EDTEC572

A discussion of appropriate use AND NON USE of technology in the art and craft of teaching in higher education. Good discussion starter for instructional design and tech integration. Examples of when technology (ie. tools, gadgets and trends) did not result in "better" learning.  A reminder that we DESIGN instruction intentionally - not according to the latest fad.

Interesting ideas on using Twitter in education.

I think many of us have had the experience of needing to send a file that is just too large. This is a free service that does it for you. I found this very helpful when I needed to send out an eLearning module that was just too big (even when zipped).

This is great information, thanks so much Amy!

Quick of overview of Google Apps for Educators. Good beginning article with links.

Find flashcards to study or create your own flashcards. Study flashcards or use the other activities such as matching, crosswords, hangman, scrambled word, or bug chase. Study flashcards anytime and anywhere by printing your flashcards or by using them with applications on your cell phone, PDA, or iPod.

Enter in words, click spell and this site generates your word with pictures from flickr. What a fun and creative way to use flickr and pictures.

Fascinating article/Blog post from NPR about Verizon and Google and their proposal to "regulate" then internet. It opens the debate about Google's "Do no evil" motto.

After using this tool in my internship at Cricket and in creating learning interventions for Marcie's class, I have found that it is truly a versatile and easy-to-learn too. I suggest you check out the free 30-day trial.

I love using this to create lessons that my students can interact with. If the students I work with were slightly older I would definitely have them use it to create interactive posters too.

Even stuffy ivy league universities are seeing the value of adding social media classes to their MBA programs to encourage new business models. Part of this is a reaction to some embarrassing errors made by major corporations: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/education/31iht-riedmba.html

Thanks for posting this Cathy! Ken and I were having a difficult time finding images that were free to use in education. We did not want to find ourselves using materials without permission. Thanks for the post!

An overview is provided for how to use search engine tools designed specifically to find pictures for teachers and students to use in the classroom.

This is really helpful for me. I use photos in my classes all the time. I particularly like the Picishare site. The search results are interesting; not always what I'd expect, but a great adventure.

Tips and Tricks for Twitter

Good glossary for online and social media learner newbies. Clear explanations, further links and resources. Terms covered: Avatar Blog Cloud Computing Personal Learning Network (PLN) RSS Social Bookmarking  Social Networking Tag Web 2.0 Wiki

Just the perfect site to help me with the glossary we want to include in our Moodle training for teachers manual! It's funny the way these terms float around out there, but most people have only the haziest idea what they actually mean! I know for a fact that our teacher-learners will benefit from a concise definition of such things as "wiki", "blog", "RSS" and others. And framing these terms within the educational context makes the definitions even more meaningful.

Cool Cat Teacher - Vicki Davis, created this Slide share for a presentation on back channeling. It explains more what it is and gives some ideas on how to use it in the classroom.

Here is a blog resource on using cell phones with students. The author has a book on the subject published though ISTE. There are some very interesting posts.

This blog post describes a teacher who uses Twitter in his 8th grade classroom. He uses it to "back channel" during certain activities. (back channeling is described and defined in the post). I think it is very interesting to see, I would like to observe a teacher actually doing this in class. I find that back channeling can at time split focus and keep listeners from 100% focus and attention and they end up missing important parts of the live goings on.

I've seen this site used by teachers when working on a project. The teacher will post and idea or question and the students respond. I've also seen teachers post a picture or the students post pictures. You could use it like a gallery walk or carousel activity, a message board for help or a forum for a novel or discussion topic.

Turn your Twitter feed into a newspaper. This site allows you to view your twitter feed as if it were a newspaper. It takes a bit of time for it to get up and running, but it is a clever way to view the links being discussed via your twitterverse. If you like using a blog reader, this is kind of like a twitter reader. Have a look at mine at http://twittertim.es/leighmurrell

This site allow teachers to create modules for students to listen to, look at and/or read. Once they do that they record an audio response. This is great for ESL and World Language teachers. It has a limited free account and the paid account is very reasonable.

This is an excellent article to help educators visualize how some of our tech tools can be used in a classroom.