Staci's EdTech World

My first review!

staci — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:44:06 +0000

Thanks to Jane Bozarth at Learning Solutions Magazine for the endorsement and honest review of Putting People First!
http://bit.ly/avtPlm

SITE 2010 is almost here!

staci — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 04:01:36 +0000

SITE 2010 in San Diego should be a great conference, and it’s almost here! This will be the first I’m presenting there, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to present as well as learn from others. In case you wish to check out my presentations, you can got to http://site.aace.org/conf, or look below.

Navigating the Digital Divide on Prezi

Updated SMARTBoard presentation

staci — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:12:54 +0000

Here’s another updated presentation for my upcoming workshop on SMARTBoards in the classroom:

http://www.slideshare.net/andella/smartboards-presentation

Updated Podcast Slideshow

staci — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:07:09 +0000

For my upcoming workshop on Podcasting in Education, I’ve made some small updates to my slides/handouts.

http://www.slideshare.net/andella/podcasting-1017940

Making complex ideas easy to understand

staci — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:47:04 +0000

Great Adobe MAX 2009 presentation about how to design visuals and multimedia that made complex ideas easier to understand. It does a really good job at helping students of multimedia understand the power of design tools to aid in education and understanding at all levels, in lots of different subjects. What a novel idea!

http://2009.max.adobe.com/online/session/356

Reasons to learn Flash

staci — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:35:26 +0000

Students sometimes ask why there’s an emphasis on learning “hard” stuff like Flash. This was an interesting presentation from Adobe MAX that tries to answer that very question:

http://2009.max.adobe.com/online/session/130

“Putting People First” @ Zelda23 Publishing

staci — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:43:53 +0000

My first Amazon Kindle book, Putting People First: Human Issues in Instructional Technology, is now available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002Y5VTG8. This text has been about two years in the making and students who have used the original edition have had a lot of good things to say about it. It can serve as an excellent supplement to any instructional design and technology course or training, as it covers those social and ethical aspects of IDT not always covered in depth in many courses. It can also serve as a guide or reference for practicing instructional designers, teachers, and even special educators in the field.
Check out http://www.zelda23publishing.com to learn a little more, and to view the complete table of contents. Enjoy!

Google Chrome OS

staci — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:44:01 +0000

As some of us might already know, Chrome was announced today as not just a web browser anymore, but a fully fledged operating system. Designed for netbooks primarily, it boots quickly and takes you straight to the Web in under a few seconds. Essentially, it’s a cloud-based operating system, so that nothing is really stored locally, or at least not exclusively. Even when something is stored on the hard drive, it’s synced up to the cloud, meaning that Google has hold of all of your information, pretty much all of the time. Hmm… I dunno about that. The jury’s still out for me as far the Cloud goes. Honestly, I like to have some things on my hard drive – the hard drive that cost less than a penny a gigabyte whereas not that long ago such an amount of storage didn’t even exist. I like to know that my music is always going to be my music, my pictures will always be my pictures, and my apps will always be available to keep me working and/or entertained even if I’m trapped in a concrete school building somewhere, where Internet connections are slow or non-existent. Keeping my whole life in the Cloud just doesn’t sit well with me – I want some things to be mine no matter what, and as much as I like Google and Flickr and Twitter and all of those other cutesy company names out there, I can’t say I trust them 100%.
Now, I do realize that Chrome is not intended as a primary desktop OS and it shouldn’t be. It’s a nice idea for small gadgets, as long as there’s an Internet connection wherever you go – I’m thinking that there’s a lot of places you can go where that might not be possible, making your gadget a doorstop. At least with iPhone/iPod, if you can’t get wi-fi or cell service you still have some native apps that you can work with.
I did find a video that sums up how Chrome works rather nicely, and I would like to have a chance to see it in action sometime. Whether I’d want to use it all the time is yet to be determined, though.

Purdue Calumet Spring 2010 Instructional Tech Courses

staci — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:22:55 +0000

Spring courses are available! The semester begins on January 19 and ends on May 15, 2010, and online and hybrid course options are available. Visit us at http://www.calumet.purdue.edu/education/grad/it.html today to email or call the advisor to learn more and get yourself registered!

EDCI 566: Education Applications of Hypermedia
Focuses on game-based learning, multimedia, and web design. Students explore features and advanced applications of Second Life, Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, and Adobe Flash in instructional settings.
EDCI 572: Learning Systems Design
An introduction to instructional design and technology. Students learn the systematic instruction of design and theories behind learning, design, and assessment. This is the typical course that students take first when entering the master’s program, and is a good course to take to learn more about designing instruction in general.
EDCI 575: Foundations of Distance Education
A survey of distance education theory and practice, including both synchronous and asynchronous programs, courses, and lessons. Students design projects for both types of distance environments, collaborate together, and learn all about best practices in distance education design and assessment.
EDCI 560: Education Technology for Teaching and Learning
A survey of instructional tools for learning, geared toward teachers in the K-12 classroom. Applications of technology tools such as the Microsoft Office suite, blogging, podcasting, social networking, Moodle, and WebQuests are used to create learning materials and lessons, and best practices in education technology integration in the classroom are discussed at length. Primarily geared toward teachers pursuing professional development or license renewal, this class is not part of the regular Instructional Technology program but may be accepted as an elective.

The death of web design?

staci — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:18:30 +0000

Is it just me or do a lot of sites today look pretty much the same…? A menu at the left, maybe a banner at the top, a little footer below, stuff in the middle. In fact, a lot of sites look an awful lot like WordPress nowadays. So are the days of experimental web design pretty much done? Or have we figured out that there is one good way to put web pages together and that’s what the majority of pages really ought to look like? I don’t know… I’m sure there’s more to life than the left-hand sidebar column but it seems like every page any of us make nowadays comes down to that.
But maybe, the devil is in the details, and it’s not about the layout anymore, as it was back in the days of tables before CSS was the wave of the future. Maybe now, it’s about the graphics and colors, the tinier elements that make up the overall user experience. The fonts, the styles, the way headlines are displayed, the way links are displayed, and so on – that’s where web design seems to be going if we want to see artistic elements on the Web.
We’re also seeing a move toward functionality, or function over form. Is Facebook really all that attractive as a user interface? Not really, but it is mostly pretty functional, so there’s been no need to change it. Same thing with Google – not interesting, but definitely useful. Some things are just good when they’re simple, and we don’t seem to care as much anymore about how our pages look when we visit them.
Have we decided that we want the Web to just work for us, or have our standards for design just gotten that much lower…? An interesting question to ponder.