Soundings: Best Practices in Teaching and Technology

Teaching with Technology at The University of Texas Arlington

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Entries Tagged as 'Tools'

The Enemy is Powerpoint?

May 2nd, 2010 · 2 Comments · Active Learning, Tools

Article: “We have met the enemy and he is powerpoint” by Elizabeth Bumiller.
WASHINGTON — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. [...]

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Online Translators

April 10th, 2010 · No Comments · Resources, Tools, Web 2.0

Online translation is quite different from traditional translation. I note the tools I am using: Google Translator Toolkit (you need a gmail account to get on), Google Translator in two forms, Leo, the online dictionary containing a grammar site, dictionary definitions, and a corpus that I am using, and http://www.google.de (to [...]

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A Brave New World Free of PowerPoints

March 29th, 2010 · No Comments · Tools

TxDLA was a great event this year. Harriet and I did our usual rebel-rousing there. Creating a session PowerPoint is usually difficult for us, since we usually don’t prepare any preset material.  We like to discuss, interact, and have some interesting conversations. But since most educators have to have something to [...]

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Mobility initiative?

March 17th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Active Learning, Authoring, Composition, Learning Management Systems, Tools, Video, Web 2.0

Does anyone know if there is a mobility initiative at UTA? Or does OIT have plans for a mobility initiative?
I’m torn between buying a class set of the iTouch or the iPhone for my Computers and Fiction Writing class and would welcome advice. Might OIT support either? Any sign of daLite lecterns or other kinds [...]

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One Semester in the Life of a Web Class…

March 4th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Blogs and Blogging, Distance Education, Learning Management Systems, Moodle, Tools, Uncategorized

We often ask our student to reflect, in writing, on what they are learning. But how often do we challenge ourselves to do the same as teachers? This semester I set out to chronicle my experiences teaching a web class, week-by-week. I realized that my past experiences with teaching web classes were vague and jumbled [...]

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When Staleness Creeps In To Your Content

March 3rd, 2010 · 4 Comments · Authoring, Blogs and Blogging, Tools

No matter how student-centered you are, no matter how often you tell others you are not a “teacher” but a “coach”, at some point you are going to be putting some content in to your course.  Even coaches will sit down their players and show them how to do things on a regular basis. Your [...]

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Creating Cuaderna Vía

March 1st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Authoring, Composition, Free, Resources, Tools

Last summer, Chris Conway and Ignacio Ruiz-Perez approached me about helping them with a new idea they had – a Spanish-language literary journal for UT Arlington students called Cuaderna Vía.  They already had an issue’s worth of content, but needed help producing the tangible journal.
Over those months, we designed and produced a print edition of [...]

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Adding Value and Battling Staleness in Online Classes

February 22nd, 2010 · 5 Comments · Resources, Tools, Web 2.0

Think back to some of the best courses you took during college. What made those courses so great for you? Well, other than the ones that were an easy A – what made them interesting to you over other courses? Probably one factor was an interesting instructor. Many instructors like to just read from the [...]

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Digital Texts in the Composition Classroom, Feb 25th

February 20th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Authoring, Composition, Free, Multimedia, Resources, Tools, Video, Web 2.0, Workshops, YouTube

Early adopters find ways to teach complex concepts, methods and software flying by the seat of our pants to be sure, but buoyed by much early trial and error experience acquired from having taught ourselves. For someone like me, whose field is digital media, I have made that seat-of-the-pants stuff my specialty, and, as a [...]

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