Educause
Educause
is nonprofit organization that deals with the incorporation of technology into
the educational system. If anyone tries to shift from old fashion teaching
strategies to the technology era, Educause provide the chance to explore hidden
treasures of investing technology into the educational process in terms of
facilitating the education and transformation of knowledge from the educators
to students. In addition, education contributes to increase the creativity and
productivity through adopting the technology in teaching and learning.
I choose
two articles that are interesting me. The
first one is dealing with Google apps. Google Apps Education Edition is a set of complete
solution with both collaboration tools and
communication tools. Without
the use of complicated software and hardware, Google Apps work through the idea
of using a browser to log in using an email address and password. (Educause
Learning Initiative, 2008) Google Apps Education Edition provides options such
as collaborative tools, for students and teachers to edit, comment and share
documents among each other (Blau
and Caspi, 2009). Google Apps Education Edition also provides
tools to create a web page with more relevant content with relation to the
school (Educause Learning Initiative, 2008). With an own domain name added as a
feature, it would create a site that feels closer to the brand of the school as
well. Google Apps Education Edition is available free for non-profit
organizations, schools and universities as well. In addition, this application
does not require any additional hardware or software to be installed into the
schools. This provides several benefits to schools, which would be discussed in
the literature review.
The second article deals with using YouTube in educational
process by Hurt and Kunka (2005). The total free and conveniences of YouTube are opening
the experience of online video to a wide range of users. It gives for people
the opportunities for expression through videos by self-publishing, and making
content available for anyone interested in consuming it. The site further
engages users, offering them into an environment that encourages them to
communicate to new people, view and share their own opinions as be parts of the
community. Therefore, YouTube is casing a revolution among the educations with
amazement and a certain amount of enchantment. It is found that YouTube
contains hundreds of, thousands of educational video clips and becomes a
foothold in academics as well as in corporate trainings. Many organizations are beginning to realize the
power of Web audio and video to get their messages across to customers,
members, investors, and employees. This includes training classes, executive
speeches, product demonstrations, video news releases, shareholder meetings,
and coverage of corporate events. In addition, The site offers users into the
experience of viewing video and engaging with the content as commentators and
creators, activities that heighten students' visual literacy, an important
skill in today's electronic culture.
Many
educators believe that the act of creating content-in virtually any form-is a
valuable learning exercise, helping develop a deeper understanding of the
subject matter and the tools used to create that content, enriching lessons and
bringing lessons to students who are home sick, and capture the learner's
imaginations. To the extent that it facilitates such creation, it has the
potential to expose students to new insights and skills, as well as link them
to various online communities. As a social software application, it is part of
a trend among Net Generation students to replace passive learning with active
participation, where everyone has a voice, anyone can contribute, and the value
lies less in the content itself than in the networks of learners that form
around content and support one in learning goals (Educause learning initiative,
2006). Now there is a new YouTube
channel, which is called YouTube EDU, an educational hub.
Atomic Learning
The Atomic
Learning suite of products is designed to provide a comprehensive framework to
bring technology and curriculum together, through targeted professional
development and tech integration solutions including specific initiatives, such
as mobile and common core. And, data-driven research proves the use of Atomic
Learning positively impacts student achievement in math and reading. Atomic
Learning provides individuals with the skills and tools needed to succeed in an
increasingly technology-driven world.
Each Atomic Learning tutorial consists of a series of manageable
tasks explained in short one-to three-minute units. View an Atomic Learning
tutorial when you have a quick question about a program you’re using or to
master an entire application. Benefits of Atomic Learning include:
- § Tutorials about software applications and operating systems
- § Workshops on topics such as blogging, podcasting, newsletter design, presentation, and more
- § Closed captioning on thousands of tutorials
- § Self-assessment tools
Surfing with Atomic Learning Website is an interesting thing for educators.
From my personal perspective, I get many benefits when I begun to use it last
year, especially in statistical courses. It helps me to understand how IBM SPSS
works and many things about different statistical procedures.
References
Blau, I., & Caspi, A.
(2009). What type of collaboration helps? Psychological ownership, perceived
learning and outcome quality of collaboration using Google Docs. In Proceedings of the Chais conference
on instructional technologies research (pp.
48-55).
Educause Learning Initiative (2008). 7 things you should know about
Google Apps. Retrieved from: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7035.pdf
Educause Learning Initiative (2006). 7 things you should know about YouTube.
Retrieved from: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7018.pdf.
Hi, Weaam. I also used the Atomic Learning website for statistics and SPSS. It was very helpful. You included a lot of very important information in your Blog and I like the inclusion of the picture. Both of these sites are very valuable to faculty and provide a wealth of resources for the classroom. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteEducause and Atomic Learning are a couple of my favorite websites for"help" on a myriad of different things. However, I find that I am using YouTube more and more. Do you think that educators are "cheating" when sharing videos and educational content that were made by OTHER instructors and professors with their students. As a student, how would you feel if you were asked by your instructor to view contend developed by a professor at another university? Would you think your professor lazy or ?????
ReplyDelete