Pew Research Center

As we are all putting the finishing touches on our syllabi and moodle shells for Spring 2015, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite resources for lecture materials, handouts for discussion, interactives and visualizations of data with charts and graphs. Pew Research is considered valid and reliable and I have seen it cited by The New York Times and CBS News. I always manage to find up-to-date information for my classes.

Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research.

Their many projects include:

• Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
• Pew Research Center's Journalism Project
• Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
• Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project
• Pew Research Center's Hispanic Trends Project
• Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project
• Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends

Here is an article that I think presents a good summary of the kinds of material published by the Pew Research Center - 14 striking findings from 2014.

You can also subscribe to their extensive selection of email newsletters at http://www.pewresearch.org/follow-us/.

I would like to hear from other members of the faculty about resources they find useful.
(This post was originally posted to the Audrey Cohen School for Human Services and Education Faculty Moodle Portal.)

Finding Online Videos

I  have been collecting a list of resources for locating on-line videos that can be used in class or viewed by students outside of class.  On-line films/videos can also serve as the basis of an on-line class when in-person classes have been canceled because of weather, rescheduled around holidays, or the professor is unavailable in-person. Links to the video can be placed in the learning management system (moodle) or embedded in the discussion forum, with discussion topics or questions. I always have one or two video assignments available on moodle just in case I need them. 

Educational Video and Documentaries

• MCNY Films on Demand Database 
• A.Weiner - Documentary Films - Society and Human Services
• TED Talks  (and TED ED lets you turn videos in lessons)
• Khan Academy
• TopDocumentaryFilms.com
• Hulu.com (also general release TV and film)
• FORA.tv (conference and event video from around the world)
• MediaStorm 
• Green Card Stories - Filmography -Documentaries and Dramas 
• SNAG Learning Films 
• The Society Pages - TSP Teaching - Video Archive 
• FreeDocumentaries.org 

News (All the major TV and cable news networks have on-line video resources)

• NY Times Video
• Washington Post Video
• Wall Street Journal Live
  
• CNN Video
• TIME Featured Videos
• Newsweek/Daily Beast Videos

Broadcast Television

• PBS Video 
• Discovery Channel Video
• National Geographic Video 
• History Channel Video
• Smithsonian Channel

Internet Videos  

• YouTube 
• Google Videos (Video Search Engine)

Miro is a free open-source video and music player. There is also a Miro Video Converter, a simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8), Ogg Theora, or for Android, iPhone, and more.

This is not an exhaustive list of all the resources available. Please feel free to share your video resources.

Resources for Teaching with Technology

Reposted from an email sent to all MCNY faculty on 5/8/12.

A couple of summers ago I developed a Faculty Development Workshop on creativity to help faculty incorporate online resources into their classes and Moodle shells. As we move forward with our Strategic Plan and our efforts to provide significant course content online, this becomes more important.

At that time I collected a list of web resources that could be used across the MCNY curriculum and placed them in a Moodle shell that was available to all the workshop participants. I still use many of these resources and have added others over the years. Of course some of them have morphed into something different than they were, totally disappeared, or been replaced. New ones have been developed. But I keep finding myself going back to that old Moodle shell to find something.

So I thought about updating this resource list to make it more accessible and since I wanted to try out my new Pinterest account (the fastest growing new social media network), I set up a Pinterest board on "Resources for Teaching with Technology". Piniterest boards are like bulletin boards where you can "pin" pictures from all over the web and add some descriptive text. When a visitor clicks on the picture, they are taken to the original source of the picture. I have also set up some other boards that can be used in my teaching ("Human Services Interest Board", "Documentary Films - Society and Human Services" and "Books Worth Reading"). The film and book boards are in response to questions that students often ask about seeing additional films or recommendations for books.

Please feel free to check out the Resources for Teaching with Technology board at: http://pinterest.com/draweiner/resources-for-teaching-with-technology/.

You can like items, "repin" them to your own boards, follow a board, or write comments. I would be interested in hearing about the creative ways you are using some of these resources. Please let me know about other resources you find useful. Unfortunately not every resource can be pined since some of the web sites do no have usable photographs, which is the main element of a pin. Groups can develop boards since the owner of a board can add others who also have the ability to pin to that board.

We can also talk about how to use Pinterest itself as a teaching tool. Happy pinning.

Are You Tired of Powerpoint?

PowerPoint is a necessary evil for teaching in a technology enabled classroom. And if you don't believe me, read Tufte. E. (2009). PowerPoint Is Evil. Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html) Ever since Adobe Persuasion was discontinued I have been forced to use Powerpoint. I have even tried using Pages on my Macintosh and iPad. 

For the last couple of years, I have been making Quicktime videos of my lecture slides and placing them in the Blackboard or Moodle shell so that students can review them. I am often asked why don't I just create handouts. I don't for several reasons. I believe that....

• students are responsible for their own learning.
• the ability to identify and conceptualize is important for students to develop and a tool for doing this is note taking
• active learning involves "activity" such as writing notes, hi-lighting, typing, etc.

Students are able to stop and review slides as many times as they want. And in fact this makes for more interesting interaction in the classroom, since students are not trying to be human xerox machines, copying every word on every slide. Many no longer take notes in class and are fully engaged in listening and discussing.

But it is a long process to make the original PowerPoint slides, turn them into Quicktime videos and upload them to Moodle. Every time I make a change in a slide set used in class, I have to make a new movie, remove the old file from Moodle, and upload the new file, and then make sure that it works.

So what if some presentation software came along that was could be edited online so that you only need to place a link or embed it in a Moodle shell. Well it does exist, meet Prezi (http://prezi.com/).  If I make a change in my Prezi slides, all I have to do is save it in my Prezi account. (Which it does automatically while I am editing.) When the student clicks on the link or the embeded Prezi, they see the most recent version. No need to upload, download or redo movies. Not only that I can import my large collection of PowerPoint slides into Prezi, which also easily imports resources such as images and videos from the web. Prezi also allows collaboration through shared editing so that students could work on a presentation together. Purpose Faculty might jointly create a Prezi that could be used by all.

And best of all, it is free to students and faculty with .edu email accounts. Prezi also has an iPad app. It is easy to learn and comes with some very suitable templates. A full series of tutorials and cheat sheets can be found at http://prezi.com/learn/.

I gave my Purpose 8  Constructive Action students the opportunity to use Prezi instead of PowerPoint for their final in-class presentations and the Prezi presentations did seem more interesting and dynamic. Prezi also has the potential of allowing students to make online presentations without the difficultly of creating, uploading and downloading slide shows. All they have to do is post their link or embed their Prezi into a Moodle forum and the other members of the class can review the presentation and comment.

To learn more about Prezi...

Prezi Zooms to 10 Million on Prezi

Now my old PowerPoint remote does not work with Prezi so I have to go out and get a new remote mouse if I want to use Prezi in my class and not be tethered to the mouse on the computer. But is seems a small price to pay.