Online Blogucation

Why couldn’t teachers create games for their students with the students having no idea they were playing? I started by creating a list of learning objectives in my class. Each starting letter of the list was a corresponding letter of my personal website. To my surprise, several students found it, went to my site, and got a small bit of extra credit! So, I started trying other things. I placed “hot spots” on my pages – white text that blended into the background – the when rolled over sent students to a YouTube video. Some students found it. Meanwhile, other students found a puzzle that I created and, upon solving it, found their way to a wiki. There were 4 sets of students working the game from different angles and they didn’t realize it until they were well into the game. But here’s the cool part…the game was all about the educational stuff I was teaching normally!

Most of us strive to be relevant. In his keynote address at Pearson eCollege’s CiTE 2009 User’s Conference, Michael Wesch talked about the crisis of significance and how education technology can help us be more relevant to our students. As formal educators we are all digital immigrants but more of us everyday are [...]

Yep. Barnes & Noble. Of course, if they wanted to, students could go to Starbucks or several McDonalds these days. They can find Internet access almost anywhere but their own school. These students can find Internet at airports during Spring Break, at Kinko’s for X cents per minute, or by going to the public library, but they can’t access the world wide web, including their online classes from school. Ugh.

My summer courses are winding down again and I wanted to try something different for my final discussion topic where students reflect on what they’ve learned that term. I decided to try using Wordle as a visual tool for summarizing text, instead of simply using the typical discussion board posts.
For those of you who haven’t [...]

This professor of communications and lover of cheese steaks bought a new pair of running shoes a few months back. Then, he bought the Nike sensor system – a small sensor you put in your shoe somehow. This sensor sends information to your iPod during a run. That data tells you (in real time) how you’re doing, but it also allows you to see any trends in your running after you upload the data to the Nike+ website. Apparently he’s run about 340 miles and his average speed has increased by 1 mile per hour. He can tell you how many calories he’s burned and he’s delighted to tell you how many pounds he has lost.

Questions about copyright and the fair use of copyrighted materials for education come up a lot during out work with educators on different campuses. I was planning on writing about this topic anyway, and then I came across a great resource that I knew I had to share. It’s an interactive guide to using multimedia [...]

In my last blog I discussed my steps towards joining Facebook (which, by the way, I have joined and love! I’ve even received a “monkey poop” gift from an anthropology colleague, but I digress…). One part of that discussion was the idea of personal versus professional space online, and I wondered how I would navigate [...]

A lot has been and will be written about Randy Pausch’s life and death.  Talk of his zest for life, his imagination, and his willingness to let the world watch his final (typically private) months of existence will be discussed for years.  And they should be. 
But I would like to look at a different [...]

Oprah.  Coke.  IBM.  These names are iconic.  The meta-communication surrounding these simple words is extensive!  A name can evoke an image of trust, friendship, or power.  Of course, a name can also instill anger, frustration, or pain!  (Think of your school’s rival college, a name like “Hitler”, etc.)  Back in the 1970’s, it was rumored that [...]

Welcome to the first eTeachers’ Blog from eCollege!
Technorati be advised!  The eCollege Academic Training & Consulting team is entering the world of blogging today!  What better place to begin our constructed entrance onto the Web than the CCA conference in Las Vegas?  I can’t think of a better way to kick off our addition to [...]