Creating Virtual Student Introductions

intro_image2

Whether you are teaching a face-to-face or an online course, you will want to create a sense of community for your students. Typically, the first day of a face-to-face class is spent reviewing the course goals and syllabus as well as doing introductory icebreaker activities. You can use one of two online tools – Voicethread or Glogster – to create this interactive icebreaker activity.

3 Social Media Tools for Connecting with Students

social-media-marketing

With the prevalence of Smartphones, affordable phone plans, and texting, social media is quickly becoming one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to inform the masses. There are several tools that aid in the creation and maintenance of your online presence; implementing these tools correctly can provide make a big difference.

Taking Our Toys to a New Sandbox

Sakai_logo_reg_mark_hi_res

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the most recent institution added to the growing list of colleges and universities that are abandoning Blackboard to move to the Sakai Learning Management System (LMS). This change comes after a highly successful pilot at UNC that started in the fall of 2008. The decision to move to Sakai is greater than just a change in a learning management system; it also is a major indicator of the direction of instructional technology in higher education as a whole.

Using Sakai and Elluminate for an Online Course

Student using webcam for discussion

With the right tools, online courses can be as effective as traditional face-to-face courses. I designed an online course that would teach instructors how to integrate multimedia into their own – virtual or traditional – courses.

Using Screen Recordings for Demos and Training

Image of the Camtasia Studio functionality

We learn both by seeing and doing and a great way to cater to this is to create screen capture videos for your demonstrations or training. These capture videos are easy to create, can serve multiple audiences at once, and allow users to watch, pause, and stop the video as needed. The creation of the video is in real time so the time constraints are minimal.

Improve Your Life, Go The myEASY Way™