academic technology

"Google Drive vs. Dropbox, SkyDrive and iCloud"

The paint is barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall in its first official courses.

Over time, though, the hashtag has evolved into something else - a form that allows for humor, darkness, wordplay and, yes, even poetry. 

Make your own motivational poster

ideas for digital-activities

The Streaming Audio Recorder application allows users to record any type of streaming audio via their computers' speakers or microphone. It's a simple way to record audio from sites such as Grooveshark,YouTube, BBC and others. The program is compatible with computers running Windows 2000 and newer

When we gather to discuss our experiences in online and hybrid classes, we often end up talking more about technology than about the subjects we're studying/teaching. For me, it's like sitting down to write an essay with pen and paper and becoming distracted by ruminations about the nature of No. 2 pencils and loose-leaf paper. Likewise, discussions of digital pedagogy can quickly become preoccupied with best practices for using technology and not best practices for teaching. 

new hangout interface diagram

Utah State 

recommended at POD Attach text, video, to your own picture.

looks like a lot of work. People write not very good dialog and then talk it. Recommended in POD lightening round.

dropbox use

"Pinterest is quickly becoming one of the biggest sources inspiration and innovation when it comes to cooking, design, and education. That's right, education is a prominent fixture on Pinterest now and that, of course, means that education technology plays a starring role."

There are several widely-accepted rubrics (Quality Matters, the ION one in Illinois, etc.), but in my opinion, they focus on course design, not on teaching the course. When I was at Black Hawk College, we created a Best Practices for Exemplary Online Teaching set of standards based on the Chickering and Gamson's "7 Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education" meta-analysis. Individual best practices for online teaching were pulled from the literature and listed as possibilities under each of the 7 principles, and an 8th was added with some of the course design elements not already mentioned in the first 7. In other words, we created a local document that could assist faculty in doing self-assessment, peer evaluations of each other's courses, and potentially institutional review of online courses. However, our instrument was not used for institutional assessment because it was not approved as part of the faculty [union] contract. It is important for a document like this to be shared with the faculty ahead of time so that they know how their courses are going to be evaluated. I also think it is helpful to have several people evaluate various aspects of online courses, such as someone who is an expert in online education who can evaluate the learning experiences and course design elements of the course, someone from the faculty member's department who can evaluate the quality and accuracy of the course content, as well as the administrator whose job it is to evaluate teaching. If the institution uses a type of rubric or assessment document when evaluating face-to-face teaching, it needs to be vetted by online experts to determine if it emphasizes appropriate, comparable variables in the online environment. For example, if activities to promote student engagement is on that form...what does that look like online? Not all administrators or faculty who have not taught online would know what to look for as indicators of student engagement.

CELT Flickr (created October 2012)

Cool interactive map that integrates with Google and is open for contributions