Cool Tools Presentation

At the recent eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLcc) Conference, our own Beth Kitts and Brenda Perea presented a popular session on “cool tools” (that is, an expert list of the latest and greatest tools you might like to use as you teach online).  Here’s the link to their Prezi:
http://tinyurl.com/2013cooltools

Feel free to share your own favorite “cool tools” in the CCCOnline Community!

What We Learned at eLcc 2012

Recently, CCCOnline staff attended the eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLcc) Conference. It was invigorating and inspirational, and in addition to collaborating with our peers from local and national institutions, we also were reminded about or learned about exciting cool tools such as:

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/ - A multimedia web-book about art and art history

http://freevideolectures.com/Subject/History - Video lectures from universities

http://bigthink.com/ - Big Think

http://www.jfklibrary.org/ - JFK Library

http://www.storycenter.org/ - Center for Digital Storytelling

http://projeqt.com/ - Storytelling software

http://www.toondoo.com/ - Cartoon building tool

https://bubbl.us/ - brainstorming and mind-mapping

http://thekidshouldseethis.com/

http://popplet.com/

http://www.livebinders.com – virtual binders

http://tinyvox.com/ - voice recorder

http://www.snappvis.org/ (SNAPP – Social Networks Adopting Pedagogical Practice)
http://science360.gov/

A few favorite take-away phrases:

Formative assessment isn’t just practice; it’s re-meaning

Class should end with a finale rather than a final

Phases of learning--Trigger Event, Exploration, Integration, Resolution

Change what you “know” about teaching and learning

One of the keynote speakers, Kevin King, talked about virtual teams and individuals’ personalities, giving us food for thought as we approach teaching within the online environment (e.g., with group projects and discussions). One memorable piece of advice he gave applies to those of us with straightforward and direct communication styles: when composing emails, remember to “add flowers” so the reader doesn’t misunderstand your tone.

--Karen Kaemmerling and Liz Dzabic

What We Learned at COLTT

Some of the CCCOnline academic staff attended COLTT (the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference) at CU-Boulder last week. Here’s what they reported:

The Best Ideas under the Sun
“One session of COLTT discussed the tool Voice Thread as used for enhancing student participation with each other in foreign language courses. Saturday after COLTT, I had the privilege of sitting in Sloan’s Lake Park with some of our vibrant Spanish instructors in a gathering arranged by Jeri Heinicke. Some of the instructors expressed interest in incorporating this tool in a couple of assignments for fall. We’ll let you know how it goes!”
-Karla Schorzman, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities

Cool Tools!
“My experience of COLTT introduced me to or reminded me of some cool web sites and tools:

*Arounder.com, which provides panoramic views of various places around the world: http://www.arounder.com/
*VIMEO, which is like YouTube without the ads: http://vimeo.com/
*XTRANORMAL: http://www.xtranormal.com/
*Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/
*Zoomerang: http://www.zoomerang.com/
*Symphony of Science: http://www.symphonyofscience.com/”
-Karen Kaemmerling, Associate Dean of Social Sciences

“I learned about two interesting tools that have come on the scene recently.

The first is http://storify.com/; this is a tool to aid story authors using quick and easy drop-in content from other sites. The demo given is that you would intersperse text, online videos or other multimedia in way to tell a story. Their demos are interesting.

The second is http://instagrok.com/ which is a meta search engine for academic materials. It’s a Boulder, CO startup that looks very promising for students and instructors seeking high quality materials to embed into various works. It sorts from K-12 to college level postings by analyzing work usage, style, etc. and gives a word cloud so you can see at a glance the content without having to do a bunch of ‘go look and return to the index.’ ”
-Joseph Foss, AT Professional