EduGeek Journal

Much has been said recently about how the Web is making us more stupid. I blame Bing really – they said that humans are basically so dumb that we go on search overload if we can’t figure out a simple page of links.  I don’t feel “stupider” than I did before the Internet :)  Maybe [...]

I was pondering future trends last week while watching the evening weather forecast.  Forecasting while watching a forecast?  Anyways… We were in for a possible round of severe weather that week. The news anchor put up a map of “storm spotters” – a network of people that would call in from their homes and tell [...]

At some of our recent conference presentations, Harriet and I have been discussing our problems with ADDIE. We usually get a large show of support when we say ADDIE doesn’t work well.  But we also get some passionate objectors.  Our presentation is not meant to criticize ADDIE, so I decided to save that for a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

I’ve been pondering an article called “Future Ed: Remote learning, 3D screens” for a few days now.  While this article covers some interesting geeky stuff (such as ocular implants and 3-D screens), there are also some great nuggets of wisdom in there about how what we teach needs to change –   along with our [...]

Finally… someone dared to speak out about some of the problems they have with open education.  And not just some old fuddy-duddy outsider that doesn’t get it, but an insider that is well versed in all angles. I’m no fuddy-duddy open education hater myself… but I have felt a little discomfort over several aspects surrounding [...]

As many of the more geeky EduGeek readers know, last Saturday was Free Comic Book Day. I took advantage of this by catching up on Marvel’s fun and compelling Sinister Six (which was not free, by the way). This event has me thinking of a tool that I have used in the past which allows [...]

When we want to move our student’s learning environment into the ether of the web, we can be hard pressed to go beyond simply assigning more reading.  In the days of multimedia, interactivity and all things web 2.0, assigning links to on-line articles will not cause many students to leap up for their netbooks with [...]

Many people have had great success integrating various Web2.0 tools and sites into their online classes.  Still others try very hard but come away frustrated with the results.  Is Web2.0 just a random concept that gives some instructors success while confusing others with no discern-able pattern?  Or is there a reason why some well-planned activities [...]