Wordle

I have come across an exciting website called Wordle. This website has been created by Jonathan Feinberg. He has created a program that will create a “word cloud”. A word cloud is a visual arrangement of words. The words can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal or any which way. To see representations of “wordles” you can visit www.wordle.net . There isn’t really any educational value in this site, but it is a very cool idea.

Moodle

Course Management Systems are quickly becoming a standard part of a schools curriculum in higher education. Blackboard is the industry standard for large schools. Other options include Moodle and Sakai. Moodle is very popular due to its open-source nature. It is inexpensive and adaptable to many different applications.

I have had the opportunity to investigate Moodle from both a student’ and teacher’s point of view. As a student, most of the tools were easy to use. The wiki and the chat function were at times frustrating because they were not consistently stable. The other tools within Moodle like quizes and forums seemed to work fine. From a teacher perspective, the grading within Moodle seems at this point to have a high learning curve. It does offer great customization of weighting and aggregation, but these features are a bit daunting if you have never used them before.

Casting Call

I have been thinking about podcasting lately. How can podcasting best be used in an educational setting. I have heard stories of professors who put podcasts of their lecture notes online and then their students never show up for class. I think that podcasting can and should be more than audio filing. The podcast should enhance or extend the classroom experience in some way. This can be done by posting a discussion idea in the form of a podcast. It might be a presentation of material not covered in the class. It could also serve as an assessment tool either created by the teacher or students. There are many uses for which a podcast can serve.