A challenge from SMU professor Jose Bowen: “Teach Naked”, meaning to utilize the face-to-face time with students for more discussion and debate, instead of rote lecturing from bullet-laden digital presentations. He encourages the use of podcasts for the lecture material, and e-mail to point students to content covered in the curriculum.
Bowen warns residential colleges that they are under siege from cheaper online learning options to provide more engaging, personal interaction with students, in order to justify the cost of a college education.
Technology has a place for teachers, and is not a replacement for teachers.
I propose a “Teach Naked” week for all teachers to turn off their computers while students are in their rooms.
We live in a world that is increasingly interconnected. Social networking tools have taken the place of US Postal mail and telephones as communication devices. The problem is not what tool to use, it is how to get your information to the people who need it. Should you create and send your message through e-mail, post to Facebook, Twitter, then post to your blog? If you have 28 hours in the day, maybe. The solution is to use your blogging tool as a single point of entry, and leverage the RSS capabilities to give your readers flexibility in how they wish to view your content. RSS is the feature that provides a standard way many social networking tools use to display your information. Take a look at this from Common Craft for an RSS primer:
So, where does it go? Take a look at this presentation to get a feel about how one message on campus can be delivered to multiple outlets immediately:
This post is the first one since I installed the Twitter Tools. This should enable me to post this article, and then it will be placed on my Twitter account. We will see.
Aviary is a great, free suite of graphic tools for your classroom. The beauty of these tools is that they are all accessed through a web browser, with nothing to install on your desktops. The image editor, Phoenix, is comparable to Photoshop with a rich editing toolset and layering, with the ability to import to photo-sharing sites.
Why just read about it? The Aviary site has videos detailing each tool.
Phoenix Image Editor Preview:
The real reason to use this is the developer’s philoshphy. As stated in their FAQ:
Through our interactions with the artists on Worth1000.com, we realized that while many people wanted to use digital editing software, it was very inaccessible:
The costs were prohibitive (and many people didn’t want to risk installing a virus by pirating).
The interface was too bloated with rarely-used features to make learning it easy.
You actually needed to install the programs on a machine with specifications that complied with the program and suffer through any unwanted DRM malware that might also come with the software.
We have our roots in the grassroots hobbyists community. We are artists ourselves and know that there are so many other potential creators out there like us… all they need are accessible tools.
