EdTech @ ADW

As you know, it can be incredibly difficult to keep up with all the different websites and blogs that you like to read regularly. Often, even remembering which pages you have checked can be difficult - especially while on holiday and away from your regular computer. This is where feed readers come in.

Basically, you subscribe to the webpages and blogs that you regularly read using their RSS feeds. As new stories are added to the webpages and blogs that you read, your feed reader will automatically have been updated with that information. Therefore, you only have to check your feed reader and browse through the stories that are new and read the ones that are of interest to you.

Google Reader is my feed reader of choice. It is easy to use and is web based, which is an advantage when you are travelling. I will blog more about Google Reader over the next few weeks. Here is a screenshot of how it looks.

Happy Reading!

This article by Chris Brogan details the advantages of Social Media. I’ve pared down his list to include those that most apply to education settings. However, his original list is definitely worth a read.

• Podcasts (video and audio) encourage different types of learning, and in portable formats.
• Social networks encourage collaboration,  and can promote non-email conversation channels.
• Social networks can amass like-minded people around shared interest.
• Social bookmarking means that entire groups can learn of new articles and tools.
• Blogs and wikis encourage conversations, sharing, creation.
• Social software, promote human-mediated information sharing.
• Online versions of your materials and media are searchable.
• Podcasts are a way to build intimacy with information.
• Tagging and sharing and all the other activities common on the social Web mean that information gets passed around much faster.
• Human aggregation and mediation improves the quality of data you find, and gives you more “exactly what I was looking for” help.
• Innovation works much faster in a social software environment.

 Here’s a nice article from TimesOnline that refers to differences in the way Digital-age youngsters process information differently from parents.

A short summary in points:

1. According to researchers digitally native children have wonderfully flexible minds. They absorb information quickly, adapt to changes and are adept at culling from multiple sources. But they are also suffering from internet-induced attention deficit disorder.

2.  A worrying view coming through is that students are lacking in reflective awareness. Technology makes it easy for them to collate information, but not to analyse and understand it -  that what is going on out there is quite superficial.

3.  Younger people expect more variety, so their boredom threshold is falling. Some teaching is adapting to that and becoming more dynamic, some is not.

4.  Because they have been using digital technology all their lives, young people feel they have authority over it. But technology cannot teach them to reflect upon and evaluate the information they are gathering online. For that, the role of teachers and parents remains fundamentally important.

DIGITAL NATIVES v DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS

Digital natives (Those who have grown up in the digital age)
Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources.
Like parallel processing and multi-tasking.
Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text.
Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information.
Like to network with others.
Like to learn “just in time”.

Digital immigrants (Older people who are learning to assimilate to this age)
Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources.
Like singular processing and single or limited tasking.
Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video.
Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially.
Like to work independently.
Like to learn “just in case”.

Here’s a nice little article that might prove useful for the language teachers in our faculty. It provides 10 tips regarding behaviors and attitudes you require to learn a foreign language quickly and effectively. Here’s a brief summary:

1. Immerse yourself
It’s almost impossible to learn a new language, or at least to learn it rapidly, unless you begin thinking in that language. But how do you think in a new language you can’t yet speak? The answer is to simply immerse yourself in it.

2. Forget translating: think like a baby!
Through imitation, repetition of sounds, and above all, by not being shy or self-conscious.

3. How do you say?
Besides common greetings, the one phrase you should memorize and always have at the ready is the phrase is “How do you say that / what is that called?”

4. Write it
After having conversations, jot down the things you remembered hearing but didn’t quite understand.

5. Use cognates and draw links
Unlocking the usage of cognates instantly gives you several hundred more words to your vocabulary. For example, most words ending in “ion” in the Latin languages are the same in English. For example: information / información, donation / donación

6. Local TV, movies, music
Watch movies, listen to music, sing songs, and browse newspapers and magazines. It’s fun and helps improve your pronunciation and comprehension.

7. Non-verbal cues
Beyond words, observe locals when they talk. Be it the Gaelic shrug or a slight tilt of the head, combining body language with a new tongue helps you communicate better.

8. Get emotional!
Emotive experiences often etch impressions onto our memory. Make full use of embarrassing / funny / angry experiences by linking them to the new language.

9. A world of friends / then going solo.
Having a friend to practice with helps you get better, and you can also learn from the different mistakes different people make.

10. Practice at every opportunity before and after you travel.

The internet, in addition to allowing us easy access to business documents, research papers, free encyclopedias and some great books, also provides us with tutorials to absolutely anything.

Want to learn how to grill a great hamburger, or how to program in PHP?

This web page posted on dumblittleman.com details 15 such super-useful sites, which aim to provide you with all the tutorials you’d ever need.

Here’s an article that claims that voicemail is dead. The writer cites the following reasons:

“It takes much longer to listen to a message than read it. And voicemail is usually outside of our typical workflow, making it hard to forward or reply to easily.”

The writer warns you to think before you voicemail, because more and more people just find it annoying - and prefer to be emailed instead, especially if the message is important.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Here’s a site called teachingtips.com, which lists some great blogs written by teachers for teachers. Click here to read.

These blogs are categorized under the following headings:

General
These blogs cover a wide range of subjects from current events to ideas for lessons and instruction.

Subject Specific
Secondary school teachers and others who are focused on one subject can find some interesting reading related to their work in these blogs.

Tips and Tools
Find supplements to your lessons and helpful tips on teaching in these blogs.

International
If you are teaching abroad, or have ever dreamed of doing it, these blogs can give you some fun and informative reading material.

Technology
These days technology and teaching are nearly inseparable, so stay on the cutting edge with some help from these blogs.

Here’s a nice little article from PCMag.com that outlines some little-known but powerful features of Microsoft Word 2007. Click here to read this article.

Here’s a brief overview of the 8 features it presents:

1. Shrinking a document by one page
2. Calculating in tables, using only Word
3. Merging to e-mail and sending e-mails using Word
4. Comparing two documents to detect revisions
5. Using the Document Inspector to remove comments, hidden text, or private properties from a document before printing or sending
6. Using the Built-in translator
7. Creating fancy equations using the equation toolbar
8. Using math autocorrect to create fancy equations outside of the equation toolbar

   

Here’s an article posted on Techdirt Blog claiming that some teachers and professors blame Wikipedia for mistakes students make, and even demand that the entire Wikipedia be blocked in schools.

This report out of Scotland blames Wikipedia for kids getting failing grades.

However, other teachers see value in embracing Wikipedia, but understand its necessary to teach students what it is and how to use it reliably.

This report out of Australia describes a course on how to use Wikipedia. That seems a lot smarter than just blaming Wikipedia.

It’s a relevant question in today’s increasingly hi-tech market, isn’t it? If we are all online more and more with computers, phones, Blackberry, iPhone, etc. When are we not supposed to answer an email from a student and when are we supposed to be helpful? Is it just within office hours, or during our usual time-off as well? If we’re expected to do it outside of office hours, then do we get compensated for that? This was brought about by this article on employees at ABC in the US and their Blackberries.