POT Newsletter #22
March 2011
http://www.miracosta.edu/onlineteaching
This Friday, April 1: First Friday and f2f workshops
1:30-2:20 Workshop: Google Forms (with Barbara McPherson)
Oceanside 4607 or Online: Elluminate link
A hands-on workshop discussing and integrating Google.forms into your Blackboard course or as a standalone tool designed to capture student responses. Google.forms can be used as a simple survey or as an instrument designed to capture your students’ online class activities and homework assignments. When using Google.forms all student responses are captured within one convenient spreadsheet. (OT200 Design Elements)
2:45-3:35: f2f Face-To-Face Get-Together about Online Teaching: Experiences with Tools (with Laura Paciorek)
This workshop is immediately after the first Friday workshop about Google Forms. The face-to-face setting may provide an opportunity to continue the discussion about Google Forms and other online tools or go into different interests that are brought up by the instructors in attendance. Instructors who are new to online teaching can have a forum to ask questions or share thoughts. Instructors with more experience may have an opportunity to mentor faculty who are new to online teaching. Please bring a snack, questions, and ideas. Faculty will benefit from this workshop by learning tips to improve instruction. Students will potentially benefit as participants may be able to create new learning experiences for them based upon what is discussed in the workshop.
Be sure to register at MCC’s flex website!
Working with groups? check out these resources
The recording of Claudia Faulk’s February session “Strategies for Groups” is now available here and at the POT site. The workshop has created interest in documents that can be used to work with groups. See also:
Claudia’s group chart
Lyle Blackmon’s Charter for groups
Laura Paciorek’s group charter
Flex credit for watching recorded POT workshops
Did you know that you can earn flex credit for watching POT workshops and blogging an entry at the Pedagogy First! blog? See the POT Recordings page for more info.
Help POT by recording a tour of your class
Several instructors have recorded Jing tours of their class to share with other faculty. You can see them on the front page of the POT site. Doing a tour is a great way to show students through your class. Please consider creating a Jing (Jing is a free program) and sending the URL to Lisa for posting.
Captioning for free!
Funding is available this year to support the captioning of course materials posted online. Any credit course can submit materials (audio, video, multimedia) to get free transcription or captioning. Contact Robert Erichsen by April 15 to sign up and for more information — he will be submitting requests so faculty don’t have to deal with the paperwork.
New Bookmarks
LTAs
A Low Threshold Application (LTA) is a teaching/learning application of information technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and (incrementally) inexpensive. They include how-tos for creating a gradebook in Excel, making animations for classes, using Respondus with Blackboard, using Google to search within a site, getting rid of red-eye in a photo, and many more. The TLT group collects these for easy reference at http://tltgroup.wordpress.com/low-threshold-applications/.
Faculty Focus: Teaching Professor Blog
This is an excellent blog to follow for the latest in online teaching: http://www.facultyfocus.com/topic/articles/teaching-professor-blog/. The current author is Dr. Maryellen Weimer, professor emeritus at Penn State Berks and one of the nation’s most highly regarded authorities on effective college teaching.
Fall planning
POT is planning a several workshops during fall flex week, on Tuesday, August 16. Featured topics will include Jing, online resources for faculty, setting up your online class, a brown bag discussion and a drop-in lab. Mark your calendar!
Happy online (and hybrid and technology-enhanced) teaching,
Lisa