First Prezi

While never being a big fan of PowerPoint slides, a Prezi is a great alternative.   Think of a animated topic map!  While a Prezi can include audio, video and images, a simple Prezi I created below only includes text.

Creating Wordies

A Wordie for one of my classes

Wordies are "word clouds" are a selection of individual words that are used to convey meaning or intent.  The example above is a Wordie that I created for my SAB: 130 Addictive Behaviors Course.   Each of the words included are directly related to the topics and intent of the specific course.  Therefore, not only is this wordie nice to look at and draws interest, it also provides a overview of the course content for the entire semester.

Wordle.net is a great free resource for easily creating word clouds.  The steps are to simply choose create on the home page and type or paste in your words into the textbox. 

www.Wordle.net

 

 

 

 

 

The website can also scan website urls and create automatic Wordies (an example is below). 

URL Scan of Village EduLand

SoftChalk

I am a big fan of SoftChalk, a wonderful lesson builder that operates similar to a word processor but is much, much more powerful.   SoftChalk can be used to create interactive lessons that can be posted via web, online inside of multiple Learning Management Systems (LMS) and even on a CD-ROM.     If you are looking for a unique way to provide online instruction that is interactive, engaging and web centric, try SoftChalk for free for 30 days.

Example Lesson Screen

View a sample SoftChalk Lesson here that I created.  This lesson is very simple and does not provide justice to the power of SoftChalk.   The actual lesson is posted within Moodle as a introduction to a course I am teaching.

Educational-Origami

For users of Bloom's Taxonomy and 21st Century Skills I found this great wiki recently called educational-origami.  The website is full of information for the Instructional Technologist or other educator interested in building higher level thinking skills.   Make sure to take a look!

A Online Screening Process

One of my faculty responsibilities is to supervise students completing their Human Services Internships with community agencies.  Screening large numbers of students for eligibility and interest is always a difficult responsibility.   A option developed for this year is a small webpage that includes program information as well a online survey process, and opportunity to view videos of past students.  

A few technical details:

• Web hosting provided by Squarespace
• Video hosting provided by Vimeo
• Survey services provided by Survey Monkey

See the FTCC Interns Page...

Polls via Twitter

Pollowers.com is another free service that allows twitter users to tweet polls.   Since Twitter is already being used in the classroom setting for classroom response, the Pollowers website could be a boon for the educational environment.

Pollowers allows users to tweet a poll question, while other users can tweet their answer into the collective group poll pool.  Real time results are provided for online review. Currently the service is invitation only, but signups tend to take just a couple of days.

Pollowers website

Pollowers Question Page

Online Services to Consider

Today's post will include a variety of online services that can be used in a variety of ways in the online setting and valuable in the classroom.

Formspring

Formspring is a online question and answer service.   Students or anyone on the web can ask Formspring Account holders questions.   The account holder can then answer posted questions for the world to see.  Questions may be asked with a name attached or 100% anonymous.

Formspring website

About.me

About.me is a free one page profile site.   Members are allowed post a profile narrative as well as links to social media accounts.  Basically, the service is intended to act as a personal web space online.

about.me website

Posterous - Post it!

Posterous is one of my favorite cloud based services that holds great potential in the classroom setting.   Posterous exists on my iOS, Android mobile devices as well as my computers (OSX and Win7).   What exactly is Posterous?   

The site provides integrated micro-blogging services to users and is an expert at molding audio, video and pictures of any format for web consumption.  

Posterous allows uses to create their own customized web site that includes text and other media.  Actually, any type of media out there can be uploaded to Posterous for viewing online.  A neat feature of the service is its tight social integration with other services.  Do you want your Posterous webpost to automatically link to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or other web services?  No problem.   

I actually use Posterous as my primary photo posting service.  Not only do I have an active photo sharing site via my mobile devices and web browser, the same photos are sent to my Facebook and Twitter Accounts automatically. 

Recently a new service was introduced using a Groups approach.  The same great features of Posterous for individual users are now accessible via a controlled group of members.  I can even see using a Posterous Group Site as a classroom webpage or other instructional resource.   

Posterous has a great simple design, available and every major computing and mobile platform and is best of all free to use. 

Screenshot of Posterous.com

Using Ning to Increase Faculty Communication - Call for Help

Ning is frequently used in the public school setting and via various professional development associations for educators.  Through my research it appears that the numbers of Ning Networks for college faculty is smaller in number.   Currently, I am reviewing possible uses of Ning to help build a interactive faculty support network for a diverse group a adjuncts.     Are there institutions of higher education that use Ning for this purpose?  

Student Video Clips

One of my professional duties is to supervise Human Services Students completing their internships in the field.  As an optional assignment, I allow students the opportunity to record a video of themselves describing their individual work experience.  Usually the video describes their work setting, job duties, overall impressions and what they have learned.   The videos may last as little as five minutes, with only the speaker themselves, or exceed thirty minutes with multiple presenters including supervisors and co-workers.

A sample video be be viewed below, while other clips may be accessed by clicking here.

I am very interesting in hearing from other folks working with students about effective methods that increase the quality of student videos and creating high quality learning experiences.