-
Workshopping
I’ve been busy over at http://testingcentre.wordpress.com, pulling a bunch of stuff together for a workshop on creating successful online learning environments. The problem with this topic is that so much good stuff has been said on the topic already, and I feel like I’m adding very little to the noise. My hope is that the participants will guide the workshop, since I’m quite prepared to go off in any direction that is needed. Of course, in preparation for the workshop I found a couple of good new tools to add to the mix: PollDaddy for quick student polls and Tangler , a non-US hosted discussion board.
-
Easy multimedia
A quick trip over at one of my favourite sites, Interactive Narratives, lead me to VuVox, a Web 2.0 multimedia authoring tool that stole my attention for about a half an hour. There could be lots of useful applications of tools like this in higher ed, in particular where multimedia development resources might be stretched, or where there is a desire for students to tell a story, explain, show understanding, or even synthesize in a multi-layered, dynamic way. Robin Good provides a nice overview/how to on the tool
-
word of the day
flickr photo originally uploaded by VROG …to describe the countless hours I seem to be spending filling forms and dotting my ‘i’s’ and crossing my ‘t’s’–paperganda (or paperazzi, if you prefer). But instead of whining, I’ll try to turn this into a constructive thought… My (lack of) patience for paperganda mirrors my escalating impatience with technology that is overly complicated and requires too much of my valuable time fiddling to get to work. Admittedly, I am a bit equipment challenged–cell phones, VCRs, etc–but I’m hardly a technophobe…I like to think I kind of get how computers and software and digital technology in general works. Today I needed to test a…
-
the not quite new year
After a 1 year hiatus from blogging (I left my UBC job last February, and with it left Connections and E-learning in the Faculty of Dentistry) it’s time to resume. I imagine it will be more of the same–finding and testing (web 2.0) tools that could be useful for busy instructors and students. This is the fourth higher ed institution that been employed by, and the one thing that never changes is that instructors need educational technologies that: 1. take less than 2 minutes to set up an account and learn 2. require minimal to no support from IT staff 3. are free 4. don’t require a lot of orientation…
