The Awards Show

Every season ends with award shows, the Emmys, the Academy awards, the Tony, etc.  So why not our class.  I stubbled on to this site this morning and thought it was a perfect way to end this class.  It is a award show of sorts for internet technology.  I wanted to share this site not so much for submitting for the awards, although you could, but more because it has the last several years worth of award winners and these have a lot of good information.

http://edublogawards.com/

I really have enjoyed learning from all of you and hope to learn with you all again!

John

My Final Project

Well as we come to an end of this course, I am posting my final project.  I created a student resource website.  This is a place for my students to find information about their classes, resources for learning, and a little bit about me.

Here is the URL, it is rough...but this is my first website ever...
http://profluke.homestead.com/untitled.html

John

A new tool

I had someone show me a great site.  http://www.wordle.net/

This would be a great site.  To use with students who want to learn terminology or do a creative project on a topic. 

I could see using this in my Intro to Economics class where there is a ton of terminology.  If one believes in multiple intelligences or at least preferences then this would appeal to the visual learner.

To PowerPoint or Not?

In class we discussed effective instruction and how many intructors use too much PowerPoint as the focus of their instruction versus as a tool. 

When looking for resources to add items for the distance learning page on the class wiki site I found other ways to use PowerPoint.

http://facstaff.uww.edu/jonesd/games/

http://jc-schools.net/tutorials/PPT-games/

Both of these sites have resources that you can use PowerPoint for they are mostly games to reinforce content.

John

A fun new site

I was examining some resources that are in a online professional development course that I am taking for one of the schools that I teach at and found a treasure trove of resources.  The professional development courses ties in with our topic of using technology in the classroom. 

Anyway I found a cute tool that is more for entertainment than education, but it might have educational applications as well.   http://www.xtranormal.com/   Xtranormal takes what you type and allows you to create an animated movie.  I thought this might be a fun way to do a class introduction or something of that nature.

Google the world

We studied a lot of different apps this term in our class and many of them revolved Google.  Many people do not know about most of these applications, I am sure I didn't.  But I have since started using many of these on a regular basis.  Google Calendar is amazing and helps me keept track of what needs done for each of my jobs.  Google Docs is a great way to store documents to work on at various place without remembering to pack my flash drive.  I tend to keep exploring these.

In addition there are many different add ons and enhancements that come to assist in making these Google tools and other better.  Some are from private developers and some times from Google.  In my feeds I came across http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-chrome-extensions-by-google.html and article that google released several new extension that are official enhancement.

So even more to explore!

John

Wikinomics Part 2

News Flash there is a follow up book to Wikinomics.  I received this in a feed this morning.  I then went to the book's website.  http://www.macrowikinomics.com/about/.  This book take the ideas of collaboration that were the key to the first book and applies them to the society and world as a whole. 

The site advertises it as "Macrowikinomics offers nothing less than a game plan for all of us to fix a broken world" (http://www.macrowikinomics.com/about/).

I have ordered mine.

John