Category Archives: Uncategorized
#octel MOOC
Introduction & My “Big question”
I’ve enrolled in ALT MOOC with the first challenge being the management of the onslaught of mails, posts and tweets from my enthusiastic classmates. Literally over the last few days 100’s of my virtual classmates have addressed the first activity in the course by introducing themselves and posting their “big question” relative to the course. So heres my contribution to the deluge of information:
Introduction
Keeping my introduction brief. I work for Dublin City University, where I head up the Learning Innovation Unit (LIU). I would imagine so many people on this course are in a similar position to myself, loads to do and not enough time to do it in. The role of the LIU is to support learning innovation throughout the university so as you can expect we get calls from every corner of the college. It is great role and I’m very fortunate to have a great team, albeit far too small team. We are constantly looking for opportunities to establish collaboration with other third level institutions and as such this is a personal goal that I have for this course. Two technologies that we are interested in collaborative projects would be the use of Moodle in HE and the use of Google sites and Blogger for e-portfolios. . My Twitter id is @glynnmark and for more of a personal background please feel free to visit my linkedin profile – http://ie.linkedin.com/in/enhancingteaching
My big question is very simple how do I engage staff in the use of technology to enhance learning? I have staff with a wide range of abilities and interests when it comes to technology – how do cater for such a diverse audience, how do I measure the success of my team and our work programme. I’m very open to hearing the experiences of others with this and would welcome advice from all corners
How do I weight assignments in Moodle?
Most teachers give their students more than one assignment throughout the year, the hassle for the teacher is not only the keeping track of all of the grades for the assignments, but some assignments may be worth more than others. Moodle will allow a teacher to grade every assignment out of 100 (because this is something students are familiar with) and Moodle will do all of the calculations in the background working out the individual marks for each assignment and combining them all together once Moodle weights all of the assignments accordingly and presents a total mark to the teacher and the student. The video below illustrates how this can be done
Backing up your Moodle courses
Not all of us are blessed with very supportive IT staff. So I would always recommend that staff using Moodle “back up” their courses on a regular basis, just to avoid a nightmare scenario of loosing all of your course work because of some IT glitch. I’m not doubting the integrity of your Moodle hosting service but I always feel it is better to be safe than sorry. Here is a quick demo on how to back up a course on Moodle 2
Blogging in Education
I started the new school year with the launch of a video on using Twitter in Education. This was compiled as part of project in conjunction with #ictedu. The purpose of this collaboration is to help extend the reach of the excellent #ictedu annual conferences run in May every year.
The “sequel” to this video will be launched in October and will concentrate on the use of Blogs in Education. Similar to its predecessor this video will span all levels of education, including contribution from staff and students. We would welcome contributions for anybody involved in education please contact me via @glynnmark. The contribution can be in the form of a series of pictures forming a slide show e.g. powerpoint or recorded interviews or even some links to websites relevant to Blogs in education that you feel are worth promoting.
The aim is to have several videos compiled throughout the year with examples, hints, tips and tutorials for educators on how to integrate technology into the classroom. So watch this space 🙂
Xtranormal for digital storytelling
Xtranormal is a website that hosts text-to-speech based computer animated videoclips, featuring animated three-dimensional characters speaking in monotone computer voices. Users who log into the site may create videos by scripting the dialog and choosing from a menu of camera angles and predesigned characters and scenes. It is free to join but you will have limited access to the variety of characters and scenes available to use. Give it a shot it is worth a try
How Google search works
The mechanics behind the search engine explained in a clear and concise manner, very interesting viewing
Assessing documents from students and providing feedback through technology
There are several posts (linked below) providing information on how to manage your assessments through technology. This post deals specifically with receiving a document from your students e.g. a lab report or an essay and providing feedback on that asssignment.
The YouTube video below shows you how to set up an assignment to receive documents from your students. It will take a bit of time to set up (roughly 5 minutes) but it will save you an incredible amount of administration time connected to the assignment and from a quality assurance point of view will provide a potentially better experience for both the student and teacher.
The challenge that you will face is being able to read the documents that they have submitted. Every student may not have MS office and even if they do, it might not be the same version as yours. This will result in potentially a lot of extra contact with your students asking for appropriate versions of their documents. one way around this is to ask them to submit PDF versions of their submission. There are numerous versions of “PDF creators” allowing anybody to convert a file into PDF format for free. The one I use is CutePDF.
From a lecturers point of view it is now possible to annotate a pdf enabling you to provide individual feedback for your students by using adobe reader
Related articles
- What is Moodle? (enhancingteaching.com)
- How to download Adobe reader (youtube.com)
- student generated content as an assessment (enhancingteaching.com)
- Feedback through technology (enhancingteaching.com)
- how can a student upload their assignment through moodle (youtube.com)
- How do I find the files that students have submitted (youtube.com)
A few tips for Creating a video resource for your classroom
I recently had the pleasure of working with Catherine Cronin (@catherinecronin) on an education project – an experience that I would highly recommend. This project involved creating a video promoting the use of ICT in the classroom by highlighting examples provided by a range of teachers across the country. The video below is the final product with the various stages and tips available below the video
Comparing Articulate Storyline vs Studio
Over the past few years I have become an active user of Articulate studio. Recently they have launched a new product “Storyline” and the link above illustrates the distinct differences between the two
Technology Enhanced Learning 