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How to use Voxopop

Seems like an interesting tool for getting students to practice oral skills outside of the classroom as well. I might like to use this idea at the beginning of the school year to have students introduce themselves to one another.

A lifestyle blog about trying to simplify tasks in your life sometimes with technology.

Tutorial on blogging with Tumblr in an short video (7')

Twitter, the popular microblogging site that allows users to post 140-character "tweets," both intrigues and irritates faculty, according to a Faculty Focus survey. Some embrace it as a clever way to teach concision and get students writing, thinking, and connecting with the course material and one another.

Ready to try them. Thank you for sharing this article!

I really like this tool. I will definitely use it this fall.

Hi, O.K. this is Padlet. ;-)

This is a quick tutorial for embedding audio into QR codes. it provides a couple examples of how this might be used in an educational setting.

Adrianne, I like your link a lot. QR is a great helper. I have used it last year and make easy to my students to get faster to pages I wanted them to go.

At the college where I teach, professors have the unique opportunity every May to develop a course outside of their typical curriculum. Teachers get to explore their interests in new courses as diverse as "The Chemistry of Cooking" and "Writing a Film Short."

I just found this article about redesigning the syllabus. Since my students hardly every really read the syllabus, I have to come up with something new. http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/creative-approaches-to-the-syllabus/35621

Thanks for the link from the Chronicle!

Very interesting postings, many of them with appealing pictures or other visuals. The topics seem to span a broad area within the area of learning with technology. This is Garett, by the way.

Hi Garrett, I was following his blog, too: Niks' Learning Technology Blog (via Feedly). He reviews and demos a lot of great tools. One thing I had a problem with is that nothing seems to be dated. One of is blogs had a bunch of great tools on it and I found links that were useful. Then, other links in the same blog were broken or, even for me, seemed way out of date (hasn't everyone already heard of Firefox?).

One of my friends started up one of these Scoop.it "newsletters" and I get messages weekly from it - automated. I wonder if she even knows it's still running...?

Digest of articles related to technology and education

I like this because it is concise. I've been getting it as an email, but now I can add it here.

Discussion on how technology is being used and why we're still struggling to give more control of learning to students. A good read!

"A 2014 paper by researchers at Michigan State University, in East Lansing, provides a tangible example: Teachers and students in the small-scale study were found to be making extensive use of the online word-processing tool Google Docs. The application's power to support collaborative writing and in-depth feedback, however, was not being realized. Teachers were not encouraging group-writing assignments and their feedback focused overwhelmingly on issues such as spelling and grammar, rather than content and organization." This really gets to the heart of the idea of combining education and technology: the technology has to serve the goal and it doesn't sound like the teachers' goals were the same as the stated goals of the assignment. So obviously Google Docs is a fantastic tool, but it has to be utilized appropriately for it to be effective.

I must say I have sat through many workshops in my tenure at my university that included the modification of some practices and even included, to my frustration, the basic structure of a lesson from stating outcomes to assessment. The problem with our particular situation is that usually it is directed to a "one-size-fits-all" use of a given technology that may not apply to many disciplines. I have found them somewhat useful for upper-level courses at times, but the language classes often pose the need for a kind of collaboration and interpersonal technology that isn't presented. Hence my desire to take this course. Another difficulty is the overwhelming number of technological applications presented--I can't tell you how many--and the students really become overwhelmed, since they often have to learn new technologies in almost many courses. Some work and some don't, and since they are the guinea pigs and there are no guarantees that everything will work as planned, and given the astounding changes in tech, the newness never seems to end, neither for the student nor the teacher. So focusing on just 1 or 2 to begin with seems like the only way to deal with it. Finally, I think that, at least in our university, the huge courses found often in the sciences reflect the slowness to adopt meaningful change. Many in these disciplines have simply used the tech to deliver more lectures on topics students must memorize, perhaps adding clickers for comprehension checks. There seems to be a great disconnect between what happens in the classroom and the amazing advances in tech they have made for their hands-on work--labs, collaborative work, etc.

This is a listing of ways to use social media in the classroom.  

I like what srafuller says about not expecting students to be like we were when we were students. I struggle with that in all the classes I teach, not just the foreign language. I work to be conscious of reaching students "where they are" every day. Not only that, but we need to be conscious (at least older teachers like me) of not teaching the way we were taught!

I really like this article! Simple, to-the-point, useful suggestions for several on-line applications. I tried out Duolingo but was chagrined to find out they don't offer Russian (Ukrainian and Esperanto but not Russian?!). I could, however, study English from Russian, which has several activities (especially translation) that my students can use. Thanks for posting this article!

What do you think of these 15 characteristics? Do you agree? Add a note to the ones you question - and tell us why. Don't forget to look at the responses after the article!

They're fine...but huge to implement on a consistent basis: by 'huge' I mean both in terms of time, and space - to get one's head around them all conceptually. And it can also be a challenge for students to buy into the responsibility for their own leaning. HTML...yes, sometimes, in designing activities writhing my LMS. Blogging...no! Takes too much thought and self- confidence! Tweeting...yes! I love passing on items that have been helpful to me. And yes...II guess tweeting is providing glimpses of great PD resources. Now all I have to do is to go back to them in more depth.

Usie Piktochart to create an interactive graphic syllabus. Laura Sexton has wonderful ideas, is a genius with Tech, and is a super, enthusiastic NC teacher. I recommend her website and blogs - PBL in the TL.

Thanks for the reference! This is really cool--not sure if our syllabus policy would allow it, but it really looks like fun and is much more attention-grabbing. I imagine, though, that it takes a while to get to the level of organization she has attained with the images and layout.

Love it!

This is a function that I always thought was lacking in PBworks (compared to Wikispaces, for example) - now they are recommending this app as an add-in. Only a PBworks admin can add this however - you need to click the "Allow javascript" button. This page has screenshot instructions, if you're not sure how to add it. HOWEVER - I haven't been able to get it to work, yet... I don't know if it's a login problem or what. It shows up in the wiki page, but I can't add anything to the discussion.