Random Thoughts
- Is teaching a “radical impossibility?” Is learning actually a product of teaching, or is it a natural consequence of human behavior? In this blog, John Connell reviews a paper by Ron Burnett called Learning to Learn in a Virtual World (PDF file). The review is interesting–the paper is fascinating.
- Looking for some new resources for research? Some information about professional associations, lesson plans, museums, or teaching jobs? Take a look at TeacherXpress–thousands of reviewed links “for busy teachers.”
- TeacherTube is a shared video service that specializes in educational videos–instructional videos that you can use as reference material as well as professional development.
- Are you getting as much power as possible from Firefox? This list of keyboard shortcuts from Mozilla.org will help you search, navigate, browse, and manage bookmarks with ease.
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Having a Second Life in Teaching
The more I explore the virtual communities of blogs, wikis, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and other social networking resources, the more I become convinced that university-level teaching can be greatly enhanced by using these technologies with students. In part that’s because so many of our students come to us already conversant in these technologies. In fact, most of them have developed their learning habits and learning preferences by sharing, exploring, and collaborating in such environments. They’re used to the immediacy and connectedness of social networking. If their brick-and-mortar university environments do not reflect these learning opportunities, will they be as involved in learning as they should be? We may not know the answer to that for a few more years as students may (or may not) begin making their enrollment decisions based on the kinds of learning opportunities available at their target institutions, and that’s probably fodder for a future blog entry.
Social networking is an interesting and engaging concept, but much of it is still text-based and–chat rooms not withstanding–asynchronous. When I write a blog entry, I have to wait until someone reads it and (hopefully) comments on it. When I update my Del.icio.us bookmarks, it takes a while for my subscribers to discover and investigate them. What if I could interact virtually in real time with folks from all over?
As it turns out, it’s not only possible but it’s a wildly popular pastime in which more than 7 million people worldwide participate on a daily basis–sometimes obsessively so. It’s called Second Life–an on-line 3D virtual world where you assume an identity, choose an avatar (your virtual representative), explore, and interact with other avatars in real time. I recently acquired an avatar (named Elwood Vella) and have begun shuffling around to see what happens. So far, I’ve actually been avoiding other “people” that I run across until I feel a bit more comfortable with the environment. Instead, I enter various locations and read the help files. (I’m not much more interesting than that in real life, either…)
The interesting thing about Second Life, however, is that I did not arrive at it through the “normal” social channels. I arrived at it because I was reading the e-Learning and Instructional Support web site from Oakland University. This fascinating site is a guide to learning activities through Second Life. It seems that many universities have devoted considerable time and effort to develop “virtual campuses” where students (or potential students) can explore, take classes, chat with other students, watch videos, and generally go to school through their Second Life avatar. Many videos of these sites–from institutions like Ohio University and Texas State (click here for a complete list)–are available that will give you the experience of what it’s like to visit a virtual campus. You can also find out how to obtain a free Second Life account.
While walking around in a virtual environment may not be your cup of tea, I’d argue that educators should become familiar with them at the very minimum to get a sense of the kinds of experiences that our students may be having, and further to see the possibilities that virtual classrooms and campuses may have for our own students and institutions.
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Random Samplings
Today’s entry will be a compendium of articles and how-to’s that relate to our iTeach seminar topics.
- GarageBand: This site from Apple has a set of lesson plans in PDF format for using Garageband with elementary and middle school students, some integrated with other software such as iMovie.
- iPhoto to Flickr: FlickrExport is a wonderful (but not free) iPhoto plugin that allows you to upload photos from your iPhoto albums directly into Flickr. Photos can be tagged, titled, and even put into sets at the time they are uploaded.
- Keyboarding: Typing skills are critical in a ubiquitous computing environment. Here is an on-line keyboarding tutorial.
- Podcasting in Schools: Need a few reasons to create podcasts for your school? Here is a short list...
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Convergence: Flickr and your Blog
One of the interesting things I have been exploring since the iTeach seminar is the way that Web 2.0 (social networking) sites work together across different types of data. Here is an example of that. I was investigating my Del.icio.us bookmarks, basically surfing around to see what new elements might have popped up in my subscriptions. I happened on this web site that explained how to embed Flickr slide shows into a web page or blog. I decided to give it a try and the first results are shown in the small slide show below–a group of my photos that were saved in Flickr as a “set” and are now being viewed in my blog. I didn’t have to do much at all, and the results are pretty impressive.
The mind reels at the possibilities of using this with students. It would be excellent for any place-based assignment (community profile, field visits), storytelling, or portfolios. It would also make an interesting medium for a “how to” document. You can create your slide shows (in Flickr) from your own photos or from other photos that you have tagged or linked to. I’m definitely going to be using this with my ED 429 students this fall.
Experiment with the slide show below. You can pause the show, change the timing, and view individual pictures separately, enlarging them if you wish. I can’t wait…
Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
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