Scanner for Facebook Privacy

The website ReclaimPrivacy.org offers an interesting tool that will scan your Facebook settings and give you a report concerning what information you have made publicly available and how to change your settings if you are so compelled. If you use Facebook as an educator and are wary of the information about you do make available to your students, this might be a useful tool for keeping informed about the information you do share and who can see it.

Great content coming down the pipe...

Sure. Everyone is throwing their hat into the ring of online learning. Why not Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bootsy Collins? Bootsy Collins' Funk University offers online bass instruction. To be honest, as a wannabe bass player, I am considering trying a class on for size. Maybe I can learn to slap like Marcus, or do whatever it is that Victor does.

The point: Even pipe dreams can be sustained with the promise of online learning.

Talk of the Nation: Simple techniques can make you a great teacher

The title says it all. Find the podcast of the show, and a transcript after the jump.

Growth of Distance Learning at Community Colleges

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that according to an Instructional Technology Council study published in March 2010, enrollment in distance learning at community colleges has increased from 11% in the 07-08 academic year to 22% in 08-09. The article suggests enthusiasm of community colleges for distance learning, the economic downturn, and enrollment efforts as possible reasons for the growth.

Is this really a little off topic?

I've been interested in game design for about 10 years, especially in the similarities between the design of games and the design of instruction--the two are really not that far apart. Several years ago, a friend introduced me to the idea of "design" in general--nothing new, but new to me.

I thought I'd share a couple of articles that came out related to the relationship between design and "game" design. I'm curious as to other's thoughts on the relationship between this and "instructional" design.

• The Ten Principles for Good Design: Part 1
• The Ten Principles for Good Design: Part 2
  

Captivate Available for Mac Users

Captivate is an Adobe product used to create tutorials - I use it to design instructional library and information literacy tutorials for classes. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Adobe is releasing Captivate 5 which is now available for the Mac platform and offers new features like better video synchronization within projects. If you do go for the Mac version, just keep in mind that the PowerPoint plug-in piece (allowing you to import PowerPoint presentations into your projects) is still only available to Windows users.

Eighty Percent of College Faculty Using Social Media

According to a recent study entitled "Social Media in Higher Education" conducted by the publisher Pearson, more than eighty percent of faculty are using social media and half of those are using social media for teaching purposes. The study also offers some additional interesting data such as 30% of the faculty polled use social media with their students and 52% use video, podcast, blogs, and wikis as part of their classes.

Creating a Good Profile Picture

As a librarian, I like to have a picture of myself available in profile on D2L as well as the social networking tools we use in the library (like Facebook) so that should students venture into the library they may recognize me and feel more comfortable approaching me and also so they get a sense that I'm real person when interacting with me in the online classroom. The social media guide Mashable offers 5 Tips for Creating the Perfect Profile Pic which includes some tools that can help you be creative in the process.

Learn a new language for free!

Here is an interesting little language site I ran into recently it's called LiveMocha it allows you to learn languages at your own pace with the addition of a social network. You can speak with other members from other countries in their native language. I've used Rossetta Stone in the past which is a great product but the ability to converse with others online in their native language to practice what you've learned...genius!

Here is a little more on LiveMocha:

Direct learning while students read

Something I learned from an instructor several years ago was the power of creating interaction with students in the middle of a reading assignment. The example at the time was to have students read focused content (in this instance about "Character" as it relates to Ethics) and then prompt the student with questions in the middle of the content before they continue reading. In this example, he would embed a form into the page, and ask questions related to having good/bad character. This form would then be processed and the instructor would get an e-mail which he could respond to if necessary--for instance, if the student didn't quite get the concept correct.A new tool, Tal.ki provides the opportunity to not only embed a single question, but entire conversations between students and the instructor around any given topic. There are some limitations to the implementation, the biggest of which seems to be the inability to focus a specific topic on a page. This might be addressed, but I'm still looking. Call if you're interested in exploring this with a Distance Learning staff member.