Podcasts in the Classroom

Consider Classroom Podcasts!
Often times when we think of using the Smart Classroom, we think of using video materials or PowerPoints with our class. Podcasts, however, are a great educational tool to use in the classroom—speeches, poetry, stories, and news clips—are all great types of podcasts to bring into the classroom or have your students listen to at home or on their computers, cellphones or mp3 players.

One application or web tool is “Stitcher”. It’s an on-demand internet radio service and application for the iPhone, Palm, and Android devices. Stitcher brings together content for thousands of providers, including NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the BBC, AP, and more. It also gives you local stations so that you can easily utilize local content in the classroom.

With upcoming local and national elections, Stitcher is the ideal site to engage students in the political process. Check it out at www.stitcher.com or on your mobile device.  (For instructions on how to use Stitcher for different platforms, we recommend checking out Youtube for instructional videos such as this one that shows you how to use it on your iPhone).

Podcasts are plentiful at the following sites as well:

• www.wbur.org
• www.wgbh.org
• www.npr.org
• www.pri.org

If you’d like more information about utilizing podcasts in the classroom, please contact me at dhoule@northshore.edu.

Enjoy this new engaging experience for your students!

Have you used podcasts before?  What was your experience like?  How would you like to use podcasts in your class?

ANGEL Tip #3: Top ANGEL Issues and Resolutions this Fall Semester

Well, the semester is underway and students and faculty appear to be settling in.  I thought I would share some of the top issues we experienced with ANGEL, our Learning Management System, here at North Shore Community College this fall.

We upgraded to ANGEL version 8.0 in late August and there have been a few “quirky” things happening.

Our top issues (and resolutions) with ANGEL this semester:

1)    Issue: Problem uploading files (PDF) to ANGEL when using Firefox
      Resolution:  Clear cache in Firefox by going to tools, options, advanced, network and then clearing cache.

2)    Issue: Can’t see student names in ANGEL email site
      Resolution: Use another browser

3)    Issue: Students can’t see course
      Resolution:

• Students –  make sure the instructor uses the ANGEL system with the course.
• Instructors — the course needs to be made available to students.

1. Go to the Manage tab in the course site.
2. Click the General Course Settings link.
3. Click the Access tab.
4. Click on the drop down arrow in the Member Access section, and choose “All Members”.  Remember to save your edit!

4)    Issue: Links won’t work (always a good idea to test them before the course begins).
       Resolution:  Relink it by first copying the correct URL.

1. Go to Lessons tab and the document where the link is.
2. Under Settings for that document, highlight the words for the link.
3. Click on the icon that looks like a globe with a chain link on it.
4. Paste the correct URL into the URL section and click Ok.  This should activate the link.

Besides these recommendations above, one thing we always encourage people to try is to log out of ANGEL, close your browser and try a different browser.  Unfortunately, due to the popularity of several different browsers all of which update their software at various and intermittent times, ANGEL will perform better in some rather than others, especially if the browser being used was just recently updated.  

What other issues or problems are you running into with Angel?  Be sure to let us know by contacting us at angel@northshore.edu.  We want to hear from you!

20 Minute Professional Development – Monday Morning Mentor

This year, the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CTLA) and Academic Technology has partnered up again to bring faculty a professional development series from Magna Publications, called the Monday Morning Mentor. The goal of the Monday Morning Mentor series is to offer faculty practical professional development opportunities in twenty minute snippets that can be accessed from anywhere and at any time during the given week. Session topics cover the areas of student engagement, teaching and learning, teaching online, assessment and learning goals, and classroom management.

New video presentations go live at 10:00am each Monday morning and are only accessible through Sunday. Presentation handouts and supplementary materials are always available.
The following sessions are on the schedule for fall 2012.  For session descriptions and objectives, click on the titles below.

• September 17: Cell Phones, Laptops and Facebook: What Can I Do about Them?
• September 24: How Can I Use Informal Writing as Part of a Low-stakes Grading Strategy?
• October 1: What is Blended Learning?
• October 8: How Can Objects and Analogies Improve my Teaching?
• October 15: How Can I Promote Deep, Lasting Student Learning?
• October 22: How Do I Choose Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Activities?
• October 29: Peer Review of Online Teaching: What Works Best?
• November 5: Can I Safely Use Facebook with Students for Class Interaction?
• November 12: How Do I Stay Calm When Students Push My Buttons?
• November 19: How Can I Connect Students’ Interests to Course Content?
• November 26: In Blended Courses, What Should Students Do Online?
• December 3: How Can I Enhance Class Using Story, Popular Media and Objects?
• December 10: How Do I Address Teasing and Bullying Behavior in the Classroom?

Information on how to access the Monday Morning Mentor sessions is available each week in the Bulletin.

We would love to hear your feedback on the usefulness of these sessions. Please send your input to itd@northshore.edu.

Technology Resources to Start Your New Academic Year

The following video will walk you through where to search for tutorials on Smart Classrooms and Smart Carts as well as operational instructions and documentation to help you in your use of technology here at North Shore Community College. Hope this is helpful to you!

Technology Resources

What's Your Story?

I recently attended the annual Ed Tech conference at Bridgewater State University and saw a lot of intriguing things. One presentation was on a free website called Storify.

Storify  is a website that lets you create a story using your social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

In fact, you can use several social networks and “drag” content into a story you can craft on the site. You can upload posts, links, images to create a story line.   It also allows you to add text, thus creating context for your story.

I can imagine many ways an instructor could use it.  A Composition instructor might give students a subject and ask for a story that includes photos, images and content.  A student could comment on a photo and create a story timeline describing how the photo came about.  A history instructor could ask students to begin with a past event and chronologically evolve to current events by using photos, quotes, facebook quotes, images, websites etc.  They could comment on similarities, etc. and start to conceptualize on how history repeats itself.

Check out the website and tell us what you think!

Some of Ted Talks' Best: Round 1

So I recently contacted faculty to find out what are some of their favorite TED Talks. For those unfamiliar with TED, get ready to be blown away and inspired. TED is where the cutting edge meets the open public. It's a regular conference (and many mini-conferences) that take place wherein people deliver a presentation based upon their most recent and powerful research. Some have equated them to Randy Pausch's famous Last Lecture or the lecture of your life, and there's much truth to how these talks can inspire, motivate, and make us think. This is why they are great for the classroom. Coming in at 5-18 minutes long, each talk can serve as a springboar for discussion, debate, and paradigm change within a vast array of disciplines.  Most recently, TED has recently released  its TED-Ed platform, an easy-to-use toolbox for instructors to flip their classroom with TED Talks (or any Youtube video).

So in our first round, we have four different faculty here at North Shore Community College, sharing what they find to be some of the most inspiring and useful TED Talks that they've come across--either for their own experience or their inclass-usage.

Aimee Mullins: My Legs Give Me Super Powers
Laurie Carlson (English): "She talks about prosthetic limbs as an enhancement rather than a deficiency. The video deals with disability, feminism, and body image, all of which I feel are important topics and ideas for our students to be aware of and grapple with."

Bill Gates: Innovating to Zero
Barbara Ikalainen(Green Initiative Coordinator, Environmental Studies): "I show this to my Environmental Science students to promote a discussion on how to meet our future energy needs. He is referencing a new nuclear technology (nuclear fusion, not nuclear fission). It's not that I'm a proponent, but he brings up all the evidence of global climate change and he is actively looking for a solution. The dilemma that he poses is the difficulty of the democratic process towards technology and changing public opinion and how solutions to climate change will necessitate working with countries unfriendly to the USA."

Niall Ferguson: The 6 killer apps of prosperity
Kara Kaufman (History): "This TED Talk is a great counterpoint to the book Origins of the Modern World, by Robert Marks that I assign in World History II. Marks and Ferguson are examples of a debate within world history scholarship regarding the role of the West in the past 500 years. Marks takes a non-Eurocentric perspective while Ferguson's point of view is Eurocentric. The TED talk is also useful in that it is not a book. In other words, students are already reading most of Marks' book, so I like that TED  delivers excellent information in an alternative, entertaining format."

Amy Purdy: Living Beyond Limits
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Purdy discusses her journey adapting to (and maximizing) life after losing her legs. Really interesting. (For example: now she gets to be as tall as she wants to be - depending on the prosthetics she chooses!). Inspiring and Uplifiting!"

Temple Grandin: The World Needs All Kinds of Minds
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Grandin explains the "thinking in pictures" that comes with her autism, and describes how that has influenced how her career in engineering. An Interesting Contrast!"

Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your world-view
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "Rosling demonstrates world trends, using interactive statistical charts - with moving bubbles and colored snakes to describe things like the relationship between GNP and longevity! Colorful, Fun and Easy to Understand!"

Tavi Gevinson: A teen just trying to figure it out
Dawne Spangler (Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment; Math): "A high school sophomore, Gevinson discusses her (plural) e-zines and her publishing success. Fun and Encouraging!"

We'll be posting more soon, but in the meantime, what are your favorite TED Talks?

I'm Digging Diigo; Are You?

Over the last year, I've become a huge fan of Diigo.  Diigo is a social bookmarking site and tool that allows you to access your saved links on any computer.   But of course, it's much more than that or we wouldn't be talking about it here.  You can get a fuller sense of its capabilities by checking out our Youtube Playlist on Diigo.  But for now, let's identify some of its best qualities.

1. Free (and more free with Educator's license).  Sign up with an .EDU account and get access to more resources.
2. Links are accessible on any computer by logging in.
3. Users can join and create groups of common interest or purpose and keep community links.
4. Users can easily share links with other friends on the network or other groups.
5. In addition to creating Lists (categories), users can also tag each link for easier classification and search.
6. Users can annotate (including multi-colored highlighting) the site they bookmark and share both the site and the annotations with others.
7. Users can subscribe to other users and groups public links via RSS Feed.  (For more about RSS Feed, check out our blog entry on using it for education).
8. Users can track the number of views a link has received.

So that's a great range of tools that instructors can utilize for learning and student engagement. With that in mind, here are some of the ideas that you could use this program for:

Course Readings:  You could use Diigo to collect and organize your class readings.  With the Group feature, you could invite the class into Diigo, and break up the readings into different lists:  Week 1, Week 2, etc.  One reason this might be useful is that the instructor can annotate each link, adding comments, emphasis, and raising questions.  For instance, in the image below, I've highlighted different text and the numbers within the document indicate different comments I've raised with the reading.   What's great is that students too and can directly respond by commenting which means you can have a conversation around a text.  


Class Created Notebook:  In this sense, instructors can make students create a course notebook; requiring them to go out and harvest relevant materials for each week's reading.  Again, the instructor can require students to comment on each others' links or go in and comment on the students' links and require their response.  Here is a set of guidelines that require students to use Diigo to collection resources for a course.

Group Dissection:  For this one, the instructor can assign specific online readings and require a group using the annotative tools, to have a conversation around a text, by asking and answering questions, connecting it to other material, etc.  The beauty is that it's all within the document/reading itself.  

Research Resources:  Faculty can also use Diigo to create a range of resources for students with regard to a research project.  One List could be on methods, another on recent research or acceptable resources to use for a project, while another could be on citing and editing.  

Research Collection:  Diigo could also be used as a resource collection created by one or more students where all their research can be found and organized for a project.  

What other ways do you foresee Diigo being useful to you?  Have you tried Diigo?  What do you think about it?  What concerns or questions do you still have about it?

Information Redirection: RSS Feeds

"Where did you find out about that?"  I get asked this question a lot about the various links, information, and ideas that I share with colleagues and friends.  My usual and most likely answer (when it's not Facebook or Twitter) is my newsfeed.  

The understatement of the century is that there is a lot of information on the Internet and more and more gigabytes being added every minute.  Finding information is hard and sometimes, it feels like the proverbial needle in the haystack.  I’ve talked before about ways in which you can channel information to you, using Google Alerts, and today’s discussion of RSS feeds is another invaluable tool for someone who needs to stay abreast of information or wants to use the latest information to help inform and shape their students’ experience.  

This video help explains just what RSS feeds are and provide a good start to the conversation.  An alternative to the video is this site, which has a good clean description of what RSS does and how it does it.

One of the most ideal places to create a feed reader is of course Google Reader.  However, we cannot use Google Reader since it isn’t part of the Google tools allotted to us with our school Gmail accounts.  But if you have your own Google Account, it tends to be the best place.  Here’s a good place to find other recommendations on RSS Feeders.  One feature in an RSS reader that I find essential is the ability to create folders to put similar feeds into.  For instance, I might group RSS feeds on “gaming and education” into one folder while I might put feeds relating to community college education into another one.  

Once you know what kind of reader you’ll be using, you’ll then want to assemble the different sources to pile into it and organize your information.  If you are looking for ideas about what to follow and why, this site offers 100 different uses of RSS feeds.  

So What can using RSS do for your classroom?

• You can require students to subscribe to a host of sites much like some instructors require students to subscribe to newspapers.  These feeds could be a different materials they need to consider before coming to class or sources they must consider in constructing a project. 
• If you have students create blogs, you can use an RSS reader to feed all of their blogs into it, so you don't have to go to each individual one.
• You can create a collection of RSS feeds within Angel (under Resources) and require students to draw upon those articles for class discussions, homework, or other class-relevant material.

For more information, you might also want to check out:

• 7 Things You Should Know About RSS Feeds
• RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators

 
Have you used RSS Feeds?  What do you like/dislike about them?  Have you used them (or considered using them) in class?  What other ways do you foresee this being useful for teaching and instruction?

ANGEL Tip #2: Rearranging Items in ANGEL

Many of our faculty “refresh” their courses every semester.  They find new  examples or new ways of introducing content and materials.  Our students today might not find it as interesting as, say 20 years ago, to just read lecture  notes.  They are used to an environment that is technologically stimulating.

As you begin to prepare your ANGEL course for the new semester you might want to consider adding new ideas or new ways to focus on your course content.

ANGEL tip #2:
In ANGEL, by default,  all new items that you add will appear at the bottom of the page. Organization is essential in an effective ANGEL course and your students will find it helpful, as they navigate their course, to find content arranged in a way that makes sense and where they can access it quickly.

You can rearrange the order of your content items under the "Lessons" tab and within each folder (maybe a list of weeks, assignments, samples, etc.).

If you want to move the newest items to the top (or in another area on the page, you can do the following:

1.  If you wish to rearrange items in a folder or on a page you must first
be in the folder or in the page.
2.  Click the Rearrange link at the top of the Lessons area.
3.  Drag and drop folders to the appropriate location.
4.  Click the Save button to finalize changes.
 
I hope you enjoy this tip and if you have any you would like to share or request, please feel free to comment.

First Steps in Using A SmartBoard

Many of us have heard about interactive white boards or "Smart Boards" but haven't yet had a chance to use them.   One suggestion before starting use the Smart Board is to download the Smart Notebook software.  This is the software that gets used on your Smart Board to create materials--text, image, videos, animations, games, etc.  The Smart Notebook 11 software can be downloaded directly to your laptop or your PC.  30 day trials are available.  Product codes are also available for North Shore Community College full and part time faculty, if you'd like to use for more than 30 days.  Please email dhoule@northshore.edu and I'll send you the link to a product code.

There are also some great short videos that will help get you started:

Downloading Smart Notebook 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZiyko_eVjI

Smart Board Tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwla8E6jz4g

Smart Notebook 11:  The Activity Builder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVwcyfJzAtA

Smart Notebook 11
http://www.teachertechnologies.com/2012/05/smart-notebook-11/

Of course, your Academic Technology department is here to help.  Please contact me, Dave Houle, at dhoule@northshore.edu and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Enjoy your Smart Board and Smart Notebook exploration.