Online Teaching Blogs [view: normal]

I've been using Google Wave for a couple weeks now and can see how the Wave could be a home run like google's email system, GMAIL or a "swing and a miss" like Google's social network, Orkut. I say Orkut is a swing and a miss, because it's not a strike out. There's still a lot more pitches to hit. A swing and a miss is not necessarily about the idea but about the adoption and whether people will

This short video is worth 5 minutes of your time. It accurately captures the revolution that is social media. The desire to connect, to know, and to be known seems hardwired into our DNA as humans. Social media facilitates those connections. Does anyone else see an eerie similarity between the social media revolution and the Tower of Babel revolution, which took place thousands of years ago?

Google started a project last year in which they gathered ideas from all over the world on how to best change the world for the better and now people are voting on them. What idea from the list do you find most promising? Which ones should Google make happen? You tell them. Your vote for one of these ideas will help their advisory board choose up to 5 projects to fund, at which point they'll

First, you have to have a passion for learning new things. You can't ever be satisfied with the status quo, especially since we live in the "Information Age." My action steps for this principle are to start subscribing to prominent bloggers in your field today. And if you want to be looked upon as an expert in your field, start contributing to the conversations in your field by starting a blog

News: 'The World Is Open' - Inside Higher EdTechnology is changing higher education in more ways than can be counted. Distance education has become common. Leading universities are putting course materials or even entire courses online -- free. The Obama plan for community colleges envisions free online courses that could be used nationwide. Curtis J. Bonk, a professor of instructional systems

There is a lot more than meets the eye to BLOGS.BGSU.EDU, the homegrown blogging platform developed by Assistant Director of COBL, Terence Armentano. Blogs and microblogs such as Twitter have taken the world by storm. Why? Because they blast open the floodgates of communication. They give everyone a voice and anyone with an internet or even a mobile phone connection can listen in and talk back.

The Newsweek article titled, "The Sound of One Hand Clicking:Online schools are booming, thanks to their convenience, low cost, and improved quality" accurately captures the shift toward online friendliness in higher education. Universities are recognizing that students and working professionals are asking themselves, why go to college when college can come to us in a convenient, affordable, high

This is something that those of us in the field have known for quite some time. I think what is extremely important about this study is that the source of this study is the Department of Education. It can be quite time consuming trying to convince some people about the quality of online education, so this just adds more credibility to what we have been saying.News: The Evidence on Online

Do you spend a lot of time thinking seriously about what the future will look like. Take a few minutes and have a laugh at this parody of Microsoft's vision for the future. *Some implied swearing but nothing audible (its beeped)

I am still processing this article which outlines Obama's big plans to give billions of dollars to Community Colleges; $500 million of which is dedicated to building free online credit based courses. Wow! What a paradigm shift in education. One thing is for sure. People are realizing that information is no longer at a premium. Almost all human knowledge is floating around in the air around us

"Blended Learning" More Effective than Face-to-Face (Source: Education Week, 2009)source: United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA)Download Report:Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learninghttp://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdfA new report http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf released today by

Bullet points from Richard N Katz's keynote presentation - Vice President of EducausePowershift in Higher Ed- 1100-? (popes>princes>professors>people)Stanley Katz - don't mistake a tool for a goalMartin Trow - information technology is embedded in, and used by, institutions that have a history. Higher Ed shift from public good to private investmentWe are in the information age and we are in the

Just a quick update to let you know that I am presenting at the Sloan-C/MoodleMoot 2009 Conference in San Francisco, CA.  I am in San Francisco right now and enjoying the area.  This is my first time in California. It's a bit chillier than I thought it would be ( high 60's) compared to Ohio (80's).  I'm looking forward to the conference as there are quite a few presentations that interest me.   

The article titled, "Colleges Consider Using Blogs Instead of Blackboard" in the Chronicle of Higher Education, gets some things right and some things wrong, in my opinion. I want to keep this somewhat short because I could write a novel on this topic. First, they understand that paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for Blackboard might not be the best technological solution to facilitate

See ya later great knowledge memorizers of the world, and hello great knowledge appliers of the world. Is it me or are the people inhabiting this third rock from the sun, connecting, computing, and collecting knowledge like nothing we've ever seen before. Well, except for maybe the time we humans tried building that Tower of Babel, which ended up not working out so well. Introducing.... Wolfram

I actually think my Blackberry Storm is a really cool gadget and would recommend it to everyone I know, EXCEPT that there is a HUGE flaw in the way RIM designed the tool and I haven't seen too many people talk about this FLAW yet. Had I known about this flaw in the design of the Blackberry, I may not have bought one. The flaw is glaring. Are you ready for it? Here it is. The phone only has 128

A Flickr stream for the Whitehouse is a great idea. I think it gives the public a more personal, social, and connected feel to the government. If you comment on a photo you know someone in the whitehouse will see it and they may even check out your Flickr photos. Pretty cool. Check it out...http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse

A FACEBOOK APPLICATION MAKES STAYING ON TOP OF BGSU NEWS EASIER! There is now an application available for all Facebook users to keep track of what’s going on at BGSU. This application collects information from the top blogs at blogs.bgsu.edu, The BG News, and Campus Update straight to your Facebook so that you don’t have to go hunting for the latest news. Simply add the application found at

I will be presenting at a pre-conference workshop at the MoodleMoot 09 Conference, which is being jointly offered with the Sloan-C Symposium in San Francisco on June 17-19. My presentation is from 1pm-4pm on Wednesday June 18th. Here are some details about the workshop.TITLE:University 2.0: Open source as a cornerstonePRESENTERS:Bob Rubinyi, Director, Distributed Education, University of

Awesome list of free math books | Education IT | ZDNet.comI know, I know, this hardly constitutes light reading over Spring Break. However, e-booksdirectory.com features an incredibly useful list of 260 freely downloadable electronic books (largely in PDF) that could drive entire courses or act as much-need supplements to a standard textbook.The books are primarily college-level texts, but many

Here is nice article about one of BGSU's own faculty creating and teaching from an e-book. I like that Dr. Huber not only recognizes the value in saving paper and the students money, but also that the e-book platform offers a more interactive experience with the material. Huber says, "The material in an animal behavior class is highly visual by its very nature and loses much of its student

Learning: YouTube EDU Brings Free Education to the MassesYouTube has just released a new sub-site called YouTube EDU, aggregating thousands of free lectures from over a hundred universities across the country, including MIT, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and oh-so-many more.

I just got back from presenting at the LLT Conference in Columbus, Ohio. It was a rich learning experience and great place to meet colleagues from around the state interested in technology and education.  A  colleague of mine from Rhodes State, Michael Edwards, has a well written review on his blog about my presentation as well as a very neat short video he put together of the Monday sessions

I will be presenting at the 2009 LTT Conference in Columbus, Ohio on Monday at 11:15am. Here are the details about my presentationTitle:  University 2.0: How BGSU Leveraged Open Source Technology to Create a Web 2.0 Learning LandscapeMy presentation is about how COBL, the Center for Online and Blended Learning, leveraged open source technologies to create a web 2.0 learning landscape at BGSU. At

Check out this blog for details about these 10 online learning tools for students: The list includes: Dynamic Periodic Table -Chemistry Periodic Table of the Elements - Chemistry Foldit - Biology Mathway -Math SpeedCrunch (Windows, Mac, Linux) - Math LiveMocha - Languages VerbaLearn - Languages Bullfighter (MS Word and Powerpoint plugin) - Languages wePapers - Literature Zotero (Firefox