BG News: Facebook in the classroom

I was quoted in an article in the BG News on Sept, 3.

http://bgnews.com/campus/facebook-in-the-classroom/

BGSU: Zoom News, Facebook in Education

http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/mc/zoomnews/page85433.html

#SLCC 2010

Last weekend I attended the Second Life Community Conference 2010 with my colleague and BGSU Virtual Campus Co-Administrator Bonnie Mitchell. Below you can find all 4 of the presentations we gave hosted on Slideshare.net and links to the Google Docs.

Guest post on official Facebook in Education blog

I was invited several months ago to create a guest post on the official “Facebook in Education” blog. My post went up today and can be found here (full link below). I’m happy to see that Facebook has vision and dedicated staff towards seeing this massive platform put to use in education.

As a Learning Management System the Facebook group enabled important educational exchanges, but there are a few additional features that could make this platform even more useful. The ability to see all contributions made to the group by a single person would enable a teacher to view all comments, links, pictures, videos and even “Like” buttons used by a student within the group page.  This would enable an instructor to easily track and measure student engagement. Adding the ability to make separate photo albums would enable an instructor to differentiate contributions posted from different classes. If Facebook groups also had the ability to add applications, a teacher could feed information from other sources, via RSS or SMS, directly into the group page. Finally, if Facebook had the ability to host document and slideshows, there would be no reason to use Google Documents or another document hosting service – students could read documents or view lecture slides without leaving the group page.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-in-education/using-a-facebook-group-as-a-learning-management-system/10150244221815570

2 iPad piano

2 iPad piano on 12seconds.tv

iPad wifi issues

iPad users on campuses like mine at Bowling Green State University and Princeton have experienced some well documented trouble with DHCP networks. See here and here (thanks Princeton!). The solution Apple is offering is out of the question for a big network like the one here at BGSU. So here’s the user fix. I can only hope Apple gets this patched quickly.

The directions are:
- back up your iPad first
- open settings > general > reset > reset all settings
- settings > general > auto-lock > never
- never turn off or put the iPad to sleep without first going to settings > wifi > off

Second Life on the iPad

The Urgent Social Blissful Epic Classroom

Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming in the real world is totally worth the watch and I thank AJ Kelton for passing it on to me! I think what she outlines as gamer skills to be utilized the real world can ABSOLUTLEY be used to construct divergent assignments in an integrative classroom. Although, I totally disagree with Malcom Gladwell‘s theory in Outliers: that 10000 hours of practice at something = you’re an expert at it. Give me two hours on FarmVille; (something I’ve never played) and Google and I’ll can be an expert too.

Help me out here… add to this open google doc:

Bonus Points: Give students the Google 20 = 20% of class time to work on their own project! Not something you assign, something they come up with themselves and can turn in for credit. Let them write their own assignment.

Odo had one first

Social Movies

Last year, movie’s went 3D. This year TVs are going 3D. TV’s are also supposed to go “social” sometime soon as well, with Yahoo ramping up their “widget” efforts… something Apple TV should have done a few years ago. Speaking of Apple, perhaps TV will have help when it jumps off of your television and onto your iPad device, but that’s another post.

So being an old theatre geek, I want to know when will movies go social? When will you be allowed, no, asked to text during a movie? Or better yet, when will you be able to interact through your phone, pad, or other mobile device with the movie you’re watching on the giant screen? What will that interaction look like?