Spaced Education.

SpacedEd is a learning environment that focuses on using questions to facilitate the learning of content.

From the Website:

It is based upon two core psychology research findings: the spacing effect and the testing effect. In more than 10 randomized trials completed to date, spaced education has been found to:

• Improve knowledge acquisition;
• Increase long-term knowledge retention (out to 2 years);
• Change behavior; and
• Boost learners' abilities to accurately self-assess their knowledge.

The system sends questions to e-mail two times a day. If the questions are answered incorrectly they are redelivered after a week. I'm currently testing it out on the "Philosophy" class which focuses on the philosophy of education. I've only answered two questions, but have already started to see some potential use for the classroom (especially if SMS is allowed.)

Who knows what tomorrow brings...?

ReadWriteWeb has published an article about social media and things that can be expected in the next year. With the proliferation of mobile computing and the social connections maintained by the media, new opportunities for learning will evolve. Take a look and see what is projected, and comment below if you have ideas on things you would like to try in your learning environments.

What's Out on the Edge?

I'm sorry I missed this one last Summer. Digging around on a link sent to me by Jeff Newell and Todd Jorns down at ICCB, I found this little bit of fun from Johnny Lee. From what I gather he works at Microsoft on interface design.

Now let's be straight. This is pushing things way down the pike, but it's fun to dream. If the issue is engaging students, how could we use this interface to engage the students--no wait. If this comes to fruition, how can we use this to engage entire families in a students education?

Watchout Kindle, Here Comes a Possibly Better Mobile Learning Solution

Since it's first generation release, Amazon Kindle has set the bar for services provided on a portable e-reader. Coming soon is the iriver Story. In addition to the usual specs, Engadget reports that the Story will support ePub, PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Ogg / WMA file formats. Throw in wireless purchasing, and a podcast player, and you have a multimedia portable learning environment...

Could be neat, but they have a way to go.

Now, if they can just get the price down to a level community college students can afford.

Use of Web 2.0 in the Classroom

This is an exciting 2 part article posted by Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies demonstrating over 100 ways to incorporate Web 2.0 in learning environments. This could lead to more meaningful interactions outside the classroom between students.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a free cross-platform folder synchronization service that allows users to save files to a secure folder shared among any Mac, Linux, Windows machine or even mobile device. The contents of the folder are also automatically updated and stored securely on the web. This means, rather than using a flash drive to tranport files between different machines (and risk losing it), you can quickly and automatically update information between serval different computers and even access it from the web if need be. There's a lot of potential for this in education and distance learning. It can possibly provide a way to share resources with students or allow students to collaborate in the creation of group projects.

Social Networking and Connecting

A new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts examines the perceived social isolation coming about in our society. Common knowledge infers that increased use of personal technology is creating a rift in the social fabric of our society, isolating us from each other. From the link above: The study shows that "internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks." Use of social networks in academic environments and students' percieved connection with classmates and their instructors should be looked at closely, especially in the context of how they might be used to affect retention and success.

Obama's Push for Online Education

In this article I ran into from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Marc Perry reports on a plan that's emerging from the Obama administration to provide colleges with access to "open" online classes for which the government would potentially fund the development. Colleges (and there seems to be a special indication of community colleges in particular) could repackage and add value to these classes by providing the actual online interaction and instruction to the students while still keeping costs affordable. There's also the suggestion that a community college or consortia of community colleges could house the project's development. Also included in the article is a broader discussion of the need for change from the current model of higher education and how online education can prove a better use of an instructor's time and a way to better tailor to the learning needs of students.

Problems with Google Scholar for Scholars

Google collaborated with many academic libraries to make many scholarly material easily searchable. But as Peter Jacso from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa points out in this article, the biggest problem with Google Scholar (and also Google's Book Search) is the poor job Google has been doing with the metadata associated with these materials. When Googling, most people don't care much about metadata, but faulty metadata can provide an inaccurate picture of the value of a resource to researchers. For example, materials are often categorized under incorrect author names or assigned bloated citations counts. All of this can be a factor for ECC students or faculty who are relying on Google Scholar as a research tool. It can mean inaccurate citations or search results that favor less valuable materials. It's good to keep this in mind when encouraging students to think critically about their information sources.

Too much fun, must post immediately

As I was catching up on RSS feeds this morning (I'm a week behind) I came across a reference to Tabbloid. Tabbloid is an RSS aggregator, but instead of putting it into an easily browseable news reader format, it dumps the feeds into a pdf file as if you were reading a news letter. The file gets e-mailed to you for reading or printing out...

I actually prefer reading my feeds online, however, many times I have been frustrated that I could not get the feeds I want onto my Kindle Reader. If I can figure it out, and e-mail the pdf's to my Kindle address...I could get the news, readable anywhere, anytime, and only for $.30 a day. Although, I'll probably just have to move the files over from the computer everyday.

Google Wave and Collaborative Notetaking

The ReadWriteWeb Blog did a review of a potential use for Google Wave in the context of collaborative note-taking by students. Google Wave is a new technology (still unavailable to the general public) which will combine elements of e-mail and collaborative document creation. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

Video Search Tool

VideoSurf is a new metasearch tool for online video resources that searches such sites as Hulu, CNN, Metacafe, ESPN, and Comedy Central. (Hopefully, they'll add more in the future!) It bases its searches on visual identification as opposed to only relying on text to locate a source. It also allows users to navigate through results to find "the specific scenes, people or moments they most want to see". This may be a wonderful tool for locating video for instruction and educational purposes as well as providing new ways of accessing this medium for research purposes.

You Can Give a Man a Fish...

Gardner Campbell, in an article in the September/October Educause Review, wrote an article about the need to understand the media of all this instructional technology we've been implementing. His suggestion: Quit limiting the creativity of the students, and open up the possibilities. He's got some interesting ideas about how to create environments that might foster commitment from students, but would require commitment from faculty and IT in order to implement. Notes 1, and 4 - 6 are especially interesting.

An easy way to organize google searches...

Google Squared is tool that returns Google searches in a square/grid that are sortable by column. Some initial searches required some contextual starting points so that the application had a better idea of what to return. I tried "Models for Quality Online Learning" and it prompted me for examples. I entered QOCI, Quality Matters, and 5 Pillars. It returned these three models, and three other links related, but not as pointed as I had hoped.

I deleted some things, added one that I knew was missing and got a final square that I saved. Definitely something to take a closer look at and see if it can be used in your classes.

Update: Just tried to do some collaborative things: doesn't really allow it. In order to edit and change a table a user needs to save it as their own table. The changes are private. BUMMER. Still neat to create some nice tables of information quickly.

Teaching Online Classes from a War Zone

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about Cheryl J. Wachenheim, a North Dakota State University instructor of agribusiness and applied economics, who chose to continue teaching an online economics class while on active duty as a captain in the Minnesota Army National Guard stationed in Balad, Iraq. She comments on the challenges and benefits of teaching and interacting with her students from a war zone. We often think about the benefits that online teaching and technology extend in terms of flexibility to students, but it's also interesting to think about the possibilities online learning can present to educators and the challenging circumstances in which online learning can still prevail.

Best Free Reference Web Sites 2009

The Reference and User Services Association of the American Library Association just published a list of the best free reference websites of 2009. This includes some wonderful sites with great information such as ePodunk, PubChem, and Lexicool. Lexicool is a searchable directory of more than 6000 free online bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and glossaries. PubChem is a search tool for free chemistry information which divides the information into 3 areas: Compounds, Substances, and BioAssays. Finally, ePodunk is an aggregate of easily browsable city and county profiles - a wonderful source of local data. You may want to consider linking to any of the RUSA recommended sites in your classes, and the ECC Librarians would be happy to provide in class or online library instruction to educate your students about any of these resources and more.

A Peak into the Future...

Part of the fun of browsing through technology blogs is finding those little gems that look like they might actually apply to teaching and learning. Gizmodo did a story on possible new technology coming from Microsoft that could have very exciting potential for the integration of textbooks, interactive learning environments, collaboration, and well...just straight-out student success. As you can see from the picture, it looks like a souped-up e-reader. But take a look at the video after the jump and really see the potential.

Of course...this is just a rumor, and it might be nothing, but wouldn't it be cool?

Update 04/29/10:
Gizmodo posted another update that the Courier has been killed.

Update 11/03/09:
Gizmodo posted another video that shows the user interface in greater detail.

College Technology Index

Peter Schilling, Director of IT at Amherst College compiled a list of data which paints an interesting picture of technology trends and use on his campus. It gives an interesting glimpse into the way college students are using various technologies. You can also check out his 2008 index as a point of comparison.

Social Media Browser

Are you a social media junkie? If so, then Flock browser is for you! I recently ran into this new browser that consolidates all of your social network sites into one place. This makes it easier manage your social network sites in one place rather than having to sign in to each individual one such as your Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, etc. You're probably thinking..."great, another browser for me to learn", I had the same though, but it's very simple to use because it runs exactly like the Mozilla Fire Fox browser the only difference is that Flock has your social network sites built in.

Cheating in Online vs Cheating in Face-to-Face

This study intrigues me. I have not been able to fully get into it (will read tonight), but I thought others might be interested. I've seem some reviews that say the study says that cheating may not be as prevalent in online classes as it is in face-to-face...That assessment right there is enough to get me to read the article. Full Title: Point, Click, and Cheat: Frequency and Type of Academic Dishonesty in the Virtual Classroom

2Know!, what your students know

Renaissance Learning has created a classroom response system called "2Know". Similar to "clickers", this device was created to aid classroom participation and assessment. You can instantly gauge your students understanding of the material, and with the newly developed short-answer and question capability, you can open up an even wider range of assessment for your class. To find out more and view a demo of the product, click on the 2KNow website.

Cybersecurity in Higher Education

What do we need to know in Higher Education as far as cybersecurity is concerned? Read this article published by Educause, and written by Larry Clinton, which focuses on Higher Educations role in cybersecurity. Learn more about why President Obama and the current administration are finding that education is a key part of why our nation needs to upgrade the national cyber-education system.

Free Anytime Online Collaboration

I recently ran into a site called Vyew.com which specializes in live web conferencing. Vyew can be used for real-time online collaboration, you can use all types of content (ie. PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Images, PDF, RTF, etc.). Vyew uses VoIP (Voice Over IP) which allows users to simply use a PC mic to communicate with each other, no need to use a phone to interact. I love the simplicity of this tool, it's about as easy as working with PowerPoint. Another great feature from Vyew is "desktop sharing" which allows the presenter to share their desktop with other users. Of course the best part about Vyew is that it's FREE!

Where Does Distance Learning Fit?

Most faculty love the flexibility distance classes offer students, but how are administrators looking at distance learning? Do they give these faculty members enough support in teaching online? Read more about this survey at Inside Higher Ed.

Top Five Video-Sharing Sites

Lifehaker conducted an informal poll to determine the top five video sharing sites. Most people know about YouTube, but it's interesting to read about the other options available for video sharing sites and the features they offer such as differences in the file size that can be uploaded and the length of videos they allow. Among their top picks are blip.tv, vimeo, viddler, and dailymotion - all of which offer a basic level free account. When I attended the Great Teachers seminar this past summer, it was clear that there are many instructors beginning to incorporate online video into their classes. It seems many are relying on YouTube, but it may be interesting to investigate what other options are currently available.

Looking for New Ways to Integrate

Microsoft Education Labs has a tool available called Math Worksheet Generator that generates a printable document in Word 2007 that is a worksheet for math. As my experience with math will only allow me to create gibberish with numbers and symbols, the best I can say is that the output sure looks pretty. Any Math teachers care to give it a try and comment?

Lessons Learned from the Global Campus

Inside Higher Education has an interesting article about the demise of the University of Illinois Global Campus online education, degree-granting, for-profit project. It sounds like the model they embraced - to take course content crafted by experienced on campus faculty and have less experienced, less expensive faculty teach that content - was at the heart of the problem. One of the commenters in the article, Nicholas C. Burbules, a Urbana-Champaign educational policy professor, spoke about how online education is not just a different mode of delivery of on-campus course content. It sounds like the university is now moving in the direction of examining current successful online programs and building those programs into something bigger. This is something to consider when building distance and online classes - instead of just thinking about taking curriculum that works in the in-class environment and delivering it virtually, perhaps this points in the direction of considering what instruction has proved very sucessful (maybe even more sucessful than in the physical classroom) and how can we build up the strength of and expand online learning from those examples.

What is Cloud Computing?

What is cloud computing? Basically its delivering technology resources to users over the Internet. And whats it got to do with Higher Education? Well there is quite a bit of talk on how Cloud Computing can help lower college IT and Distance Learning Budgets as well as provide a more sustainable environment. This article by EDUCAUSE has over 72 Cloud Computing Resources including articles, and pod casts for you to explore.

Visualizing the Quality of the Information

Wired,com's Wired Science Blog, published a quick overview of a new service on Wikipedia called WikiTrust. Content will be color coded based on a formula related to the reliability of the writer, and the number of reviews it has passed by editors. Don't know how it will play out in the context of ADA, but definitely will be worth a look when it goes live as a tool to evaluated information.

Although WikiTrust has been available as an add-on to the MediaWiki since November 2008, This current movement is to incorporate it into the live Wikipedia. Didn't see a date, but definitely something to watch for.

Wouldn't It Be Cool?

The other day my mind started wandering and trying to think of things that might help people interact easier with D2L and other online services. At about the same time I came across this on Engadget. The Razer Naga is a "gaming" mouse that allows the user to program key strokes in a program to a single button. There's a left click, right click, scrool wheel, 2 buttons for you index finger (apologies to my lefty friends), and then 12 more buttons for your thumb. Wouldn't it be cool if we could program button 1 to open up the window that picks your file from your desktop and puts it up into D2L and makes a link in the Content? Wouldn't it be cool if we could write a macro in Word that would take a word document and do the same thing?

OK, and THAT is enough silliness for Friday.

If you don't know, Engadget is a blog that pretty much dumps any kind of rumors, news, or silliness related to technology that they can find. A must read if you need to know everything you never wanted to know about all the new phone, gaming, audio, and computer gadgets that are coming out.

How Colleges Should Be Using Social Media

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed S. Craig Watkins, an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future about social network and the future of education. He speaks about the characteristics of this generation of technologically comfortable students and the manner in which technology is affecting instructor's teaching style and pedagogical techniques. Watkins also touches on concerns about privacy where higher education intersects with personal social network accounts.

Technology and Adult Basic Education

How can technology be used in the area of Adult Basic Education? Learn more about the infusion of technology in this area of higher education from the OVAE, the Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Key findings from adult literacy research and evaluations are included in this website.

Finding New Content Made Easy

Xmarks is a bit different than other online bookmarking services, in two ways:

1. It uses your browser bookmarks, also allowing you to sync up your bookmarks between different machines, and even different browsers.
2. It takes you interests and suggests other sites that may be of interest to you. (Hopefully some new things that you could use in a class.)

Now I'm not sure if it's going to be that easy to discover things, but it certainly sounds fun. Looking through my bookmarks is stuff on pirates, and games, and polymer clay, and a whole bunch of media watchdog and political sites. Wonder what it will suggest? I think I'll give it a try this week.

Tech-free Classes?

NPR has an interesting article about Jose Bowen who is a Dean at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Contrary to how it may sound, he is not actually anti-technology when it comes to teaching. In fact, he has created and uses online games as a way of teaching music history to his students. Bowen is advocating an inversion of current teaching models (such as lecturing) in which instructors wait until students enter the classroom in order to introduce them to class materials and content. Bowen advocates using technology to familiarize students with content before coming into the classroom and then use the classroom time to interact directly with the students, rather than lecturing. This may be a really useful way to structure classes at ECC in order to take advantage of the technology we have available while freeing up precious class time for more interactive and collaborative work.

eBooks for College and Universities for CHEAP!

Lets face it books are expensive and in the current economy the prices of text books for college is astronomical. In comes a company called CourseSmartwhich allows students and teachers to purchase ebooks at a much lower price than those found at your schools book store. The best part about it is that they are available online any time. It allows you to enter notes, bookmarks, and has a handy search tool. There are currently 7000 book titles in 900 course areas and 100 disciplines and growing.

CourseSmart LLC has content from some of the leading textbook publishers today including:

* Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group
* Cengage Learning
* CQ Press
* Elsevier
* F.A. Davis & Company
* John Wiley & Sons
* Jones & Bartlett Publishers
* McGraw Hill Higher Education
* Nelson Education
* Pearson
* Sage Publications
* Sinauer Associates
* Taylor & Francis
* Wolters Kluwer Health

CourseSmart came out with an iPhone application, check out the video below to see a demo:

The 5 keys to Mobile Learning Technologies

Learn more about mobile learning technologies in this article by Campus Technology. There are 5 key tips covered in this article that will help you learn best practices of mobile learning! The article has specific tips on i phone, and i pod touch as well.

TinEye: Reverse Image Search Engine

TinEye is an interesting new search tool that may be useful for research and teaching involving the use of online images. According to the Tin Eye site, "You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks." This can be very helpful for locating copyright information for presentations and for finding the best resolution of images to display in D2L and in online class material.

Virtual Higher Education Community

Edu1world provides a place for faculty and other educational professionals who are interested in working with Web 2.0 technology to collaborate, network, and share information regarding technology in the education industry. The community is a free service and provides valuable opportunities to share and collect information if time and budget restraints restrict you from attending “live” conferences.

Free Online Polls that you can use in D2L

Students demand more interactivity during lectures, they no longer want to simply sit and listen. Studies also show that the more interactive the lecture, students tend to recall the information covered in last weeks lecture. We've all heard about clickers or student response systems that can be used in the class while the lecture is presented on the board. But not everyone has access to that technology on campus, so is there an alternative? Maybe a free alternative? Well you're in luck! Thanks to PollDaddy.com you can:

- Have unlimited free polls with unlimited votes per poll.
- 14 PollDaddy skins to choose from or create your own in CSS.
- View poll results online, as XML, CSV, or subscribe to them via RSS!
- Add text, pictures and video to your polls.
- Full foreign language support.
- Block repeat voters by IP address or cookies.
- Create single choice or multiple choice polls.
- Close polls after a certain date, randomize answers, allow text entry 'other' field, show or hide results from voters and much more.

Check out my D2L Poll

Which Online School Shall I Attend?

If you are trying to decide which online school is best suited for you, take a look at a new web site that compares various online colleges.

Fraud In A Distance Learning Office!

See what happens in a distance learning office located at the University of Texas-Brownsvillle when too many people have administrative rights to CMS.

Some news...

Some interesting things have come up in the context of data and the control of the data now that more and more data is stored "in the cloud."

• Student sues Amazon.com (seeking class-action status) for the removal of a purchased book from his Kindle, rendering his class notes useless;
• Thoughts on Amazon.com and it's "control" over purchased data, and implications;
• FCC looks at Apple's App Store and practices on approving and removing apps;
• Podcast of Talk of the Nation segment: "Who Really Owns Your Data?" (mp3, transcript)

All have relate to things we need to keep in mind as we start using more and more of the Web in our learning environments.

If only things could get pushed a bit further...

Tynt Tracer is a new service that does a number of things beneficial to content providers online:

1. Protects content from being plagiarized--though with just a little bit of knowledge, the plagiarizer can minimize that;
2. Drives traffic back to the original source of the information;
3. Gives credit to the originator of the content (the copyright holder?);
4. and can also improve your search engine ranking--What with all those extra links floating around back to your site and all.

It's kind of an interesting idea, and outside the "fair use" arguments that will abound, I thought, what a great tool for teaching about plagiarism. How?

Step 1: Create a website that provides ALL content that is to be used in the development of a short research project.

Step 2: Use Tynt Tracer to mark all the content that is copied and pasted from one site to another.

Step 3: Use the resulting projects to talk about plagiarism, and how copying and pasting is not the way things are done.

Could be interesting to give it a try.

Something new and exciting is being used at college campuses:

Mobile technology! Recently featured in an article by Campus Technology, the University of Illinois has a new feature that allows those students with cell phones to log onto the campus web page. The new feature is called U-Mobile and is featured on the colleges website.

Without specific mobile technology web pages can be difficult to navigate and unappealing visually. This new technology is rapidly spreading to college campuses worldwide. “Mobile users account for over 40% of all students from a number of colleges surveyed in Beijing while the number was 10%in 2001 according to a report by studies on China’s Youth magazine.

Computer Literacy Does Not Equal Research Literacy

In the article "Not Enough Time in the Library" from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Todd Gilman makes a case for why it is not enough just to give students (even digital natives) the technology and tools to do research; they still need research education provided by librarians. He writes, "Research education involves getting students to understand how information is organized physically in libraries, as well as electronically in library catalogs and in powerful, sometimes highly specialized commercial databases." This is critical for students hoping to "function effectively in our information-driven economy." Gilman suggests several ways faculty can work with the library to bolster research skills including dedicating class time to practicing search strategies, taking a tour, reinforcing a lesson with a library assignment, and encouraging students to use library materials in support of their class work. The ECC Library is happy to work with any faculty member interested in incorporating library instruction to strengthen their students' research skills in either the online or physical classroom.

What *Does* Technology Bring to the Table?

An article in the New Chronicle of Higher Education, "When Computer Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" made me start thinking about when I was in school. Lectures were boring pre-PPT too. The point that always seems to get lost, technology does NOTHING for a learning experience unless it is adopted specifically to address needs created in the process of guiding students toward their learning objectives.

Why should you start using an RSS Feeder?

This article will explain how RSS feeders can help keep you organized,save you time, and explain why an RSS Feeder is like an email with updates on your favorite information web pages. (Slide show after the jump.)

By the way this article is hosted on a web page called "geeksugar", meant to target female audiences interesting in technology. This web page offers simple how-to instructions, from selecting the right digital camera, to tips for creating a personal blog, to reviews of gadgets and new online tools - this web page is fun, creative, and informative...

Finding Educational Videos Online Made Easy

WatchKnow.org, a website that catalogs videos online that are available for educational purposes. I found a video about the stifling of creativity by copyright laws that could be used in an appropriate learning space. Sure, I could have found it anyway, but WatchKnow made it easy to browse. There are many videos already there, and I would expect that over time, as more and more educators get involved in the WatchKnow community, I would expect this will evolve into a key resource to keep in our pocket.

Thinking of Online Classes as Distributed Teams...

ReadWriteWeb published a nice review of 4 Essential Apps for Distributed Teams. This was intriguing to me as it felt like I was reading a best practices for online learning. If our "connection" improves satisfaction and success, and "connection" is essential to good team development, these are worth a look. The four apps are:

1. Instant Messaging and Chat;
2. Wiki;
3. Task Tracking (Keeping tack of work); and
4. Web Conferencing (synchronous classroom experiences).

All of these are available in Web 2.0 implementations, or are included in most Course Management Systems (ours being Desire2Learn). In addition to the options noted by RWW, other options include:

1. Meebo (for instant messaging)
2. D2L has a chat room
3. pbworks for wiki's
4. Elluminate (for "web conferencing"...free Vrooms for up to 3 people are free)

Tabbloid Creates Personalized Newsletters of Online Content

Research has shown that many people prefer reading longer segments of text in print rather than online. The free service Tabbloid allows users to aggregate RSS feeds of news, blog posts, and information into a printable PDF format. You can create your own schedule and have your personalized newsletter emailed to you and ready to print at your convenience. This might be a great service to offer to students for class resources, especially those who may already struggle with reading and prefer a printed collection of class materials emailed to them on a regular basis.

New G.I. Bill may drive up online enrollments!

Learn about the new Post-9/11 GI Bill legislation which has a special provision for veterans choosing to enroll online programs at colleges. This new GI Bill will go in effect this August and can be used for courses that are completely online. Learn how much ECC veteran students can expect to receive on average!

Can Continuing Education drive Distance Learning?

This article by Enid Burns, ClickZ, reviews findings from Penn State University Office of Outreach Marketing and the Communications and University Continuing Education Association. Within this article is information concerning how Continuing Education drives Distance Learning enrollments. Information including the projected rates of growth for Distance Learning within the next 10 years is included.

TechSmith's Education Community Blog

TechSmith is the maker of such academic technologies as Snagit, Camtasia Studio and Jing. They've just lauched a new Education Community blog and website. The purpose of the blog is to provide a place where educators can share stories and examples of how they are using TechSmith products. It may prove a good place to pick up an idea or two to use in your classes.

Cheating? OR, just a good excuse

A new website, purportedly started as a joke (I don't believe it...), sells comprably sized corrupted files for students to submit electronically should they need extra time on an assignment. Inside Higher Ed provides a good overview of the service, and talks to the owner of the site. Seems like a lot more work and money than it takes to ask for an extension. Probably need to adjust electronic submission processes to correct for this new endeavor.

Students Say Using Tech to Cheat Isn't Cheating

“A new poll conducted by the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media suggests that students are using cell phones and the internet to cheat on school exams. What's surprising, however, is not just the alarming number of students who say they cheat, but also the number of students who think it's OK to do so.

Cheaper eBook reader challenges Kindle

Do you enjoy reading ebooks? Ebooks (short for electronic book) are becoming a part of higher education, many people are starting to see a shift to e-books on campus. Now you can purchase a COOL-ER for much cheaper then Kindle. Interead's Cooler, costs just $249, which is $240 less than the Kindle DX!

New Report Finds Effectiveness in Online Learning

Inside Higher Ed reports on a study done by the Department of Education that supports the notion that online learning has advantages to face-to-face learning. Story includes link to the final report.

YouTube EDU and TeacherTube Brings Free Education to the Masses

YouTube has released a new sub-site called YouTube EDU aggregating thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and many more.


Another online community that provides the sharing of instructional videos is called TeacherTube. Their goal is to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

New Media, New Literacies, New Opportunities for Learning

In a recent article in AAUP's Academe Online, Jason Ohler articulated differences in the media literacies between traditional learning opportunities, and new opportunities. "New Media Literacies" specifically looks at the shift from read-only technologies, to what Ohler calls write-possible technogies. Ohler suggests we build learning opportunities based on students literacies, not only those literacies that might be identified as traditional classroom opportunties.

Evernote

Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

Slideshare: The best way to get your slides out there on the web

SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations.

- Individuals & organizations upload presentations to share their ideas, connect with others.
- Anyone can find presentations on topics that interest them. They can tag, download, or embed presentations into their own blogs & websites.

SlideShare is the best way to get your slides out there on the web, so your ideas can be found and shared by a wide audience. Are you a teacher looking to share your lesson plans?

Some of the things you can do on SlideShare

- Embed slideshows into your own blog or website.
- Share slideshows publicly or privately. There are several ways to share privately.
- Synch audio to your slides.
- Market your own event on slideshare.
- Join groups to connect with SlideShare members who share your interests
- Download the original file

A few useful links:

* A new plug-in for PPT to directly upload to SlideShare (haven’t used it yet)
* SlideShare application for Facebook
* SlideShare publishes a blog
* You can now upload Apple Keynote files to SlideShare
* The most viewed presentation all-time has over 800,000 views

Radio Brings Great Learning to Portable Electronic Devices

I've long thought that This American Life (by WBEZ Public Radio in Chicago) provides an incredible opportunity for students to better understand how different issues affect real people. On face value, Economics, Business, Psychology, Sociology, Education, Science, Literature, Poetry...all are represented in one of the best radio shows ever created. All current shows, and most of the past shows (if not all) are available from their archives.

Note: I've heard the host of This American Life, Ira Glass, is a fan of RadioLab (from WNYC in New York). I figured if my favorite radio host likes something, I should check it out. These two shows have got to be the best information/education shows on radio. Check out RadioLab's show on the evolution of reproduction...very funny and very informative.

'Twitterature': Tweeting Classics on the Web

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Learn how two University of Chicago sophomores, have written a new book titled Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less.

'Twitterature': Tweeting Classics on the Web

This Magic Moment...

ThisMoment, currently in Beta, is a new website that allows users to gather "presentations" about specific events. Links, videos, Google maps, comments, and other things are all linked together on a single page providing a multi-faceted perspective on a given moment in time. Could be an excellent opportunity for web presentations by students, especially if linked together. See a quick page I made on the USA vs. Honduras World Cup qualifying match.

The Best Format to Read a Book

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ann Kirschner experiments with Reading Dickens Four Different Ways, ranging from old-fashioned print to new technologies: paperback, audiobook, Kindle, and iphone. This article gives a glimpse into format options for reading traditional texts that future generations of ECC students may prefer or come expect.

Amazon Kindle Library Project

Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library recently attempted an interesting pilot project combining technology with an innovative new library service. Their plan was to fill faculty requests for interlibrary loan materials by lending Amazon Kindles with an e-book version of the requested item. Unfortunately, the pilot has been discontinued due to lack of written agreement with Amazon. Taking a look at such initiatives from other libraries can inspire new ways of thinking about how we can harness emerging technologies to improve library service for ECC faculty and students.

Fulcrum

"Give me a lever and fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
-Archimedes