Flowgram: create interactive guided presentations
Looking for a better way to record and present information online? Give the free Flowgram a try! Create interactive guided presentations by combining web pages, photos, PowerPoint, and more with your voice annotation.
Viewers can control the pages, scroll, click on links, view videos and more.
Anyone else already using Flowgram? What are your thoughts thus far? I’m looking forward to giving Flowgram a try.
Survey: Opinions of Facebook as College Teaching Tool
I heard from Stuart Mader of a survey that Caroline Lego Munoz, Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Silberman College of Business at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is conducting on college instructors’ opinions of Facebook as a teaching tool. If you’re a college-level instructor, or know one, I’m sure she’d appreciate if you took a few minutes to complete her survey. Here’s her message:
A colleague and I are conducting an online survey in order to understand college instructors’ (faculty, graduate teaching assistants, lecturers, and adjuncts) behavior and opinions about Facebook being used as an instructional or course tool for courses. This survey will take participants approximately 10-20 minutes. For completing this survey, participants will be entered in a drawing to win one of two $100 gift cards to Amazon.com.
Projections of Education Statistics to 2017
This publication provides projections for key education statistics. It includes statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2017. For the 50 States and the District of Columbia, the tables, figures, and text contain data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2017. In addition, the report includes a methodology section describing models and assumptions used to develop national and state-level projections.
To view, download and print the report as a PDF file, visit:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008078
Sifting and sharing my favorites with Google Reader
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from the being the “ideal blogger” that writes detailed, lengthy, insightful posts on a regular basis. I hope to one day become more faithful and substantive in my blog postings. However, right now, I find that the primary purpose I have for blogging is to share and archive quick information updates as well as post concerning new technology, tools, or approaches that I find interesting.
Often, what I want to do is to quickly tag a blog posting and aggregate it somehow with my other favorites. Google Reader has a very easy-to-use sharing feature that allows me to either on the web of mobile interface to mark a posting as starred and/or shared.
Shared postings are aggregated in a convenient location so that others can quickly see what I’m reading. To catch a glimpse of my recent shared items, click here.
While I will continue to post to my blog with select new tools or approaches that I find worth mentioning, I now have a much easier way to simply flag a posting as one I’ve found of interest and want to share with others. This is even easier than bookmarking a posting and adding it to my collection of delicious bookmarks.
If you are a Google Reader user and you’d like to follow my shared items from within Google Reader, just post a comment or shoot me an email with your email address and I’ll get you added.
NfoMedia: course management + social networking
I recently received an email invitation to NfoMedia, a new free social networking utility designed especially for faculty and their courses. I’ve setup a free account and poked around a bit, but since NIU isn’t yet listed as one of the home institutions, I’ve not dabbled any further. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until many more institutions are listed and I look forward to eventually giving this a try.
This certainly does look intriguing…if you have already tried this new tool, please post a comment with your experience.