Cool thing I learned today....

... we've moved! Come follow us on our new blog, Cool Thing I Learned Today...

The pros and cons of PowerPoint

Many faculty use PowerPoint to deliver presentations... and just as many in the business world have turned a critical eye on the use of PowerPoint, the education community is doing the same.

PowerPoint is just a tool that can help you organize and deliver your presentation, and help your audience focus on your key ideas. PowerPoint can also be abused... or even become the focus of the lecture -- think of those flashy presentations with text flying in from all corners, calling attention to the presentation so that you stop paying attention to the speaker!

Some of these articles may give you some ideas about ways to use PowerPoint to serve teaching and learning -- not the other ways around.

• PowerPoint is evil
  
  
• Stop your presentation before it kills again!
  
  
• Five rules for better PowerPoint presentations
  
  
• Learning to Love PowerPoint
  

More than music to their ears!

We all see students walking around campus, rocking out to their music players. :) Now, thanks to software like iTunes and Tegrity, students can also download your lectures and listen to them.


What's an RSS Podcast Feed?
We're glad you asked! First, let's talk about what a "podcast" is. A podcast is an audio (or video) broadcast that is available over the internet -- like a radio or tv show. Podcasts are usually created and published on some regular (or irregular) basis... so rather than force people to constantly check a website to see if there is new content available, the podcast publisher can create a "feed" to alert people.

If you are recording your classes with Tegrity, your classes are available for students to download as "podcasts" -- without you having to do anything! You and your students can follow these directions to subscribe to your class and download the recordings.

Listeners will need:

• an MP3 player (like an iPod or other brand like Sony or Dell)


• MP3 software (iTunes for the iPod, or something like Juice)


• the "RSS Podcast Feed" for your class (see directions below to get the right link -- there is one link for iTunes and another link for all other software

How to download classes to an iPod MP3 player
Directions for iTunes

1. Go to the Blackboard website for your class
   
2. Click the Tegrity link
   
3. At the bottom of the screen, right-click on the icon "iTunes PODCAST" and select Copy link location
   
4. Start iTunes
   
5. From the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to podcast
   
6. Right-click and select Paste to paste in the iTunes podcast link from the Blackboard website. It will look something like this:
   http://131.118.128.46/TegrityUtils/getCourseRss.asp?courseId=TrainingandDevelopment&userId=abyrnes&mediaType=AudioMp3
   
7. Click OK.
   

Directions for all other MP3 players that use other software, like Juice

1. Go to the Blackboard website for your class
   
2. Click the Tegrity link
   
3. At the bottom of the screen, right-click on the icon "RSS PODCAST" and select Copy link location
   
4. Start Juice or other MP3 software
   
5. From the Tools menu, select Add a feed
   
6. Right-click and select Paste to paste in the RSS Podcast link from the Blackboard website. It will look something like this:
   itpc://131.118.128.46/TegrityUtils/getCourseRss.asp?courseId=TrainingandDevelopment&userId=abyrnes&mediaType=AudioMp3
   
7. Click Save.
   

Looking for course materials to use for your class?

If you are looking for course materials that you can use in your class, two places to check out are:

• World Lecture Hall, at University of Texas
  
• OpenCourseWare, at MIT
  

The World Lecture Hall has links to online course materials in virtually every discipline, from universities around the world. You can browse by area, or search to find specific topics. For example, there are about 10 sites listed for Nursing.


OpenCourseWare is an initiative at MIT to make its classes available to anyone who wants to use them for learning. A few other institutions have also decided to make (some of ) their class materials available:

• Johns Hopkins school of Public Health
  
• Tufts University
  
• Utah State University
  

Welcome to the Coppin Teaching and Learning with Technology blog!

Welcome! Looking for some interesting info about Teaching and Learning with Technology ? You've come to the right place!

We'll try to point you in some interesting directions, tell you about emerging technologies that we are exploring, and share some random musings with you.