Good Afternoon Developers,
If you live in Minnesota, I hope you are enjoying the beautiful weather as much as I am! And if you live elsewhere, I hope you too are getting some beautiful March weather. It is hard to believe it is already March! And that means the 25% completion date for new course development is just around the corner. For most of you, I will be going into your courses on Monday, March 8th, to see how the developments are progressing and to offer feedback and assistance. If you believe you won't be able to meet this 25% completion date, please let me know right away.
As I've previously mentioned, one primary focus in this development cycle will be the implementation of a minimum of 3 audio lectures within the course(s) you are developing. Last week I talked about how you could transition a static PowerPoint presentation into an audio-enhanced, flash-type presentation using Adobe Presenter (once again, I will take care of the recording for Adobe Presenter for you; I simply need a PowerPoint and an accompanying script). This week, I'd like to introduce you to a great resource where you could bring "guest lecturers" into your course(s) through the use of TED.
Who is TED you may be asking. Well, 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.
This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free (a huge opportunity for us to bring experts into our online courses). More than 200 talks 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 encourage you to do so. The videos that are shown are very "real life" and "relevant."
Several of you are working on media and technology courses currently, so this resource would be a perfect option for you in implementing various audio lectures, since this was the initial base of the program. In fact, if you click here you will be able to view many of the technology topic videos.
However, because of its success and growth, even if you are teaching a course not in one of these areas, I strongly encourage you to check out the various TED listings as the videos also include the disciplines of Business, Science, and Global Issues.
By incorporating TED lectures into your course development(s) you are adding in both video and audio, thus reaching audio and visual learners. The more learning styles we can appeal to in our courses, the more effective we will be.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions on your development work. I look forward to reviewing your courses starting on Monday!
Have a great rest of the week!
Heather
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