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Primer for using Google Docs in your class. Provides information about various tools and plugins that enable bibliographic work, speech recognition and voice commenting, assessment using a rubric, and more.

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...

M4 Slides for live session

Leah, Thank you for this - it was a lot to absorb in the hour-long session and this will make it easier.

Perhaps just another "hack"

Actually, Leah, I really like this! I had no idea about the audio commenting -- I was using 'jing', but this is better. Thanks for sharing this. Peggy

A bit dated, now, Hess is one of the few faculty who has treated the use of technology in theological education with sustained attention.

R.A.D.A.R. Learning Cycle = Read Apply Discuss And Reflect - this a template of a method that you can use to formulate learning assessment by using the discussion forums, blogs or written assignments. It is definitely a (Student-student and Student-content interaction)

Authors: Lehman, Rosemary M. and Conceicão, Simone C. This volume highlights the need for creating a presence in the online environment. The authors explore the emotional, psychological, and social aspects from both the instructor and student perspective. It provides an instructional design framework and shows how a strong presence contributes to effective teaching and learning. Contains methods, case scenarios, and suggested activities.

CuriosityStream is the world's first SVOD service for premium factual content. Watch enriching, ad-free videos at any time and on any device. I have used their video on the Crusades to bring meaning to a very removed period for students.

Resources for Web 2.0 technologies and composition pedagogy From Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects By Kristin L. Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, & Cheryl Ball

It seems to me that instructional design and course design models presume that every student in the class has to pursue the same objectives and should be taught in the same fashion; yet, as universal design ideas suggest, we may need to occasionally use different assignments and allow different learning approaches. And maybe, to take this idea a step further, learning in general should be personalized and course designs become more flexible. At least that's what some educational pioneers from Silicon Valley have declared. What follows is the introductory passage of a very recent New Yorker article, an article which is ultimately quite skeptical of the new models and of the role of technology in the classroom: "Seen from the outside, AltSchool Brooklyn, a private school that opened in Brooklyn Heights last fall, does not look like a traditional educational establishment. There is no playground attached, no crossing guard at the street corner, and no crowd of children blocking the sidewalk in the morning."

As the article goes on to highlight, the founders of the company AltSchool intend to break with traditional educational models. In the older model, the founder Max Ventilla asserts, the teacher is "an artisanal lesson planner on the one hand and disciplinary babysitter on the other hand." Not just that, the teacher also creates, following Common Core for example, standards and objectives for his or her class; one teacher quoted in the article claims that "by looking for standards to pull everyone up we are forgetting to address what the individual needs." This is where the AltSchool idea intervenes. This new school's approach "acknowledges and adapts to the differences among students: their abilities, their interests, their cultural backgrounds." How so? By monitoring students and collecting as much data about each student as possible, thus personalizing plans and projects for students (sound familiar? Ventilla worked for Google before founding AltSchool). While I think the idea of personalized learning is compelling, I also read with interest about the mixed results of AltSchool and other similar institutions - plus, the schools seem to be very utilitarian, focusing on what the student purportedly needs to succeed in the workplace (languages are supposedly rather useless, for example, because everyone will carry an electronic, speaking dictionary in 20 years from now). On a slightly different - and final - note, I was also intrigued by a quote from Daniel Willingham, education scholar at UV: "The most common thing I hear is that when you adopt technology you have to write twice the lesson plans. You have the one you use with the technology, and you have the backup one you use when the technology doesn't work that day." Congratulations! If you read this sentence, you have survived the challenge of reading this epic post.