Second Life and Education

Second Life has become one of the newest tools for educators to use.  With Second Life educators can design curriculum in a 3D environment for their students to attend.  Even going so far as to purchase virtual land and build their own structures or classrooms that they can use to teach in.

Second Life can offer a different online learning experience then just using something such as Wimba or iChat.  Educators can incorporate real time images and sound files and can even invite other professionals in the field to be a guest speaker and give a lecture to the class in an online environment.

Also with Second Life members can form or join communities where they can share information with other members of that community.  By joining a community a student or instruction will have a wealth of access that might otherwise be unavailable.

With Second Life, like many other online tools, there are some pitfalls educators and students need to be aware of when using the program.  When you’re using Second Life it’s very easy to get distracted.  One of the best ways to describe Second Life is to say that it’s a 3D version of the internet.  When using the program it’s best to know exactly what you want to do or research before opening the program.  Also the program itself is a bit cumbersome and has steep learning curve.  Lastly it’s also very processor intensive on your computer, this can cause items to display slowly or create graphical errors.  However if you can overcome these drawbacks then Second Life has many uses in education.

Here are some links about Second Life and education.

SLED Blog

This is the Second Life in education blog.  This blog contains information on how Second Life can be used in education along with announcements of up coming events that are taking place relating to education.

Second Life in Education Wiki

This wiki type sight is a great place to start when researching how Second Life is being used in education along with current events that are happening.

Second Life and Education

Another good website that briefly goes over what Second Life is and how it’s being used for education.  This website also has direct links to schools and educational institutions and how they are using them.

Real Life Education In Second Life

Here is a link to the group that I joined in Second Life.

Second Life In Education
Interesting video on how a doctoral candidate from the University of Indiana uses Second Life in her classrooms.

Education and Podcasting

Podcasting is fast becoming one of the best ways to get information to students, especially those students that are taking online classes.  Before I get into podcasting and education for this weeks blog I would like to give the definition of what a podcast is.  PC Magazine defines podcasting as “An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player. Although many podcasts are played in a regular computer, the original idea was to listen on a portable device; hence, the "pod" name from "iPod." Although podcasts are mostly verbal, they may contain music, images and video.” 

There are many ways podcasts can be used in an educational setting.  The major one is giving lessons via podcasting.  For example; educators could record themselves speaking (with video being optional) the lesson plans then allow the students to download that plan.  The students would then have access to that full lesson plan have the ability to listen to it whenever they want.  For the class I teach we are currently writing new lesson plans and curriculum.  While we’re not giving entire lesson plans with podcasts we are offering supplemental information that students can use for their projects.

Students can also get involved with podcasting and their work.  If a student had to give a multi-media presentation on a project podcasting would be a great way to do it.  By using a podcast students can incorporate both audio and visual aspects of their work into their presentation, even if they have other movie or Flash files.

In addition to what you can use podcasting for, there are also other benefits to doing it.  For starters it’s easy to create.  Most of the software required to create a podcast already comes installed on the computer.  While it may not necessarily be top of the line software it can still be used to create high quality podcasts and video.  Since this software also comes installed on the computer it’s also cheap, costing only the price of the computer.

Below are some helpful links for podcasting and education.

Podcasting

This article gives a lot of basic information on podcasting and how it can be used in education.  If you’re new to both podcasting and how it can be implemented this is a good place to start.

Why Every School Should Be Podcasting

Another article on the benefits of podcasting and education.  Gives a few examples of how podcasting is being used in education but mostly discusses the benefits of doing it.

Apple Educators Section

This is the Apple educator’s section online.  This website contains great examples of educator created content and how you can make a professional looking podcast with the software that you have on your Macintosh.

Podcasting In Education

More examples of how podcasting is being used in schools from around the country.

Podcasting In Education

This PDF documents further addresses some of the benefits of using as well as some of the technical issues such as movie length and quality.

Defintion of Podcast

Excellent definition of what a podcast is from PC Magazine.

RSS and Education

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds can be an effective teaching tool if used properly.  With RSS feeds you can stream information on your website and have students sign up and receive them in their browser.  Listed below are some ways RSS feeds are currently being used for education.

Updates: Much like Twitter RSS can help teachers keep students updated on when projects are due or let them know of information that might help them with their assignments can use feeds.  Students can use it for their group projects to let their group members know when they’ve completed a portion of the project or post information that might be helpful.

School News:  The school can have a general RSS feed about upcoming events or important information that needs to reach their students.  This could be any type of information such as special guest speakers that will be coming to the school or school closings due to weather.

Search Feeds and Monitoring:  With an RSS feed a student can create a search feed and then monitor that feed for new information.  For example, if a student was doing a research paper on the Iraq war then they could create a search feed to search for information on the war and monitor it for any new information that happens.

There are other ways that an RSS feed can be used in an education setting, though not directly related to the classroom.

Scholarships:  Students can subscribe to an RSS feed about scholarship and grant information to help them receive funding to get through college.

Job Searching:  Students can also find RSS feeds about job related to their current field of study.

Listed below are several websites about RSS feeds and their uses in education.

RSS Specifications: Education

This website lists many different ways in which an RSS feed can be used in an education settings.  It has examples of classroom RSS feeds and non-classroom feeds.

Educational Uses For RSS Feeds

This website gives a very brief description of what an RSS feed is.  It also covers how an RSS feed can be used on collaborative projects and covers administrative uses of an RSS feed for a school.

RSS Feeds in Education?

This article discusses how an RSS feed can be tied into other applications such as Moodle or Netvibes to create a very specific RSS search feed.

RSS: A Quick Start Guide for Educators

This PDF file covers information such as what an RSS feed, how to set one up, how to find and add new feeds, and various ways to use it in the classroom.  Also contains many useful resources for RSS feeds directly related to educators.

Newspapers Offer Education RSS Feeds

This website offers many links to RSS feeds that have been sponsored by newspapers from around the United States.  While they aren’t necessarily RSS feeds being used in a teacher/student setting they do offer a wealth of information to educators on current events in education.

Social Bookmarking In Education

Social bookmarking is a new trend in education that is starting to take hold in today’s classrooms.  Social bookmarking is saving essentially saving your bookmarks in a public place for other users to access.  A person could then search “tag” those links with keywords relating to the link so other users can easily search for them.

In a classroom setting this can have enormous benefits.  For example:  An instructor could design a lesson plan that includes internet research.  Then they could post a number of links on the subject to a site such as http://delicious.com/ and direct their students there, thus giving their students a repository of information that they have available.  Taking that a step further, students could then be required to find more links outside of what the instructor has provided them with to add to the social bookmarking list.  This would provide an ever-growing amount of information that both the instructor and the students have available to them.

There can be some drawbacks with a service like this however.  First is the verification that the links actually work.  While most social networking sites do verify that links are correct and functioning, they don’t do it on a daily basis.  If a link has gone down or become outdated there is still a chance that it will be posted on the site.  If you’re an educator this can look bad on you since you’re responsible for the content in your class.  Another drawback is verifying that the link is relevant to the topic.  Many tags for a link can overlap and it would be up the instructor to make sure that a link is relevant to the topic.

Social Bookmarking in Education

This is a good blog about social bookmarking and education.  It discusses the two biggest social bookmarking sites, FURL which has become Diigo and delicious.  Also contains information on two targets types of social bookmarking sites, Flickr, and CiteuLike.

'Social Bookmarking' Site for Higher Education Makes Debut

Excellent article about a new social bookmarking site that is going to cater to students and educators called Brainify.com.  This website is restricted to people with a .edu email address so as to keep it confined to the realm of academia.  Other features such as Blackboard are also going to be incorporated into this site.

Social Bookmarking

This website contains a video tutorial on what social bookmarking along with a video tutorial of Diigo.  Gives examples of other peoples social bookmarking pages along with links to other social bookmarking websites.

7 Things You Need To Know About Social Bookmarking

This PDF discusses the basics of what you need to know about social bookmarking.  It covers what it is, how it can be used in education, and what some of its pitfalls are.  This is a very useful source of information if you’re unfamiliar with the concept of social networking.

Social Bookmarking In Education (different from the first one)

Another article that goes over how social bookmarking can be used in education.  Focuses on some of the functions and how they apply directly to education along with links to other social networking services.

Twitter In Education

Twitter has become one of the fastest growing applications on the web, its popularity is the same as Facebook and instant messaging.  But how can it be used in an education setting?

 One of the benefits of Twitter is that it can be used to reach a multitude of people all at once.  For an educator this is a great tool to help their students keep track of when projects and assignments are due.   As a matter of fact that’s what we use it for in the class that I teach.  Every Wednesday morning I send out a “tweet” to my classes letting them know what is due and when and encouraging them to contact me should they have any questions on their projects or assignments.

 As a peer-to-peer tool Twitter can also be used as a great collaboration tool.  It can be used to keep in contact and organize meeting times with other group members should they have a group projects.  They can also use it to ask questions from each other should be it a quick question that requires a short answer.  Setting up a group Twitter in some ways is also easier then setting up a group IM.

 While there are other educational uses of Twitter it does have its drawbacks.  The 140 character limit makes it difficult to give an in-depth answer to a question should one be required.  While I do use to in my class I would prefer a student to contact me via e-mail, IM, or phone should they have a question.   Some “tweets” may also be taken the wrong way.  If a person was making a joke the other group members may not realize that and become angry over it.  To be fair to Twitter though this is a problem that is inherent with all forms of electronic communication.  Lastly an educator needs to make sure that Twitter is being used properly.   Students that have access to it in a classroom may be using to hold conversation with their friends and not paying attention to the teacher.

Twitter Tweets for Higher Education

This article discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks of using Twitter for education.   It contains additional links to other articles about Twitter and education and links to an interesting article on how libraries are using Twitter.

Twitter for Academia

Another great article on how Twitter can be used in education.  Has a great idea on how to use it as writing assignment, whereby one student starts a story and other students continue it.  The 140 character limit is a great way to do a writing assignment like this.  One thing I did like about this article is the authors concern that Twitter is just another form of “sound bite communication” and that the character limit limits nuanced communication.

Potential Uses of Twitter in an Educational Source

This article discusses more ways in which Twitter can be used in education.  The one that caught my attention was setting up a course group to keep in contact with your students.

Can We Use Twitter For Educational Activities

This article discusses how a Twitoshphere can be used in education by offering an example of how they applied to the Romanian Twitosphere.  Also goes over the benefits and drawbacks that I discussed in my opening statement.  As a side note I was also introduced to scribd.com which looks to be a website where books and papers can be shared, but that’s a different post for another time…

Social Survey: Twitter for Higher Ed Marketing

I included this article not necessarily for the info on how Twitter can be applied to education but for the statement “Some ideas have been thrown around about using Twitter for Higher Education marketing, but the reality is Twitter is a toy for internet techies to communicate. The rest of the world isn’t really using this resource yet.”  I noticed that this article is over a year old and in that time Twitter has grown to a very large and accepted form of communication.

Blogging and Education

 

For better or for worse, blogging is becoming another tool for education in today’s classrooms.  Blogging is allowing students from all around the world to connect in ways that were previously unavailable and is being used as both a communication and a collaboration tool.   A teacher that uses a blog to convey information now has the ability to reach a student or students literally anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection.  In addition to the benefits of the teacher/student relationship there are also other benefits that are gained in the student/student relationship.  Students using a blog can use it to share ideas and thoughts, review their peer’s work and offer their own insight.

 

For all of its benefits blogging is not without its pitfalls.  First off is making sure that the information that’s being displayed on someone’s blog, or a response from someone to your blog, is as accurate as possible.  Proper referencing of materials is just as important as accurate information otherwise one could be accused of plagiarism.   One other thing to be aware with your blog is cyber vandalism or bullying.  It can be very easy for someone to go onto your blog and post inappropriate remarks or purposefully post inaccurate information.

 

Listed below are some articles and links on how blogs can be used in education.

 

Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher education sector

This article discusses the use of blogging in a higher education setting such as a college or university.   While it is a little outdated being from 2004 it is interesting to read about the first weblog Harvard University had for its law program.  This article also contains a sample questionnaire that the BGSB issued for an MBA blog along with the results of that questionnaire.  One of the more interesting aspects is that it addresses the concept of “lurking”, that is reading a blog but actively participating in it, and how some people feel that lurking is a legitimate form of participation.

 

Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education

This web article discusses how blogging has helped the medical field of education.  While it does focus on medicine the concepts are still very much the same.  This article addresses not only the benefits of being connected with their peers and instructors but also the difficulties in maintaining an accurate and useful blog.

 

The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities

This PDF documents address what a blog is, what the benefits of an educational blog are, and the uses of an educational blog.  It also contains questions an educator could as their students as to what types of electronic communication they currently use and how they feel they can incorporate a blog into their learning experience.

 

Blogging For Enhanced Teaching and Learning

The last PDF article in this list discusses whether a blog is just a fad or does it have a higher purpose.  It also contains examples as to how students were using blogs as a communication and collaboration tool on their projects and how, over time, the students writing styles improved thanks to the active use of a blog.

Examples of Blogs in Education

This website contains many examples of educational blogs and how some people are using them.  It has direct links to educational blogs and free blogging websites that people can use.