eBizMBA - The eBusiness Knowledgebase Khan Academy 10 Tools for Increasing Engagement in Online Courses Over the last few years I've done a lot of work developing writing and redeveloping online courses and course materials. In the initial rush to get learning online many organisations got themselves a Moodle platform and then attached a whole load of PDFs and .docs, added some forums and the odd video clip and called it an online course. It's no surprise then that drop out rates for online learning courses have been so high. The advent of Web 2.0 though, brought a whole bunch of new tools that course designers could take advantage of to make content more social, interactive and engaging. Here are some of the tools I've been using recently to embed a bit more interactivity into the courses I work on. Storify - Storify is a great tool for collecting together a mixture of web based resources and references into a web based widget that you can then structure into a digital research paper. Tricider is a great tool for crowd sourcing opinion. Related links: Best Nik Peachey
A Pearltree of Free Technology for Teachers A few months ago I wrote Playing With Pearltrees - A Great Way to Organize the Web. Last night I was exploring Pearltrees again when I came across a Pearltree titled Free Technology for Teachers. While the name is the same as my blog, I did not have anything to do with creating that particular Pearltree. That said, many of the resources cataloged in the Free Technology for Teachers Pearltree are excellent resources that I have used and or written about here in the past.
Websites - siteencyclopedia.com Websites Think.com, Oracle Education Foundation, Projekte | Wettbewerb | Bibliothek Clayton Christensen on disruption in online education Let’s have a little exercise. Walk me through this school you’d create. What do the classrooms look like? What are the class sizes? What are the hours?It’s open 24 hours a day. Earlier this year we discussed how the Internet is revolutionizing education and featured several companies and organizations that are disrupting the online education space including Open Yale, Open Culture, Khan Academy, Academic Earth, P2PU, Skillshare, Scitable and Skype in the Classroom. In October, Knewton, an education technology startup, raised $33 million in its 4th round of funding to roll out its adaptive online learning platform. According to the 2010 Sloan Survey of Online Learning, approximately 5.6 million students took at least one web-based class during the fall 2009 semester, which marked a 21% growth from the previous year. But with its tremendous growth, online education has brought up much debate between deans, provosts and faculty. “I absolutely do. Image: Shutterstock/carroteater
mindmapping for students Although the paid office suites hold the lion's share of the productivity software market and there are educational discounts on these tools, you may find that you prefer an open-source software suite, which are free to download and use. All of these tools work on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers. LibreOffice If you're using Windows, Macintosh, or Linux, you can download and use LibreOffice for free. Not only can you use the word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet software included in the suite, but it also has a drawing program, a database, and an equation editor. LibreOffice is derived from OpenOffice. Lotus Symphony Lotus, a division of IBM, offers this open-source software suite for Windows, Linux, and Macintosh computers. Apache OpenOffice Apache OpenOffice provides word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database, equation editing, and drawing tools, free for the end user. How are LibreOffice and OpenOffice different?
www.isoc.de Adding a Synchronous Component to Online Courses November 14, 2011 By: Linda Macaulay, EdD and La Tonya Dyer in Teaching with Technology Interactive, synchronous web conferencing software such as WebEx, Blackboard Collaborate and even Skype are innovative tools that can be implemented by faculty teaching both hybrid and fully online courses. When faculty at Towson University began using WebEx to incorporate a synchronous component to their courses, they discovered that interactive web conferencing (IWC) delivers many benefits. In this article, we outline some of the benefits we found and share tips for getting started with interactive web conferencing in your classes. Interactive web conferencing increases accessibility. Interactive web conferencing increases student-to-student and student-to-teacher interaction. Interactive web conferencing promotes active learning. Do you want to get started with interactive web conferencing? Getting Started Practice using IWC prior to meeting with your class. Classroom Management Dr. Recent Trackbacks