Tag Archives: SD

Online Math Training Event

Wednesday Aug 27, 2014
10:00 am to noon
Ewing 110
Lansdowne Campus
With Morgan Sargent, Brenda Proctor, Karen Lightbody
Regrets from Marc Bissley and Ramona Scott.

Agenda

I. A little bit of history
Our reactions to technologies — Douglas Adams
   In the beginning

II. Current Thinking
Innovations 2014 Report
   William Rankin – Director of Learning Apple Inc.
   LA Community Colleges Hybrid Lab Courses for Core Mathematics
   Essential Online Instructor

III. My Current Practice
The task of updating and improving my online math system at http://mathxl.com continues throughout the year.
Details are available at my faculty website, my Google Plus site and YouTube Channel as well as in my online classroom 

This is also a 52 week a year task. Pearson Ed, our math textbook publisher who provides the site, regularly makes changes to its site that I need to keep up on.  There are two MathXL updates in the month of July that I will need to master and then implement in my online classrooms in time for the Fall 2014 term.
I begin my orientation to the online classroom by welcoming Fall 2014 student in mid-August. 

IV. MathXL from the Student Perspective

V. MathXL from the Instructor Perspective

 

Social Media for Teaching and Learning

This session was animated by the folks from Pearson, our department’s math textbook publisher and developer of the MathXL platform. Their presentation is available at http://www.scctv.net/league-dl/ppt/INV2014/s19632.zip. As an illustration of the use of modern technology in the classroom, we started off with http://www.polleverywhere.com/  that uses text messages to poll.

Cave paintings may be the first application of social media. Web 2.0 provides the tools for the same social media, but over the Internet. Social learning is student as teacher. Social networking is connecting the two above. Web 3.0 will take social networking to the next level by providing a personal assistant , like Siri, who can access all the information on the Internet to answer any question.

How can we use social media for education? Twitter, Facebook, Google + and YouTube allow individuals to report directly about their experiences. Connection changes everything. Some examples are buying online, web md, eharmony, banking, friendships, secrets (post secret.com). What has connection done for Education? Education’s use of technology was ranked 55, below coal mining. Schools tend to be against connecting learners to the Internet. Devices, apps (wolfram alpha), websites (Wikipedia).

To enhance education’s  Potential for Connection Pearson has created a Research & Innovation Network. They have also created a series of videos that present a vision of the future that integrates technology, neuroscience and educational psychology into everyday life to make anytime, anywhere learning possible.

Pearson considers itself to be one of the world’ss top ten most innovative companies in education. To gain a better understand of faculty’s use of technology, Pearson partnered with the Bapson Survey Research Group to survey the use of social media in higher education. Faculty use of social media increased 10%. Facebook is number one followed by blogs wikis, linkedin, podcasts, andtwitter. Students leaving, but faculty joking. Survey results are available at http://www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com/higher-education/social-media-survey.php.

The animators also suggest using social bookmarking tools that allow you to share websites of value. Delicious and diigo.com are the popular. Zite allows you to aggregate info from the Internet based on topics. Pocket allows you to keep articles you found of interest. They also recommend using podcasts once a week to remind students do what is ahead.

The problem is determining which of the myriad of social media tools to use in your classroom. They suggest using four or five of the tools of the many available. Begin the process of determine which tools to use. For me it is my faculty website (blog), Google Plus and YouTube.

 

Wikieductor workshop

I first learned about Wikieductor at a Commonwealth of Learning conference I attended in 2008.

The following information from the Commonwealth of Learning about the above free workshop will be of interest who have been following the Open Education Resource initiative. I’ve found Wikieductor to be a useful tool, particularly for Computer Studies. I believe it also has an application for math essential skills.

“WikiEducator Gives Back” online workshop, July-August 2010
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21 July – 4 August 2010

“WikiEducator Gives Back” is a unique opportunity to interact with some of WikiEducator’s most seasoned and experienced facilitators and editors. This free wiki workshop is presented online over 10 working days and requires approximately 15-20 minutes per day. The course is presented asynchronously – so you can work at times which fit your own schedule. Join educators around the world who are returning to the core values of sharing knowledge freely.

“WikiEducator Gives Back” is part of the Learning4Content project, which is the world’s largest attempt to build wiki skills for education. It is administered by the OER Foundation, an independent non-profit organisation helping individuals and organisations to achieve their objectives using open education approaches.

http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content/Workshops/eL4C41/About

and www.col.org/WikiEducator

Songhees Meeting

On May 5, 2010 those of us teaching at Songhees this last term met with staff members to discuss partnership plans for the fall term.

We heard a need expressed for career preparation for Songhees members. Many are looking for jobs over the spring and summer. Some find they lack the essential skills required, even for entry level positions.

My schedule development proposal for 2010-11 fits in with these expressed needs. See  SD Proposal Form 2010-11 MartinRevised.