Program for Online Teaching Newsletter #42
POT All-Day Workshop: Strategies and Tools for Online Teaching
Tuesday, August 14
Flex time: 6.5 hours
Limited enrollment: 40 participants (contact Lisa if it’s full and you want to get in)
Cost: $20/person includes lunch (sign up in flex and send check made out to MCC Academic Senate (put PDP on memo line) to Debby Adler, MS 8C. Deadline to pay is August 13, or you will lose your spot to someone on the wait list.
Instructors of all levels and styles are welcome to join us for an all-day exploration of the strategies and tools that can be effectively used for online, hybrid or on-site classes that use web technologies. Beginning with developing good course design through individual pedagogy, participants will work hands-on with a
selection of proven teaching tools and explore how they can be used to realize instructional goals. If you have attended an all-day POT workshop in the past, there will be some new additions this year.
Please bring your laptop computer, tablet or smart phone if you have one – that will open up more computers in some of the sessions.
Participants will receive 6.5 flex hours for participating (attendance of less than 6.5 hours may be recorded on the sign-in sheet).
Other fall flex week workshops of interest to online faculty
Monday, August 13
- 9 am, OC4612 Bb 101: Introduction to Blackboard
- 10:30 am, OC4612: Creating Exams and Practice Exercises in Blackboard
- 1:00 pm, OC4611: Internet Basics I: Critical Concepts & Browser Basics
- 2:00 pm, OC4611: Internet Basics II: Better, Safer, More Effective Web Browsing and Searching
- 3:00 pm, SAN107: Bb 101: Introduction to Blackboard
Wednesday, August 15
Thursday, August 16
- 10:00 am, OC4610: Second Life: What’s in it for Educators?
- 12:00 pm, OC1201: Streaming Media from the Library
- 12:30 pm, OC4611: Free Web-Based Tools to Enhance Your Productivity (and Maybe Student Learning)
- 3:00 pm, OC3607: No Sweat Accessibility (OK, maybe just a little)
POT Online Teaching Certificate Class starts September 1
POT offers a very special opportunity to learn how to teach online in our free, year-long, open online class!
Our next class begins on September 1. There is a textbook, and activities for 12 weeks in fall and 12 weeks in spring. Participants learn about teaching online by putting their pedagogical goals first, and learning to use various technologies to fulfill their objectives, whether teaching online, hybrid, or in a classroom. The class is free and open and led by POT participants, moderators from around the globe, and graduates of the certificate program.
The draft website is currently being put together at http://pedagogyfirst.org/wppf12. If you would like to join us, just email Lisa.
We will also hold a pre-class workshop in the POT Facebook group beginning August 19 – all are welcome.
POT First Fridays at Oceanside 4804
Laura Paciorek hosts our successful First Friday workshop series again this fall.
Come and discuss your online teaching adventures with fellow faculty members. Individuals with no, little, some, and a lot of online teaching experience are all welcome. Each First Friday will focus on what the group wants to discuss; however, prompts will also be provided to start the discussion. Questions are welcome, too!
September 7 – 3:00-3:50 p.m.: Engagement – What do you do to engage your students in online classes?
October 5 – 3:00-3:50 p.m.: Time/energy management – How do you manage your time/energy as an instructor and how do you help your students manage their time/energy?
November 2– 3:00-3:50 p.m.: Evaluation – How do you have students evaluate your classes and how do you evaluate your students’ work?
December 7 – 3:00-3:50 p.m.: Renewal – What are your plans for your future classes? What did you learn or what do you want to try next?
Sign up at the flex website.
Online Tool News
No more Talkback Badge
One of the great tools POT recommends has disappeared. Google’s Talkback Badge could be put on any web page to allow students to instantly chat with you, without downloading or having an account. It’s been discontinued.
This summer we’ve been testing plupper.com, and think it provides a good alternative, although it needs a client (such as iChat for Mac or Miranda for PC) to work. Information and other options can be found on Lisa’s blog.
No more Meebo
Pilar reports that Meebo is also gone, so plupper may provide a solution for that also.
Textbook or Wikipedia Book?
We’ve discovered Wikipedia Books, which allows you to put together (and edit) books for students comprised of collected articles from Wikipedia.
Diigo for student annotations
Diigo, the social bookmarking service, can be used to have students annotate documents. Each student needs a free account, and Diigo will give you a URL for saved documents with annotations so students can see each others’ work. You can even use Diigo’s Educator features to create a class account.
Just need a gradebook?
We’ve been testing a free gradebook, and can recommend Engrade for ease of use. It does set its own student passwords, however, which must be given to the students so they can access their grades. Intended for K-12, even with its new features it’s simple to use.
Add a Twitter widget to Blackboard
Blackboard isn’t always good at taking code from elsewhere and displaying it properly. The trick is to switch to HMTL mode and make sure the Text Editor is disabled. To add a Twitter widget to your Bb 9.1 class, see these instructions.
Create a quick and simple web page
Sometimes you just want to make something available to students on the web. Try checkthis.com.
Sharing web images with Pinterest
The latest tool for selecting and displaying collections of images and videos, kind of like an online poster, is Pinterest. You “pin” images from the web on a page, and can talk about them and share.
Public Domain resource
Public Domain Review is a website dedicated to curating text, images and video available in the public domain.
A style guide for citing Wikipedia
Wikipedia has a full page on the formats and methods for citing Wikipedia pages in research and student projects.
Happy online teaching and learning!
Lisa