academic technology

Authors Who Skype With Classes & Book Clubs (for free!) 

We are thrilled to announce major enhancements to our PowerPoint to video conversion engine and they are: Support for embedded video (WMV & AVI) in video conversions Support for Transition effects in video conversions Improved conversion engine with fast conversion time and more accurate results

Any author (with or without a disability) can use the Accessibility Checker feature to find potential accessibility issues and instructions for how to fix them. This article provides details on the issues the Accessibility Checker looks for, and gives some information on how to resolve them. Through notifications in the Backstage View and a task pane that helps authors navigate to, and resolve issues in their file, the purpose of the Accessibility Checker is to help authors improve the accessibility of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that they create.

One of the great benefits of digital publishing is its flexibility and the capability for ebooks to bring something for every reader. Like Amazon's Kindle Singles or Atavist's shorts, these ebooks are generally in the range of 5,000 to 30,000 words and are reviving interest in a variety of short form literature

I am adoring the virtual instrument apps that I have on the iPad for my elementary music classroom. Some of the apps that I am experimenting with or using in my classroom can be found here. In the recording above, my 3rd grade class is singing and performing "Chatter with the Angels" utilizing orff instruments, recorders, voices, and an iPad using a autoharp app plugged into the stereo amp. This was recorded using the GarageBand app on my iphone. The microphone is the phone's internal microphone.

Volume 2 * Number 1 * 2012

free video chat across platforms

The problem is that to have a Google Docs account, you need an email address.  You need it to verify your Google Docs account.  Most elementary and some middle school students don't have email addresses and their parents may not want them to have one.  Mailcatch.com is a disposable email address service.  You create an email address by just using it.  Then you go to mailcatch.com and retrieve any emails sent to it.  In a few hours, the email disappears.  You can't send email from it and you can return to it to get recovery password emails.

The 2012 Apple TV has a new interface, a new A5 processor, the ability to (finally) stream movies you've purchased through iTunes, 1080p movie streaming through iTunes and Netflix, and more. It's also as deeply integrated with Netflix as ever, and AirPlay is getting better all the time. The Apple TV also holds a lot of clues for what Apple's trying to do in the TV space, whether or not it ever decides to build an actual television.

Twitter 101 for Conference Backchannels

Bb to Moodle documentation wiki

The mission of the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy is to promote open scholarly discourse around critical and creative uses of digital technology in teaching, learning, and research. Educational institutions have often embraced instrumentalist conceptions and market-driven implementations of technology that overdetermine its uses in academic environments. Such approaches underestimate the need for critical engagement with the integration of technological tools into pedagogical practice. The JITP will endeavor to counter these trends by recentering questions of pedagogy in our discussions of technology in higher education. The journal will also work to change what counts as scholarship - and how it is presented, disseminated, and reviewed - by allowing contributors to develop their ideas, publish their work, and engage their readers using multiple formats. We are committed first and foremost to teaching and learning, and intend that the journal itself - both in process and in product - provide opportunities to reveal, reflect on, and revise academic publication and classroom practice.

A student guide to studying online - What you need to know before you enroll for an online course 

I am conducting a series of workshops in Florida and was asked to share a rubric to help teachers evaluate educational apps as part of the workshop. In 2010 Harry Walker developed a rubric, and I used his rubric (with some modifications by Kathy Schrock) as the basis for mine.

The Modern Language Association likes to keep up with the times. As we all know, some information breaks first or only on Twitter and a good academic needs to be able to cite those sources. So, the MLA has devised a standard format that you should keep in mind. Its form is:

If you're interested in learning something new, this article is for you.  Broken down by subject and/or category, here are several top-notch self-education resources I have bookmarked online over the past few years.