Group items tagged

Nice free transcription tool that works well with Google Docs

new improvements

""Twitter is really useful for simultaneous monitoring of events in real time," says Witze (who is also on TON's Board of Directors). At another meeting, the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston in March 2015, she went to a session about the MAVEN mission to Mars. She used real-time Twitter feeds to get a sense of what the scientists in the room thought was important, and wrote up this story while the speakers were still talking. The real-time feedback she got from Twitter was "like having a small army of smart people helping out," Witze says. And following the live tweets provides "a whole other level of commentary" that can be valuable for identifying sources to interview for a story. "

"This article is significantly longer than previous installments. It features 4 interactive slideshows, each introducing a new tool as well as related concepts around it. In one way, it's just another math guide, but going much deeper. In another, it's a thesis on everything I know about animating. Their intersection is a handbook for anyone who wants to make things move with code, but I hope it's an interesting read even if that's not your goal."

"The Open Syllabus Project (OSP) is an effort to create the first large-scale online database of university course syllabi as a platform for the development of new research, teaching, and administrative tools. "

"Doodling may be better described as 'markings to help a person think.' Most people believe that doodling requires the intellectual mind to shutdown, but this is one misrepresentation that needs correcting. There is no such thing as a mindless doodle. The act of doodling is the mind's attempt to engage before succumbing to mindlessness. "

"Having exhausted traditional learning methods such as highlighting, note-taking, and rote memorization, Virginia chose to unleash a powerful, primitive tool that ultimately turned out to be her savior: The Doodle. Virginia decided to draw rudimentary visual representations of every concept in her Morrison and Boyd textbook. She deployed a problem-solving technique that defied conventional wisdom and all the academic advice she had received. And the story has a happy ending. Not only did Virginia ace her organic chemistry final and eventually become Dr. Scofield, she also became a celebrated immunologist, earning accolades for one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs related to HIV transmission. She credits much of her success, then and now, to her world-turning decision to doodle. "

Author states "this has been a long, rambling article....My basic thesis is that IoT technology can be a tool for behaviour change for social and environmental benefit, through involving people in making systems which address problems that are meaningful for them, and which improve understanding of the wider systems they're engaging with. "We're heading into a world of increasingly complex engineered systems in everyday life... "Yet there is a disconnect between the potential quality of life benefits for society, and people's understanding of these - often invisible - systems around us." Worth a read to inspire several thoughts and arguments.

Twitter lists are incredibly useful. Making them has been incredibly painful. This is a good step forward...

"Traditional courses have long focused on tools and techniques for the presentation of content. Traditional concerns from faculty focused on covering the material, getting through the book and meeting expectations so that faculty in other courses won't muse and wonder,  "Didn't you learn these concepts from faculty X?"   And "Didn't you study the work and contributions of  ____ (Fill in your favorite who)"  A major drawback with designing for content as a priority is that it focuses attention on what the faculty member is doing, thinking and talking about and not on the interaction and engagement of students with the core concepts and skills of a course. The new focus on learners encourages a focus on learners as a priority. The new focus on the learner is to develop a habit of asking, what is going on inside the learner's head? How much of the content is being integrated into their knowledge base? How much of the content and the tools can he/she actually use? What are students thinking and how did they arrive at their respective positions? Additionally, we are seeing a shift to looking at the student no only as an individual, but as an individual within the learning community. Other questions that we are now considering include: How is the learner supporting the community of learners and contributing to the overall growth of the group? "

Great tool for simulations or even research

Really cool mapping tools. *THIS* is what computing + the Web affords by way of augmenting human intelligence.

Tools and Instruments

"It's an annotator that you can carry around the web with you." h/t Gardner

Game making can be one of the best ways to get students thinking creatively while cultivating useful technical literacies, and there's a ton of absorbing tools that students won't tire of over the long break. Here are three options to choose from depending on the type of technology students have at home.

"Online Learning, like any educational tool, requires utilization, evaluation, reflection and modification.  We cannot engage in that process unless we actually DO IT. "

" five critical questions for teaching and learning for technology and media selection: Who are the learners? What are the desired learning outcomes from the teaching? What instructional strategies will be employed to facilitate the learning outcomes? What are the unique educational characteristics of each medium/technology, and how well do these match the learning and teaching requirements? What resources are available? "

An interesting look at how news sites are using various tools to create interactive stories. Targeted towards journalists but still has some potential for higher ed use

An online focus group was used to investigate the experiences of nine individuals with cerebral palsy who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) and social media. Information was gathered related to (a) advantages of social media, (b) disadvantages of social media, (c) barriers to successful use, (d) supports to successful use, and (e) recommendations for other individuals using AAC, support personnel, policy makers, and technology developers. Participants primarily chose to focus on social media as a benef cial tool and viewed it as an important form of communication. The participants did describe barriers to social media use (e.g., technology). Despite barriers, all the participants in this study took an active role in learning to use social media. The results are discussed as they relate to themes and with reference to published literature.

"Obfuscation: A User's Guide for Privacy and Protest is an important and straight to the point book that reminds us that, ultimately, we're up against intimidating asymmetries of power and knowledge. Stronger actors -whether they are corporations, governmental bodies or influential people- have better tools at their disposal if they want to hide something. What we have is obfuscation. It might require time, money, efforts, attention but it gives us some leverage as well as some measures of resistance and dignity. "