A friend of mine from high school recently posted a study of his 2.5-year-old using the iPad and then wrote a blog entry about it called “What My 2.5-Year-Old’s First Encounter with an iPad Can Teach the Tech Industry.” One of the points he makes is that consistency matters. He makes the point that simple things like uniform standards for buttons and sliders are very important. This is something that has broad applications in everything from street signs to Web navigation to course-design elements. While many will argue that standardizing these things eliminates creativity, one can argue, successfully I believe, that consistency in the design means better usability.

Back in December of 2007, Rick Salisbury (see 12 Web Tools of Christmas Post) mentioned EditGrid as one of his top tools. While EditGrid is a great tool for creating shareable spreadsheets with many advanced, Excel-like features, I have found a new use for this application in online classes—virtual sign-up sheets! More than a few times in the past few months, I have needed a tool to allow students to sign up for something—be it to lead a discussion, create a blog post, or choose a book for review. With our current learning management system (LMS), Blackboard 8.0, there is no easy way to do this, so faculty are left using some sort of e-mail/discussion work-around or simply assigning students. While these work-arounds suffice, the process has always seemed clunky and overly difficult. I recently remembered Rick’s post, and the idea of using EditGrid to create a virtual sign-up sheet was born. I am currently piloting it in my own class, and students seem to be able to sign up without difficulty, and I am able to see the results easily. A win-win in my book.

More and more over the past few weeks, I’ve found that I have been recommending that faculty visit a wonderful Wiki site called CogDogRoo, which was developed by Alan Levine. I usually make this recommendation when the subject of student presentations—and how to do them effectively in an online class—comes up. While there is nothing wrong with having students create PowerPoint presentations, I find that there are often other tools available that allow for better interaction and more creative presentation or just allow students to explore a new way to present information. Most recently, I have been working with faculty from our School of Education, and there is often a mandate that their students be able to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. As a parent, I am well aware that “technology integration in the classroom” often means using PowerPoint (including all of the crazy animation—don’t even get me started there) and Google. But I am finding that the faculty I work with feel empowered knowing that there are sites like CogDogRoo out there that can help inspire not only them but also their students to think about classroom technology in new ways.

Ever run into a situation where materials that you used to link to in a class (or that you have bookmarked) are suddenly no longer available?  Ever wonder if there was a way to archive these materials so that they could be available to you (or your class) even if the Web site disappears?  While there may be no way to keep these links active forever, there are a couple of resources I use to help me find and/or maintain links to pages even after the links go away.  The first is the Internet Archive.

As an instructional designer, I find that two of the things that faculty struggle with are developing sound outcome statements and developing interesting online activities that effectively assess those outcomes. I don’t mean to imply that faculty don’t know how to do these things but instead that often, especially with objectives, they are implied instead of explicitly stated. In the face-to-face classroom environment, an instructor can easily adjust objectives and assignments based on class reaction—unfortunately much of this flexibility disappears when teaching online. Online students need to know up front what the objects are (at both the course and week/modular level) and see a clear connection between those objectives and the assignments/assessments.

Need an easy way to stay current in your field?  Table-of-contents services are a great way to get the tables of contents of your favorite scholarly journals delivered to you via e-mail or RSS reader.  A couple that you might want to explore include:

ticTOCS (Journal Table of Contents Service)  – TicTOCS is a free resource that allows anyone to keep up to date with newly published scholarly material.  The site is simple to use:  just register for a free account where all of the tables of contents you choose will be permanently saved.  Then, search for the titles of your favorite journals.  You can then add them to your list and export them in a format that is easily imported into Google Reader.  The site currently only has about a thousand titles, so your favorites may not be there.

I recently returned from the NFAIS (National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services) Annual Conference interestingly entitled, Barbarians at the Gate? The focus of this conference was on the impact that “digital natives”—defined as those born after 1980—and emerging technologies have on the future of information services.  As one might imagine, based on the conference title, there is a perception that digital natives are very different than those of us outside this generation.  The word “barbarian”also implies that somehow their skills are not as refined as those of us born before 1980.  But is this really the case?

As I was reflecting on what we as a department do and how technology fits into that equation, I realized that so much of how we think about technology has to do with how the instructor uses the technology to push/impart information to the student. While this is a valid use, I fear that what we are creating is really just a high-tech version of a correspondence course. Is there really that much difference between a lecture delivered via a video tape and one that is streamed over the Internet? Sure there is the “cool” factor—we can make the Internet version portable so the student can view it on their iPod—but are we really offering the student anything new? I would argue that these technologies should also be used by students to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts. I would further argue that when both faculty and students are using these technologies to communicate knowledge to each other, we will have created a paradigm shift in online learning.

Libx is a Web 2.0 tool that connects you to the university library while exploring the web. Available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, this plug-in is customized especially for DePaul and pops a handy little search bar across the top of your browser window, so you can quickly and easily search the library catalog or check on whether the library has the journal you need online or in print.

Even better, when searching for titles from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or many other sites, you will see a little DePaul icon next to the book title allowing you to see if it is available in the DePaul Library.

I recently returned from a trip to Thailand, where I was teaching a cohort of graduate students how to use library databases for research. A common question that I was asked upon my return was why an in-person visit was necessary to teach these skills.

I find it interesting that many people believe that technology and in particular synchronous technologies are a panacea that can replace the face-to-face classroom environment. While I believe that these technologies are powerful and can and do extend the reach of traditional classrooms, I also believe it is important to make wise decisions about the use of technology based on the potential audience and their unique needs and attributes.