EdTech Innovation conference in Calgary in May 2103

The EdTech Innovations conference will take place in Calgary this year.  Go to their website at http://edinnovation.ca/ for more information and to sign up.

I signed up and look forward to attending. It runs May 1-3, 2013.

Speakers include:

• John Baker
• Deborah Quazzo
• Jose Ferreira
• Dean Shareski
• Heather Payne
• Audrey Watters
• Dan Pontefract

TCC Online Conference 2013

I just registered for the 18th Annual TCC Online Conference for 2013. Although this conference is based in Hawaii, it is online so no one has to travel there. :(

I have attended this conference several times before and it is a very good conference with the cost, which isn't much ($99 before April 2).

One of this year's keynote speakers is Dr. Terry Anderson, who is a former mentor of mine. We worked together in Grouard Alberta, a long time ago.

The conference runs April 16-18, 2013

MOOCs at Coursera.org

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) seem to be the buzz this summer and I just found a very interesting Ted Talk about the MOOCs that are available at Coursera.org   You can go to to the Ted Talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education.html  Daphne Koller is the speaker.

But then go over to https://www.coursera.org/ and check out the free, university level online classes that you can take. I found three intriguing ones, two about designing online courses and an intro to Logic that I signed up for just because it starts next month and I want to see what these are all about, and how they manage to design them so that they work.

The two education courses that look very appealing are eLearning and Digital Cultures   and
Fundamentals of Online Education: Planning and Application

If you would like a crash course in MOOCs go to moocmooc.com and sign up for a MOOC about MOOC's that starts next week (Aug 12) or just read the article at http://www.hybridpedagogy.com/Journal/files/MOOC_MOOC.html that explains what MOOC are. I signed up for that on, too. So I may see you online.

If you know of any good MOOCs, please share.

Using games in teaching Chemistry

I am making a presentation today on how to use games to teaching chemistry.  Go to http://goo.gl/epcK to access the hand out of links and resources.

Rod Corbett

Cloud Computing for Your Classroom

There are many useful cloud computing applications that are emergingthat you can easily use in your classroom to engage your students and supportcollaborative learning. Cloud computing applications are tools that reside totallyon the Web and you can access through any computer with a Web browser andInternet connection. Many of these tools can be used with very little investmentof time to learn and set up -- and, most of them are free. In this session, we willreview several of these resources and how you can employ them to enhance your teaching.

Resources:

• Prezi including links to my three top ten lists.
• Shared Typewith.me document.
• Go2Web20.net- Cloud Computing Applications Index
• Growing list of Free Cloud Computing Teaching Tools that I and others are compiling.
• Click here to sign up for a free Dropbox.com account and get a 250MB Bonus.

If you are using a free cloud computing app in your teaching, share it with us. Post a comment.

Rod Corbett

Jane Hart's E-Learning Handbook

Here is an very useful online handbook all about E-Learning from Jane Hart. This e-book is free and will serve as an excellent PD source and reference. Jane promises to keep the handbook current with continuous revisions.

Useful topics covered include:

• Virtual worlds like Second Life
• Blogs and wikis
• Podcasts, videocasts and screencasts
• What is Web 2.0 and E-Learning 2.0?
• RSS Feeds
• Mobile E-Learning
• Social Bookmarking
• And many more
  

Click here to check it out.

Educational Technology and Related Educational Conferences

Clayton R. Wright has compiled and distributed his excellent list of conferences about Educational Technologies and related topics. This list covers the dates from November 2007 to June 2008.

I have posted the document to Google Docs so you can access it from the follow link:
http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd78qwxf_455djr835

I would like to contact Clayton directly to give him feedback or to add events to the list his email address is crwr77@gmail.com

GTD on Retro PDAs

I have been exploring a new organizing system that may help me get better organized. It is the GTD system from David Allen. In my explorations I ran across four very interesting tools that can help you organize your life and they are all free, sort of.

The first is the Hypster PDA. Click here to learn more. This started out as a joke but it works so well that many people are using it. Or click here to see how to use Hypster PDA for GTD.

Next is PocketMod. Check it out at www.pocketmod.com This is like Hypster PDA but you can use common letter sized paper.

Then there is Thinking Rock, which is an actual stand alone computer application that is open source. This software helps you to use the GTD system and it prints out reports in PocketMod formats.

For Gmail users you can configure your Gmail account to do the same thing Thinking Rock does but it is online and accessible where ever you can access your Gmail. Go to http://spaceagewasteland.com/gtd%20with%20gmail.pdf to read a white paper on how to do this.

And finally, there is a Firefox addin that even makes it easier for you to use Gmail for your GTD system. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3209

Check them out.

Oh, if you want to check out the book by David Allen about GTD click here

If you are using the GTD system, please post a comment here and let us know how it is working for you.

Rod

Podcast Recordings Available for the Future of Eduation Conference

The podcast link is now available for the MP3 recordings of the presentations from this conference hosted by George Siemans and University of Manitoba. Click here to learn more about the conference.

I really appreciate these presentations being made available through MP3 because even though it is online, I could attend any of the sessions live because I have been just too busy this week. I also find it restrictive that I need to use Elluminate to view the archive recordings. I love the MP3 recordings because then I can load them into my MP3 player and listen to them anyway. I can also share them easier.

The URL for the Podcast list in RSS is http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/foe-2007/podcast/index.xml which came up right into my Google Reader, which even offered to play them for them. Nice.

Thanks George.

Rod

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

Call for Proposals Out for October Symposium

The call for proposals is justing going out for presenters at the Distributed Learning in the 21st Century: Shaping the Future of Learning Symposium taking place October 17 to 19, 2007 in Edmonton.

The due date is May 14th to get them in. Please consider sharing some of your insights, research and/or practices that will help us Shape the Future of Learning.

All presenters will receive a discount on their registration fees.

Click here for more details.

Canadian E-Learning 2007 conference

The 5th Annual Canadian E-Learning Conference will take place in Edmonton at the University of Alberta on June 18 to 22, 2007. This is the former Canadian WebCT conference that UofA have hosted over the last 4 years. The title is explore 2007.

This conference will be very different because of the take over of WebCT by Blackboard and the organizers are working hard for make this a conference for all WebCT and Blackboard users in Canada, as well as other platforms.

The call for proposals is out right now and the due date is March 20th. If you are accepted your registration fee is cut to $100.

Plan to attend. I have submitted proposals to offer the 25 Google Learning Tools workshop that Jeff Hamilton and I have developed. This workshop has attracted a lot of interest when we have offered it. I am also working on a concurrent presentation about the top 10 free tools you can use to enhance your WebCT or Blackboard courses.

It will be a great conference. See you there. Click here for details.

Rod

Publishing with Google Tools Module Guide

Publishing with Google Tools Module

In this module you are going to use some of the Google blogging tools to find useful blogs to read, subscribe to their feeds, and even publish your own blog and website.

Google Tools Explored in this module:

• Blogger
• Google Blog Search
• Google Reader
• Google Alert
• Google Page Creator

Learning Objectives:

• Find useful blogs that have postings that would want to read on a regular basis.
• Setup a blog of your own that you can use to publish your own thoughts, opinions or commentaries on an area of your interest.
• Setup two tools that will act as agents for you to alert you to new postings on selective blogs or just generally on the Internet, as well as make it easy for you to read the postings.
• Create an HTML based website using Google Page Creator

Resources Required:

• A Google or Gmail account login.

Directions

Blogger

1. This module guide is a posting in one of my blogs in Blogger, one of the most popular blogging tools around. Google acquired Blogger awhile back and recently it just came out of Beta release. Explore the features of this blog. Can you find the archive of past postings, organized both by date and topic?
2. This blog is one that I started a few months ago to post my views and reviews about Ed Tech. Post a comment at the bottom of this post and let us know who useful you may find this particular blog useful, or suggestions on how I could improve it.
3. Think of a topic within Ed Tech that you would find useful and enter a keyword or two into the Search Blog tool at the top and left of the page and see if I have posted something about that. Did I?
4. There are thousands of blogs out on the net and many on Blogger along. Click on the
   Next Blog>> link at the top and centre and take a look at another blog. Would you find this one useful? You may need to click on the Next Blog>> again.
   Google Blog Search
5. Now lets search all of the blogs out there for some useful posts. Go to the Google Blog Search and enter in a key word or two describing a topic you are interested in
   reading about. Find at least two blogs that you will want to subscribe to later in this module and bookmark their URLs.
   Google Alerts
   
6. New blogs are created every minute and there may be one that is useful to you that gets created tomorrow. Well, you could always do another Blog Search to find it but better yet, use the Google Alert tool to let Google let you know. Go to Google Alerts and enter in a keyword or two you would like to be alerted about, and your email address. You may want to change the other options or just leave them as their defaults. If you are already signed in with your Google account you won't need to enter your email address. You can have as many alerts as you wish.
   Google Reader
7. Hopefully you now have 2 or 3 blogs identified that you would like to read on a regular basis. We are now going to set up Google Reader to help you monitor and read the postings on these sites. If you would like a list of blogs that I subscribe to see below. Go to Google Reader and sign in with your Google login. As you create your Reader for the first time, you may choice to add some of the feeds offered but it is up to you.
8. Most blogs have an RSS feed when will allow Google Reader to automatically check for new postings and present them to you to read. It is easy to add these to your Subscription list in Reader because you just need to click on Add Subscription and paste in the URL from the blog site and let Google Reader set up the feed connection. Add 2 or 3 blog sites subscriptions to your list. Feel free to add any of the ones I have listed below.
9. If you get a lot of blogs subscriptions, you can go to the Manage Subscriptions tool where you can set up various folders, tags and other tools for organizing your subscriptions. Now take some time to actually read some of the postings. As you do, notice how Reader keeps track of what you have read. It will do this even if you access Reader from multiple computers because the information is stored on the server and not your computer. You can use the tags feature and some of the advanced publishing features to share selected postings with your class.
   Blogger
10. Would you now like to create your own blog? Go to the Blogger start page and sign in with your Google account. Review the information about blogs presented here.
11. If you are ready to create your blog click on the big orange arrow that say Create your blow now and follow the directions of this wizard. Feel free to just create test blog, it is free. Or if you have figured out a purpose for you blog, create one and start publish your postings.
    Google Page Creator
12. Blogs are different than Websites and you may want to build a website using
    the Google Page Creator tool. Click
    here to access my website built in Google Page Creator. What is nice about
    this tool, is that it is free, no HTML knowledge required and you get 100MB
    of space.
13. Click here to start your own website using
    this tool. To get started, simply click on Create a New Page button and follow
    the directions on the new page. Explore the tools. Look for buttons to change
    the look and layout of the page. And experiment with the editing tools. When
    you are finished you can Publish your page by click on the publish button and
    you will see the URL for your site at the bottom. It should be something like
    http://yourusername.googlepages.com/home
14. Try adding a gadget or more pages and then inserting links to them on your
    home page. Could it be any easier to publish a website?
15. Go back to the Teaching with Google Group and look for the discussion thread
    about Publishing with Google Tools. Review the postings there and post your
    own message describing how useful you found the Google tools you explored in this module. Please include links to your Blog and Page Creator website so we can view them.
16. Go to the bottom of this page and click on the Reward link for a reward video clip on Google Video for completing this learning activity.

Additional Resources:

• What is Google Blogger? by Marziah Karch
• What is Google Reader? by Marziah Karch
• Google Blogging
• Jeff's Google Page Creator pages
  

Some blogs I subscribe to about Educational Technologies:

• Blogging Pedagogy
• Ed Tech Journeys
  
• EdTechPost
• elearnspace
  
• Online Learning Update
  
• Rick's Café Canadien
• SVSD Classroom Technology
• Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day
• and my blog, Rod's Ed Tech Review

Click here to access the next module in this workshop, Google Does Office and More.

Reward

TCC 2007 Online Conference

TCC Worldwide Online Conference or Technology, Colleges and Community is a online conference designed for university and college practitioners. Interact in live presentations from the comfort of your office or work place. This year will be the 12th annual online conference.

The dates are April 17-19, 2007 with pre-conference dates: April 3-4, 2007. The call for proposals is still open but the due date for submissions is January 26.

The theme for this year is Blending Community and Multimedia in Ubiquitous Learning.

I have attended this conference a couple of times and it is very worthwhile. It attracts participants from all over the world.

Because it is an online conference you can save travel costs and the registration is low ($99 US) because they don't have to rent large halls or feed you.

Click here to access the information website.

Synergize and Energize Conference

Mount Royal College, ADETA and McGraw-Hill Ryerson will be hosting the next National Teaching Learning and Technologies conference in Calgary on February 21 to 23, 2007. Early bird registration fees will be $245 before January 19th, I believe. This conference will have many presentations and discussions about Ed Technologies and how best to apply them into our classrooms.

The Synergize and Energize: Exploring the Dynamics of Teaching and Learning conference will be a great Professional Development event and will replace the Interface conference ADETA normally holds in the Spring. There is an entire stream of presentations devoted to making technologies transparent yet effective in learning.

We also have some great keynote speakers lined up. Click here to check them out.

Look for a preconference workshop that Jeff Hamilton and I are facilitating on how 25 Google tools can be used to enhance learning. You can actually participate in the workshop online if you can’t make it to Calgary. This will be fun as using the Google platform may leave you wondering why would you use your institutions LMS for your online or blended courses.