At this point in time many of you have probably heard the term Web2.0. And I know that most of you have heard all of the “social”-ness of the internet, especially with social networking sights like MySpace and Facebook. What you probably do not realize that it is primarily RSS technology (Really Simple Syndication) that pulls all this socialness together. So what IS RSS?
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The CTL Teaching Team events have really taken off during the past couple of weeks. We’ve had the CIS folks at both S&D and Red Mtn., sharing their expertise and teaching us all how to navigate the new interfaces of the MS Office 2007 suite.
On Monday Paul Valach introduced TED: Ideas Worth Spreading to a few of us. If you ever decide you want a guest speaker for your class, face-to-face or online, TED is the place to start looking. (more…)
In surfing for content to post to a variety of blogs this week, I came upon an interesting article that doesn’t necessarily relate to this week’s topics in any of my classes, but thought I would share anyway. (Besides, it’s my turn to present in my Recent Innovations in Ed Tech class this week)
Inside is an interesting reference on how technology is affecting instruction today. I like the fact that it focuses back on the teacher: (note that in the following quote, IT is referring to Information Technology and NOT Instructional Technology, but I think in the end it applies to both)
“IT is not a good substitute for good teaching. Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them.”
Here’s the link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/it
I’ve prided myself for a long time on being a liaison for technology and people who aren’t technologists or those who at the very least tolerate it. However I still would like to contribute to the web development community regardless of whether they are developing e-Learning or educational software interfaces or not. With that said, I would like to emphasize that my first degree was in software engineering, so I am an engineer at heart. Therefore I will proceed to get a little tech-y…
I thought I would “cheat” and make my blog posting this week an easy one. For those of you who do not know, Donna Guadet, Mesa CC’s fabulous instructional technologist, decided she missed the classroom and moved over to Scottsdale CC as a full-time math instructor. To allow MCC to run a full search to replace our instructional technologist position, I will be the acting instructional technologist for the 2007-8 academic year.
I just finished five years, full-time, in the English, Humanities, and Journalism department teaching writing and media studies classes. My scholarly interests generally include the interface between technology and humanity. My various scholarly projects are usually about teaching and learning with technology, technologically mediated professional development, and cross-media narrative studies. I have been blogging about my various scholarly interests for the past year and a half and just upgraded to my own domain.
Besides helping with workshops, course design, and various programs in the CTL, I will also be working on my own interests of scholarship at the two-year college (specifically how do we seek funding and do it). I will also be working on revising the ETL (excellence in teaching and learning) courses.
So swing by if you:
I was the one who initially put together the streaming media guide in preparation for some media classes for MCC faculty taught by Richard Felnagle of the English Humanities department and myself. The guide is horrendously out of date, but the class itself was fun class to teach, and I learned a lot. I really enjoyed teaching it with Richard who delivers a great portion of his own instruction for his on campus and distance-learning students via our Helix Universal Server. (more…)
10. The first thing you think about when you get in a car is returning all those phone calls you haven’t had time to return.
9. You never watch a TV show at its scheduled time (go Tivo!)
8. While in the customer service waiting line, you call the customer service number on your cell phone and get faster service.
7. You use the alarm on your cell phone to wake up in the morning.
6. You regularly email yourself (and maybe even respond!).
5. When you say or do something you didn’t mean, you think “Undo.”
4. You use Google to research answers to all you unknown questions.
3. You don’t forward the “please forward this to 10 of your friends” messages to your friends (unless they really are profound).
2. You are regularly disappointed that you can’t surf while driving.
And…the number 1 sign of a modern techno-geek…
1. You send yourself a voice mail message then, when listening to your voice mail, you don’t recognize the caller!
Melanie posted earlier about her favorite photo online storage and organizing sites. The CTL also has in the past offered workshops on how to obtain content for use with instructional projects that is legal and honors copyright law.
I’d like to quickly add a few to the list that I’ve found helpful over the past year or so.
In my opinion, one of the reasons that George Lucas’ earlier Star Wars film efforts were so successful is because they portrayed his vision of a ‘used future’–one where its inhabitants weren’t totally amazed at the fact they were traveling by light speed in space ships the size of Texas. They just used technology because it was there. What part of this are we employing today? Which teaching and technology trends are here to stay and won’t evolve or degenerate because the future is here and now and we just use it without geeking out about it?
James brought to my attention that the folks at Apple are up to their old (but good) tricks again. They’ve released a new version of their Boot Camp software that allows MS Windows to run on their hardware. Newly added is support for Windows Vista. I anticipate there will be a day when we will be so used to technology that it won’t matter THAT much what OS (Operating System) a computer has on it. We will just walk up to technology and begin interacting with it. Bad technology will devolve and good technology will progress…much like natural selection in ecology.