Schedule Student Conferences with TimeDriver

Every semester I schedule conferences with all my students to talk about their final papers before they start to finalize the paper. It was always a pain trying to schedule these 60+ conferences with students until I found TimeDriver. Watch how I use TimeDrive to schedule student conference fast and easily.

How to Collaborate Using GDocs (Students)

We recently started our group project module in ENG101, so I introduced students to a few tools to help them be able to collaborate with each other during this process. One tool in particular is Google Docs. This video was created for students to show them how to collaborate using Google Docs to complete their projects.

Creating Macros in Word 2007 for a Grading Toolbar

One of my most popular posts on this blog was a post on how to create a grading toolbar in Word. Well, it has since become outdated after Office 2007 was introduced a few years ago. I'm finally getting around to creating a new version, so here it is.

Teaching with Email in the Online Classroom

Over the years education has continually changed, or evolved into something that is considerably different from what education was when I was in school. One major difference is the inclusion of online and hybrid courses into the course offerings. This is still evolving on most campuses, so it's understandable that many people in charge of educational institutions aren't always clear about how faculty use certain technologies in their classrooms. So I'm going to try to clarify some things.

First, we've used email for many years in our district, and all employees are given an email address to use to communicate official district business amongst ourselves. This system works well, as it's easy to find an email address in the district and send a fellow employee a message. We can even create distribution lists to send to certain groups of people. It works so well, that we used to get tons of emails on a daily basis from just about anyone who had a cause, a need, a show, or any important information they felt everyone in the district needed to know. Mercifully someone recognized the overload we all experienced, and we adapted to a "only specially designated people on each campus can send ALL district emails. Thank God or whoever made that decision. It was nice to see that we could recognize a problem and find a solution.

But as I mention, delivery methods of teaching have changed too, and faculty are now using email in lots of different ways. Before I started teaching online classes, I never gave my students my email address. I couldn't imagine how I would handle all that email, and there wasn't really a need. If they had a question, they could just ask me in class. When I first started teaching online, I recognized the need for students to be able to contact me and quickly created an email account just for that purpose. Since then how I use email in my online and hybrid courses has evolved along with the courses themselves. I don't use email as just a way for students to ask questions. It is so much more than that.

Email can be a drafting space, prewriting activity, organizational tool, assignment dropbox, conferencing space, peer review tool, and so much more. It is so essential to teaching online that it always surprises me that as an educational institution, we have never sought a more robust email tool for faculty to work with. It has always been up to us to figure out how best to make it work. It wasn't until webmail evolved that some of us began to dream big with email and start to use it in more ways than the obvious. Now it's hard to imagine teaching without it.

Here's a brief example of how I use email in the first week of school. I begin by sending all my students an email introducing myself and giving them a list of things I'd like for them to do before the first week of the semester ends. This list includes filling out a form and providing me with a convenient email address for them. If it's convenient, they'll use it and hopefully read my correspondence to them. I use the collected information to set up folders, filters and auto-responders in my email client. To get students familiar with using email in my classes and to help me set up the filters, I have students send me an email after they have completed the first assignment. That email is received, filed, and an auto-responder to that particular email is sent out. It all works quite smoothly. I get what I need and students get instant feedback.

I also keep track of student activity on the course network via email. When students fill out the form, register for the network, and participate in the first discussion, I get an email notification for each. This allows me to quickly approve their registration and then welcome them to the network right away. Students feel a part of a community and feel as if there is someone present to interact with in the online environment. In the first week, many students are nervous about the online class and have questions. During this week, I try to answer questions as soon as possible. For instance, the bookstore had a mix-up with the books for my class. After reading the syllabus, students discovered that the book listed in the bookstore was different than what was listed on my syllabus. Many emailed me to asked about this. One student had even emailed from his phone while he was still in the bookstore and got a response right away. He was able to purchase the correct book right then.

I don't profess to respond that quickly all semester long, but to me it equates to all that extra time all faculty spend during the first week giving directions, advice, answering questions and just plain being "present" on campus for students. Students have responded well to this interaction in my classes. Just today a student responded to me with,

"Wow, I am seriously impressed by the quick response. I will have to remember this when I do 'Rate my professor'."

Once the first week is in the books, I continually use email as a teaching tool in my online courses. Students in the ENG102 course send me research prospectuses and we have email conferences about their research progress. Students collaborate on writing projects in Google Docs and use email to invite me to see their work and to receive updates on revisions made. And I use my email contacts groups feature to take role and keep track of attendance in my hybrid and face to face classes. These are just a few of the ways that email has evolved for me.

When I'm teaching, I don't have time to deal with emails about:
Biology instructors needed, weekly air quality, and employment opportunities. I'll handle that later when I get back to my work "office." I have email for teaching, and I have email for work. My work email stays at work, and my teaching email goes with me to my many teaching environments and teaching moments. I control when, where and how I want to deal with it. I love that freedom, and I love that it allows for me to serve my students. I couldn't do this if I had to deal with all my email in one standard, made for business, work email account. That just doesn't work for me.

Update your Calendar & ToDo Lists via Twitter

My first post about Twitter, Little Known Facts about Twitter in the Classroom, talked about some easy uses for Twitter in the classroom. I said, Twitter is connected to everything. I can update my Google calendar and ToDo tasks via Twitter, and I can set it up so Twitter will broadcast my blog posts from my blog to Twitter with a link sending people back to my blog to read the post. Think announcements for students with that one. It's also connected with a very nice polling site, Poll Everywhere, that lets your respondents vote in your polls via Twitter. Twitter makes their API available so any company can develop tools that will work through Twitter.

This post follows up that and talks about the calendar and ToDo updates via Twitter. If you're busy, like most people are, you might find that your calendar and a ToDo list are very helpful in keeping you going. I rely heavily on both in my everyday life. Usually when I'm out and about, and I need to either add an event or meeting to my calendar, I find it a hassle to pull up my calendar program and add it. Same thing with my ToDo lists. But I've found that sending a text message directly to Twitter can do that for me. All I have to do is text a direct message to my Google Calendar or Remember the Milk ToDo service and it automatically posts to my calendar or list. Click the links for more information about each.

I use this when I schedule conferences with students. I grab my phone and send a text message to 40404 with "d gcal Meeting with 'Student' Tuesday at 11am." The d is for direct message, which is private on Twitter, and gcal is the Google Calendar Twitter name. The rest is the event I want added to the calendar. When I get to a computer, all the appointments are there in my calendar. And since I sync my Google calendar with my Blackberry, they show up on my phone calendar too within minutes. The screencast below shows you how this all works.



Part II of III tips for using Twitter in the classroom. Part I covers using Twitter via text messaging on your cell phone, Part II update calendar/ToDo list via Twitter. The last tip will show you how to use Twitter with a polling service PollEverywhere.

Teaching Kids Technology

I had and opportunity to teach a bunch of Upward Bound students how to use various technologies over a 6 week period this summer. We learned to create photo essays using Animoto, and plain Word documents using Creative Commons images. We used Picnik to remix photos. We also learned to create videos using Flip cameras and Windows Movie Maker. And our last project was creating podcasts using Audacity. Below are a few of the podcasts they created. I was really proud of their work.

What's on Your iPod Touch? Mobile Apps for Learning

We've been having a little exchange on our list about mobile gadgets and apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so I decided to blog about what I have on my iPod Touch. Not so surprisingly, I have very little music. I have an iPod Video and Nano for that. The Touch is for mobile learning. I'm trying to see how this gadget can be used in education. The obvious is podcasts, both audio and video. It's easy to find good podcasts to share and recommend with students, as well as create your own. So I have over 3 GB of video on my Touch, mostly video podcasts. One of my favorite apps on the Touch is iTalk. I can hook up an external microphone and record lectures right on the Touch. Then I can sync and have the podcast uploaded to where ever in a matter of minutes. Sound quality is really good.

Most of my apps are free, unless indicated by (paid). Here is a list of my first page of apps on my Touch.

• Google
• YouTube
• Remember the Milk (RTM)
• Twitterific & TwitterFon
• iTalk
• Facebook
• Bb Learn

These are all obvious choices. We haven't had a chance to try out the Bb Learn app yet. District says we will be able to do so after the upgrade, which just happened, so I'll check into that next week.

My second page of apps is a mixed bag. I have a few ereaders I'm trying out and some blogging tools.

• Kindle & eReader & GReader (Readers)
• Google Voice & GV Mobile (Paid)
• Google Talk & Skype (chat)
  
• Gyminee
• Wordpress
• Animoto
• WootWatch
• Tumblr
• Where
• Brightkite
• TripIt
• Nike +iPod

These are some of the more important mobile tools for blogging, reading documents, books and RSS feeds, and communicating via chat, voicemail and text messaging.

As I move through my app pages, the apps get less and less relevant to mobile learning. So far we've seen lots of social networking apps and reading and writing apps. That trend continues, but I start to add more home automation and fun stuff. I mean, you never know when you will need to Tivo a show for class, right.

• myhomework (Keep track of classes and homework)
• Evernote (This could be a big elearning app)
• Shakespeare (Complete works on my iPod)
• Yelp
• Yahoo!
• LinkedIn
• i.TV & DirecTV & PhoneFlix (Schedule DVRs & Netflix)
• fring (IM & Skype in one/VOIP)
• Assistant (PageOnce - Acct Management)
• WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
• Flickr
• Ustream (watching only)

I found lots of apps that have created collections of works like the Shakespeare one. This would make teaching a lit class easy in terms of access to free books. Evernote has the biggest potential for impact in the mobile learning space. I will be exploring this a bit more this summer.

My last two pages are just a bunch of games and sports apps like for the Master's and the NBA playoffs. Also MLB (At Bat) lets you listen to live game audio for $10 for the whole season. I also have the Stanza ebook reader, a dictionary, notes, and a calculator. That's it. And like I mentioned earlier, I only paid for 3 apps. As I explore and try new ones, I'll probably purchase more if they are worth it. We'll see.

So what's on your iPod Touch or iPhone? Leave a comment and let me know so I can add to my collection.