A blog designed for instructors who are teaching technology in colleges and high schools. We provide discussion topics for class as well as recommendations of free tools that students can use to complete projects.
One of the best ways to learn a subject or to demonstrate mastery of a topic is to teach it to someone else. So why not assign student projects that require them to create videos that explain the functionality of Microsoft Office, a Web site, or another application software package? Students can then produce podcasts from their videos using Windows Movie Maker and deploy them on YouTube or Podbean. Now that is Web 2.0 learning in action! But, since many colleges don't have a video tool deployed for the students to use, a free tool for recording on-screen activity is needed.
Fortunately, CamStudio is an open source software package that is based on the popular Camtasia Studio product from Techsmith. The software is easy to install and learn to use. They even provide a handy video on downloading CamStudio. The help files in the product will get you familiar with how to use it. The recorder has simple basic functionality similar to older versions of Camtasia Studio.
Although CamStudio is not as fully-functional as the current version of Camtasia Studio, the basic functionality is similar. For pure ease of use, Camtasia Studio 5 does offer significant advantages and I prefer to use Camtasia Studio. But if your college doesn't have a site license for Camtasia Studio or your students don't want to spend $299 to buy the software for home use, CamStudio is the way to go. So have the students download CamStudio and get them creating their first podcasts this week!
Microsoft is running an offer especially for college students call The Ultimate Steal. For a limited time, students can obtain a copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate Edition for only $59.95. To qualify for this offer, you must be enrolled at a U.S. educational institution and have a valid e-mail address that ends in the .edu domain. Considering this package is available at retail for around $500, this is a fantastic deal for students. So click here and save some $$$ today!
Nothing is worse than having a great video from YouTube identified to start a class discussion and then finding out your network connection is down. You can avoid this unpleasant experience by installing a free product called YouTube Downloader from Biennesoft.
This freeware (no cost to use it) enables you to download videos from YouTube (and other sites) and save them to FLV (Flash video) files. Now FLV files are pretty useless since it is difficult to find players to play them back. Fortunately, the program allows you to convert the FLV files to more useful formats for display on devices such as iPods, iPhones, PSPs, cell phones, and Windows Media Player. You can even export just the sound to an MP3 file.
The software is dead simple to use. Just paste in the URL of the video and click OK to save it as an FLV file.
To convert to another format, browse to where the FLV file was stored and select it. Then choose the appropriate conversion format and click OK to convert. It couldn't be easier!
By downloading the video and converting it into an appropriate format you won't have to worry about losing your Internet connection. This also makes it handy for distributing the file via e-mail or in a course management system.
Before you can launch students on a group project involving wikis, you obviously need to explain what wikis are and their basic functionality. Students can get a quick grasp of the basics of wikis by watching this video:
And, a good article from Information Week explains How to Use Wikis for Business. If you have students watch the video and read this article before class, you can get them up to speed on the idea of wikis pretty quickly.
Naturally, the students will need a free wiki site to use for any wiki project you assign. Two of my favorites are Wikispaces and PBwiki. They are both very straightforward and easy to use but currently PBwiki has a slicker feature set.
Wikis are obviously great for group projects because of their collaborative aspects. Here are a few approaches you could take:
1) Student Study Guide - Have the students create and edit pages that provide a study guide for each chapter (or topic) you cover in class. This requires explaining concepts in their own words which reinforces learning. And this type of wiki can act as a repository of knowledge that next semester's students could update and expand. 2) Wiki Moderator - Have a student create and moderate a page (that other students update) for a week. The page should cover one topic from the current course content and aim to provide a comprehensive summary of the topic. 3) Battling Business Units (with apologies to Dilbert) - Have competing groups create wiki pages on the same topic. Then assign one group each week to review all the pages on that topic and combine them into one comprehensive (definitive?) resource.
And if you need some inspiration for projects or additional insight for students, check out the wiki resources below.
Although specialized search engines abound on the Web, Green Maven is the first engine specifically tailored to generate search results only from "green" Web sites. Aside from searches of green sites, Green Maven also offers a Green News Reader which pulls postings from green blogs and other green news sources. Finally, if you don't want to use the search engine, the Green Maven Directory is set up in categories so you can easily browse (by topic) the sites indexed in their search engine.
So next time you are looking for that perfect computer recycling site or a source for compost supplies, head over to Green Maven.
On Demand Books, a New York company, has recently announced the second version of their Espresso Book Machine. This machine is designed to print books on-demand from PDF files. At 112 pages per minute, it prints pages and a cover, trims them, and then binds it all into a high quality paperback book. This all takes place while you are sipping a latte (or your beverage of choice). The machine can generate books from 40 to 830 pages in length at a cost of about one penny per page. You can find full details of the Espresso Book Machine in this article from Book Business magazine.
Widespread use of on-demand book publishing machines would reduce costs for book publishers. There would be no need for the book publishers to incur shipping costs to ship books to bookstores. Publishers wouldn’t have to guess about the demand for a book and possibly print extra copies that are never sold. And the large warehouses that publishers currently have to house their printed books while they await shipments to retailers would no longer be required.
Bookstores should also reap considerable savings. Bookstores would not need to tie up large sums of money by keeping thousands of books in inventory. There would never be any unsold books to return to the publisher (which saves shipping expenses). And bookstores could be much smaller as they would only need to house a few of these machines instead of rows of shelves for printed books. However, the bookstore cost savings would be offset by the need for the bookstores to stock the paper and printing supplies to print the books.
All of these factors might allow books to be sold at lower prices. The reason that on-demand printing hasn’t been popular so far is that it hasn’t been fast enough or cost-effective enough to replace pre-printing books. But with the introduction of the Espresso Book Machine 2.0, these problems look like they may have been solved. This could be a boon for students if it allows for reductions in the cost of textbooks.
Check out this video of the Espresso Book Machine 2.0 in action!
Digg is a site that encourages the community (Digg members) to vote for (votes are called Diggs) content that they find on the Internet. If a particular piece of content (whether it be a blog post or a video) gets enough Diggs, it is shown on the front page of the Digg site. Since millions of people visit Digg every day to look for new and interesting sources of information, having your content added to Digg by Digg community members can increase your visibility on the Internet.
Since successful blogs depend on garnering many readers, it is a good idea to make it easy for people to Digg your blog posts. Therefore, I place a Digg This Story button after every blog post to make it easy for my readers to submit my blog posts to Digg. If you find one of my posts particularly useful, I encourage you to submit it to Digg. This will help spread the word to other potential readers.
Since this site is also an instructional tool for my students, it does have a few advertisements. I encourage my students to start their own blogs and set them up to potentially make a profit and therefore, I provide a few examples of ways that you can monetize a blog, such as:
PayPerPost – This is a service through which advertisers pay bloggers to blog about their products or services. Many of my students enquire about paid blogging opportunities. Since PayPerPost is the oldest and best known, I’ve included links to this site on this blog so my students can easily register.
Amazon Associates – Affiliate programs pay bloggers (or other web site owners) when they send people to another site and the people they send end up purchasing a product or service. Amazon Associates is a well-established affiliate program that is free to join and very easy to set up. When you place links to Amazon on your site through the Amazon Associates program, you are paid a commission when your blog readers follow those links and purchase products on Amazon.com. Many of my students join Amazon Associates and feature these links on their blogs.
My name is Alan Evans and I’m an adjunct instructor at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, PA, Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, PA, and at Manor College in Jenkintown, PA. I’ve been teaching computer literacy and business courses at the collegiate level since May of 2000.
I am also one of the authors of Technology in Action, a market-leading computer concepts text published by Prentice Hall. Technology in Action is used in over 250 colleges and universities throughout the world and is designed primarily for freshman and sophomore computer literacy courses. I have also co-authored a book on Web 2.0 tools and written a book on computer ethics.
This blog is designed for instructors who are teaching computer literacy courses, Microsoft Office courses, or other courses where computer technology, the Internet, and software are covered as part of the curriculum.
I’ve been teaching technology courses since May 2000 at the collegiate level and I am constantly researching technology topics to provide a basis for discussions, homework, projects, or hands-on lab exercises for my students. This blog is designed to share the results of my research. I hope you find the topics that I cover here useful for your courses.
As technology is constantly changing, I encourage my students to perform research on new and emerging technologies as part of their grade in my courses. I also encourage students to use Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, social networks, and wikis to enable them to practice their writing skills, as well as to familiarize them with cutting edge tools that they can use when they enter the business world. A secondary objective of this blog is to provide an example to my students of ways to utilize Web 2.0 technologies. If you are a student, I hope you will find the topics discussed here relevant to your course work.
Please leave appropriate comments on the blog entries as I love to exchange ideas with other instructors and students. The comments to this blog are moderated so your comments will not be immediately visible on the blog.
