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.