ENHANCING YOUR COURSES WITH TECHNOLOGY

 

FEEDBACK TOOLS

Online Polls/Surveys

 

Clickers Personal Response Systems

 

Course Management Systems

Course management systems have built-in assessment tools, such as tests and surveys.

 

 

CREATIVE TOOLS

Images

  • Adobe Photoshop
    Photoshop is digital imaging tool, helping users to edit and create images and graphics.

  • Adobe Illustrator
    Illustrator is a vector-based drawing tool, enabling users to create advanced graphics and designs.

  • Adobe Fireworks
    Fireworks is a graphics editing tool, helping users to edit images. It is similar to Photoshop and Illustrator, but particularly designed for web graphics.

 

Video

  • Windows MovieMaker
    MovieMaker is a video editing tool for Windows computers, allowing users to create videos.

  • iMovie
    iMovie is a video editing tool for Apple computers, allowing users to create videos.

 

Print Design

  • Adobe InDesign
    InDesign is layout tool, allowing users to create print media.

  • Microsoft Office Publisher
    Publisher allows you to create, personalize, and share a wide range of publications.

 

Web Design

  • Adobe Dreamweaver
    Dreamweaver is a web development tool, helping users to create web pages.

  • Adobe Flash
    Flash is a digital authoring tool, permitting users to add animation and interactivity to web pages, as well as create other features.

 

Audio

 

 

ORGANIZATIONAL TOOLS

Citation Management

 

Concept Mapping / Mind Mapping

  • FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Download)
    “FreeMind is free, mind-mapping software.”

  • Mindomo (http://www.mindomo.com/)
    “Mindomo is a versatile Web-based mind mapping tool, delivering the capabilities of desktop mind-mapping software in a Web browser - with no complex software to install or maintain.”

  • bubbl.us (http://bubbl.us)
    “Bubbl.us is a simple and free web application that lets you brainstorm online.”

  • Gliffy (http://www.gliffy.com)
    “Gliffy is an online diagramming service that helps users communicate with a combination of shapes, text, and lines.”

  • Wordle (http://wordle.net/)
    “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.”

  • Mind-Mapping Tool (http://dmc.umn.edu/objects/mindmap)
    “Use our mind-mapping tool to create a visual representation of the relationships between ideas or things they are studying for your class. There are more powerful mind-mapping tools available on the market; our tool emphasizes ease of use over robust functionality.”

 

Notetaking / Notecards

  • Flash Card Machine (http://www.flashcardmachine.com/)
    “A web application that enables users to create interactive web-based study flash cards and share them with others.”

  • NoteMesh (http://notemesh.com/)
    “NoteMesh is a free service that allows college students in the same classes to share notes with each other. It works by creating a wiki for individual classes that users can edit. Users are free to post their own lecture notes or contribute to existing lecture notes. The idea is that users in the same class can collaboratively create a definitive source for lecture notes.”

 

Social Bookmarking

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39378

Teaching Today: Social Bookmarking
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/social-bookmarking

  • Delicious (http://delicious.com/)
    “Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking. It also means that we can show you the most popular bookmarks being saved right now across many areas of interest. In addition, our search and tagging tools help you keep track of your entire bookmark collection and find tasty new bookmarks from people like you.”

  • Simpy (http://www.simpy.com/)
    “Simpy is a social bookmarking service that lets you save, tag, search and share your bookmarks, notes, groups and more.”

  • Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/)
    “Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community.”

 

RSS Feeds and Feed Readers

7 Things You Should Know About RSS
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39401

RSS: A Quick-Start Guide for Educators
http://weblogg-ed.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/RSSFAQ4.pdf

Feed Readers

  • Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/)
    Bloglines is a free online service that helps you subscribe to and manage lots of web information, such as news feeds, weblogs and audio. Bloglines tracks the information you're interested in, retrieves new stuff as it happens, and organizes everything for you on your own personal web news page.”

  • Google Reader (http://www.google.com/reader )
    “With Google Reader, you subscribe to your favorite websites and let new content come to you.”

  • Netvibes ( http://www.netvibes.com/)
    “Netvibes is a free web service that brings together your favorite media sources and online services. Everything that matters to you — blogs, news, weather, videos, photos, social networks, email and much more — is automatically updated every time you visit your page.”

  • Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/)
    “Pageflakes is your personalized homepage on the Web. Your favorite news, weather, sports, entertainment, photos, videos, music, email and much more – all on one page that you can access from anywhere. What's more, you can collaborate on your page with your friends, or publish it to the entire world.”

 

 

COLLABORATION/COMMUNICATION TOOLS

Collaborative Editing

7 Things You Should Know About Collaborative Editing
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39386

 

Blogs

7 Things You Should Know About Blogs
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39383

EdBlogger Praxis
http://educational.blogs.com/edbloggerpraxis/hs_course_blog/index.html
Examples of blog projects in high school classrooms

Blogs for Learning
http://blogsforlearning.msu.edu/
“Online resource about instructional blogging. The site provides students and instructors with information and resources about the technical and pedagogical aspects of blogging in the classroom.”

Teaching Today: Blog Basics
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/blog-basics

Blog Software:

 

Twitter (http://twitter.com/)
“Twitter is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, and part cell phone/IM tool. It is designed to let users describe what they are doing or thinking at a given moment in 140 characters or less.”

7 Things You Should Know About Twitter
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/44762

 

Wikis

7 Things You Should Know About Wikis
http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39381

Teaching Today: Wiki Basics
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/wiki-basics

Wild, Wild Wiki: Wikis in Higher Education
http://www.wildwiki.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Wiki Software:

 

Course Management Systems

 

 

INSTRUCTIONAL TOOLS

Interactive Whiteboards (SmartBoard / Sympodium)

Creatively Implementing Interactive Whiteboards
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/creatively-implementing-interactive-white-boards

 

Virtual Worlds  

 

Presentations (Slideshows)

 

Course Management Systems