Teaching Naked: Should you do it? Yes!

Okay, so this is not be about teaching without clothes on but this is a very good article about not letting educational technologies get in between you and your students.

What I get from this article is that we would be more effective teachers if we stopped using so much technology in our scheduled class-time to present content or have quizzes. But we should use the technology to develop content and admin quizzes outside of scheduled class time so we can use that valuable time to have more open, less structured discussions and other interactive learning activities. The notion of teaching naked is to prepare to take some risks in your classes, with less content to hide behind and allow the students to set the directions of the activities more.

The article explains this much better so click here to access this great article by Jose Antonio Bowen and post a comment on what you think about it.

Rod

Top 10 Time Savers for Instructors

On May 15, Andrew Reil and I made a presentation at the Spring PD Retreat of the Mount Royal Faculty Association about the Top 10 Time Savers for instructors. We tried to present a list of tools that are easy to use, to acquire and will save an instructor significant time. We selected this topic because we have continually heard feedback from instructors that they are suffering from shortage of time in their work.

Click here to access the handout, which includes the to 10 time savers as well as several that didn't make it into the top ten.

We had about 25 instructors attend our presentation and several of them expressed appreciation for the timesavers as many they were not aware of and they felt they could use right away.

We also presented a similar presentation for Researchers where some of the timesavers are the same but you can access that handout by clicking here.

Free Blended Learning Guide from Web Junction

Here is a free guide (PDF download) that is an update guide to Blended Learning. It is full of links to many examples of the latest online learning tools and resources. It also features many tips, case studies and examples of best practices for trainers and instructors.

Click here to access

Symposium Promotional PostCard

A promotional postcard is being emailed out to invite participants to register to attend the Symposium 2007 event. And to submit a proposal to present.

If you didn't receive a postcard or the images got mangled through the email then click here to view it.

The online registration using SPORG is now open at http://adeta.org/symposium/registration.html

This is going to be a great event. Don't miss it.

Rod

Second Life International Education Conference! May 25, 2007

Planning is currently underway for the first Second Life International Education Conference! The focus will be on best practices in teaching, learning and research. Click here for more information.

The conference will be held on May 25, 2007 in venues all over the Second Life world, with exciting presentations, vendors and exhibitors, and everything an educator needs to know to get started exploring the possibilities for teaching, learning, and research in Second Life!

There is no cost to participate in this conference but you do need to sign up for a Second Life identity or account, which is free. Go to http://www.secondlife.com for that.

Rod