Group items tagged

This page is actually a brief (but helpful and concise) overview of the use of rubrics. The main reason I am posting it here is because the entire site (Cornell University Center for Teaching Excellence) has a wealth of information on design, assessment, student engagement and using technology in the classroom.

Quick read, reputable source.

"The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI).....designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education."

an account of using diigo vs. evernote

Thanks Leah, I have been playing with diigo this week and am sure that eventually it will become a "go to" site, as Evernote currently is for me. Unfortunately, I am not tech savvy, such as the people who write these commentaries, rather I am like the "old dog" who has mastered "one bone". Having become familiar with my "bone" no matter how chewed-up it is, and how old it is... it is comfortable. In this lies perhaps my biggest challenge with technology - I am not comfortable jumping from one platform to the next and transforming my "work" into new platforms at what appears to be constant speed! Is this type of classroom rendering perhaps more appropriate for younger generations??

I think it might be just like buying a car: Most will get you where you want to go, but you have to take it for a test drive to feel if it is right for you. I've not used Evernote, but now I will certainly kick the tires on it to see how it compares. When designing sound for theatrical productions, I often use Audacity, a free program, over more sophisticated programs such as Amadeus and Logic, because it is quicker to move through the interface. It cannot do as much as the other programs, but the comfort level is higher with the "get you where you need to go" mantra. And then I use the more sophisticated programs as necessary.

Article by Karen Thickstun in American Music Teacher from Aug/Sept 2014, Vol.6, Issue 1. The article explores the various alternatives in teaching music with the emergence of modern technology in the U.S. It states that online teaching needs a little change from the procedures in a traditional studio. It highlights the significance of the modern technology in teaching as it improved the methods of teaching while reaching new and diverse students.

MERLOT is a CoI revolving around technology and learning objects. It is a repository of learning objects that can be accessed and used. The objects are grouped according to subject / content, and they are peer-reviewed. This is an excellent resource with something for everyone. (My personal favorite object - the "eye simulator," which demonstrates the actions of the 6 extrinsic muscles of the eye and lets you "paralyze" muscles specifically to examine the effect on eye movement - completely cool!) There is also a wealth of other information on their site (sorry - within their community :) Best of all - all the resources at MERLOT are free.

This article investigates the gap between instructional training and technology training when it comes to second language teachers.

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.

This article talks about the challenges of online courses that go global and not taking into consideration the politics involved.

This article addresses barriers to the accessibility of information from state health department websites (rapidly becoming go-to resources for people and practitioners) across 4 dimensions: readability, disability access, non-English translation and privacy / security. The authors state, "These results raise fundamental issues of justice and equality in public health...In the meantime, inaccessible websites hurt the underprivileged and make it difficult to justify the investment in technology that has occurred in state governments...." I thought there was something for everyone in our cohort here.

somewhat of a commercial for online learning, but does a good job of outlining global concerns of non-traditional learners. Curiously, like many articles that are older, it seems to attempt to define the non-traditional learner as an older learner, not younger technology savvy learners and those who learn differently.

This article is a rather old (1999) meta-analysis of the effect of small-group learning on undergraduate students in STEM majors and the outcomes of collaborative, cooperative, or mixed form learning on student achievement, attitudes and persistence. What we like about this article is that it is scientifically robust, from a really high impact (5 point impact factor) educational research journal. It serves as primary research evidence about how important small group learning can be on a number of outcomes, not just the outcome of achievement. While it doesn't address specifically online work, it is powerful research about the benefits of this kind of learning, which is really convincing, especially when we have students who might resist collaborative learning.

Researchers are saying the most pervasive learning disability in schools--and the major challenge for UDL--is emotional--changing the perspective of tuned out students.

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!

Here is the very large report following ten years of studying online education. I think it probably has been or will be cited in other postings in this bibliography, but I thought it would be good to post the whole thing here. It's is very comprehensive but also easy to access. Enjoy!

Tenth annual report on the status of online learning in U.S. higher education. The survey is based on the response from more than 2,800 colleges and universities and addresses the status of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the increasing importance of a long-term teaching strategy, ther percentage of students learning online, does it take more time and effort for faculty, is online comparable to F2F learning, faculty acceptance to online learning, and barriers to the adoption of online learning.

This is a multi-authored article that appeared in the journal Teaching Theology and Religion. I participated in the composition but the reason I am posting it is not my own little section on multi-sensory imagery but rather the part by Russell Haitch which discusses long distance education in the New Testament--the Apostle Paul to be specific. Haitch (as I recall) makes a good case that examples like this one show that one really communicate effectively and passionately, from a long distance, for the purpose of educational transformation. So, if you look at this, zero in on Haitch's case study.

FlipSnack is a flipping book software that lets you convert PDF documents into Flash page flip digital publications that you can embed into your website.

OK, I have to admit, that's very cool.

Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum