Tired of lecturing?

Fifty Alternatives To Lecture

Fifty Alternatives to Lecture

Researched by J. Prusch and written and adapted by A.M. Pickett.

Almost any activity can be designed to be carried out in some way or another for an online course. Most important is that the instructor must set up the activity with all the supporting and explanatory documentation necessary for the students to understand fully what they are to do, when, where in the course they are to do it, what is expected specifically, and how they will be evaluated. Areas in the course must be designed and set up in advance by the instructor to account for and accommodate, explain, model, and evaluate each activity. Below are some ideas to get you thinking about what is possible and how. For help implementing any of these ideas in your course, contact your assigned instructional design partner.

Open Course in Education Futures #edfuture

Open Course in Education Futures | Open to all.

I am participating in this free eight week course - it looks to be an interesting experience.  The first orientation and lecture is available online. Stay tuned to get more information.

Mandatory Reading for School Reformers and Transformers: Alvin Toffler’s 2007 Interview in EduTopia

Mandatory Reading for School Reformers and Transformers: Alvin Toffler’s 2007 Interview in EduTopia « Moving at the Speed of Creativity

James Daly's 2007 interview with Alvin Toffler, "Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up," should be considered mandatory reading for anyone seeking to reform and/or transform formal education in the 21st century.

RCampus - Create and Conduct Courses Online

Free Technology for Teachers: RCampus - Create and Conduct Courses Online

RCampus - Create and Conduct Courses Online

RCampus is a free, web-based, platform for creating and conducting courses online. Using RCampus teachers can create a course, collect students' assignments, and maintain a gradebook. RCampus provides all of the tools you would expect to find in an online course management system. Through RCampus you can post assignments, host discussion forums, post videos, post images, post links, collect assignments, and manage a gradebook.

Report profiles key emerging technologies for K-12

Report profiles key emerging technologies for K-12

The New Media Consortium (NMC) today released the 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition, the second in an annual series of reports focused on emerging technology use in elementary and secondary education. The report identifies and describes six emerging technologies that will likely have a significant impact on K-12 education in the next one to five years.

Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives

Ning: Failures, Lessons and Six Alternatives

Ning, the network of social networks that boasted 20 million visitors a month, is making massive staff cutbacks and has announced a complete end to free services for its users. Those who pay for premium services will be asked to pay more, and those who are getting their social networks free of charge will be asked to fork over or phase off the Ning platform.

Save My Ning

Save My Ning.com - Home

Save My Ning is an archive service that will allow you to backup your existing Ning Network on our webservers for free. We will host ads on the sites in order to cover the cost much like your Ning Network had ads. However, you will not be able to post to your archive, only read it. For continuing your community, we recommend any of the services listed to the side.

Replacing Etherpad with TypeWith.Me

One EtherPad Replacement « Tablet Talk

Source: Jane’s eLearning Pick of the Day

Site: TypeWith.Me

There is a super simple and ultra functional website called Etherpad. Etherpad allows you to create a document that multiple people can edit at once. It can be handy for collaboration with other teachers, creating a super-simple wiki page and a few dozen other uses. There are other sites which allow similar functionality, but what sets etherpad apart is that you can create and share a new page without an account (type in to your browser http://etherpad.com/xxx where xxx=what you want your page to be titled). Another thing that sets etherpad apart is the simple chat function in the bottom corner of the page. It allows users to discuss things before they set them down on the page.

So if etherpad is so great, why would you ever use anything that was similar? Well, etherpad was purchased by google (have you heard of them?) and the technology behind the product is going to be used in other products that google offers.

Google will not be keeping etherpad up and running, but to their credit they have made the source code available to other designers. The first (that I’m aware of) replacement is TypeWith.Me and is linked up at the top of the page. You can navigate to the site and create a pad (or you can place http://typewith.me/xxx in your brower’s URL bar, where xxx is your desired title) and start collaborating on shared documents!

If you want to just ’see’ what a pad looks like before you create one, click here:

http://typewith.me/tablettalk

There are likely to be be more and more etherpad replacement on the horizon. Enjoy.

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November

This seems very aligned to my feelings on how we need to be teaching - well done and thanks Alan!

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.