Sources for Learning Objects

Merlot http://www.merlot.org/Home.po

National Science Digital Library http://nsdl.org/

Wisc-Online http://www.wisc-online.com (You have to sign up for an account, but it is painless and they have over 2000 objects.)

On the wisc-online I found two learning objects that would fit my module on nanostructures in the "Nature as Inspiration for Innovation" course. It took me only 5 minutes to find them because I got there through Holly's link, so I did not even have to sign up for an account.

The first LO is called "Nano Introduction to Nanotechnology" and the other "Why Nano?". They would serve well as introductions to what nanotechnology is and its history and its future. Both LO are from 2005 and may already be somewhat outdated. But that is OK, since the activity I require my students to do is to create a learning object like these on nanostructures that were based on structures in nature. My students will be high school biology teachers and the LO they create will be used in their classroom.

Twitter. How would that work?

I used to have a personal twitter account, but the only thing I ever did on it was follow Lance Armstrong while he was participating in the Tour de France. That guy has really embraced modern technology tools and used twitter to update his fans about how he was feeling after another grueling day on the bike. It was extremely interesting to see when he had good days and bad ones, when he missed his family, when he had to report to yet another doping test, when he felt let down by his team mates. But he was at his best when he would throw in the occasional reminder that life was short, and that some people go through tremendous suffering every day. Live strong. Here twitter added to my life, and raised awareness (and money) for a good cause. But there are really no other people I wanted to tweet with. Not many people are that interesting it seems. The people that are interesting to me (friends and family) deserve more than 140 characters. I am definitely not the tweeting type.

I tried again for this exercise. I can see the value of Twitter as a way to send out announcements and reminders, but do we really need another mode to keep students on track? I am currently teaching a blended portion of a class. I see the students for the first official face-2-face class this Tuesday, but they had an online assignment due at midnight Friday. I emailed the students multiple times, even went to the class itself to introduce myself and to remind them that it would be a good idea to at least log in to the moodle site a few days before the first assignment was due since tech support on a Friday night is hard to find. Even my smiling face didn't prevent at least 2 students from emailing me in a panic just prior to the due time. Seems to me that there are always a few students that are not paying attention – I gave them every opportunity – still they did not take the opportunity that was given to them to succeed. Is Twitter just going to cause confusion, give me more work (reading all the chatter, making sure everyone has an account), or is it going to wake up those last 2 students who otherwise could not bother following the directions? Encouraging students to use Twitter to voluntarily share links and info they come across with each other might be an idea, but wouldn't that be better as a water-cooler forum on the course website?

So basically, I am not convinced that twitter will add much to the class. Am I too skeptical, too old-fashioned?

My twitter account: MAlleyne10

Can't see the forest for the trees?

Sometimes I am just overwhelmed by the number of tools that can be used in an online learning environment. The websites explaining these tools are one top of all the content I come across when working background for my research. How to keep track of it all.

For the last few months I have been using Diigo to help me keep track of it all. You can become a user for free and it helps you annotate, archive and organize all the websites that are of use to you. In that way it kind of serves as a fancy bookmarking tool (if you were really good about sub-categorizing bookmarks - my bookmarks tab had 50 entries in random order - not very useful). But Diigo asks you for tags to the website (some are already suggested by the article itself) and later you can quickly search interesting sites by tag.

During my Tech Tools course I learned to also become a member of a Diigo group. In this group setting all the bookmarks from members in a group come together. This could be very helpful for class activity. Sometimes, as an instructor or a student, you read something that you want to share with your class - putting it in this group will enable others to see what you were so excited about (you can even include comments) without bothering them with yet another e-mail or twitter. After the course is over the bookmarks can still be a great resource to refer back to.

It takes a little while to remember to use the Diigo tool, however, it is very easy to use and the toolbar I installed makes things even easier.

When to use a wiki or a blog - and what is the difference?

Answering the second question is much easier. The first one I am still trying to figure out.

A blog can be viewed as an online journal of a particular owner/author. It is updated whenever the author has something to share (weekly, daily, hourly). Blogs do have spaces for opinions of readers to be posted, but readers do not alter the initial post.

A wiki is a website that is meant for multiple people to update in real time from all around the world. Wiki entries/articles represent a consensus, but again there is an area for discussion and comments.

Wiki's can host a blog, but not vice versa.

Blogs:
- Usually a single author. Sometimes can have multiple contributors,
- Author posts, user comments,
- Opinion Sharing ,
- One-to-many content.

Wiki:
- Multiple Authors,
- Edited by a group or team,
- Contains links to other Wiki pages,
- Continuousy changing and growing rapidly,
- Many-to-many communication.

Both blogs and wikis can be used in online courses. This blog was started to serve my journal while discovering new tools to use for online learning in my Tech Tools ION course. It follows along as I learn more on the topic.

Wikis are probably more useful for group projects. I place to share material created by group members as well as a place for discussion and editing to occur.

I personally really like blogger for blogs, mainly because I familiar with the tool plus it is linked to my google account. For wikis I use pbworks, another very intuitive tool.

This article, by Bill Ferriter is a great resource to find out how to use blogs and wikis in education.

I have not really used blogs and wikis for educational purposes (except as a student, with mixed results). Some problems I see with this technology is that it takes a student away from the main course website, in addition if the group working on the wiki is large it can become quite cumbersome. I will post more on this topic later when I have more experience actually using it as an instructor.

Elluminate: Skype on Steroids

For an excellent article on asynchronous learning refer to "Taking the 'A' out of Asynchronous" by Matt Villano.

Elluminate is a very powerful tool to accomplish synchronous teaching.

• A link can be created by the moderator within the class website so that getting access to the session is straightforward.

• There is a whiteboard feature where the moderator can upload files such as powerpoint presentations.

• It is easy to polls while in Elluminate (A show of hands everyone ?!)

• Students can ask questions both by typing/chatting or by speaking through microphone.

• There is also a webcam function – but I have not yet used it in a live session.

• It is also possible to tape the session so that those who were unable to “attend” can follow along in the future.

• There is also a group function. Students can be divided into several groups and have separate, private, discussions. I am not sure how difficult it is to accomplish this by the moderator while in a session. Curious to find out.
  Using Elluminate seems pretty intuitive, especially from the student's standpoint.

• Elluminate can be used for lecture, study sessions, and office hours.

Whereas the basic Elluminate tool is free to use, the full license is very expensive and usually only available to to instructors at bigger institutions. (vRoom, the free versions, does not have recording capability and is limited to only 4 participants).

Another option would be to use Skype – but for now that synchronous tool can only be used between two computers.

You can actually record your skype sessions (both video and audio). You do this using ecamm. You can try it for free, to get the full service added to your skype costs $20. (This one is for Mac only, but there might be other services for PC). The result is a quicktime file which our tech office suggests you store/host outside of, in my case moodle, to save space. I think this would be a great feature for some activities I do in class where I ask grad students to contact physiologists they admire and ask them some questions about their career. These interviews can then be used to share in the class, and in future courses.

There is a feature on skype where you can share your screen view (the files that are open on your screen) with the person you are skyping with. So you can draw things and work on a document together. You cannot share both your video feed (your smiling face) and your desktop (documents) at the same time, but I don't think that is such a big deal - there is still the audio.

This might be a cheaper option than Elluminate for those at smaller colleges.

• Skype is inexpensive.

• Skype is easy to install and use, the video and sound are usually clear, though the webcam feature can slow down the conversation considerably if bandwidth is an issue.

• Weblinks and documents can be send via the chat box.

With both Elluminate and Skype there are going to be challenges like set up, getting used to the interface, and scheduling times when students will all be available.

Chatting and Texting

Many tools are available to help you incorporate texting and chatting.

Chat within Moodle

• Adv: tool within the course website
• Disadv: sluggish

Chat within Skype

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: only enabled when computer is on.

Chat within Elluminate

• Adv: works well – fast, more than two people can participate
• Disadv: requires access to Elluminate (see separate blog entry on Elluminate)

Chat within Facebook or other networking sites.

• Adv: works well – fast
• Disadv: I view FB as something I do outside of work.

Chat via GoogleTalk

I do not know enough about this tool at the moment to comment on its usefulness, but since it is connected to all things Google, which I use a lot, I am sure I will soon become more familiar with it. However, my University discourages me to use Google tools for teaching – and I am not sure why – something about not being able to provide the same support in case work is lost.

Chats can be viewed as an asynchronous or synchronous tool. Sometimes you want to chat with somebody but they are not online – then your typed text basically becomes a message that can be dealt with later. If you make an appointment ahead of time to be online chatting is definitely a synchrounous tool.

Texting is handy when using a cell phone, but probably just for shorter messages. Again, this is a semisynchronous tool.

But what to use chatting and texting for? Probably not for actual content delivery. Chatting would be good for virtual office hours or for collaborative work between two students. Texting could be used to get almost instant feedback from a particular student or from the instructor.

Disadvantages of texting:

• Texting via phone would require instructor to give out his/her personal phone number.

• I don't think you can rely on texting as the only way to deliver important messages to students since some students do not have access to cell-phones. Posting messages using the text feature in conjuction with message feature in Moodle or e-mail would be a better idea. Many smart-phones now have quick access to e-mail.

• A phone plan that inludes texting may incur an additional cost to the student.

Polling

Advantages (according to my fellow TechTool students):

1. Asynchronous communication using polls or texting is an efficient and quick, low commitment method for short evaluations.
2. Response rates are usually very high because students feel valued because their opinion is considered (especially when the poll is anonymous)
3. Great way to check if the difficulty levels or expectations after an assignment or tests were not met or exceeded.

Pitfalls:

1. Technology breaks down, which lessens the student's positive experience in the course.
2. Texting involves costs.

For the TechTools course we used:

Polleverywhere.com. It was a positive experience for me. I was able to text my response to the question (which was posted with the number to text to and the numbers corresponding to the different possible answers on the course website) via my iPhone. (I also had the option of going to the website and clicking on the response there). When I visited the website I found that creating my own poll was very straight forward.

Polldaddy.com is preferred by one of my fellow students because "you can send the link directly to students in an email or embed it in BlackBoard. Its free with easy signup and poll links are not public, ensuring student privacy." (It does not involve smartphones, which some students may not have anyway - which would leave them out of the process).

Tech Tools Scrapbook

Hello,

this is the first post in my "Tech Tools Scrapbook". This is where I will be keeping track of all the great resources that are out there.

Greetings, M.