Working Connections Knowledgebase - Recently Updated Pages

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Anonymous — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:52:40 CDT

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Podcasting Pilot Project @ BCC

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:49:16 CDT

Podcasting: Lessons Learned from a Pilot Project at Bellevue Community College presented at the League of Innovation 2006 in Charlotte, NC. (Download PowerPoint Presentation)

Student Response System

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:07:54 CDT

You might have seen the 'clickers'in action in TV shows such as America's Funniest Videos, in which the audience participates in the selection of the winner by entering the corresponding number for their favorite video on a little remote control ('clicker'). In the past 2 years, they have found a new niche, classrooms! There are several names for this technology, i.e. Classroom Performance System (CPS), Classroom Response Systems (CRS), Student Response Systems (SRS), or Personal Response Systems (PRS) but overwhelmingly known simply as the'clicker'. Many textbook publishers are now bundling these with the sale of their textbooks, which brings up the point raisedat a recent Campus-Technology article "Beware of publishing reps bearing free gifts that click".

How to they apply in the classroom setting? Check out the following articles:

Classroom ‘clickers’ catching on as instant assessment tool from the Univ of Madison - http://www.news.wisc.edu/11142.html
New for back-to-school: Clickers CNET - http://news.com.com/New+for+back-to-school+clickers/2100-1041_3-5819171.html
Michigan State University Clicker Info Page - http://computing.msu.edu/events/?m=200502

Types of technology:

Infrared
Radio Frequency
Wireless

Recommendations:

Explore the market not only the vendor sites but the different university sites. There is quite a number of universities that have posted their "clicker" research online and is available to the public.
A single campus solution rather than a "free-for-all" approach.
Engage students and faculty representatives in your selection process.
Inquire vendors to provide your with demo units.
Use radio frequency based clickers whenever possible.
Develop a buy-back program with your college bookstore.

Vendors: (This list is not complete but the result of a quick Google search and listed in no particular order of preference.)

eInstruction - http://einstruction.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=HigherEd.Display&Header=HigerEd
Interwrite - http://www.gtcocalcomp.com/interwriteprs.htm
iClicker - http://www.iclicker.com/
H-ITT - http://www.h-itt.com/
TI Navigators - http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/productDetail/us_ti_navigator.html
Quizdom - http://www.camcor.com/qwizdom/index.html
Turning Point - http://www.turningtechnologies.com/highereducationinteractivelearning.cfm

What Some Others are Doing

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 18:24:39 CDT

Doug Kaufman, CEO of clearTXT. "Today, students are so mobile and connected that email is considered too slow and inconvenient. . . ." See what Seton Hall is doing . . .
http://carolinanewswire.com/news/News.cgi?database=headlines.db&command=viewone&id=10842&op=t

A video game that covers the lessons of second-level economics that students can take – or play – for credit . . . what?! Play games and get credit!!??
http://www.campus-technology.com/news_article.asp?id=19083&typeid=150 (second article)
http://econ201.uncg.edu/dcl/econ201/ (the actual site)

Are campus educators and administrators prepared to make full use of the iPod’s educational potential?
http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18001

Columbia College Chicago is aiming to be the most student-centered arts and media school in the world
http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=18005

Technology is a "hook" for people who aren't going to study anyway . . . some views from the "flipside."
http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i07/07a03401.htm

What skills do students learn from using the wiki?
http://www.ikiw.org/?p=90 A podcast of this entry is also available. What do you notice about this podcast?

Banning laptops and wireless in the classroom . . . what do you think?
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060806/OPINION02/608060311

Testimonials

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:34:38 CDT

This page contains stories about uses of case-based and problem-based learning. It can be used to generate ideas for others.

*******************************************************************************************************************************
At our college, we use a case-study throughout two quarters in our Systems Analysis and Systems Design and Development courses. Sometime this is a case study designed by the instructor, and other times, it has been a real-life problem. All of the assigned work is within the context of this case. For example, early in the quarter, the "client" brings a problem for the class to solve. The first writing assignment is a follow-up memo to the client, describing the issues identified during this interview and setting up a time/date for the next meeting. A Statement of Work (SOW) is created for the relationship with the "client" using a standard SOW template and signed by all parties. All deliverables are provided according to this document (which is, essentially, the course deliverables listed in the syllabus).

Teaching Resource Kit

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:25:05 CDT

Welcome to the Working Connections Knowledgebase and Teaching Resource Kit. This is an exciting collaborative site. Please feel free to join in. It is a collection of online teaching and learning resources for college faculty.

This site was created by community college faculty attending the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies (NWCET) August 22-25, 2006 Working Connections workshop on Using Skill Standards and Infusing Technology into the Curriculum at Bellevue Community College. It is a continuing group effort.

Feel free to add or edit pages to make this a more useful and robust site for the faculty who use it. If you do make changes, please leave a note in the edit notes or comments about who you are and what you added.

Questions about this project? Send e-mail to NWCET2006@gmail.com.

Thanks for your support!

Podcasting (Tools and How-to)

Anonymous — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 22:09:10 CDT

This page contains information and links to resources for creating your own podcasts.

Podcasting 101 http://www.pod101.com/

A great site for learning how to do a basic podcast http://forevergeek.com/geek_articles/beginners_guide_to_podcasts_and_podcasting_plus_how_to_create_a_basic_podcast_of_your_own.php

Matrix

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:40:58 CDT

	Teacher Centered	Learner Centered
Blogs
Wikis
Podcasts

Team Building

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:29:06 CDT

"Team building" (or "'teambuilding'") refers to the process of establishing and developing a greater sense of collaboration and trust between team members. Interactive exercises, team assessments, and group discussions enable groups to cultivate this greater sense of teamwork. Team building has many contexts, for example in sport clubs and work organizations.

Need for team building

Modern society and culture continues to become more fluid and dynamic. Factors contributing to this include the communications revolution, the global market and the ever-increasing specialization and division of labor. The net effect is that individuals are now required to move between working with many different groups of people in their working and also personal lives. Joining a new group and immediately being expected to get along with them is somewhat unnatural - historically humans have evolved to work and live in close-knit, static societies. Hence the sudden need for methods to help people adapt to the new requirements. All kinds of people, from investment bankers to catering staff and session musicians, face the same difficulties. As yet there is no generally agreed solution to the problem - it may not even be possible given the thousands of years of cultural evolution that brought us to our present behavior patterns.

[edit]

Team building ingredients

Ingredients seen as important to the successful set-up and launch of such team efforts include:

selection of participants
establishing visions, goals, missions and/or objectives
distribution of workload
timetabling
balancing skill-sets
allocation of roles within the team
metrics
harmonising personality types
training on how to work together

The morale of the team, an important variable, may depend on such factors as:

As team performance reflects on management, managers -- and even coaches -- sometimes feel the need to take part in constructing and fostering teams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_building#Need_for_team_building

http://www.ideachampions.com/team_building.shtml
Click on Launching Team Projects for an overview of elements that must be understood to create an effective team. Although this article is aimed at business, the ideas can be adapted to student projects.

360 Evaluations
http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cgpc/opm/360_Eval.htm

How are you using skill standards?

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:17:38 CDT

Feel free to add your ideas here!

Skill Standards

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:08:05 CDT

From the Washington state website for skill standards (http://www.wa-skills.com/):

Skill standards answer two critical questions:

What do workers need to know and be able to do to succeed in today’s workplace?

And how do we know when workers are performing well?

Other useful websites:

U. S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/home.htm

Introduction from the homepage of the National Research and Dissemination Centers for Career and Technical Education:

"Academic and skill standards are being developed across the country to help educators determine where to set the bar to measure student performance. Finding these standards documents for many disciplines and occupational fields can be challenging. This repository of standards has been created by the National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education to help you find the information you need."
http://www.nccte.org/repository/index.asp

NWCET (National Workforce Center for Emerging Technologies, Bellevue WA) website for IT skill standards:
http://www.nwcet.org/products/skillStandards.asp

Books and Articles

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 16:18:05 CDT

Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classroom Will Richardson Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press. 2006. 139 pp. $27.95. ISBN 1-4129-2767-6
A Guide to E-Learning: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity:School_for_the_Advancement_of_Tertiary_Teaching_and_Learning/E-Learning

Podcasting, the do-it-yourself guide, Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. www.wiley.com

Podcasting for DUMMIES, Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. www.wiley.com

Music and Sound Effects

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:35:57 CDT

Music and Sound for Podcasts
To add interest to podcasts or video presentations, it's nice to have sound effects and music. However, there are often issues with copyrights and digital rights licensing.There is a great site on Creative Commons that is a database of free sounds and snippets of music, useful for adding interest to podcasts. Here is the link: http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/index.php. You do have to become a registered user to download sound files in .wav format, but no personal information except an e-mail address is required. (ES)

Multimedia Content

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:33:08 CDT

Things to keep in mind when choosing multimedia content:

Computer minimum requirements
Bandwidth
Variety of computer platforms and browsers
Accessibility for differently-able individuals

Content creation: skills needed, time, planning
Copyrights

Multimedia Content

During the podcast presentation someone mentioned Camtasia. I used it, it was alright...but Captivate from Adobe and another product called WINK (Open Source) create great teaching presentations.

Infusing Technology

nwcetwc2006 — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:03:10 CDT

Here are some preliminary questions:

Why use technology?

employ resources (on the internet and using other tools)
extend the classroom (create a learning environment outside the classroom)
serve all learning styles
meet learning style (and expectations) of "Net Generation" students
it's there/ everybody else is doing it/ my tenure committee expects it (Are these good reasons???)

Which is the best tool for your class?

email
internet
course web site
podcasting: audio, video (RSS)
blogging
wiki
student content creation: documents, images, audio, video, presentations, web sites

Is access available to students?

digital divide
access at your institution

How much time will your material/course work require?

how much do students have for their education? (consider life demands)
bear in mind that some students are very quick on computers and others are very slow
how much of your time will it take: preparation, support, feedback, assessment, etc.

Which activities are best suited to which methods, resources, or tools? What are students expected to learn?

How can you use technology to enhance student learning? How can it help you create new kinds of learning experiences that will help students get engaged in their learning and retain what they learn?

How can you foster collaborative learning?

group work
pair work
projects
peer mentoring

What are the benefits of collaborative and experiential learning?

authenticity (real world and work place)
constructivist learning

What are the issues with infusing technology into the curriculum?

Computer access - some students still don't have computers
Computer capacity - some students don't have powerful enough computers
If specialized software is required, will students be able to afford it or install it?
Who provides technical support for students when specialized software is used?
Who provides training for students?
Are tools compatible with students' computing environments (i.e., Apple, PC, etc.)?

Online Resources:

Journal of Technology Education - http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/
International Society for Technology in Education - http://www.iste.org/
Office of Educational Technology - http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/index.html
Campus Technology - http://www.campus-technology.com/
John Hopkins Univ. Center for Technology in Education - http://cte.jhu.edu/index.html

listen to some podcasts

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:25:27 CDT

National Public Radio podcast directory at http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

A wide variety of podcasts at www.podcast.net

Great podcasts from PBS at www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/podcasts.html

Indiepodder.org offers any subject you can think of at www.ipodder.org

Uses

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:15:33 CDT

Podcast can be used for a variety of ways:

distribution of audio or video as an addition to existing text
avoiding regulatory bodies
education (aka Educasting)
politics
religion (aka Godcasting)
audio tours
communication from space
television commentary
sports
conference and meeting alerts

Podcast/Webcast Hosting Sites

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:14:05 CDT

Liberated Syndication - Podcasting/Blogging hosting

www.libsyn.org

Podcasting made easy... is the company motto. They charge a small monthly fee for storage rather than by bandwidth usage. This avoids you from having to pay more as your podcast or blog gains popularity. For as little as $5/month (equals to 100mb storage) you could start podcasting daily (M-F) 20-minute talk program, encoded in low-quality or a weekly 30-minute mixed talk-music program. As your passion for podcasting grows so will your storage needs... LibSyn offers a professional package for $30/month (~800MB of Storage), which translate into a daily (M-F) 50-minute talk program, encoded in hi-quality, a daily 45-minute mixed talk-music program or a daily 40-minute high quality music program.

Homestead - Web Hosting

WWW.Homestead.com

Pick from 2,000 professionally designed websites.

Quickly add your own logo, graphics, text, and domain name.

Click one button to publish your site to the web (we host it).

Prices start at $9.99/mo.

Hardware

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:05:16 CDT

So what do you need to start podcasting to the world?
The basic setup requires:

Internet-connected computer (PC Running Windows XP or a Mac Running OS X) at least 512 MB of RAM, a handful of GB of free space on your hard drive, a Mic input and Headphone output (provided by computer soundcard).
Good quality microphone - They are not as expensive as one would think. You can use your USB connection instead of Mic input if preferred, see Samson CU-01 USB mic which sells for about $70 .
Headsets - You can buy a mic/headset combo such as Plantronics' .Audio 350, which sells for about $40.
Optional: Mixer allows you to connect multiple input sources such as a couple of microphones, cassette, music instrument, etc... see Pevey 6-channel sample.
Optional: MP3 Player. It doesn't have to be an Apple iPod player. Podcasting is non-proprietary.
Optional: Pop Filter For $20 you can get a filter, check it out at Musician's Friend.

Your podcasting "studio" might look like these ones:

Studio attributed to Adam Curry "Father of Podcasting"

Richard Giles' Studio (O'Reilly.com)

nwcetwc2006 — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:04:13 CDT

Educational Lessons
Official and unofficial audio tours
Conference meeting alerts and updates
Public safety messages