Group items tagged

This link includes a useful summary of virtual team technology tools. I like this list because it is categorized by the function/goals for the team and needs for collaboration. A way for us to consider guiding our exploration of team tools for educational groups.

A list of free tools for language teachers: for example, tools that can be used for creating and editing technology-enhanced tasks, activities, and materials for language learning. Especially useful for our group as we have many instructors teaching language classes!

This page contains a list of free tools and resources for online teaching. It's geared toward language-learning, but has a wide variety of different things.

Whoops, I seem to keep finding things that have already been posted!

by Mike Acedo Over the years, many of us have personally experienced the growth of technology in today's classrooms. Instead of taking notes, students are now occupied by surfing the Internet, scrolling through Facebook, and messaging their friends on their smart phones, tablets, and laptops.

This powerpoint presentation from a library instruction conference talks about uses for the tool Padlet -- which looks like a really interesting way for students to share findings on an online graffiti wall.

Because the early planning stages of online instruction are crucial, Diane Chapman and Todd Nicolet propose a 'project approach' to course Development: a formal, team-based operation that makes use of consistent standards, trackable processes, standardized tools, and structured communication to facilitate technology initiatives of all sizes. This appears to facilitate scaling and the design and development of online instruction while maintaining the quality and integrity of the courses. Course design and development become more manageable when they are translated into repeatable processes and easy-to-apply tools.

This is very similar to Strategy 6: Apply Project Planning and Management Methods to Course Development in last weeks reading, "Effective Workload Management Strategies for the Online Environment".

Curious - how many technologies have we used are on this list? :-)

Good taste. I didn't see Screencastomatic, and I'm very surprised that VoiceThread is not higher, it's such a great program.

Over the last decade, larger student numbers, reduced resources and increasing use of new technologies have led to the increased use of multiple-choice questions (MCQs) as a method of assessment in higher education courses. This paper identifies some limitations associated with MCQs from a pedagogical standpoint....

Trying to catch up and get ahead as I leave town this week :) I teach beginning undergraduates in typically large (150+ students) classes, often with little or no (or ineffective) TA assistance. Multiple choice questions are an absolute necessity as a management tool. I find that many of my colleagues in traditional liberal arts colleges think that multiple choice questions are unacceptable as a means of student assessment. However, I've noticed that many of the online adaptive learning tools and licensing exams required by many professional programs (nursing among them...) are also based primarily on multiple choice questions. I looked for an article to rebut the reading from the flaguide website (http://www.flaguide.org/) which stated, "...the multiple choice test..... [is] usually most effective at measuring fact-based knowledge and the ability to perform algorithmic problem-solving...However, if our goals include different student outcomes than these....then this assessment technique will not provide useful feedback about attainment of these goals." The above article gives several ideas for creating and using multiple choice questions to assess higher order thinking, my favorite being the idea of assigning scores based not only on student answers to the questions but also their confidence in their answer. I also liked the idea of the self-tests that students can take repeatedly to check their mastery of concepts, which seems to play into the instructional design loops that we were studying in M3.

I have been very interested in trying out Paper, so this ranking entices me further.

I can't wait to try Paper.li and Emaze.com Thanks for sharing this resource.

As we move into different modalities, it is nice to remember that our students will arrive in our classroom familiar with these technologies. As the use of on-line tools increase in public education, our students will arrive with a baseline comfort level with the google tools, which still remain robust for many activities. These graphics really bring this home.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/06/handy-google-hangout-cheat-sheet-for.html This is a cheat sheet for the Google Hangout...

Broken up into skills: speaking, writing, working collaboratively, this site identifies tools to assist in the learning process

Faculty learning communities provide their members with both information and support as they move toward utilizing digital technology tools, learn new skills, and share meaningful instructional practices... This is off-topic for M3 , but it occur to me that we have established a learning community among ourselves with the above goals.

Universal Design in the ESL classroom

I like this list, Jane, though I feel the author Kregg Strehorn could have elaborated on some of the suggestions to explain more clearly what is meant and what a particular method entails. Maybe there was a strict word limit to which Strehorn had to adhere. In any case, some of the ideas are very interesting but also seem to be very time-consuming and potentially confusing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's wonderful that Stehorn reads and records some of the texts they are using in the class, reads and records and transcribes lectures, gives students different assignment choices, writes detailed class outlines and shares them with students, etc. All of these ideas make sense to me, but how do you have time as a teacher (and in my/our case instructor and full-time staff member) to do all that, unless you teach the same course over and over again? I am a great supporter and believer in universal design; plus, online classes in particular are, almost by nature, using a range of tools, thus serving students with different needs. Yet, Strehorn should discuss the amount of work involved in creating this course and should also address students' responses to this course as well as potential pitfalls in terms of student assessment. Perhaps Strehorn has done so in a different place.

This report offers some observations on the use of multimedia resources in online courses. The focus is more on course development (both time investment and quality of materials produced) than on student experience or learning outcomes, but this can still be a valuable tool for instructors thinking about whether (and how) to use multimedia in their online course designs.