Technology & Instruction for UNEX

It's probably the biggest event between Halloween and Thanksgiving in the US -- National Distance Learning Week is coming up from November 12-16th! You could celebrate by enrolling in an online course, or by listening to Rod Jefferson's interview with the NDLW National Chair, Dr. Ken Hartman on Rod's Pulse Podcast from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

from the Educational CyberPlayGround NetHappenings Mailing List Speak Up Survey Through December 15, K-12 students, teachers, administrators, and parents from across the nation have the opportunity to share their ideas and opinions on how technology should be used in the education process through Project Tomorrow's fifth annual Speak Up survey. This year's survey features new questions, addressing student interest (and parent support) in math, science, and technology careers; utilizing web 2.0 tools, like MySpace, in school; the merit of 21st century skills, such as learning a new language; the value of emerging technologies, such as video games, in education; and designing the ultimate, 21st century school. Results are shared with participating schools and school districts so they can use the data for planning and community discussion. Results are also used by government agencies and various organizations to inform new programs and polices.

Our free four week course, Introduction to Online Instruction, starts in less than a week. We could use a few more students, so contact your department programmer if you are interested.

Check out the debate on the Economist site. Sir John Daniel and Dr. Bob Kozma go toe to toe on the topic of "Effectiveness of Technology in Education - Does new technology add to the quality of education?". As far as I know, both guys (can you refer to a "sir" as guy?) are technology proponents, but in this debate Kozma has the positive perspective and Daniel has the thumbs down position. A poll running on the site is at 52 percent con and 48 percent pro at the moment. Although can add your own comment on the site, it suffers from poor implementation. There's no way to reply to specific comment and are no titles for comments, so you get a very long list of text to look through if you want to find something. There is also a comment from Linda Darling-Hammond , professor of Education at Stanford University which is worth reading.

You can add a YouTube video to your Blackboard course by including the URL of the video in a link, but a slightly more elegant way is to add the Embed code from YouTube to any course content. That way, you can include a video in an assignment or other item and it will stream from the YouTube (or other) website. The same technique works with TeacherTube also. Here are the step by step instructions [PDF] .

There is an interesting article in today's NY Times about the use of iPods and music as tools to help students learn English more quickly. Most schools ban mp3 players, but the schools mentioned in the article make them into learning devices. Making learning relevant is a tough job sometimes, but new technologies can be a part of it. "Grace Poli, a media specialist at José Martí, said that she approached district officials about buying 23 iPods for an after-school bilingual program in 2004 after being struck by students’ passion for them. Spanish-speaking students seemed bored by their English-language textbooks, she said, which they found outdated and irrelevant."

Zotero is a Firefox plugin which helps with online research. You can save PDFs and websites and it integrates with Word and OpenOffice and WordPress. Scott McLemee has a nice review of Zotero on Inside Higher Ed. Zotero is free and open source, developed at George Mason University.