Berkeley on iTunes

This is exciting and amazing! iTunes Berkeley. While other universities have partnered with Apple to shelve their media course content, it seems like Berkeley is the first to make these available to a wider, global audience. To make course lectures available to the world seems to tip the balance of accessible education just a bit. And what will it do to attendance? I listened to one Computer Science course lecture in which the instructor collected attendance cards for extra credit. Might just be enough to keep students coming. Then again, maybe they don't need to be there... maybe there is something more important they could be doing. In the same lecture, the instructor points out that students have been skipping class since the Middle Ages and probably before. He goes on to work on redefining the lecture into a more socratic dialog. Makes me want to go to Berkeley!

search tools

Ever wish your search tools were more interesting? Here are a couple of recent finds that you might like.

• www.ujiko.com
• www.kartoo.com
  

eyespot

Eyespot is another potentially useful edu tool. Still in beta, and will likely mature with time. The concept of sharing and remixing short video clips and audio tracks for quick stories is intriguing, but perhaps I am easily intrigued. This example is fairly abstract. This was pieced together from other user clips uploaded to eyespot.

BubbleShare

This seems like a useful tool for sharing photos and creating quick tutorials. Check out their website: BubbleShare. Play the slideshow or click on the image below to view the slides at actual size.

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WZ, My new Hero

Walter Zorn is my new hero. I was looking for a tool tip tool and stumbled across his work. Not only are these useful applications, but careful attention is paid to making them stable across multiple browsers. This means more of your students will easily benefit. Tool tips might be especially useful for labeling complex drawings or glossing difficult texts or even providing a small thumbnail image for vocabulary.

It might not be the easiest tool to use just now. There isn't a GUI, so if you are not comfortable working with code, it might not be for you. Or maybe it just means finding someone who is comfortable and working together.

Walter attains hero status because of the cycle he built. That is incredible!

MI requires DL

Mich. first to mandate online learning

This is timely. Just this weekend I was talking with family about the upcoming expectations for students in regards to distance/online learning. I suggested hybrids and blends are almost expected these days in higher ed. Students want access to materials and more online. The students in the room (highschool) agreed. But I also suggested that as tools become more sophisticated less seat time will likely occur. The students in the room were less sure they would benefit from this as communication would be sacrificed. Of course, I assured them that online learning is (or ought to be) very communicative... potentially more so than F2F. My wife then shared her horror story of taking on online course where she was required ("forced") to post once and reply twice to a poorly designed discussion board. This didn't help my argument much. So, it will be interesting to see how MI students react to the requirement. I sure hope MI educators are ready in terms of the pedagogy of online learning, or my wife will be joined by hordes who will never stop sharing their less than positive online learning experiences.