DV for Teachers

Alrighty, back at work at Georgia State, and a first working post. With so many people wigging out about Apple’s purported tablet computer, here’s a savvy weigh-in from yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed:

Before the integration of the iSlate and iTunesU it was never possible to bring all the course and learning materials to one device. Course readings and video delivered through the browser were often difficult to navigate, and the reading experience was relatively poor. But with the iSlate and iTunesU it will be possible to download all the course related materials, hosting them locally for easy viewing and reading. At the same time, the browser experience in the iSlate will keep what is good about a Web based learning system – the ability to interact and communicate. Combining both the reading/viewing experience not browser based, with the collaboration/communication experience browser based will converge these activities into one device.

via Blog U.: iSlate / iTunesU / Higher Ed – Technology and Learning – Inside Higher Ed.

If you’re looking for effective software, of all kinds, to use to run and teach in classroom, The Freewares of 2009 has a lot to offer you. It’s a month-by-month listing of the author’s favorite free software. Each item has a thoughtful comment about using the software, often with first-hand reporting. A very valuable year-end list.

Via My Apple Menu.

Wordle is great for making word clouds, which you can use in your classroom in many ways. Ellen sent me this

really useful little tip that opens up all sorts of new possibilities – a way of including phrases in word clouds. Look below and you will see what I am talking about. The phrase that Sylvie demonstrates is “Once upon a time”.

Read the details at Jamie K Eddie’s A really useful Wordle trick, and her neat-o followup tip here.

We knew this day was coming, and it’s about time. Teachers Using Cell Phones For Class Lessons, Homework.

Quick, to follow up on later: 10 useful Twitter presentations. Have a Twitter account? It’s a heck of a lot more than what some celeb had for breakfast. You can use it to create an almost instantaneous professional network that can give you the help you need when you need it. Check out these presentations to learn more about how it can work for you.

Update: More on Twitter! Mashable, the social network site about social networking (meta meta meta meta, on and on), gives us this on Twitter for Beginners, and the fine folks at Twitter themselves give us a nice look at what Twitter can do for business. If it works for business, it can work for education too. Read up on this and you’ll get an idea.

I think jose. I do. I met him – only briefly – when he recorded an interview Ellen and I did last weekend at the National Storytelling Festival. The organizers of the festival were collecting peoples’ stories from their own experience in Jonesborough and at the festival over the years. The first time I went, 11 years ago, I had a memorable time and was part of a great onstage story. I’ll tell that tale here another time, but I want here to point to Jose’s site, which documents his many interests, achievements, and areas of expertise.

If you’re i his area, check him out, and if you’re not, check his site – there’s lots he knows about and can help you with.

Think Jose!

Mashable, the relentless site for news on social networking and blogging tools, today posts Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers.

I would love to hear if any classroom teachers are using any of these.

Macworld’s Tom Negrino explains five solid tips for making the most of the latest PowerPoint for Mac.

I saw some very engaging student projects while judging at the Festival—previous post here. There were 160 judges there, working into the afternoon judging several categories, all hosted in the facilities of Georgia Public Broadcasting.

I worked with an instructional technologist from Muscogee County and a library media specialist from Fulton County. We looked at several student-created web sites, most on CD and some online. Lots of good creative work, some were rather cookie-cutter, and one or two a bit misguided or unfortunately marred by broken links or missing images. I particularly liked the emphasis on citing sources as part of the projects. One nice resource I discovered is Weebly, a free website host for several of the projects. The sites I have seen had few ads, and not to distractingly placed. A nice find.

Encourage your students to participate in the festival in your school!

Rob Weir, Inside Higher Ed’s Instant Mentor columnist, offers this must-read item for anyone who lectures, whether you think you’re good at it or not: Boring Within or Simply Boring?

But even if enormous class sizes aren’t the norm at your college, lecturing is still an art you should master. It doesn’t matter how technologically adroit one is or how many non-instructor-directed whistles and bells get crammed into a course, at some point every professor lectures, even if it’s just giving instructions or recapping a completed exercise.

Emphasis mine. We’ve all seen instructors blow off the importance of this kind of address to the class. It can be tough if it’s a syllabus you’ve gone over a hundred times, it’s still new to the students you’re facing.

Frankly, it gets my dander up when I hear professors proclaim they “don’t have the gift” for giving good lecturers. Lecturing is not genetically determined like eye color or a receding hairline. The most common reason for bad lecturing isn’t phobia; it’s that professors don’t value the craft enough to hone their skills. Use such individuals as negative role models. Think of the most boring lecturer you’ve ever encountered. Do the opposite!

Once again, added emphasis is mine. These days, with budgets declining and teaching loads increasing while the pressure for research never lets up, it’s more important than ever that the basic function of the university – teaching students – not decline as well.