August 2010
5 tags
Open Folklore →
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first scholarly society to shift their review process to being open to everyone rather than just peer review.
That makes this a very, very big deal for academia.
The American Folklore Society (AFS) and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries are creating a prototype of a new scholarly resource called Open Folklore. The vision for this open-access...
3 tags
“People tell us all that time that they’re getting more and more mail and often...”
– Email overload? Try Priority Inbox - Official Gmail Blog
10 tags
Using VoiceThread to Give Students a Voice Outside... →
Just like most educators, I view teaching as a process. After incorporating a new activity or giving a new course, I reflect upon the outcomes. What went well? What failed? Sometimes I know the modifications I would make the next time around, but other times I look to my student evaluations for guidance. This recently happened after teaching an introductory Spanish class online. While I felt...
4 tags
“During my time as an educator, I found that computer technology heightened...”
– Yes to technology; no to distractions - JSOnline
7 tags
7 Places & Ways to Find Copyright-friendly Images →
Do I even have to spend more space writing about how great Free Technology for Teachers is?
It's Tuesday...
If you’ve enjoyed reading so far, please consider taking a minute or so to recommend me for the Educational Directory. Here’s the link :o)
5 tags
iTunes U Downloads Top 300 Million →
In just over three years, iTunes® U downloads have topped 300 million and it has become one of the world’s most popular online educational catalogs. Over 800 universities throughout the world have active iTunes U sites, and nearly half of these institutions distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store®. New content has just been added from universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico...
5 tags
“But it’s a mistake to think that casual, social network-based games are just for...”
– 56 Million Americans Are Playing Social Games [STATS]
7 tags
“The press and the blogosphere have devoted significant coverage recently to a...”
– Views: Fixing Higher Ed - Inside Higher Ed
Is “OMG” appropriate here?
4 tags
Open to Change: How Open Access Can Work →
Last week, when I challenged readers to think about how to make open access happen, Jason Baird Jackson had a ready answer: the Open Folklore project. This project is drawing a terrific map for societies unsure of how to proceed. Partnering with Indiana University libraries, the American Folklore Society is identifying where their literature is and how much of it is accessible, bringing...
4 tags
Blackboard Learn Certified for Accessibility by... →
It only took 9 major revisions and the complete destruction-via-buyout of all their major competitors, but Blackboard’s finally done something worthwhile.
7 tags
Free Technology for Teachers: 140 New Things Being... →
Loving Free Technology for Teachers!
6 tags
Dallas-Fort Worth area schools grapple with social... →
Schools open their doors today to technology-savvy students who probably spent their summer texting their friends and updating their Facebook pages.
These are often the preferred methods for staying in touch with friends and family for a generation steeped in electronic media and social networking sites.
But should that type of direct and somewhat personal communication extend to teachers and...
8 tags
Former governors fight for digital learning →
Part of providing a 21st-century education means incorporating digital resources into the classroom, but not every school has the knowledge or necessary to implement education technology successfully. To help remedy this situation, former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and former Democratic Gov. Bob Wise of West Virginia have put their party differences aside to head a new Digital Learning...
9 tags
The Top Five Back-to-School Online Safety... →
5. What technology does the school provide for the classroom, and how will the teacher use it? Internet connected devices today range from your standard desktop computer to SmartBoards and iPads. Ask how the technology will be used in the lesson plan, and if you have questions about the educational value of something—like YouTube—ask why it’s being included.
It’s essentially a...
4 tags
6 tags
New Jersey Middle School Principal Urges Facebook,... →
“It’s become meaner and meaner and they don’t understand” the impact, he said. “They aren’t socially and emotionally ready to understand.”
Actually, according to developmental theories, they are. But just saying “No” is easier than establishing responsible online behaviors early on. Saying “No” is easier than doing something...
5 tags
Harvard Professor Found Responsible For Scientific... →
Why hasn’t someone come up with an effective way to teach academic integrity? How can we expect students to follow suit when the faculty have bad behavior too?
5 tags
4 tags
Call phones from Gmail - Official Gmail Blog →
Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail.
Awesome.
3 tags
4 tags
“I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at...”
–
Seth Godin Gives Up on Traditional Book Publishing
5 tags
HOW TO: Undo "Send" in Gmail →
I installed this Labs feature about 18 months ago, and never looked back.
Did you know you can undo a sent e-mail in Gmail? It’s a lesser known feature, but Google just made it even better than it was before. When it first launched, you were given a 5-second window during which you could hit “undo.”
Now that’s up to 30 seconds, Google Operating System discovered.
The feature is hidden from...
9 tags
5 tags
Simple Presentations with 280slides - ProfHacker -... →
There’ve certainly been some good arguments made that PowerPoint presentations don’t make for the best pedagogy. At the very least, we want to be sure that any slide presentations we might use don’t involve Death by Powerpoint.
Sometimes, though, there are reasons why we need to use a slide presentation, so it’s worth taking a look at the tools that might be avaialable....
8 tags
Why Facebook and Apple Will Win the Q&A War →
The Q&A market is on fire. In the last month alone, Ask.com relaunched with a community Q&A focus and Facebook released Facebook Questions to the first wave of users. That’s on top of the buzz surrounding Quora, Google’s acquisition of Aardvark, the explosive growth of Formspring, Apple’s acquisition of Siri and the juggernaut that is Yahoo! Answers.
Speaking of question and answer, I...
5 tags
Livescribe: Fixing note taking once and for all →
My point is that we have many different ways of taking notes, whether in the classroom or the boardroom. For many of our students, note taking is ineffective at best and downright harmful at the worst. This is where Livescribe comes in. No, really…their echo smartpen is not like other smartpens out there that just digitize what you write. This is different, and really compelling.
But...
6 tags
Checklist for an Open CourseWare Semester →
For many of us, another semester is right around the corner. For those of us who adhere to an Open CourseWare (OCW) philosophy, it’s a good time to evaluate (or re-evaluate) our personal OCW strategy. For those who are thinking about getting onboard with OCW, now is a perfect time to think about how best to go about getting in on the game.
5 tags
7 Resources for Detecting and Preventing... →
My favorite on the list:
Paper Rater is a free service designed to help high school and college students improve their writing. Paper Rater does basic spelling and grammar checks, but the real value of Paper Rater is that it tells students if their papers have elements of plagiarism. Paper Rater scans students’ papers then gives students an estimate of the likelihood that someone might...
6 tags
Coca-Cola Marketing Event Tracked Facebook Users... →
The way it worked, according to Adland, is that visitors to the amusement park wore RFID bracelets. This allowed people to log into their Facebook accounts and then ‘like’ various attractions such as the water slides and video games. If the park photographer took their pic, they only had to flash their bracelet in order to be tagged in the photo.
The educator in me wants to see this happen at...
6 tags
4 tags
Classes on the go: Distance education becoming... →
Unlike many who take courses during UW-Madison’s summer session, Peter Owen hasn’t spent any hot evenings catching up on his studies while sipping a cold beer on the Memorial Union Terrace.
Owen is a 24-year-old first lieutenant stationed in Iraq with the 724th Engineer Battalion of the Wisconsin Army National Guard. So instead of sitting near the shore of Lake Mendota while...
7 tags
“Textbooks are just plain boring,” said Short, who is a professor of management...”
– News: A Graphic Text - Inside Higher Ed
3 tags
The Best Colleges In America .. And The Amount Of... →
It’s amazing how we really overlook the financial toll taken by a college degree. How much damage have underfunding and private loans done to this generation, this economy, and this country?
Some members of my parents’ generation believe students today have it so much easier, yet this generation begins life much further behind the ball than their Baby Boomer parents.
The financial...
6 tags
Simple, Powerful Uses for Google Books →
First, it’s very handy for searching for a quote in a particular book when you know it’s there but can’t find it (though, annoyingly, you can remember that it was on the left-hand page, and about two-thirds of the way down, that memory’s of little use when you’re dealing with a 400-page book).
This used to happen to me all. the. time.
I eventually just started...
5 tags
Views: Libel via YouTube →
Such libels are bound to be increasingly common in the YouTube age and a threat to any professor in the classroom. Any one of us could be next. How can we speak freely if we must fear that any student might post distortions of our remarks on the Internet? Can we allow video vigilantes to incite mobs in the university? Can administrators be intimidated by the vigilantes and still retain the trust...
Things for Teachers: I post a lot of stuff on... →
I have been working on this post for a while. Since a lot of you are already back in school or going back very soon, I thought this would be a good time to publish!
There are a lot of resources on the web for teachers, but it’s not practical or possible to use everything. Here’s what I plan on…
4 tags
Skype Etiquette →
A lot of people know I like to use Skype for communicating, and I get a lot of inbound messages. And I’m starting to go a little crazy from the way people are using it. So it’s time for a friendly primer on appropriate Skype etiquette. Most of these helpful hints will also be useful for people using different IM applications.
A great writeup from Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch.
What are...
4 tags
“Question: What is the most useful piece of technology that a Montreal student...”
– Interesting answer. Thoughts?
Technology in today’s classrooms
5 tags
OUTRAGEOUS: Philly requiring bloggers to pay $300... →
This is ridiculous. How can you tax a hobby? How do you tax an individual’s creative output?
Are they going to start taxing grease monkeys who rebuild cars in their garage? The man who brings cupcakes into the office because he likes to bake? The geek who sets up her friends’ computers because she’s techie?
It looks like cash hungry local governments are getting awfully...
4 tags
Where to Find Free Textbooks →
Lifehacker just ran a new feature today “Five Best Places to Buy Cheap Textbooks.” Cheap is good, no doubt. But free is even better. So we figured why not take the wraps off of a new Open Culture collection: 100+ Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection.
This new and growing collection pulls together an assortment of free textbooks available online. The list is mostly slanted toward science and math...
6 tags
5 tags
“Colleges are focused on teaching kids content, not on teaching them skills, and...”
– Robert D. Atkinson, Ph.D.: The Failure of American Higher Education
Thoughts?
Things for Teachers: Happy Tuesday Tumblr... →
Absolutely worth it.
In July, I wanted to research better online tools to use in my classroom & connect with other educators for the approaching school year. I decided to share my findings with the world via Things for Teachers.
A little over a month later, I have found an overwhelming amount of information and I…
It's Tuesday...
…and so begins my solitary post for the day asking if you’d recommend me for the Educational Directory. It takes 30 seconds at this link here!
4 tags
Online Professional Development Modules from LOC →
thingsforteachers:
The Library of Congress offers online self-directed professional development modules. Most of them deal with finding, using and teaching primary sources.
2 tags
“A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members.”
– David Coblitz (via infoneer-pulse)
7 tags
8 Reasons to Focus on Informal & Social Learning →
8 Reasons to Focus on Informal & Social Learning
View more presentations from Charles Jennings
discovered via Jane Hart
4 tags
5 tags
“A study of undergraduate note-taking and studying online has found that students...”
– Surprise?
Quick Takes: Online Tools Don’t Help Students’ Study Skills, Research Finds - Inside Higher Ed 