Featured
Technological magic and the philosopher’s education

Technological magic and the philosopher’s education

Comments 0 Comment

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Clarke’s third law). The impact of current digital technologies such as Web 3.0, with its intelligent cloud, on our education system is potentially magical. Yet as we navigate our way through digital disruption, widespread effective and enthusiastic implementation among many muggle academics and their students is not immediately apparent. What determines how we incorporate technology when we design learning activities? It goes without saying that inclusion must be purposeful – the use…

Read More Read More

Featured
Reference managers

Reference managers

Comments 0 Comment

I’ve devoted scant resources to evaluating reference managers, which is unfathomable given a good deal of my time is involved in organising information. Over the years I have wandered from one to the other, and not been happy with any of them. The free ones all seemed buggy. The ones that cost money, work AND have heaps of delightful features fail me when I move on from the host institution willing to pay for them. My requirements for a reference…

Read More Read More

Gr8 cur8tors – sites that make you go ooh…

Gr8 cur8tors – sites that make you go ooh…

Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes you are told about them. Sometimes you stumble across them. However you arrive, there are some sites that seem to hold the secrets of the universe within. They frequently distract you for hours with the promise of potential purpose. So I’m going to list my favourite sites/blogs here and reduce my FOMO on vital information that could change my practice 😉 ​Free Technology for Teachers – Richard Byrne. My favourite site – full of truly useful and reviewed technology that…

Read More Read More

Learning outcomes vs learning opportunities

Learning outcomes vs learning opportunities

Comments 0 Comment

“You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink”. This sums up my discomfort with the terminology “learning outcomes” that underpin much curriculum development. Sure, it is usually preceded by the wordy catch-all “on successful completion of this course students will…”, but there seems to be a hot potato of responsibility for achievement sitting just below the surface. In our arguably justifiable discomfort with the traditional concept of the dominance of didactic delivery we are in danger…

Read More Read More

Tools, fun stuff and tips

Tools, fun stuff and tips

Comments 0 Comment

All our ideas – Create an online wiki survey – ask a question, seed some ideas and in a few moments you’ll have your own wiki survey. Give participants the link and they will be presented with the opportunity to vote on the seed ideas and invited to give their own ideas. Then view the results with a range of visualisations. AnswerGarden – post a question, participants post their response (up to a few words) or upvote another answer, and a…

Read More Read More

Active learning online

Active learning online

Comments 0 Comment

The online environment has a way of exposing pedagogy, or the lack thereof. Like there is ‘no back row’ in an online class and all students are virtually seated in front of you, similarly, a virtual classroom has pedagogical intent as its floor, walls, ceiling and furniture, laid out for all to see. You are much more reliant on your carefully arranged resources to asynchronously shape the learning journey than when you can wing it with your engaging in-person presentation…

Read More Read More

Augmented reality

Augmented reality

Comments 0 Comment

Augmented reality can spice up your content presentation by linking real world ‘trigger’ images to online content. This is not the same as Virtual Reality which creates a complete world of its own that immerses the student.The impact of these technologies on all aspects of our lives will be huge. Fortunately there are ways to start introducing them into your teaching even if you have only a passing interest in how it all works. Metaverse is a (so far) free…

Read More Read More

Automatic closed captioning in Google slides

Automatic closed captioning in Google slides

Comments 0 Comment

When you present in Google Slides, you can now have real-time closed captioning by simply clicking the ‘cc’ button when you are in presentation mode. As long as your microphone picks up your voice, your spoken words will scroll along the bottom of your presentation as you speak! With all the fun of the not-quite-transcribed-correctly fair of course…but it worked quite well in my trials and was one of those things you show people and they go ‘wow’! Microsoft Powerpoint…

Read More Read More

Word clouds

Word clouds

Comments 0 Comment

Word clouds are not only an interesting way to quickly get an idea of the content of a piece of writing, but can also be a navigational aid, if the keywords are linked to search results within a website or blog page. Creating the clouds is quite easy and several free online options are provided below. Usually you just provide a URL or paste in text, and a word cloud will be created, with the size of the word proportional…

Read More Read More

Recording a video or screencast

Recording a video or screencast

Comments 0 Comment

Presenting your content using a video can involve creating a simple screencast of a powerpoint, adding audio in the form of music, automated or real speech, with or without a talking head, through to a recording of a lecture in a recording room or out on location. You might use a video camera, or simply a smartphone or tablet. The finished product might reside on your institution’s server or on a private or public YouTube channel. Here are some useful…

Read More Read More