Too much Technology in the Classroom?

In the recent article, "More Face-to-Face, Less Face-to-Screen" in The Chronicle of Higher Education, St. John's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Assistant Professor Sharon Marshall writes about the struggle to maintain face-to-face connections while still taking advantage of technology in the classroom.

Educause Study on Students and Technology

Educause Center for Applied Research has release this 2010 study based on qualitative data from students at both 4-year and 2-year institutions on how undergraduate student use information technology. The study is 120 pages, but, for a shorter synopsis, you can peruse their key findings which provides information of student use of desktops versus laptops, mobile devices, learning management systems, and social networking.

Free Tool for Creating Audio

The new free tool AudioPal allows users an easy way to create audio for online. You have the option of recording by phone or by mic, uploading an audio file, or simply typing in text and having it converted to speech. AudioPal will then email you code to allow you to embed your audio widget where ever you would like. This could be a great tool to allow students to work with and share audio in online and enhanced classes and might also be used for creating audio for lectures and tutorial instruction.

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.

What will become of bit.ly?

Bit.ly is a wonderful link condenser with the added bonus of tracking link clicks and providing statistics about those links. We use it with this blog, and ECC Library also uses it to track the clicks on our Twitter and Facebook fan page feeds. One of the great assets of bit.ly is that it allows you to post your "Tweet" directly through its interface - there's no need to long into Twitter to do it - because of the relationship between the two services. However, Twitter's CEO Evan Williams just announced that Twitter is going to create its own link shortener which may mean a questionable fate for bit.ly. It remains to be seen whether the Twitter link shortener with feature tracking and statistics and whether bit.ly users will transition to it. This is something to be aware of if you use bit.ly to track student use of any of your links.

New Service for Video/Screencast distribution

Tubemongul OneLoad is a free one-step service that allows you to upload a video or screencast and have it distributed efficiently to number of different video and social networking sites including Google, Yahoo! YouTube, vimeo, viddler, and myspace. It may come in handy if you use a number of different sites to distribute content to your students. The service also includes analytics in case you would like to track viewership and engagement.

iPads for All New Students

In a post from ReadWriteWeb, Frederic Lardinois reports that two colleges, Seton Hill University and George Fox University, have announced plans to give all incoming students a choice between a MacBook or an iPad. This may be a premature endorsement of the iPad considering it hasn't been tested enough yet and it is not yet apparent whether the iPad will suceed where Kindle hasn't with the textbook market. It remains to be seen whether textbook publishers will be able to leverage the iPad's interactive capabilities to bring new value to students and educators.

Online graphic organizing tools

The blog Free Technology for Teachers has a recent post illuminating nine freely available online tools that can be used for graphic organization of ideas or mind mapping. These can be useful tools for visual learners and can help students broaden and narrow research topics and see the relationships between different concepts. Among the tools highlighted are Wise Mapping, Slatebox, exploratree, and mindmeister. The library also has Creedo Reference (you must login to access this link from off campus), a database aggregating electronic encyclopedia articles which includes a "Concept Map" feature similarly allowing students to visually see the connections between different research topics.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.