Rich Open Educational Resources: Courses, Course Modules, Videos, and eTextbooks

Please watch this very good, brief video about Open Educational Resources (OER) and how to easily find them -- from EmergingEdTech.

Teaching Tip: Designing Online Lectures and Recorded Presentations

Five Best Practices for Online Lecture and Presentation Videos



-- Video by Jill Zimmerman and Greg Steinke at the U of M College of Continuing Education

Google+ Tips for Successful Teachers

Build on student-teacher relationships and build student engagement by using Google+

1) Teach with Hangouts:  You can successfully plan teaching sessions with this feature. If your students are away, or you, yourself, are away, this can be quite useful. You can also bring in a guest lecturer with Hangouts.

2) Research with Sparks:  The Sparks feature helps in researching the various topics that might apply to your course.

3) Connect with Circles:  Create a circle for a course and connect with your students, share resources and exchange notes.

4) Share Google Reader:  Google Reader is an excellent platform that allows you to subscribe to relevant content and then allow your students to access Google Reader to find that content.

5) Easy to Add Media:  With Google+ it is very easy to add media. All you need is a single click, drag and drop and your media is ready to go.

6) Learning Sessions with Video Chat:  You can conduct learning sessions, review sessions, office hours, and so on, using video chat.

7) Select Who Can See Your Message:  This option is available within Google+ so that you can choose whom you share with.

8) Instant Upload:  You can share contents easily and instantly. Anything from photos, documents to videos can be shared.

https://www.voniz.com/articles/10-google-tips-successful-teachers/

Teaching Tip: 5 Ways to Use YouTube for Teaching and Learning

My colleague and friend, Greg Steinke, U of M CCE. created a great YouTube video about how to use YouTube for teaching and learning.  In fact, he has created a series of five videos -- one for each of the "5 Ways" that he introduces in this video.  Just click on them at the end of this video.

Who Wants Change?

George Couros wrote, "I saw the above picture a few months ago, and it is one that has resonated with me. When we talk about “change”, it is often something we think about when talking about others, and rarely in connection with ourselves. It is easy to want others to change, but it always starts with “us” and our attitudes to change."

During the past two years, I have actively participated in a task force for accessibility, a task force for online learning, a formal community of practice (fCoP) for academic technology, an fCoP for video conferencing, and a few others.  Membership in these various groups included adminstrators, academic technologists, IT developers, and faculty.  Many wonderful plans were made for change, and hundreds of hours were spent developing plans to implement these changes.  But for many reasons, these wonderful plans are probably just going to sit there, on someone's shelf,  Look at the second image above . . . it tells the story.

Technology, Access and Instruction: Student access to instructional material

I served on the University of Minnesota Morris Technology, Access and Instruction (TAI) Working Group from November 2013 through May 2014.  This working group was tasked with achieving a set of outcomes to address concerns that were raised by an informal working group (of which I was also a member) in October 2013, which primarily provided recommendations towards accessibility of course and classroom materials, technology, and digital content to benefit all users with disabilities.

The TAI working group submitted its report, including recommendations for the University of Minnesota Morris campus, in May 2014.  The report included the following expected outcomes:

1. To identify barriers to student access to instructional material, prioritized by first identifying the non-accessible hardware and/or software to impact the greatest number of students.

2. To generate a list of achievable goals to reduce these barriers over the next 12, 234, and 36 months.

3. To create a plan for realizing these goals that includes a sequence number of necessary steps to be taken and recommendation regarding the academic service provider whom should take lead responsibility and a cost estimate.

Upcoming posts in this blog will address specific actions that each of us can take to provide accessible materials.

New - Adobe Slate .. and more

NEW - Adobe Slate - for the iPad

Adobe Slate - Empower Students
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY3iVeqxGTs&feature=youtu.be

With Slate, teachers have a powerful communication tool — they can create beautiful newsletters, class portfolios and more. Students have an easy way to share their knowledge and express their creativity in visual essays, reports, journal entries, portfolios, and science projects. At the same time, they can learn about layout, design and interactivity on the iPad and publishing for multiple devices. Through a simple link to the web, they can share their ideas and knowledge with the world.

See "Slate" compared to the iPad "Google Plus" App and "Microsoft Sway" and "Day One."  Also a discussion about the Apple Watch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9GsVDh9KwU&feature=youtu.be

Here's a great website to keep tabs on! --  The NMC Horizon Report's "Emerging Technologies" page.

http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/Emerging+Technologies

This is their Higher Education Horizon Report 2015 Edition Wiki.

Taking a look at this today, I see discussions about the Apple Watch -- Coming to a classroom near you!  They included a link to a Chronicle of Higher Education Blog Article.

Much discussion about wearable technologies, such as Google Glass and Gaze Tracker:

UCI School of Medicine First to Integrate Google Glass into Curriculum
http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uci-school-of-medicine-first-to-integrate-google-glass-into-curriculum/

Gaze-Tracker Lets you Connect to Devices with a Glance
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329874.600-gazetracker-lets-you-connect-to-devices-with-a-glance.html

Visit the link at the top of this article to read the entire "Emerging Technologies" NMC Wiki Page.

Interesting stuff!

The 2015 Higher Education Horizon Report

The 2015 Higher Education Horizon Report
(A report by The New Media Consortium's (NMC) and ELI - Educause Learning Initiative)

Watch the Video Summary of the 2015 Higher Education Horizon Report

Trends:

Short-term (1-2 years)  

• Increasing Use of Blended Learning
• Redesigning Learning Spaces

Mid-term (3-4 years)

• Growing Focus on Measuring Learning
• Proliferation of Open Educational Resources

Long-term (5+ years)

• Advancing Cultures of Change and Innovation
• Increasing Cross-Institution Collaboration

Technologies on the horizon:

Near-term (1 year or less)

• Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
• Flipped Classroom

Mid-term (2-3 years)

• Makerspaces
• Wearable Technologies

Far-term (4-5 years)

• Adaptive Learning Technologies
• The Internet of Things (IOT)

Download the free report at http://go.nmc.org/2015-hied

The NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This 12th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The report aims to provide these leaders with more in-depth insight into how the trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership and practice.

I Flip, You Flip, We All Flip: Setting Up a Flipped Classroom