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
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TED. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Monday, August 31, 2009
August 31, 2009
Good Morning Developers!
Can you believe that it is September tomorrow - wow, did the summer fly by fast! Your 25% completion deadline is approaching fast - next Monday I will be going into your courses to check for 25% completion. Please let me know if you have any concerns about meeting this deadline.
This week I came across a video titled Social Media Revolution – This 4 minute video does a fantastic job of telling the story that social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. It is well worth the watch! Here is the website where this video came from.
After watching this video I couldn’t help but feel proud of the work that we are doing in our online division at GU/MSB.
One of the statistics in the video stated that a 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction. This statement impacted me greatly. For many years those who work in online education as a whole have been striving to overcome the stigma that it cannot rival face to face instruction. Although I still believe that there are certain topics that are best learned through a residential environment, this study shows all of us that online education can in fact be just as good as face to face instruction for many topics.
As online developers we are directly impacting the 1 in 6 higher education students who are enrolled in online education and are responsible for them performing just as well as those students who learn in a traditional brick and mortar classroom. This is an awesome responsibility and I believe that thus far we have lived up to the challenge!
The work that we are doing is cutting edge, impactful, and highly motivated by the changing face of communication and education. Congratulations for being so closely involved in a changing world! Don’t be afraid to work these social media avenues into your developments – your students will love being able to use them in a classroom environment!
Can you believe that it is September tomorrow - wow, did the summer fly by fast! Your 25% completion deadline is approaching fast - next Monday I will be going into your courses to check for 25% completion. Please let me know if you have any concerns about meeting this deadline.
This week I came across a video titled Social Media Revolution – This 4 minute video does a fantastic job of telling the story that social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. It is well worth the watch! Here is the website where this video came from.
After watching this video I couldn’t help but feel proud of the work that we are doing in our online division at GU/MSB.
One of the statistics in the video stated that a 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction. This statement impacted me greatly. For many years those who work in online education as a whole have been striving to overcome the stigma that it cannot rival face to face instruction. Although I still believe that there are certain topics that are best learned through a residential environment, this study shows all of us that online education can in fact be just as good as face to face instruction for many topics.
As online developers we are directly impacting the 1 in 6 higher education students who are enrolled in online education and are responsible for them performing just as well as those students who learn in a traditional brick and mortar classroom. This is an awesome responsibility and I believe that thus far we have lived up to the challenge!
The work that we are doing is cutting edge, impactful, and highly motivated by the changing face of communication and education. Congratulations for being so closely involved in a changing world! Don’t be afraid to work these social media avenues into your developments – your students will love being able to use them in a classroom environment!
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