Dynamic Content

Below is a realtime stockmarket tool that would make a wonderful addition to a course in finance or economics. Why is it stuck here in the middle of my reflections, well someone asked me what a widget was, so I typed "google gadgets" into the Google search field, clicked the link and chose a gadget/widget, copied the embed code and pasted it here in my blog. That easy!

Embed code is making real-time learning a cinch! I will share this with my students so they can enhance their journals in EDU102

Collaborating with Social Bookmarking and Tutorials

This week we continued with graphic communication, students had a bit of extra time in the classroom to work on their Jing tutorials. They all are very impressed with the application. We didn't quite make it to tagging in delicious today, so we carried that lesson over until the following week. I am contmeplating redesigning this course for next semester. It has been very difficult to keep content and outside class assignments down to a one credit level. This could easily be a two or three credit class. I hope to get more student input on whether it would be best to learn five topics in depth or 10 topics briefly as we have been attempting this semester. Students were asked to reflect on the class at mid-point and they were pretty much split down the middle as to which would be better.

I checked delicious.com where I had students tag their submission edu102jings, I found only one addition but it is a good one! Thanks to Emmy for showing us how to use Flicker to add images to PPT and Word for use in the classroom! See her tutorial here or type edu102jings in delicious.

Using Audio and Graphics in Communication & Collaboration

To prepare for this week's class, students read about how to support student communication, the second performance indicator in the ISTE Educational Technology Standards for Students
Last week they tried audio communication. This week I had planned to introduce graphic communication by having the students download and use Jing, an excellent (and free) screen capture application. If you haven't heard of Jing, take a look at the handout from my "Cool Tools" presentation at the NETT conference this past August
Since last week's class didn't go as planned and students were not able to convert their audio files, I decided to slow it down a bit and have them create their Jing accounts and just take a screen capture instead of trying to cover screen captures and video captures all at once. This way students can spend part of next class on creating their video tutorial in Jing. and then those students whose audio files didn't come out so great can try again.

All went well for this class, especially since students could immediately see how they could use this application in their teaching. This week I will have them tag their creations as edu102jings in >delicious.com this way they will be able to share their tutorials and understand how easy it can be to collaborate with those who have similar interests.

Experiencing Audio for Content: Live and Learn!

This week's focus was on how to use a learning object to teach content learning ( see 21st Century Skills). Student read about content learning and reflected on how to use audio to teach either declarative, procedural or knowledge. To prepare, I created an audio file as a demonstration: http://www.gcast.com/u/ldriskel/main.xml Unfortunately, we could barely hear the sound and turning up the volume on the classroom equipment didn't help. I will add checking volume on teacher station to my to do list.

Next the students created their audio files. I chose to use Audacity for several reasons. One because it had already been installed on both the PCs and the MACs I have in the classroom. Two because it is an application which is free and easily available for my students to download on their personal computers. And three, because it is fairly easy to use.

They were up and running in no time with microphones and headphones (helped to diminish noise while recording took place). One student is challenging herself by using a MAC, she did not need a microphone because it is built in to the MAC.

Students all did a great job coming up with ideas for content lessons using audio such as singing a song as a mnemonic device for remembering the colors in the rainbow. They also were real troopers creating their audio files - it is so difficult to record alone in my office but much more so in a classroom of students! We ran into a glitch when attempting to export our audio. We were not able to convert them to the MP3 format that is necessary for uploading to the web. I knew Audacity had been installed but I never thought to check for the side application, the LAME encoder, that is necessary for converting Audacity project files to MP3s. Live and learn is our motto in this course!

I will make time in a upcoming class for revisiting Audacity and audio file conversion now that LAME encoder has been installed - after I check that is has anyway!