Friday, January 29, 2010

How to Engage Each of Your Students (Small Classes to Large Classes)

I teach at a mid-sized, public institution in Texas and my class sizes range from 22 students to 36 students in a course section. Today, I discovered a wonderful article pertaining to class size and how to reach all students in a larger (50+) class. The author contributed wonderful ideas that will help any teacher/professor accomplish the goal of  engaging every student in your classroom! Enjoy!


http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/encouraging-student-participation-in-large-classes/

Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Top 50 Educators to Follow on Twitter in 2010!

DistanceEducation.org just published a list of the top 50 educators to follow on twitter. This list would be helpful for anyone who is seeking to improve their knowledge of K-12 and higher education in the field of distance learning. Check it out!

The Top 50 Educators on Twitter to Follow in 2010

Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Monday, January 25, 2010

Try This Website! - ASCD Launches Teacher Social Network (K-12 Teachers)

Calling all K-12 teachers! If you enjoy social networking websites, here is the social network for you! The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development just launched their new social networking website for teachers. I imagine that this website will foster idea sharing and informal support groups that span across the United States!


What do you think about this new website?


Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Friday, January 22, 2010

E-Textbooks in College Courses: Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Article from the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus: Leading E-Textbook Seller Reports 400 Percent Sales Increase in 2009 - http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Leading-E-Textbook-Seller/20566/

I really like the e-textbook concept in undergraduate courses. This technology was not present when I was an undergraduate, but I think that today's undergraduate student would really benefit from the technology. I promote the e-textbooks because they would save the students money (compared to an actual tangible textbook) and the students would not have to carry all of their textbooks across campus. E-textbooks also provide the students with interactive features that may help their learning process. I teach at a rural, 4-year, public university and my students seem to be resistant to e-textbooks, because many of them do not have a laptop computer to view the e-textbook. In addition, most undergraduate students look forward to selling their books back to the bookstores at the end of the semester and e-textbooks do not give them this option.

What is your opinion of e-textbooks? 

Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Communication Tech. (Use This Tool!): Screencast-O-Matic

Use Screencast-O-Matic.com to create "how to" videos and power point presentations for online classes. This website has the EASIEST online screencast software that I have ever used for my syllabus overview for online classes. It provides an easy upload to youtube.com (10 min. or less) and the site even provides its users with a place to host their 15 minute presentations. The volume is great and I uploaded the video to my youtube account. This provided me with a seamless integration into my blackboard course.

Here's one of the videos from the site (another professor):



This browser-based tool would be great for professors who teach online classes and librarians who need to teach others how to conduct research using the databases. Just an idea!

Have a great week!

Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Monday, January 11, 2010

Eduroam: Access to University A's wireless network, while using University B's username and password

Recently, Louisiana State University (LSU) students, faculty, and staff gained access to technology that enables them to use the wireless network while visiting several other universities. This technology, Eduroam, is a service dedicated worldwide roaming access for international research and education communities.

My perspective: I think this is a great
Publish Post
move for LSU and I wish that my university (and other universities in Texas) would offer the same service. When I travel to other parts of Texas and to several Louisiana cities, I have to do without access to the internet or I have to request guest access to the university wireless network. I think this move would definitely benefit the research community.

For more information, access - http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2010/01/04/Louisiana-State-Joins-Eduroam-Network.aspx.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Surviving Teaching Online Courses

Are you teaching a class online? Are you pulling your hair out? Well, this article offers seven strategies for professors who teach online, "Surviving Teaching Online Courses".

Millennial Professor/Jennifer T. Edwards

Saturday, January 9, 2010

This Blog's New Focus: COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Hello readers! 

Great news! From this point forward, this blog will focus on service, teaching, and research on COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN HIGHER EDUCATION from a millennial professor's perspective. This topic will be addressed by focuses on the following: social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and human interaction, privacy and online communication, instructional communication, distance education, diversity, leadership, service learning, volunteerism, educational technology, and SOTL.


Give me some feedback on the change! There will be frequent posts!


Remember to subscribe to the blog!

Sincerely,


Millennial Professor

Monday, January 4, 2010

Using Tweets in Scholarly Research


In the future, I plan to use twitter in my research endeavors. Since most journals are requiring authors to use the American Psychological Association 6th edition, I had to research the new guidelines for electronic resources.

The Buzz, a School Library Journal, highlights several guidelines for citing Twitter and Facebook in scholarly articles. The Buzz features a quote from Chelsea Lee (bit.ly/jEeAm), a senior manuscript editor of APA Journals. Lee states, "We don't know if these status update pages will still be here in a year, or 5, or 20 years. So if you are writing for publication, it may be prudent to self-archive any social media updates you include in your articles."

Remember that users' accounts can be locked or deleted and all of their tweets will be inaccessible. So, if you plan to use twitter, please save the tweets in PDF format.

Millennial Professor

Friday, January 1, 2010

Twitter: It's What's for Dinner (It's the New Beef!)


Professor Rankin, a History Professor from the University of Texas at Dallas, started using twitter in her classroom last semester. This is a video she created from her experiences:



This year, I plan to write several scholarly articles and blog posts about twitter and its impact in the secondary and post-secondary environments. Today is the first day of the year and I am compiling ideas from several articles on the subject.

If you have any ideas on how to utilize twitter in the classroom environment, please let me know! Send me ideas! I will publish them on the blog! I am motivated for 2010!

Sincerely,

Millennial Professor