Teaching in Higher Ed

technology

My 2015 someday/maybe technology list

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someday/maybe technology list

I've talked on the podcast many times before about my approach to exploring new technology that I hear about during the semester. When I discover an educational technology or productivity tool that seems like it might be a good fit for me, I attempt to resist the temptation to dive in right then.

Instead, I place the item on the technology section of my someday/maybe list.

David Allen prescribes the use of someday/maybe lists in his GTD (Getting Things Done) system, as follows:

Activating and maintaining your Someday/Maybe category unleashes the flow of your creative thinking – you have permission to imagine cool things to do without having to commit to doing anything about them yet. – David Allen in Getting Things Done

Someday/maybe technology list

Here's what's on my someday / maybe list under the technology section, to check out during our 2015 holiday break:

Doceri

  • Evaluate Doceri as a possible pencasting replacement, due to LiveScribe's reliance on a proprietary PDF format or app for playing pencasts

Backdraft

  • Check out Backdraft for pre-populating Tweets for a live presentation

Markdown Field Guide

Ulysses

  • Consider switching to Ulysses for podcast interview notes

Mac “Vacuuming” Mail Optimizer

Stanford's Online and Blended Courses

FileMaker Pro

Evaluate using FileMaker Pro for tracking Teaching in Higher Ed guest recommendations

IFTTT

Learn OmniFocus webinars and videos

Linky 5.0

  • Learn about Linky 5.0 and evaluate it's use for social media sharing (not quite sure what it does over BufferApp)

[reminder]What's on your someday/maybe technology list that you'll be checking out as the year ends? [/reminder]

Social Media and Pedagogy

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Socialmedia

We recently gave a class for a client on managing across generations. In preparation, I put together some trivia from decades past and present. It reminded me of how far we've come in terms of technology, but our educational models sometimes seem so far behind.

Students today won't tolerate passive learning. I suspect one-way teaching methods were never very effective, but generations past didn't fight against it in the same ways they do today. Now, social networking sites and blogs are becoming increasingly popular, but can be misaligned with a learning strategy when they are used purely as an attempt to be hip.

As teachers/professors, we can't just start using these ‘new-fangled' tools and expect students to learn any better than they are now. We have to utilize them in the right way… in alignment with what we are trying to achieve. We have to also completely change the way we're evaluating learners' progress in our classes.

The CommonCraft Show puts out these wonderful videos that take challenging concepts and make them easier. Check this one out on social media and consider how you might integrate this concept in to helping people learn. Also consider Common Craft's teaching methods and how they do eLearning different.

I'll be writing on this subject more in future posts, but would love to hear your best practices in the comments section.

Keeping Up to Speed

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It is definitely getting harder to keep up… with our industries, research, teaching techniques, political affiliations, books-of-interest, and whatever else aligns with our passions and goals.

Rss

I use RSS feeds to stay up-to-speed on what most interests me. In my case, I use Outlook 2007 on my primary computer and it has RSS Feed capability built right in. You just look for the orange RSS feed indicator on your favorite site or blog and it will automatically add the feed inside of Outlook with two clicks of your mouse.

It doesn't make your in-box crowded, because the RSS Feeds are kept in a separate folder (see graphic above for an example straight out of my RSS feeds). You get to decide when you'll invest the time to catching up on your various feeds.

If you don't have Outlook, there are plenty of other free feed tools. Google Reader is one of the best ones out there and it links with your Gmail Account, Google Calendar, custom Google homepage and whatever other apps you use from Google.

Think it will be too hard to learn?

With Common Craft's video: RSS in Plain English, it couldn't be easier
(and they're pretty darn funny, too).