Monday, May 26, 2008

Teaching while Traveling

I am in Velacruz, Mexico. My proposal, entitled “Creating Collaborative Learning and Communication Environments with Web 2.0 Tools” was accepted at the EDRA conference. I have got the notification right when I started teaching my summer courses. I have never been to Mexico. What an opportunity! Here I am in Velacruz. I created a newsletter with Letterpop that I would like to introduce to my students and have an assignment to do during my class. More tools to explore!

Friday, May 23, 2008

New Web 2.0 Tools Help Teachers Enrich Teaching

Teachers love YouTube. There are a lot of educational videos. To download videos and then show them from your sites (blog, wiki, or your personal website) you can use a DownloadHelper. It is an add on plug in from Firefox. Here is a video that guides you through the steps how to install it on your computer and use it when you want to save a video and add it to your websites. Hit the hyperlinked word DownloadHelper. Enjoy!


Sunday, May 18, 2008

A New TwT Class with a New LMS

New summer semester is ready to begin. I am somewhat in between the spring semester (finishing grading) and the beginning of the summer semester (setting up two courses). I had all my courses designed and happily ready to be uploaded to Web CT but... This comfort feeling is gone. The college is now using a Learning Management System MOODLE . It is exciting to explore something new and at the same time it is overwhelming --- you have to start everything from scratch. It is time consuming. I have been exploring this LMS during the spring semseter -- I was teaching 3 course. I also was in a pilot group of 10 MSMC professors who volunteered to experiment with Moodle. Last Friday was our last meeting. :-)

Here is a you tube video "What is Moodle?"

The IT department has just upgraded the Moodle and requested to watch what will be happening and report to Arthur if something needs to be fixed. I have already noticed some of Moodle's misbehavior and also head from my new students that it does not allow the students to easily upgrade the pages -- participants' page, in particular. It brings the user to the MSMC Web Module page. I also noticed that the chat room is not activated. The IT is informed about the problems.

I would like my class to be patient and open to the exploration of the new LMS. Next week I will add students' blogs' links to keep them in one place. I am excited to introduce some new Web 2.0 tools and services to my TwT students and to motivate them to learn to use them in their own teaching!
Let the summer learning/teaching adventure begin!

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Visit my CoveritLive blog, explore the site, try it out and reflect on the experience:

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Teaching to the Future

View the video and reflect on the content during the class and in your personal blogs: