Learn the Periodic Table of Elements

Learning the periodic table of elements has never been easier!  The Google Play App called Socratica has over 30 facts about each element to make learning the elements easier. The APP also includes audio clips to help with pronunciation, tests to quiz how well the learning is going, and prompts to assist in finding the elements by table, search or index. The App is free, was recently updated (August 2011), has been downloaded and rated by over 5000 users, and requires an Android 2.1 devise and up. The App rates 4.4 out of 5 stars!

         

How to and How to Share the Knowledge

So you want to leverage technology to know-how to do something…what? Anything! It doesn’t matter!

We wanted to take a moment during this holiday season to share with you some great- How-to sites designed specifically to help faculty and students!

 

Instructables  is a great web-based platform where people contribute and share what they do and how they do it making it a great DIY website.

I have used the technology portion of the site and found it to be very helpful!

 

 

SoYouWanna.com  teaches you how to do all the things you never considered.

From how to publish a book to how to select learning materials for your course.

The site offers some areas that are more scholarly in nature but there are also more practical how to’s such as how to paint a room or play poker.

 

 

This next resource is not only a great place for you to learn some great how-to tips but a space to add to the community with your expertise.

 

WikiHow is the how-to manual that anyone can write or edit. It is a collaborative effort to build and share the world’s largest how-to manual.

Like Wikipedia, wikiHow is a wiki that anyone can write or edit.

 

 

Articles on this site verify from arts and entertainment, education and communication to health and philosophy.

Other how-to sites:

How stuff works – Online reference tool powered by the Discovery Channel.

 

Knol – This website allows you to easily share what you know and write a knoll (a unit of knowledge) to create your own how-to on a topic.

Your topic can be collaborative as you connect with others experts in your interested area or set to hear only your voice. The choice is up to you.

Note – come May, Knol will cease to exist but knolls may be migrated to Annotum 1.0 (a hosted theme on WordPress.com, a free theme on WordPress.org, and a freely available download on GitHub.

 

eHow is the go-to place to find out how to do just about anything!  Its library has more than 1.5 million articles and 150,000 videos, written and produced by experts, as well as others who share their knowledge and know-how. 

Over 70 million people visit eHow each month.

How To Web Enhance Your Course

You want to Web Enhance Your course without recreating the Wheel? Use Videos to Enrich Your Content with a multimedia approach.

There are several great sites to search for valuable educational content for your course and in this blog we will outline a few.

YouTube is the most popular site to host videos – both from mainstream publishers, like the Royal Family and The Whitehouse – as well as general users.  YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world.  It hosts both informational and instructional videos, including “screencasts”, i.e. video recordings of screen activity that shows you how to use software or work through websites, etc.

YouTube EDU – aggregates all the videos from more than 100 institutions of higher education around the US.

 

 

There is also a direct link in Blackboard to Youtube so the integration is easy!

 

More General video sites

Academic Earth – Thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars

Google Video – videos on all topics

TED videos – ideas worth spreading; riveting talks by remarkable people worldwide

Vimeo – a thriving community of people who love to make and share video

Finallyunderstand.com- offers videos related to mathematics, physics, electronics concept videos

 

Don’t forget the NBC Lean Video archives that are resource tools inside of Blackboard and your textbook course sites such as McGrawHill. Both of these content providers have partnerships and integrations with Blackboard Learn.

 

How To video sites

 

 

Graspr – The instructional video network

Howcast – How-to videos

5min Life Videopedia – instructional and how-to videos

SuTree – Learn virtually everything by watching how to videos from all over the web

Video Jug – Life explained. On film.

 

One tip for implementation: When you are adding these components to your Blackboard course make sure that you are linking to the material instead of embedding the video.

Accessibility and Universal Design: The Google Way

As institutions look to take advantage of more tools and technologies to serve all students, Google gives faculty another couple of tools for their accessibility toolbox. This blog will outline three essential areas where Google has worked hard to increase accessibility for the blind community.

Google+ has been a great tool that many of us have used but the video quality has been poor. Chief Engineer, Chee Chew states that Goolge+ has been working to improve the video quality and sustainability in an effort to increase the ability for the deaf and hard of hearing population to see sign language.

How many people have been victim to the buffering monster? Or the quality of the video does not allow for sudden sharp movements? Well while these may be just a nuisance for some of us, they pose as serious barriers for the blind community where individuals need to be able to observe signing.

Google has also been working with specific advocacy organizations for the blind to make other products more accessible such as Google Docs. The new features allow for more efficient keyboard shortcuts and support for the usages of screen readers in Google Docs, as well as Google Sites and Google Calendar. For more information about how to get started using Google Docs with a screen reader visit their website: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=1631663

 

 

Calendars are an essential time management tool for most in our current society. Now there is more accessibility for the blind community of the Google Calendar app. The calendar now supports the usage of assistive technology software for JAWS Screen Reader Software, Apple’s VoiceOver software that is built into every single Mac and Chrome’s ChromeVox screen reader application.

For information on all the new accessibility functionality visit Google’s Official Blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/improved-accessibility-for-google.html

In addition, for a complete list of all the added keyboard shortcuts and more information about screen reader functionality for Google, you can find more information here: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=1630828

Share your Presentations

Whether you are a student or faculty, presentations are a way of life in the academy! Sharing those presentations has taken on a whole new approach with some recent technology advances. In this blog, we will explore some of the latest tools you can use to share your presentations with peers, teachers, or other colleagues across the country.

Prezi – www.prezi.com –  is a new type of presentation tool that supports the online creation and sharing of presentations in a non-linear format. It is often referred to as the “zooming presentation editor.” This cloud-based presentation software opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them.

The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery. Great for design and you can also add video to your presentations. Watch this short video to learn all you need to know to get started with your first Prezi!

 

Slideshare with Zipcast Feature

Slideshare has been around for some time and is another great resource used to share your presentations and word documents. However there is a new feature in Slide share that allows you to offer a more dynamic experience to the viewer of your presentation with the recently, released Zipcast – 1-click. This provides a (private or public) personalized meeting room, where you can use:

- any presentation
- streaming live video
- group chat.

Plus, there is also Facebook and Twitter integration. Here’s a screenshot of what the Zipcast feature looks like from a Guide to Using social media course I am enrolled in:

Google Alerts

Overloaded with Information on the Web? Google Alerts Could be Your Solution!

In today’s society the internet has a lot of useful information to keep faculty and students up-to-speed on current research and trends in specific disciplines. However, sometimes because of the amount or volume of information readily available at your finger tips, it can be overwhelming. One solution is Google alerts.

Google tracks new content on the web, so you can use Google Alerts – to monitor new content of interest and have it emailed to you with links to the articles or news.

The Google Alerts home page explains how this is useful for the following activities:

- monitoring a developing news story
- keeping current on a competitor or industry
- getting the latest on an event

To set up an alert, use the form on the right hand side of the Google alerts home page and enter:

- the search terms you are looking for
- the type of monitoring you want to take place, the default is “Everything”, i.e. news, blogs, web and videos
- how often you want to receive an email and its length
- your email address – where you want to receive the alerts.

Once you have set up the alert, you will start receiving emails with links to new content, e.g. here is one email I received based on my Google Alert for “social learning.”

If you have a Google account, you can sign in to manage your alerts – i.e. amend or delete existing ones and/or add new ones.

Happy Searching!

Google+

Google+ a new social-networking platform is currently in a limited field trail. The ability to check it out is by invitation only. Some scholars who have viewed Google+ have shared excitement about its potential - so lights up the blogosphere.

Google+ is Facebook like in many ways and may be a spring forward from Google wave (remember that platform? It was quickly dropped after nonuse). Google+ promises the tools to share photos, updates, and recommendations with a tight circle of identified colleagues or friends. The key difference from Facebook is that it is easier to restrict access and information by isolating contacts, friends, and subgroups. This provides a veil of protection from accidently sending updates to everyone on your “friend” list.

The structure of sharing found on Facebook is defaulted to share with everyone – creating a FERPA nightmare. While it is not difficult to restrict access in Facebook to only friends, there have been enough accidental posts and sharing to cause weighty concern. Professors and students alike have posted comments that they meant for only a few, to later find that their comments were shared wider than intended.

In Google+, scholars may be able to define classes into subgroups and use the application to deliver course content and share communications or collaborate in new ways. Some have said that they plan to use it to collaborate on research projects (search - B.J. Fogg, Dir. Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab and the Chronicle of Higher Education to learn more). Others have praised the potential of the video chat features as a possible way to hold virtual video office hours or synchronous small-group meetings. The video chat application allows up to 10 people to join a discussion. Another scholar (Dave Parry from the University of Texas, Dallas) has gone further to say that Google+ may turn out to be an alternative to learning management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, etc.

Emerging technology is exciting as it provides fertile ground for leading edge thinkers to find new ways to use tools and applications for teaching and learning. But caution must always be applied as we consider first and foremost: Is the new application accessible to all learners? Does the new application facilitate learning and achieve desired outcomes? Does it protect student privacy and records? Is it appropriate? And, does it make sense to use it?

The reason I approach new applications with caution rests with the fact that we have seen many cases where the use of technology and new applications are simply added to classes without consideration of goals, objectives, outcomes, or pedagogy. Add-technology-and-stir is not the right approach.

I am also cautious because we know that many of the existing Google Apps may not be accessible to all learners and universities have faced discrimination lawsuits for violating federal (ADA) law.

I also share concern because social networking sites and learning management systems prove to be a fertile ground for scholarly research. There is much we can learn but also much at risk. Take for example events at Harvard whereby scholars have been accused of violating student privacy after it was revealed that they downloaded the profiles of a Harvard college class without students' knowledge and for failing to protect student privacy. Ethical challenges abound as scholars research social networks and other online environments. Both faculty and students need to realize that what is posted on public forums is public and may not be protected as private.

From an administrative perspective, we need to be certain that before we implement any new application that all learners have equal access to the benefits of using the application to drive learning. Therefore, as Google+ prepares to make its debut, academics and administrators should ask themselves many questions. Like others, I share excitement about the potential of web 2/3.0 in higher education. I also look forward to innovative flexible learning platforms that tear apart silo infrastructures. Google+ may be the next step forward that many of us have been waiting for.

Resource: Wired Campus, Chronicle of Higher Education (Monday July 11, 2011).

How to Share a Document Using Google Docs

So I’ve set a goal to become a paperless teacher within the next 6 months.  Between dropbox, Google Docs, Scribd, drop.io and a 4 gig USB drive, I’m very determined to make this happen.  I’m also lucky enough to have an ipad and a LiveScribe Pen  (pictured) to help me stay paper free.

But this post isn’t about me, it’s about my quest to help veteran faculty members to better leverage technology in their teaching.   Most faculty are misguided in thinking technology is an end-product for classroom use. They often dismiss the use of technology in class prep and post-class work.  In all honesty, I end up using more technology to make MY LIFE easier, as opposed to *in class* ‘stuff’.
Yesterday, a prof. asked me about a way to share a document with colleagues so he could get a quick turnaround on comments and revisions.  I used Jing to introduce him to Google Docs (they already had a Gmail account) and the sharing capability. 
I didn’t go into ALL of the features [get a tour], but it worked just fine.  Check it out below [here’s the link]

To learn more about Google Docs and file sharing, check out the Google Docs help page.