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.

twitter

You may have heard of Twitter in the news or from your students, but did you know there are uses for this social messaging utility in higher education? For example, tweets between students and faculty can help minimize the pscyhological distance that often occurs in an online course.

For ideas for your own course, read how one instructor has successfully utilized twitter with his students.

For a quick overview of Twitter, view the 7 Things You Should Know About Twitter from Educase.edu.

For a different take, read this thoughtful essay on the limitations of online communities from Christianity Today.

CTL Online Resources

Can't find what you're looking for? We have reorganized our online presence to better serve you! To learn where our different resources are located, please view our tour (1 min) and download the handout for future reference.

Blooms DIGITAL Taxonomy

You may be familiar with Blooms Taxonomy of cognitive objectives, but did you know that there is an updated version? In 2001 Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom's, published the revised taxonomy. It remains a "continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills to Higher Order Thinking Skills," but now includes activities and objectives that have emerged with the use of digital technologies in the classroom (such as blogging, podcasting, googling, editing, and social networking).



You can read a detailed description of each skill level at this article from Tech & Learning.

NoodleBib

If you have ever wasted hours sifting through your preferred style manual (my department uses APA) looking for more information on how to cite that one, obscure source, then NoodleBib may be a good option for you. According to their website, NoodleBib is a:

“Powerful note-taking software that promotes critical thinking and creativity combined with the most comprehensive and accurate bibliography composer on the Web. MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian styles.”

I’ve been using it for about 5 years and recommend it to anyone who asks about online bibliography management. It’s loaded with features, flexible, and easy to navigate. Well worth the $8/year subscription. Check out the trial today at: Noodletools.com.


Bill Ventura, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Communication, School of Undergraduate Studies

Five Best Screen Capture Tools

The blog, Lifehacker, has a great post on screen capture tools (most of which are free).
If you have ever wanted to capture a portion of your computer screen without having to go through the process of hitting "print screen" and then editing the image using an image editor, this posting might be useful to you!

http://lifehacker.com/5218155/five-best-screen-capture-tools

Open Educational Resources Commons

“Learning is sharing,” states this website. A collection of higher education course materials and resources that is completely searchable, the Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons presents great potential for providing supplementary online resources for an array of disciplines including: Arts, Business, Humanities, Mathematics & Statistics, Science & Technology, and Social Sciences. Visit them at http://www.oercommons.org/

Intermediate Photoshop – A Sneak Peak at CTL’s New Training Course

Intermediate Photoshop will be offered to the Regent University community this spring! This course is designed to follow Photoshop Basics and build on fundamental skills taught in that class.

The intermediate class will cover:

- Using Palettes: Layers Palette, History Palette
- Tools: Magic Wand
- Layer Styles and Special Effects: Drop shadow, Stroke, Color overlay
- Free Transform
- Fill and Adjustment Layers: Solid, Gradient, Opacity, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation
- Masks

Keep an eye open and register for the course in the Spring, or sign up for the waitlist. We look forward to seeing you there!

RU Global Roundtable & Wiki

The RU Global campaign is well underway, and we want you to be involved! Academic Affairs, CTL and GLE hosted the first Global Roundtable on February 26th. If you missed this groundbreaking event, you can view it in full on our website.

The discussion continues on our RU Global Wiki. Help the Regent community collaboratively understand Christ-centered global competence and how to apply it in our classrooms and research. Discuss what Christ-centered global competence means to you.

Go to http://ruglobal.ning.com/ and sign up to be a member.

High Quality Stock Photography

For those of you Photoshop junkies who are (like the Production Team at CTL) engaged in an endless search for high quality, royalty free, and fair-use friendly images, allow us to introduce stock.xchng and morgueFile.

These sites are jewels! They can be invaluable to educators looking to augment their online classes with visual elements. Also check out the Wikimedia Commons which, in its own words, is “A database of 3,973,575 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.”

Imagine the PowerPoint Possibilities!

Think PowerPoint consists of static slides? Think again! PowerPoint features multiple tools you can use to create exciting, interactive learning units. Tom Kuhlmann of The Rapid eLearning Blog demonstrates how you can transform a simple PowerPoint slide show into a dynamic learning experience. Click the image to view the presentation.

If you have an idea for a multimedia addition to your course, please contact our media production department. We would love to sit down and discuss how we can make your ideas into reality.

Create Lovely Charts

Charts are boring. Really boring. Lovelycharts.com is a new free online application that helps you create your own dynamic and visually appealing charts without the need for software like Microsoft PowerPoint or Visio. You can create people diagrams, flowcharts, and process diagrams which are in a word...lovely. It takes seconds to sign up and is easy to learn.

Welcome!

Welcome to our new CTL blog. Soon, we will be posting tips, tricks, articles, and links to help you, our faculty, become the best in your field.