Archive for the ‘Learning Spaces’ Category

Laura I. Gómez, online media executive and former college language instructor, writes for Mashable about How To: Learn and Practice Languages Using Social Media. This quick and useful guide provides the following types of website recommendations for people who wish to learn a new language through today’s new media sites:

• Community
• Video/Interactive
• Blogs
• Twitter

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb writes about how University of Texas at Dallas History Professor, Monica Rankin is using Twitter in her classroom. This video discusses how Rankin is using hashtags to engage students in discussions. Be sure to check out the full post for links to other educational Twitter efforts, and please list any you’ve heard about in the comments!

Educators who want to get up and running on Twitter can reference this guide to 100 Tips, Apps, and Resources for Teachers on Twitter. This list of tutorials, guides, suggestions, and project listings includes links to articles such as:

• Twitter4Teachers Wiki. This wiki provides teachers on Twitter and are organized by subject. You can add yourself to the list as well as find others with similar interests as you.
• Twitter Professors: 18 People to Follow for a Real Time Education. While these educators are all working at a level higher than K-12, these professors share valuable experience using Twitter and keep their pulse on what is happening on a larger scope.
• How To Become Twitter Teacher (TT) In 23 Steps Or Less?. From the basics of using Twitter to suggestions for using it in schools, this article incorporates videos, suggestions, and links to other resources.
• The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter. This blog post offers great advice on getting started with Twitter.
• Twitter Etiquette. This wiki page offers tons of information on Twitter etiquette and ways to help manage your Twitter experience.

A new online portal called Academic Earth has aggregated the video lectures available from universities such as MIT, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley. According to The Bivings Report they plan to roll out many social features for users over the next couple of months. Another good place to look for open courseware and lecture materials is the Open Courseware Consortium where you can browse or Google across the collections of the 200 international universities who provide OCW.

The MaintainIT Project which gathers experience, tips, and techniques from public libraries across the US and Canada is offering several upcoming free webinars which may be of interest to librarians. You can register for these online, or access them later through the Share & Learn section of their site.

23 Things Online Summit
When: March 3, 11:00am - 1:00pm Pacific (Noon Mountain/1 PM Central/2 PM Eastern)
“23 Things” is a self-directed staff development learning concept centered on social collaboration tools such as blogs and wikis. During this 2 hour Summit, organizers from several successful programs around the nation will share best practices and lessons learned. Participants will be able to ask questions and seek advice to help in implementing a similar program. WebJunction, MaintainIT, the State Library of Kansas, and the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library are collaborating to create this event.

Roadmap for Creating a Successful Marketing Campaign: TechSoup Talks
When: March 5, 11:00am - 12:00pm Pacific (Noon Mountain/1 PM Central/2 PM Eastern)
Want to learn from an organization that won an award for their creative marketing campaign? This nonprofit used Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop to create all the components of a fun and engaging product marketing campaign that was chosen as runner up in the Adobe-TechSoup 2008 Show Your Impact contest. Kami Griffiths will interview Lea Anne Armstrong from Evergreen to talk about their winning entry and how it was created.

IT Asset Management: A MaintainIT Book Club Discussion
When: March 10, 11:00am - 12:00pm Pacific (Noon Mountain/1 PM Central/2 PM Eastern)
How old are your computers? Are they still under warranty? How many software licenses do you have and do you need to buy more? It can feel overwhelming to keep track of serial numbers, vendor contact information, networking data, etc. Luckily, there are IT Asset Management solutions that can help and some of them are free! Kendra Morgan, TechAtlas Project Coordinator, will be a special guest for this discussion.

Technology Grants for Libraries 101
When: March 12, 11:00am - 12:00pm Pacific (Noon Mountain/1 PM Central/2 PM Eastern)
Discover the confidence and knowledge to successfully receive library grant funding. Find out where to easily locate grant opportunities, learn a step-by-step method for writing grant proposals, and discover real library grant success stories. Stephanie Gerding, an experienced trainer and author on library grants, will provide practical advice ideal for new grant writers.

Following four months of discussion, Educause has issued their Top Teaching and Learning Challenges for 2009. They have set up a Ning network and a wiki to address these issues:

1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual).
3. Reaching and engaging today’s learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.

Andy Guess at Inside Higher Ed writes about using widgets for education with A Widget Onto the Future.

“Already, some instructors are using them in their own courses, and the idea is catching on as others consider the possibilities. While widgets aren’t nearly as ubiquitous in learning circles as are PowerPoint presentations or online quizzes, some educators hope the time is ripe for them to catch on. A meeting of the Northeast Regional Computing Program is already being planned on the topic for next year and professors are busy discussing and embedding widgets on their blogs.”

via Educause

Tom Haymes, Director of Technology and Instructional Computing at Houston Community College Northwest, outlines a Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change in the latest issue of Educause Quarterly. According to Haymes, the successful adoption of any new technology is rooted in its ability to fulfill three criteria for the user including making its potential evident, being sufficiently easy to use, and essential to the user’s life.

“The dirty little secret of technology in education is that a lot of it doesn’t get used effectively—or at all. As technologists, many of us find it hard to understand why. We constantly search for new ways to employ technology in the service of teaching and research. Most users, however, be they faculty, staff, or students, do not approach technology the same way we do. According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study, 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.””

Alisa Miller at Smart Teaching has created a mega-list of 100 classroom videos to provide you with fresh perspective and inspiration to spice up your instructional sessions. Her recommended videos are divided into the following categories:

• The Basics
• The Arts
• Getting Physical
• Education and Technology
• Special Needs
• Creative Techniques
• Videos Made by Students
• Teachers Say
• Classrooms on the News
• Just for Fun

Rafael C. Alvarado, Director of Academic Technology Services at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania writes for Educause Quarterly with Overcoming the Fear of Gaming: A Strategy for Incorporating Games into Teaching and Learning. Alvarado discusses opportunities for the effective use of immersive games in academia.

“Ultimately, to take full advantage of games as engines of learning, we should move from a critical approach to a creative one and encourage the innovative use and development of games (and gaming engines) within our colleges and universities as collaborative new media projects. Such projects would take advantage of our unique social arrangement of students, developers, and faculty and allow us to rely less on consumer culture to provide game content. The design of these games would be guided by the experience of managing the pedagogical outcomes of games in real-use contexts, forming a feedback loop that would identify and select for better games.”

Christina Laun at CollegeDegrees.com has compiled The Ultimate Guide to Using Open Courseware: 70+ Apps, Search Engines and Resources for Free Learning. Her annotated list of resources are divided into the following categories:

• Search Engines and Directories
• Open Courseware Collections
• Podcasts
• Videos
• eBooks
• Educational TV
• Resources, Articles and Guides

Earlier today Google officially launched Knol which had previously been in beta and invitation-only (see previous coverage). Knol is a collection of authoritative articles, written by a community of experts and a direct competitor to Wikipedia. Knols are written by individuals or teams who are credited for their contributions and can share in the revenue generated from the Google Adsense ads on their subject pages. Readers can rate, review, and comment on knols as well as suggest changes or additions to the content which is subject to the article authors’ approval.

Further coverage:

Knol: Google Takes on Wikipedia - ReadWriteWeb

Google’s Wikipedia rival, Knol, goes public - C|Net News

Google Launches Knol, The Monetizable Wikipedia - TechCrunch

School Library Journal will be hosting a free Learning 2.0 course hosted by Michael Stephens beginning on Monday, July 21, 2008. Based on the Learning 2.0 23 Things program originally held by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, the program will focus on a new technology each week. By the conclusion of the course, learners will have had experience with:

Blogs
Podcasts
RSS
Wikis
Flickr
Web Toys
Web 2.0 & Library 2.0
Social Networking Sites
Video Sites
Twitter
Tagging
Google Apps

The course is free and open to everyone to participate.

I’ve created a faculty office in Google Lively where my students can drop-in and chat in a virtual space. Up to 20 people can join and interact in a room at once, although 100 can enter rooms with view-only access. If you’ve installed Lively, stop by and say hello. If you’re just getting started you may find these resources helpful:

Official Lively Help Group

Lively Help Center

Blogoscoped’s Google Lively FAQ

Open Culture spotlights 70 educational video collections on YouTube originating from media outlets, cultural institutions, universities and non-profits. Among their top picks are:

• The Nobel Prize
• University of California - Berkeley
• Stanford University
• MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
• Citizen Tube
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting