A Lifelong Learner Shares Thoughts About Education
For the second consecutive year, the eLearning Guild survey, which measures use of over 100 professionally-developed LMS products and excludes in-house created systems, shows that Moodle™ is ranked as the #1 LMS product among eLearning Guild members with over 24% of respondents selecting it as their primary LMS.
Read the full article here on Learning Solutions Magazine
One of the items which slowed posts this month is our school implementing Google Apps across most of our departments. We provided each of our an account and the stories of actual changes are amazing, encouraging, and worthy.
A recent development trying to implement a new electronic grading system with no training left us unable to share information at our usual pace and with our usual tools. Today we created a Google Site to share or use as a wiki and enhance fast knowledge sharing. See the site @ http://sites.greshamhs.org/esis-tips-and-tricks/. The change from a deliberative process or top down approach should be significant. Key ideas included were to eliminate email folders and attachments and focus on easily produced screencasts such as this example using Screenr and posted on YouTube as well.
Screencasting just got a whole lot easier and more powerful with Screenr. I have to add a disclaimer here, I love, absolutely love the complete package Camtasia Studio from Tech-Smith and last year my class all used Jing for an assignment to publish on their blog. But for quick one run through knock offs, from any machine, anywhere. Screenr simply rocks! Combine it with Twitter (or in my classroom Edmodo) as well as publishing on YouTube, providing an MP4, an embeddable link, this is simple. It takes under 60 seconds to learn and use.
Pitfalls? My students know this by heart. It sounds great, and it works great, but not for quality work. The ability to add captions, to edit, to clip, to record voice later, with better equipment, makes Camtasia much better for work that you are going to need some effort like training examples for class.
But this goes in my toolbox for sure.
How was my first pass? Watch for yourself. And of course, I got the two commands backwards and no way to redo the voice, or zoom the video…and yet…it plays wonderfully on my iPhone 🙂
I only took the one class this summer and it was a lot of fun. I was nominated to give a class this Fall to a conference and will try to be able to be there. The focus of that talk is to be using Technology to Teach Technology. A subset of the overall issues if you will. Still, the problem remains, if when students are in a classroom filled with computers, one can’t use Technology in an area, well….
And that led me to one of my annoyances, that while my school focuses on using Cornell Notetaking as a consistent method across classes, there was no easy way to implement it via a computer.
Then as the summer rolls to an end LifeHacker utilizing the HackCollege staff, had this article on Five Classic Ways to Boost Your Notetaking which then spun off to not only my favorite Evernote which I use all the time and benefit from on my iPhone and iPods but also this Cornell Note software application Notalon.
Download Notalon and start using it today. Oh, click on the Downloads tab near the top of that page, and then select this link (or just click it right there) and it will download the Windows software package. This application is built for Linux and MAC as well, so it should work on all the machines at our school.
On first glance and use, it seems to support the Cornell Notes format very well, and exports to a PDF as well. Let me know what you think.
I know, there are so many great resources to read, or watch, or learn about, where to start.
Let me tell you about my workflow to catch or stay up with videos about Technology and Media. First find a great web site that has a long list of videos that someone has a clear purpose to gather and list. My favorite is the list that Alec Couros put together, 90+Videos for Technology and Media Literacy, although he always is tweaking so it might be longer when you get to it.
Do not view them. Look at ONE video. The one I use in class is #11 (no, you have to go look for the title)and it is one of the most powerful videos I have shown ane elicits many reactions and I pursue many discussions and topics from it. It also demonstrates why screencasting can outdistance powerpoint.
In a month, pick a section title that applies itself to you. I am choosing his Mashups, Stop Motion, Animation and Short Film section for my film class. Watch THREE videos in the section you think can apply itself to your class. Pick descriptions that speak to your interests, styles, or possible audience.
In another month, watch ONE video from each other section you have skipped. Choose one the is appealing to you, for any possible reason. Try applying one inside a classroom, perhaps a starter, perhaps a closer, or to reinforce a topic you are covering the next month.
Now, having integrated videos intospecific lessons and into generally delivered curriculum, you might find time to watch the rest of a section or TWO from each. Pick any plan you can. The point is to not worry or beat yourself up about not watching all of them. Do what you can. After a period of time, you will be farther and feel better than if you sit down and try to process the entire list and make sense of it for the year. (more…)