Good Morning Developers!
Today marks the 50% completion date for your developments. If you do not feel your course is at 50% or you are running into any problems please let me know ASAP.
Starting on Friday of this week I will officially be on Maternity Leave. During this time Heather Thomton-Stockman will be working with you on your new developments. Please feel free to contact Heather with any questions that you might have! Her e-mail is hthomton-stockman@msbcollege.edu
I want to remind you of all of the rich resources we have available through our library. If you haven't incorporated the library resources into your courses yet, I highly encourage you to do so. Being a higher education institution it is important that our students are information literate and feel comfortable looking up information in scholarly journals and in reputable sources. It is also good to increase student's skills of searching on the internet, but it is important for them to know the difference between information on the internet and information that can be found in an academic library. If you have questions or concerns about how to incorporate the library into your developments please contact Elaine Settergren (the online librarian) at esettergren@msbcollege.edu and she will help you not only find appropriate resources for your subject matter but will talk to you about ways that you can incorporate those resources into your courses.
Have a great week!
Amy
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
March 23, 2009
Good Morning Developers,
One resource that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet is TED. Some of you may have heard of TED before and some of you are probably wondering who TED is? So I would like to start with a description of what the TED website consists of:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a creative commons license , so they can be freely shared and re-posted.
If you haven't had a chance to search around the TED website at http://www.ted.com/ I very much encourage you to do so. The videos that are shown are very "real life" and "relevant" and having students do an assignment that requires them to watch a TED video would also introduce them to this wonderful resource.
To show you an example of a video that is extremely relevant I would like you to watch the 8 minute video on Twitter. I have been talking about Twitter quite a bit lately and this speech is given by the creator of Twitter and he does a great job talking about the philosophy behind it and how to best use it in your own lives.
On a different note, please notice that I have started to give labels to my blogs and you can now see some of the labels on the right side of your screen. I have yet to get through all of my past blog posts to label them, but it is a project I am working on. For now, you can start to look at archived postings based on their subject. Have fun!
Have a great week!
Amy
One resource that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet is TED. Some of you may have heard of TED before and some of you are probably wondering who TED is? So I would like to start with a description of what the TED website consists of:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a creative commons license , so they can be freely shared and re-posted.
If you haven't had a chance to search around the TED website at http://www.ted.com/ I very much encourage you to do so. The videos that are shown are very "real life" and "relevant" and having students do an assignment that requires them to watch a TED video would also introduce them to this wonderful resource.
To show you an example of a video that is extremely relevant I would like you to watch the 8 minute video on Twitter. I have been talking about Twitter quite a bit lately and this speech is given by the creator of Twitter and he does a great job talking about the philosophy behind it and how to best use it in your own lives.
On a different note, please notice that I have started to give labels to my blogs and you can now see some of the labels on the right side of your screen. I have yet to get through all of my past blog posts to label them, but it is a project I am working on. For now, you can start to look at archived postings based on their subject. Have fun!
Have a great week!
Amy
Monday, March 16, 2009
March 16, 2009
Hello Developers,
Most of you are moving right along in your developments and we are now in the development phase where you are getting creative with your assignments, discussion boards, and interactivity between the students in the courses you are creating. Several weeks ago, on March 2nd, I mentioned iTunes University. I want to take this time to point you in the direction of another article that mentions iTunes University: http://www.oculture.com/2006/12/the_hottest_cou.html
This article comments on the amount of information that is available for free on the web. The article mentions that this free information is making companies that offer these kinds of taped lectures for a price become obsolete. If we can get it for free, why would we pay for it?
Please take a couple of minutes to take a look at the free information that is is available via iTunes University and see if any of this information could be worked into the courses you are developing. There is a wealth of information out there, we just need to find it!
Have a great week!
Amy
Most of you are moving right along in your developments and we are now in the development phase where you are getting creative with your assignments, discussion boards, and interactivity between the students in the courses you are creating. Several weeks ago, on March 2nd, I mentioned iTunes University. I want to take this time to point you in the direction of another article that mentions iTunes University: http://www.oculture.com/2006/12/the_hottest_cou.html
This article comments on the amount of information that is available for free on the web. The article mentions that this free information is making companies that offer these kinds of taped lectures for a price become obsolete. If we can get it for free, why would we pay for it?
Please take a couple of minutes to take a look at the free information that is is available via iTunes University and see if any of this information could be worked into the courses you are developing. There is a wealth of information out there, we just need to find it!
Have a great week!
Amy
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
March 9, 2009
Good Morning Developers,
Today I will be going into your courses to check for 25% completion. If you have any concerns about meeting this deadline please let me know.
Plagiarism:
We have found that as students have more and more access to information via the Internet our instances of plagiarism have increased. In order to combat this plagiarism increase many faculty members have started taking advantage of our SafeAssign feature feature that is built into Blackboard. SafeAssign compares submitted assignments against a set of academic papers to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works. SafeAssign can be used to prevent plagiarism and to create opportunities to help students identify how to properly attribute sources rather than paraphrase.
I have created a new "How To" document on how to create a SafeAssignment in your course and have e-mailed it to all of you. If you are developing an assignment with a research component I encourage you to set up your assignment as a SafeAssignment rather than a regular assignment. These assignments are integrated with the Grade Center just like other assignment but just have the added feature of checking for plagiarism.
Have a great week!
Today I will be going into your courses to check for 25% completion. If you have any concerns about meeting this deadline please let me know.
Plagiarism:
We have found that as students have more and more access to information via the Internet our instances of plagiarism have increased. In order to combat this plagiarism increase many faculty members have started taking advantage of our SafeAssign feature feature that is built into Blackboard. SafeAssign compares submitted assignments against a set of academic papers to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works. SafeAssign can be used to prevent plagiarism and to create opportunities to help students identify how to properly attribute sources rather than paraphrase.
I have created a new "How To" document on how to create a SafeAssignment in your course and have e-mailed it to all of you. If you are developing an assignment with a research component I encourage you to set up your assignment as a SafeAssignment rather than a regular assignment. These assignments are integrated with the Grade Center just like other assignment but just have the added feature of checking for plagiarism.
Have a great week!
Monday, March 2, 2009
March 2, 2009
Good Morning Developers,
Now that March has arrived we have almost reached the season of spring, yipee! It makes those summer developments you are working on seem like their roll out date isn't that far away. Please remember that your 25% completion deadline is Monday, March 9th (one week from today). If you have concerns about meeting this deadline please let me know ASAP.
In the past week there have been two very interesting news updates that pertain to online learning. The first one is from the Department of Psychology, SUNY, Fredonia, NY. They studied how iTunes University can assist students in the classroom. Their findings revealed that
students who listened to a podcast while going through power point lecture notes scored significantly higher on a test than students who sat through the same the lecture in the traditional lecture format. So those of you who are posting lecture notes in your courses (which should be all of you) now have proof that if you also record a podcast to go with your power point presentations your students will learn much better! http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-4V5GCPP-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e37f858b8a49dca5d5cd6a8c85494e7a
If you have questions about how to create a podcast just let me know!
The second update is from Microsoft and how they are exploring educational link to video games. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDQ-SWd6OPxfVg2xMiYzMvPxF5UgD96FCQL82
Could playing video games draw students into learning and get them more interested in Scientific Thinking? Here at Globe University we think playing games, or doing learning objects, can really get students interested in the material! See these websites to find learning objects that are related to your subject matter:
http://www.lolaexchange.org/
http://www.mrelot.org/
http://www.wisc-online.com/
Have a great week!
Amy
P.S. Don't forget to set your clocks for day light savings on Sunday!
Now that March has arrived we have almost reached the season of spring, yipee! It makes those summer developments you are working on seem like their roll out date isn't that far away. Please remember that your 25% completion deadline is Monday, March 9th (one week from today). If you have concerns about meeting this deadline please let me know ASAP.
In the past week there have been two very interesting news updates that pertain to online learning. The first one is from the Department of Psychology, SUNY, Fredonia, NY. They studied how iTunes University can assist students in the classroom. Their findings revealed that
students who listened to a podcast while going through power point lecture notes scored significantly higher on a test than students who sat through the same the lecture in the traditional lecture format. So those of you who are posting lecture notes in your courses (which should be all of you) now have proof that if you also record a podcast to go with your power point presentations your students will learn much better! http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-4V5GCPP-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e37f858b8a49dca5d5cd6a8c85494e7a
If you have questions about how to create a podcast just let me know!
The second update is from Microsoft and how they are exploring educational link to video games. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDQ-SWd6OPxfVg2xMiYzMvPxF5UgD96FCQL82
Could playing video games draw students into learning and get them more interested in Scientific Thinking? Here at Globe University we think playing games, or doing learning objects, can really get students interested in the material! See these websites to find learning objects that are related to your subject matter:
http://www.lolaexchange.org/
http://www.mrelot.org/
http://www.wisc-online.com/
Have a great week!
Amy
P.S. Don't forget to set your clocks for day light savings on Sunday!