Top 100 learning tools 2010

You have to love a website that makes looking for the best tools, the most-used tools, the incredible tool that you've been chomping at the bit to find, right? I used this website last year and actually printed the top 100 tools from 2009 (I'm bad, I know!) so I could go through them when I had time.

This year, here's the site so far. It's open until some time in October of this year. I've added my favorites already and it's time for you to add yours! You can add or just browse to see what others are using to help themselves, their students, or their institutions.

Enjoy!

UDUTU... No need to say "gesundheit"!

So you must know those people who create these amazing pieces of content for their classes and you look at them with a combination of disbelief, awe, and envy. What if there was a tool out there that you could use, for FREE, that helps you create interactive content for your classes? What if your students could go through a tutorial that you've created that teaches them a concept without needing to passively listen or watch? What if they had to "DO" something?

Take some time to visit udutu.com. They are an authoring tool with an easy-to-use platform to create content that you can put in your course.

Try it out, take a look, check out some samples that show you what it can do. If you get an opportunity to put it to the Professor Test, send me a comment!

Like organizing? Try LiveBinders!

I discovered this pretty exciting resource through a daily email I receive called Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day. Today, Jane's pick was just this: LiveBinders. I took a short, virtual jaunt to the website and found some very exciting resources--for me, the sample LiveBinders are useful for my own children, but there are many categories you can search to find other people's nicely organized binders. What am I talking about?

You can create a LiveBinder about anything, such as recipes, math games, accounting tutorials, investments, e-learning tools, etc. You can download a link to your computer's navigation bar and when you're on a website that fits one of your LiveBinders, you click the icon and you can organize that website quickly, without visiting any other website! You can share your LiveBinder, too! There are tutorials on the website too. Yes, it's free. Let me know what you think!

Zotero: helping students research, cite, and share

I've heard about Zotero, but the name just wasn't catchy enough to make me want to look it up. Then I saw it mentioned again, and then again, so I figured I'd better check it out, especially if it claims to help gather and organize research, as well as create citations. I see the benefit for students, naturally, but even for me as I am going to attempt to find some time in my life's insanity to try to publish more. So, what this place does is allow you to download it using FIREFOX (which, I think, is superior to Internet Explorer) and it sits in the background. Then a little red "Z" appears on your screen. When you click it, well, how about this, I'll just let you watch this video to see how it works. There's also a plug-in for Microsoft Word that will automatically create reference pages for you. Here's a video about how the plug in works! Enjoy and share this with your students!

Teaching with social media tools

So, I came across a blog today through the Chronicle and wanted to share it with you. I won't waste your time by regurgitating its contents here, but it seems that this professor started integrating more social media tools in his course: Twitter, Google Wave (which I blogged about last week), wikis, a new one I haven't heard of called Zotero (which I'll include in a future blog after I visit it and play a while).

I enjoyed his honest opinions, insights and wonder if others who are using some social media tools would be willing to share their insights as well.

Wave? Where's the Wave?

That's Google Wave, my friends.

Google wave is the talk of the e-learning community right now, and a big hit at conferences. What's the whole Wave thing about, anyway? Jason Rhode, a fantastic fellow and someone to know, provides this resource for all of us.

Visit it, take a look-see, explore, let me know what you find and maybe, just maybe, how you might use it. If you DO use it, please tell us in what capacity and how effective it is or isn't for you.

Google wave, in my humble opinion, is the start of something BIG, just like Walmart was the start of the super grocery store, the one-stop-shop for anything and every thing you would ever need to live under one roof (or was this Meijer?). I think Google is our virtual Walmart. Pretty soon we won't need to go anywhere else but Google to find what we need for searching, playing, learning, collaborating, creating, publishing, you name it.

What do you think?

How some thing called Pivot might change some things....

Ever hear of Pivot??? this is so new that I am not even sure it’s easy to get, but I’m going to share it anyway because the following video awed me: Watch Pivot in Action

What do you think? How could this type of program be useful in your courses? If you do happen to download it, do come back and share with us how you used it, what your students thought about it, and anything else worthwhile. Have fun!

Microblogging? What's that all about?

I am so excited to explore Google Apps, learning how to create a Wiki in PBWorks, and figuring out how to bring this excitement back to my NEIU faculty members and instill it in them!


Do you know what microblogging is? This blog isn't micro because I can write as much as I want. Instead, microblogs are much smaller in terms of content. One is Twitter, which most people know about, and Tumblr, which is a newer type of microblogging that allows for more characters and input of multimedia.


How can we use these tools to increase learning in our courses? Do you think they have a place in higher education classrooms?

Who's at FSI?

Here with me at FSI are Jane Peller (Social Work), Rene Alvarez (Teacher Ed.), Julie Scigalski (English), Paul Lempke (Art), Brian Ogrowdowski (English), and Mary Ellen McGoey (FLL).
We're attending fairly long sessions here that are informative and a bit empowering. Some are sort of controversial too. Interesting....
We've done a lot of walking and I'm personally hoping that I don't lose my Blackberry like I did yesterday. My afternoon could have easily been screenplayed as an episode of "The Office".

The Faculty Summer Institute at U of I

I've never blogged in my life; I've never really read blogs, either. However, I see a value in a blog such as this, especially for my faculty members at NEIU. Right now I am in a session at the FSI at U of I. I can't wait to bring the technologies I'm learning back to NEIU, especially during our No Professor Left Behind (name coined by Professor Jane Peller in Social Work at NEIU) bootcamp this summer.


What am I learning? Voice tools, online polling, voicethread, avatars, online design techniques, how to use YouTube, TeacherTube, and dozens of other web 2.0 technologies.


I hope to embed this blog on our Center for Teaching & Learning webpage so that when I start sending out a monthly post with a really awesome technology that can be used face to face and online, that faculty members can share how they're using these technologies, or others, to improve their practice.


'till next time,


Angela