Creative Commons: Every Educator Needs to Know

How much do you know about the Creative Commons? The following presentation created by Rodd Lucier is an excellent resource on this topic.

R2D2: A Model for Technology Integration

When talking about web technology and information in the digital age, people may have different responses. For educators, one of our responses is what we should do with all the overwhelming information. In his book, Empowering Online Learning, Professor Curt Bonk introduced a model that can help educators to integrate technology into teaching: R2D2. The R2D2 model refers to Ready, Reflect, Display, and Do.

The phase one activity of reading refers to reading, researching and listening to the web resources such as blogs, wikis, online articles and e-books. The phase two activity of reflecting refers to writing, comparing, contracting, or communicating with experts in the field about the concepts or ideas students read in the first phase. This phase is to enhance understanding and foster critical thinking skills. The third phase of displaying refers to the visual content such as timelines, animations, flow charts, and videos. The visual content, free from online or created by the instructor or students, will help students learn the concepts or theories in the class. The last phase of doing indicates that students can solve problems or simulations by doing such as in the Second Life or creating such as a blog, a wiki, or a podcast. Learning by doing provides students an opportunity to try and practice what they have learned in the class.

This model has addressed different learning styles of the students. It is a practical framework that you may want to try when you design the learning activities in your teaching.

Jing + Twitter = Magic

If you're a Jing user, you may have noticed that Jing had an update last week! All Jing users, both free and Pro users, now have the ability to post your Jing captures and screencasts straight to Twitter!

You can find more details at http://jingproject.com/twitter/, including a screencast showing the new feature in action.

My Top 5 Videos Related to Teaching and Learning

Last night one of my friends working as an instructional designer in another state called me, and shared her frustration in working with her clients.

Through our conversation, I tried to look at her cases in a positive way, which is my style. I shared my two points with her: it is not easy for us to inspire mindset change but we might use media created by others; and it is expensive to create quality online learning but we can try rapid online learning through existing online resources.

Lots of online education literature indicates that professors are content experts but may not know much about instructional design. What are the differences between today’s learners and learners a decade ago? What is the impact of Web 2.0 on teaching and learning? What changes do we as educators need to make to meet the needs of the digital learners in the 21st century?

In our course design and teaching, we really don’t have to create everything from scratch. Some good resources such as YouTube videos and TED talks can be used in our course design and teaching. This will spice up our teaching and also save time for course production.
Below are my top videos related to teaching and learning. I’ve shared with you in this blog or my students in the class. It’s five videos all educators should watch.

The Machine Is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch
A Vision of Students Today by Michael Wesch
Five Minute University by Father Guido Sarducci
Did you know? 3.0 by Karl Fisch
Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Ken Robinson