If you have chosen to teach in the open, there are many tools you can use such as WordPress. There are a few reasons you may be conducting some or all of your course in a space outside of the confines of Blackboard. Read this tip for a few ‘whys’ as well as how you can learn more about Community.
Similar to Microsoft Word, Google apps support the creation of templates for documents with particular pre-formatted layout and style requirements. Templates are a simple–often overlooked–tool for saving time by eliminating the repetitive processes of formatting and layout. Templates help reduce cognitive overhead by allowing users to focus on creating content.
How do you follow news online? We have so much access to information we can’t possibly read it all. Do you remember the episode of "I Love Lucy" where Lucy works at a candy factory? She has to wrap all the chocolate coming down the belt but it keeps moving faster and faster. The pace of news today can feel like this.
In this Teaching Tip we introduce Kaltura Mediaspace, a new option that gives UAF instructors a lot of control over how a video is presented in their course and how students interact with it.
Have you noticed Google has been growing their list of Chrome-related products? The names are similar but the features are notably different. I was losing track of this growing Chrome universe. This article is an attempt to explain each tool and how you could use it in a classroom.
There is a new version of Google Sites and it is really easy to use! Need to make a quick website for your class materials? Want to have your students create simple websites for presentation or other activities but not get bogged down with technology? In this Teaching Tip, we check out the fancy new Google Sites, now available at UA Google Apps for Education.
By design, Google Applications offer bare-bones formatting and functionality, but sometimes you need additional features to support your purpose. This week's Teaching Tip introduces five add-on like the Google Doc Highlight Tool which allows you to designate a certain color of highlight with a theme. Once done, you can gather those selections, organize them by themes, and share the results with others. Explore more!
The "Learning Glass," sometimes called a Lightboard, is a large piece of glass ringed by LED lights. When fluorescent marker is applied to the surface of the glass, it catches the light from the LEDs and glows clearly and brightly. An instructor can take advantage of this and draw from behind the glass, allowing the audience to see them and their written work at the same time.
UAF CTL recently installed a Learning Glass unit, joining institutions such as Northwestern, San Diego State University, and University of Florida. Several UAF instructors have already created videos that are being used this semester.
Have you been playing Pokémon Go lately? You have probably heard about it if you haven’t actually tried it out for yourself. Apart from cute Pokémons, one of the reasons this game is sensational is because it involves Augmented Reality (AR), which is a digital layer that can be seen on top of the real world through your mobile device, which is super fun.
A course banner offers the instructor the opportunity to provide a unique welcome, a personal touch, basic information, style and flair to an individual course or possibly a group of courses. Give your students the assurance, at a glance, that they are in the right place. Create a course banner with your course section, number, and title.
There may be times you need to explain concepts that are visual in nature, for which you might want to annotate or diagram ideas for your students who are not physically in the room with you. This can be the case, for instance, if you are teaching an elearning course or if you are using a flipped classroom model in your class.
Elearning classes sometimes require students to watch a prohibitive amount of web video in terms of bandwidth availability, yet it’s no secret that access to inexpensive broadband internet access is almost unheard of here in Alaska. The reality is that the majority of us pay high fees for very limited bandwidth. With these constraints in mind, there are a few strategies you may be able to employ to watch web video economically.
