Saturday, September 25, 2010

What I've Learned About Twitter

As one of the assignments for Online Course Design, I and my classmates are required to use Twitter. This week the Tweme (theme) is synchronous learning or simple augmented reality.

I've been doing some research on synchronous learning tools and found two excellent articles written by Stefan Hrastinski. I decided to see if he has a Twitter presence. Indeed he does, except he tweets in his native language: Swedish. While looking at Twitter tools, I discovered a built-in translator: key combo ALT+enter+O

It works! Now I can read his tweets!!

Another thing--did you know there is a service that ranks Twitter users' reputations? Take a look at Trst.me

Monday, September 13, 2010

What Google Doesn't Do

Lately I've been trying a new approach to library instruction for the ENL111 classes:
What are the advantages of using library resources over using Google?

I focus on four things:

1. Finding scholarly articles
2. Browsing subject/topics for research ideas
3. Ordering free full text through interlibrary loan service
4. Formatting citations in APA/MLA

I break the group of 20 or so students into groups of about 4 each and assign the groups different databases and instruct them to find these features in their assigned database. They then report their findings to the entire group from their computer using the NetOp feature installed on all the computers in the classroom. Most students hate getting up in front of the group and this enables them to do it from their own desktop. While they are presenting, I may point out other features such as this database will read articles to you...This one includes lots of instructional graphics...etc.

This is completed within our 50 minute time frame. I have yet to figure out how to assess its success...