posted Apr 11, 2008 9:32 AM by Bradley Vaden
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updated Apr 12, 2008 9:50 AM
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| Using the web for your classes is more than posting your syllabus online. In the world of Flickr, YouTube, Digg, eHarmony, and Google Gears we have a plethora of tools and information to harness for our students. Learn to create assignments and activities that extend the interactions of your students beyond the hour and a half that they see each other every week. Not busy work, but actual activities that increase dialogue, analysis and participation.
The reality is that today's student audience is very much in control of the content found online; students are no longer passive consumers of knowledge, but also producers, or "prosumers," indicating a more active approach to learning.
- To produce, edit and publish ideas to a wider audience of peers, and to subsequently rework published ideas on the basis of critique and feedback obtained, and/or to allow the ideas to grow, change, and evolve at the hands of the community.
- To demonstrate communicative competencies such as create scripts and record podcasts on a range of cross-cultural themes and concepts, sometimes in a foreign language.
- To participate and collaborate in formal and informal learning networks beyond classroom walls, thereby soliciting multiple perspectives and going beyond the limitations of their own viewpoints.
- To personalize learning events, following through on individual interests while taking into account multiple sources of information to achieve a balanced and critical view of knowledge generated.
- To demonstrate essential generic skills such as communication, digital literacy, and presentation skills, as well as to construct and consolidate knowledge through creating multimedia learning objects for peers.
Platform
As a college you need to decide upon a platform upon which to build your campus online classrooms. It makes it easier for students and faculty to move between classrooms. Meet as an Academic Senate, Administration and IT. Make a decision. - Wordpress MU - This allows faculty and students to create their own blogs. You can restrict the creation to students and faculty that have email addresses from your college. Wordpress.com is the free hosted version of this.
- Blogger - This is Google's blog platform. It is integrated into the Google Apps product line.
Resources - TED - Technology, Enterntainment, Design - a great site for inspiration.
- ESL Videos - Use videos from YouTube or from your own sources to create quizzes and activities for students.
- CLEAR - Create videos with subtitles.
- Viewpoint - Foreign language learning videos
- Timelines - create timelines or have your students create timelines as an assignment.
- Scribd - A great place for students to create documents and allow others to comments upon them. It can also "read" your documents back to you.
- Hippocampus - Modules from many different subject areas that you can use in your classroom.
- Community Walk - Create a map with pictures, video, commentary on your neighborhoods.
Tools - YouTube - The uber-collection of videos.
- Google Video - Like YouTube, but you can also download the videos to your iPod, Zune or other portable video device
- JumpCut - revise, cut mix up video.
- Viddler - record your own video from a web cam. Allows you to add comments to points within the video itself.
- Tumblr - Create mini-blogs/scrapbooks that can be centered around a class. You can use all sorts of media and can post from your phone.
- Flickr - the quintessential photo sharing site. It will soon allow videos.
- Picnik - online photo editing software. It can pull pictures from Flickr, Picasa and Photobucket.
- Sketchcast - this site records what you draw or write within its whiteboard area. You can add a voiceover explanation as well. You can draw with your mouse. It's better if you have a drawing pad. I suggest Bamboo by Wacom. It's cheap (fits a department budget) and works well.
- Twiddla - Online, synchronous whiteboard for getting together and either reviewing documents or creating plans or sharing resources. It won the award at SXSW for best technical achievement.
Online Resources - Free Technology for Teachers - a clearinghouse of examples of web technology and how to use it in the classroom.
- Websites of the Year - Multiple lists by use and subject material of software and sites to use in your classes.
- Classroom 2.0 - A site for instructors to ask questions, get answers, discuss how to use technology in the classroom.
Activities
- Ficlets - This site is a community based writing site. You start a story and others will add to it. Great idea for English/ESL courses. Have students in groups work on a story together.
The Story of Stuff - Environmental Science Fun with Wii-remotes
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