Academia's Social World

It was only a matter of time before the popularity of social networking entered into the hallowed halls of academia and became known as Academic Social Networking (ASN). After all, Facebook did start on a college campus. So what is an ASN and is it beneficial?

Snagit replaces Jing Pro for video captures

What program do you use for your image and video captures? One option is Jing Pro. It is cost effective and easy to use. TechSmith, however, is retiring the Jing Pro yearly subscription option as of February 2013. All is not lost, however,

Regent University Global Roundtable

Could the Future of Online Learning Really Be Free?

On Monday October 10th, Stanford University embarked on a radical new idea, offering their CS221: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence to anyone in the world, for free.

LibGuides: Your source to "just in time" library research information

At a recent new faculty orientation we heard how we now can "embed a librarian" into a Blackboard course. I called the Regent Library to find out just what that meant, whether it was linking to the page of the librarian assigned to each school or if there was something more to it. Turns out there is! Regent Library has been working on developing "LibGuides" that are specifically tailored to every school or graduate program Regent University offers, including undergrad. They're not done with all the guides yet, but 14 of them have been posted online already. Click this link and select "All Guides" on the page that opens up.

Chromebooks are coming...tell us what you think

Have you heard of Chromebooks? Is it a laptop? Is it a computer? Or is it a new way of thinking as we go about our work day? Watch how Google introduces it in this 1.5 minute video.

CTL’s Recent Tweets

This past week Regent University's Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) Tweeted about:

• Google Chromebooks are lightweight notebooks that come with free software and hardware updates. You pay a monthly fee and Google updates the Chromebooks' software AND hardware at the end of each hardware cycle. This may be an option to explore for schools thinking of providing their students with notebooks or laptops.  
• How faculty and students can build a web presence for their professional selves, with free and easy to use software options available online.
• YouTube Copyright School, a 4.5 min. video clip that highlights copyright law; It packs a lot of information on how to avoid copyright infringement and details things that we might do when using YouTube which actually violate copyright law.
• A guide to social media marketing best practices that Facebook just published. It is applicable to things Faculty or students do online when it comes to marketing their courses, skills, etc.

• An infograph showing how teens are using their mobile phones.
• A 4 min. video clip on how to use Twitter which demystifies the idea of using Twitter. In just 4 minutes covers the basics of how to open an account to how to start Twetting, i.e., make a post on the Twitter social networking site.

Mobile Devices & Learning

Smartphones give you wings:
Pedagogical affordances of mobile Web 2.0
Thomas Cochrane and Roger Bateman
Unitec New Zealand

Collaboration between Instructors & Tech Facilitators

Tech & Learning offers an interesting article, "Creating a Culture of Collaboration through Technology," proposing collaboration between instructors and technology facilitators to create courses relevant in this digital age. According to the article:

Once a school begins to build this culture of collaboration, it soon becomes second nature for teachers to work in partnership with the technology facilitator, bringing new and innovative ideas into the classroom, learning new ways to meet the needs of all students, and exploring the possibilities to connect, communicate and create on a global scale. This collaborative partnership is a powerful tool to increase student learning by combining the expertise of multiple educators.

Contact us at ctl@regent.edu to learn how you can begin to collaborate with our e-learning professionals.

Information is Beautiful

David McCandess is an independent data journalist and information designer from the UK. His website, Information is Beautiful, features his and other's artwork turing raw data into meaningful information. Besides being fascinating to look through, this website reveals how good presentation and design can make information come to life.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/

For example, ever wonder how to reduce your odds of dying in a plane crash? Click on the picture of find out...

Have you met TED yet?

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) began as a conference in 1984 to bring together from these three worlds. It has expanded to encompass the brightest minds in science, business, and the arts. From the yearly conference in Long Beach, TEDtalks emerged, free video of each of the TED conference lectures available at www.ted.com. According to the website, "We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other."

There are currently over 500 talks available, covering a wide range of topics and each around 20 minutes or less. These videos were released under a Creative Commons license, making them perfect for use in the classroom or online. The website allows you to search through the videos based on subject or theme. Each video is closed captioned and many are translated into multiple languages.

Be careful... once you start looking through TEDtalks, you may find you can't stop! Here are a few of our favorites:

Pattie Mayes demos the "SixthSense"
Mike Rowe celebrates Dirty Jobs
Jane Chen: A warm embrace that saves lives

Attentionomics

It's a fact: people have a finite attention span. Your students have a finite attention span. Are your PowerPoint presentations helping student grasp the course content? A traditional bullet-point layout may not be the best way to go.

Chris Atherton, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Central Lancashire at Preston in the UK, developed this PowerPoint to demonstrate a different and possibly more effective way of presenting information. This type of presentation would work especially well in distance courses.

Chris Atherton at TCUK09

View more presentations from Chris Atherton.

For more information, check out Chris Atherton's blog, finiteattentionspan.wordpress.com.

Elearning and the iPad

Last week, Apple launched its long awaited iPad.

Here is a link to its capabilities and here is a link to its implications for eLearning.

While the first version of the iPad certainly has some eLearning limitations, I believe that future versions will have a significant influence on learning, especially in higher education.

Elate: An e-learning wiki

Elate wiki is a free tool that is designed to help create and facilitate a community of learning for faculty, staff, and students involved in e-learning.

The wiki is divided by pages related to course issues (e.g., accessibility, intellectual property, versioning a curriculum), instructors (writing a book prospectus, institutional review board), students (online study skills, student support), and tools (Blogs, Skype, Flash).

You can utilize the wiki without signing in, or you can sign up for a free account, which will allow you to edit pages and create new pages. Also, you can participate on discussion boards and create a “watch list”, which lets you know when changes have been made to a topic in which you are interested.

Present yourself better with Slideshare

Slideshare is a free Internet based service. One needs to subscribe on www.slideshare.com and begin uploading files. Besides PowerPoints, other documents such as pdfs and Open Office files can be used. Potential uses for Slideshare include:

• Way to archive Power Point presentations
• Means to share presentation slides made at or for conferences
• Posting Power Points for an academic course
• Way to create picture montage
• Method of posting class presentations in public place for comments
• Backup for making presentations at conference where internet access available

Each set of slides obtains its own unique URL. All the slides are public therefore anyone can view them. Some limitations of the service include:

• Limited to 30 MB for slide file
• No sharing or privacy options
• Original presentations cannot be downloaded by publisher or viewer

Tutorial on Slideshare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJKlFUwQE8o

Promote your work with Facebook

Facebook and other social networks can be used to promote a professor, his/her writings or even a class or topic. Here are a couple of links that give tips on promotion:

* movie promotion

* business promotion

Del.icio.us, Mashups, Cloud Computing and other good stuff

Del.icio.us and Zotero are two examples of bookmarking applications that allow us to personalize our web experience and gather online content in a way that is personally meaningful to us. Tagging with tools like delicious (http://www.delicious.com) is more common, but tagging tools that extend the use of the browser are personalizing the web for us. Zotero (http://www.zotero.org) is a reference to add bibliographic notes to a web browser.
Mashups is a reference to a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. For example, Flickr is an application that manages photos and allows these photos to be searched through geotagging. You can use geotagging in the classroom to map out events in literature such as this map completed for The Travels of Marco Polo.

Cloud Computing refers to the use of data farms or networked computers to process information; for example, Google, YouTube, and Flickr all use this technology for their offerings. Applications do not reside on your local computer. In this scenario, applications like email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are accessed through a browser window, but the software is installed elsewhere. YouTube, Flickr, Splashup, Sliderocket, Google Docs, and Disaster Alert Maps are all examples of applications using cloud computing technology.

Keep track of time

Dipity is a free online timeline application. Users can develop customized timelines on any topic with embedded audio, video, and text content. This application could be useful for educators to provide students with historical context, either by developing timelines for students to study or have students create the timelines themselves.

For more information, visit the website (www.dipity.com) or watch this brief presentation.

Swine Flu

For months now we have been hearing about the swine flu and how to protect ourselves. As faculty, it's time to think of how to protect your courses! With today's technology it is possible to maintain class even during a flu epidemic. Using Blackboard, Wimba, email, and other online services, you can host class and collect assignments all from the convenience of home.

For a list of tips on teaching during a flu outbreak, please visit CTL's flu page.

For the latest information on the H1N1 virus from Regent University, read this update.

Create free screencasts without installing software!

Have you ever wanted to show a student or colleague how to access something on the internet or some sort of interesting feature, but they were not within computer monitor viewing distance?

Maybe you have a student that swears they cannot find an important assignment on Blackboard.
Now, you can easily create a screencast from your computer and save it as an MP4, upload it to YouTube or Twitter, or create a flash file to play on the web. You can even embed the video to play in your blog, wiki or website. And it's free.


The application is called Screenr.
A great tutorial on how to use Screenr can be found on The Rapid E-Learning Blog.