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Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Sick of trying to tame the growing mess of bookmarks in your web browser?? Wish there was a way to better share good website resources with your peers on the fly? Social Bookmarking and Delicious (http://del.icio.us/) are a great answer. Here is an excellent BRIEF (3 minutes) and plain english introduction by Lee Lefever of the Common Craft Show:

You can view my del.icio.us bookmarks collection at: http://del.icio.us/mrw

Have a great long weekend!
-Mike

OLN TeachU Free Webinars schedule

The Ohio Learning Network (OLN) has announced its 07-08 schedule for free online webinars for faculty, starting next week with a session on online labs:

OLN’s TeachU webinars are hour-long interactive web seminars on uses of emerging technologies and pedagogies within the contexts of teaching, assessment, and student success. They’re also free!

This month TeachU presents:
Online Labs

Date and Time: September 6^th at 10:00 am
Presented by: Shan Huang from Sinclair Community College and Ron Krempasky from At Home Science
About the Event: Shan Huang will present: Breaking new grounds - an attempt to put an existing classroom astronomy lab with many hands-on activities online. What are the successes and where did we trip? How did students learn and what did they say about their learning? Ron Krempasky will discuss existing science laboratory options in distance learning, including hybrid labs, computer simulations and virtual labs, "kitchen" labs, remote access labs, plus instructor-generated and commercial lab kits.

To register go to: http://wiki.teachuohio.org/page/Register

Additional Webinars in the 2007-2008 TeachU Series Include:

October 4th @ 2:00 pm: The Web 2.0 Classroom: What's Available, Where to Begin, and Innovative Integrations
Presented by Garrick Ducat, Mercy College and Terence Armentano, Bowling Green State University

November 8th @ 3:00 pm: Stretching Into the Future
Presented by Kay Strong, Bowling Green State University

December: Happy Holidays

January 17th @ 11:00 am: Creating a Course and Open Source Portfolio for First Year Students
Presented by Jason Tetzloff, Owens Community College

January 24th @ 2:00 pm: Mobile Learning
Presented by Sheri Stover, Bryan Beverly, Frank Carone, Terri Klaus and Chris Roberts, Wright State University

February 14th @ 1:00 pm: Reverse Benefits: How Teaching Online Improves Face to Face Teaching
Presented by Paul Pennington, Dean of Distance Education and Institutional Research, Cincinnati Christian University

March 20th @ 2:00 pm: Making CENTSS of Web-based Student Services
Presented by Melody Clark, University of Cincinnati and George Steele, The Ohio Learning Network

April 24th @ 11:00 am: Blogs and Wikis in an Integrated Curriculum
Presented by Lisa Meloncon, University of Cincinnati

May 29th @ 11:00 am: Creating Hybrid Courses
Presented by Antoinette Perkins, Judith Anderson, Ingrid Emch, and Sharon Barnewell, Columbus State Community College

Firefox releases Campus Edition of Free Web Browser

Mozilla has released a tweaked "campus edition" version of its free Firefox web browser that has a number of essential add in for students, including the excellent Zotero (www.zotero.org) research/citation tool, as the Chronicle's Wired Campus reports:

"...Last week Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox Web browser, released Firefox Campus Edition for free download. A key feature of the new browser is the Zotero citation system developed by George Mason University's Center for History and New Media, noted here last year. The system is designed to help students and scholars mark and manage information on the Web that they want to cite in research papers. The campus edition browser is not all work and no play, though. It also includes a plug-in called FoxyTunes that helps manage the soundtrack to cram sessions, and StumbleUpon, a service to quickly jump among favorite blogs, online videos, and photo Web sites.--Jeffrey R. Young"

Project aims to rate trustworthiness of Wikipedians

From the 8/3 Chronicle's Wired Campus....
If you are looking to try and help students mine the good form the bad of WIkipedia, a new project may be of help:
"...Researchers at the University of California at Santa Cruz are trying to make that process simpler. They've designed software that color-codes Wikipedia entries, identifying those portions deemed trustworthy and those that might be taken with a grain of salt. To determine which passages make the grade, the researchers analyzed Wikipedia's editing history, tracking material that has remained on the site for a long time and edits that have been quickly overruled. A Wikipedian with a distinguished record of unchanged edits is declared trustworthy, and his or her contributions are left untouched on the Santa Cruz team's color-coded pages. But a contributor whose posts have frequently been changed or deleted is considered suspect, and his or her content is highlighted in orange. (The darker the orange, the more spurious the content is thought to be.) The researchers, led by Luca de Alfaro, an associate professor of computer engineering, have posted 1,000 demonstration pages on their Web site, and the samples show that the sorting process is pretty acute... Because the software assesses the histories of Wikipedia posters without actually fact-checking, it won't necessarily direct people to Wikipedia's best, most academically rigorous articles. But the program might be a useful tool for professors who want their students to examine closely how Wikipedia works rather than take it as gospel. --Brock Read"

Live TLT Class Schedule Calendar with Feed Up!

Happy summer to you all!
As we IT folk never sleep, I have setup whatI hope will be a more flexible and accessible version of the upcoming Faculty Technology (TLT) Classes Schedule

If you use RSS readers at all, you can click the "RSS" image here to get the live feed for the calendar:

Get in some classes this summer or before the quarter starts :)
-Mike

Website for Dee Fink's Book

Here is a good resource for instructional design info:
http://www.ou.edu/pii/significant/

Learning Theories Resource

Here is a good resource for brief introductions to various learning theories:
http://www.funderstanding.com/about_learning.cfm