Group items tagged

The tools we discuss below can be embedded into any open source LMS and down the road we plan to revisit other platforms.

I opted to have students use Google Sites to create their portfolios, for several reasons. Students were already using Google Documents for their essays, so the interface was reasonably familiar to them. Google Documents integrates well with Google Sites, so it was very easy for students to embed their essays in their portfolios. Google Sites allows for easy customization, for any student who might want to get creative with site design. Using Google Sites along with Google Documents makes it very easy for students to control who's allowed to see what.

Google Currents is an application for Apple's iOS and Google's Android [that] lets you add content that you might want to read from a variety of sources. Google offers a list of featured content that is predictable: Forbes, CNET, ReadWriteWeb, and the like. Google has some other subject-specific lists of content too. The real strength of the app, as far as I am concerned, is the ability to add any RSS feed including those in your Google Reader account.

I had high hopes when I handed out iPads to students in my graduate seminar this semester. I wanted to explore the possibilities of tablet computing and see firsthand how tablets might be used in higher education. … For the most part, students ended the semester with a collective shrug. They simply weren't all that impressed with tablet computing as it now exists.

a service that "provides a very handy way to keep track of citations to your work."

I have developed some thoughts that might help everyone become a bit better at discouraging, recognizing, and responding to plagiarism.

In their excellent book Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe call the process of designing courses around learning goals "the backward design process."

structuring learning experiences around frustration/reward dynamics can lead to engaged learners.

I used Google Docs Forms to structure an in-class peer review workshop.

A simple thumbs-up/down technique for peer assessment.

A wonderful approach to writing the common syllabus.

I suspect that many of us ask students to do some kind of writing in class: whether reflecting on the day's topic, responding to a brief prompt, or outlining their ideas. I include those kinds of writing-to-learn activities in my classes as well.

So what happens between the end of that two-course sequence and the start of the rest of those students' college careers? If pressed I would offer a hypothesis or two: In many courses that are not focused on writing skills, instructors might not provide detailed enough instructions on their writing assignments to convey to the student what the instructors' expectations are, and A different issue is whether or not the student understands the course material: a badly written essay may be the result of the student author not understanding the subject rather than not being a capable writer.

At the recent THATCamp Southeast, I had a chance to teach a hands-on session for building interactive, geospatial timelines.

The use of models and other abstract forms in literary study has recently seen a revival in a digital age that puts data and sophisticated data management systems in the hands of the literary scholar, teacher, and student. Pedagogical applications of these abstract models are rich with possibility for the literary classroom, and offer exciting opportunities for engaging non-English majors and non-traditional learners in the advanced study of literature, as well as challenging students to verbally articulate visual and spatial knowledge.

Collins … theorizes about the rituals by which people interact with others, from large groups, to person-to-person relationships, to the imaginary conversations that a person engages in his or her mind. … When people interact their shared attention trains each other to be in a group with a shared purpose.

How one professor uses a MOOC and its resources to flip his own classes.

When Jason B. Jones wrote about "Gamifying Homework" in November, I felt inspired to try something new with one of my courses this spring. As an avid World of Warcraft player used to completing silly tasks for nothing more than a badge of completion, I definitely believe that motivation through achievements and other rewards systems works. But implementing these types of elements in a class can be a challenge.