Tag Archives: blogging

Traveling afar? Keep us close!

As we begin wrapping up the spring semester, many of us may have exciting plans coming up. Summer is typically the time for trips abroad that may not fit into the school year, mission trips to help out in different areas for different purposes, family trips, friend trips, and wherever else the summer takes you…
One of the neatest ways to use all the great technology and tools available on the internet is to document experiences and share them with others. There are tons of ways to do this, and today we are sharing some of our favorites!
Blogging: Blogging is such a great way to get out there and share your experiences, opinions, ideas, and basically inspire (and be inspired!) by others on the internet. Incorporate videos, posts, photographs, maps, and anything you want to share about your trip (the list is really endless!) Blogs are great because they combine all of these elements in one easy location for others to follow and keep in touch while you are busy traveling the world.
Google Maps: If you are a Google Maps user, you may have noticed some of the pretty neat elements they’ve begun incorporating into maps: photos, videos, landmarks complete with descriptions, and custom-made maps created by Google users for others to explore and share. Creating a Google Map of a trip (especially if you are hopping around place to place) is a great way to document your travels and share them with others so they can see some of the same things you were able to experience!
We have so many ideas we’d love to share with you if you are looking to incorporate multimedia into really any of your experiences. You don’t have to travel to Europe to create a blog or go on a backpacking trip to create your own Google Map. These awesome tools are at your fingertips waiting for you to become inspired, create and share!

The world of Social Media in Higher Education

It seems everywhere you turn today there is some new social media tool that is instantly becoming viral all over the internet. As soon as you give in and create an account and learn how to use one thing-the next thing has already taken over. Here is a breakdown of some of the newest social media tools, and how they can be integrated into education to keep you and your students in sync with the evolution of technology!

 

Timely

If you are an avid user of Twitter, Timely is for you. It boasts that users get the most out of their tweets when they integrate their use with Timely. All you do is add your Tweet to Timely, and Timely will publish the Tweet so your Twitter followers will read it when it is anticipated to have the most impact and get you more followers, retweets and more. Seems like magic, but it is able to do this through analyzing your past Tweets and examining the patterns that have contributed to making some more popular than others. Amazing!

Summify

Connect your Google, Facebook and Twitter accounts to Summify, and you will get everything you want to see the most in one place. Essentially what Summify does is delivers the top stories from these other resources and delivers them to you so you can view what is most important, and skip having to weed through the rest. It does this by looking at both your personal and global social networks and selecting the news that has been shared, re-tweeted, or liked by others the most!

Pinterest

Pinterest is essentially a virtual “pin board” that allows users to share images that link to websites of really anything on the internet. Categories range in everything from recipes and DIY home décor to sports, education, and technology! Pinterest is a great way to explore your interests and get creative new ideas in tons of topics. Particularly in higher education, pinterest is a great way for students to explore new information, news, and tools in their particular areas of interest!

Facebook and Twitter

I have no doubt these tools sound unfamiliar to you, however, recent polls show they have continuously increased in use since 2008 and are becoming very popular in education. Tweet your students news stories relating to your class, or create a Facebook for your class to gather as a central location to share and retrieve information.

Tips for you:

One helpful tip to make the most of using social media tools in your classroom is to mix up the information you are sharing-tweet links to current articles on material-related research, events, and share images and videos with your students to keep them connected to your classroom in a variety of ways. Make it an interactive experience, and you will best engage your students!

Stay on top of these tools because not only can the be useful (and fun!) for you and your students, but they are becoming the way the world communicates.

Spice up your next lecture

What I’m blogging about today isn’t a new tool that is going to revolutionize the way you present your lectures. It is, however, a tool that can be used to spark the interest of students, promote brainstorming and discussion, and spread ideas.

For an engaging way to present material in your class and gain the attention of students without having to ask for it, visit http://www.ted.com, a website full of motivational, educational, and interesting videos of speeches from all over the world. TED’s mission is to spread ideas to change attitudes, lives, and successively, the world. What better place to begin spreading these ideas than in your classroom?

From topics focusing on poverty to collaborating in business to “what makes us happy”, you will be guaranteed to find a speech that can somehow be integrated with your class material. You can even search by speaker if you already have a particular person in mind. Think of TED as a “YouTube” containing only motivational and unique speeches about topics worth listening to. So spread some new ideas, get your students thinking, and then maybe they will change the world.