from a wide choice of free Web 2.0 or Open Source tools. Certainly, it’s not necessary for a college to go through a formal adoption strategy for a free tool–no money changes hands, and what works in your discipline and class might not be the best tool for the next person’s class. We’re missing the point of teaching creatively if we try to stifle creative experimentation with free tools.
That said, Ruth Reynard suggests that you can run your own pilot in your own classroom with these free tools, and that it becomes a good learning experience for your students to be involved in evaluating the effectiveness of the pilot with the small p. In “6 Ways not to become Rote Using Technology,” Reynard suggests using a pattern of implementation similar to the one above, but more tailored to your course:
I’m reminded of the EDUCAUSE surveys of students that reveal student preferences for technology that faculty know how to use well, and think this approach strikes a balance between the creative innovator and the expert. Capital P pilots aim for achieving a standard of expertise before implementation and lower-case p pilots engage students in innovation and evaluation of technology and learning. There is good cause for both to be happening.
What Web 2.0 tools have you tried out in your courses and to what success?
Image Author: Luca Cremonini Source: http://www.railsonwave.it/railsonwave/2007/1/2/web-2-0-map Original Source: Markus Angermeier Source: http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5
Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, learning, open source, pedagogy, pilots, teaching, technology
11/13/2008 • 2:32 pm 0
I think you knew after seeing my ToonDoo cartoons that I would be up for the next opportunity to create a little narrative, as long as I don’t have to draw–that would be ugly!
From xtranormal.com comes my first film, Find the Secret:
Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff
09/25/2008 • 2:24 pm 0
From the comment on my recent post “yes yes, of course, the desk!” a homegrown innovation of the new touchscreen developments:
Filed under: Web 2.0, free stuff, innovation, open source, software, technology
04/27/2007 • 3:59 pm 5
Luckily I can change the time stamp on this post, so it still looks like I posted in the morning.
If you are curious about those web-conferencing products that allow participants to chat, write on a whiteboard, share desktops, and the like, you can download a free version of Elluminate Live, limited to 3 participants. I think it’s a good way to see what it’s like to moderate such a session. I see this limited version useful for office hours, tutorials, or collaborating on documents in real time, but when you all can’t get together.
I’ve tried it with Sara, even though she’s just on the other side of the office, and it works pretty well. There was some lag in a video presentation, but participants wouldn’t be aware of that, as we were. Still, for free, it is a good way to see how the technology works. Of course, they have more advanced and more costly products.
Filed under: education, free stuff, video conferencing
Presence: Education in Virtual Worlds
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Barbara Pittman
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