Enhancing Education with Technology

links for provoking thought on and providing tools for using technology to support our educational goals

The links below relate to:

Glossaries and Dictionaries
Learning Styles and Learning Theory
Good Teaching Practices
Online Communities -- Asynchronous Learning Networks
Accessibility Issues
Intellectual Property
Copyright
Academic Honesty
Views and Visions
WebCT Tutorials
Tutorials on Other Tools
Some Seach Tools
Web Pages Not Fitting the Above Catagories

Glossaries and Dictionaries

The whatis site

provides definitions for a variety of information technology words.

The Jargon Dictionary

HTML-ized version of the hacker slang dictionary offering links to

individual words (for speed) and
words grouped by letter (for serendipity).

The Hacker's Dictionary is witty, authoritative, and as comprehensive as you can expect any single source to be. Alas, it cannot stop the defamation of the term "hacker".

The Netdictionary

from Albion.com. Each initial letter gets its own Web page.

Distance Education Glossary

from the College of Engineering at the University of Idaho. All terms are on one Web page.

Square One Technology-FAQ

from the Answer Guy. All terms are on one Web page.

Learning Styles and Learning Theory

Collections of teaching and learning strategies can be found at

Ten theories on how to design instruction

are: Mastery Learning, Cooperative Learning, Accelerated Learning, Thematic Instruction, Whole-Brain Teaching, Service Learning, Cognitive Coaching, School-to-Work Transition, Instructional Technology, and Youth Apprenticeship.

Twelve theories on how people learn

are: Constructivism, Behaviorism, Piaget's Developmental Theory, Neuroscience, Brain-Based Learning, Learning Styles, Multiple Intelligences, Right Brain/Left Brain Thinking, Communities of Practice, Control Theory, Observational Learning, and Vygotsky and Social Cognition.

Learnativity

concerns adult learning, productivity,creativity, and activity.

Links to Theory and Philosophy in Education, Technology, and Culture

can be found at the University of Colorado at Denver School of Education Website.

Some online inventories of learning styles are

The North Carolina State Index (Felder-Soloman Model)

Diablo Valley College Learning Style Survey

Barsch/Haynie Learning Style Inventory from Honolulu Community College

Keirsey Temperament Sorter II

Good Teaching Practices

Chickering & Gamson's Seven Principles of Good Teaching Practices are discussed

by James King at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
byJ P Murray in ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Reports
by Chickering and Ehrmann -- how the Seven Principles might be implemented
and at many other sites.

K Patricia Cross

at the University of Califoria, Berkeley, spoke at a service academy about what we might do to improve teaching.

Lawrence Ragan set forth some

guiding principles and practices for the design and development of distance education.

The award-winning Flashlight Program

helps institutions study and improve educational uses of technology while gaining control over the time, effort and money.

Thomas Anthony Angelo has, in pdf format, a

teacher's dozen (really 14) general, research-based principles for improving higher learning. A simple listing of the 14 principles, in ordinary html format, can be found, along with many other summaries, at the Campus Writing Program Library at Indiana University.

Education 173 Online has a lecture on

teaching with principles of learning..

Online Communities -- Asynchronous Learning Networks

Carol Wilson: discusses concerns of instructors delivering distance learning via the WWW.
Zane Berge discusses: barriers to online teaching in post-secondary institutions.
Solloway and Harris discuss: negotiating students' needs and desires in cyberspace.
At the 1996 Harvard Conference on the Internet and Society: Peter Kollock discusseddesign principles for online communities.
The paper titled: "Asynchronous Learning Networks: A Sloan Foundation Perspective" is based on a chapter from The Learning Revolution.
David Petergrass discusses: problem based learning -- involving small student discussion groups rather than lectures.

Accessibility Issues

The Web Accessibility Inititive: has somequick tips for designing accessable Web pages -- these summarize the main points of the W3C document.
There are steps that we should take: to make our Web pages accessable in any browser.

Intellectual Property

The W3C: has a collection of drafts, white-papers, and presentations of intellectual property rights.
The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: offers interested laypeople -- as well as lawyers, legal scholars, judges, and lawmakers -- its course "Intellectual Property in Cyberspace 2000" conducted by Professor William Fisher.

Copyright

The Stanford University Libraries: have guidelines on fair use and copyright.
The allocation of copyright ownership: between faculty and their sponsering institutions is discussed by Dan Burk in CAUSE/EFFECT.

Academic Honesty

The University of Washington: has a well thought out and well presented policy on cheating and plagiarism.
The University of California, Berkeley,: has tips for preventing academic dishonesty.

Views and Visions

One Size Doesn't Fit All

Subtitile: Designing Scaleable, Client-Centered Support for Technology in Teaching. The UWired project at the University of Washington was started in 1994. In this paper, they share some of what they've learned and give some advice --

The "vision thing" is critical.
Think strategically.
Accept uncertainty; embrace experimentation.
Collaborate. Often.

Links Relating to Distance Education at Algonquin

The Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology brings us several links relating to using technology in education.

Examples from the University of Washington

Catalyst Profiles are a response to educators who often tell us that they do not have a good idea of how their peers are using technology in creative, effective ways. These profiles:

Highlight campus educators and their use of technology.
Focus on the way educators use technology to advance their instructional goals.
Discuss the pros and cons of educators' experiences introducing technology in teaching.

The CAUSE/EFFECT journal

is available online. It is published by EDUCAUSE whose mission is to help shape and enable transformational change in higher education through the introduction, use, and management of information

Some Experiences at Other Universities

Readers of CAUSE/EFFECT journal respond to the following question and request: Has your central IT organization established a partnership with your institution's Faculty Development/Excellence program to support the development of skills related to using technology in teaching and learning? Please describe briefly your collaborative activities and provide URLs for any related Web sites or documents.

'Follow the Money'’ and Other Unsolicited Advice for CIOs

"CIO" = "Chief Information Officer". In this article from CAUSE/EFFECT journal an Associate Provost at the University of Chicago gives advice to other senior administrators.

The author of this Web page (Furman Smith)

would like to give some personal views and visions.

WebCT Tutorials

Getting Started with My WebCT 2.0

Tutorials on Other Tools

Some Seach Tools

Yahoo: is a classic search engine.
Ask Jeeves for Kids: is a wonderful resource aimed at kids (and avoids the pornography that often finds its way into search results). The child enters either a question or a seach string. (The same question-scheme is used in the version which does not worry about protecting us.)
Dogpile: is a metasearch engine -- it submits your request to ten search engines.
ixquick: is another metaseach engine.
Google: is another search engine which is popular in the academic community.
A list of search engines: can be useful when your topic is obscure.

Web Pages Not Fitting the Above Catagories

The WebCT Communities Page

has links to some nice places.

The Faculty Development Consortium

The FDC is composed of eleven Alabama universities and colleges, including Auburn University, Birmingham-Southern College, Faulkner University, Huntingdon College, Judson College, University of Montevallo,John Patterson State Technical College, Spring Hill College, Stillman College,Talladega College, and Tuskegee University.

The WebCT e-Learning Hub

has many offerings. It includes a library which in turn includes the MakeQuiz program for constructing multiple choice questions for WebCT using Microsoft Word.

URLs for "Introduction to Instruction on the WWW"

from the Faculty Development Consortium. There are links to courses on the Web and examples of other information resources on the Web.

The World Lecture Hall

contains links to pages created by faculty worldwide who are using the Web to deliver class materials.

Courses on the Web

Links collected by Mark Dalton. Most of the courses are in the sciences.

Lecturesonline

is a site for downloading PowerPoint lectures, demonstrations, figures, html pages, etc.

WritingTree

is a place to publish and copyright your writing, receive feedback from readers, and comment on the writing of others.

The D-Lib Forum

supports the community of researchers and developers working to create and apply the technologies leading to the global digital library. Its goal is to support and facilitate collaborative activities, information exchange, and communications of this community. Click on the picture to enjoy the current issue and you might find yourself spending some time browsing the back issues too.

A WikiWikiWeb

is a serious tool with a funny name. Each of the web of pages can be editied by anyone. (That's right!) The oldest Wiki is "an incomplete and *informally* written history of programming ideas". So if you are reading a page and want to add a sentence or paragraph or link, you just do. (I am amazed that in this age of crackers and viruses, this wonder repository doesn't just get trashed.)

If you are a citizen of Alabama (Southern USA),

the Alabama Virtual Library is a wealth of resources which is available. Access to the AVL is by password only but a few minutes at any Alabamaian's local public will yield a card with their password. (This card is just as free as any other public library card; that is, it has already been paid for.) This password allows access to many subscription based services. Services at the time of this writing are:

     African-American History & Culture 
     Alabama Libraries 
     Career & Technical Education 

     EBSCOhost Web 
     Electric Library (General) 
     Electric Library (K-12) 

     Electric Library (K-6) 
     Encyclopedia Americana 
     Encyclopedia Britannica 

     Ethnic NewsWatch (via EBSCO) 
     FirstSearch by OCLC 
     Gale Literary Resources 

     Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia 
     HealthSource Plus 
     JuniorQuest
                                              
     KidsQuest 
     New Book of Knowledge 
     Poemfinder 

     ProQuest Gold Full Text 
     ProQuest PA Research II 
     Searchasaurus 

     SIRS Discoverer 
     SIRS Knowledge Source

Some of the Auburn University Montgomery courses using WebCT

( version 3.1 and version 2.0) have the little key icon (

) which shows that you can share the WebCT site simply by clicking on the icon and following the instructions. Feel free to take a look at some of our work -- that's why we left the keys around. (If you see "Wb 1" and "Wb 2", I have no idea where they came from or what they refer to. When I tested to see if anyone could come into one of my WebCT sites, I just typed some junk in those fields and I got in.)

This page was originated from the interests and suggestions of AUM Faculty Development Institute participants and has enhanced by WebCT's Train the Trainer Program. In particular, some of the sections above have shameless 'borrowed' from the structure of the Train the Trainer Online site (Spring 2001 version). In the above links, the author has felt free to copy and paste descriptions from the sites themselves. Furman Smith was the instigator of the page and updates it from time to time. Keep those suggestions for links comming to fdi@sciences.aum.edu.