Wandering through Articles and my Mind (?)

OK, so I've been re-exploring Google Docs/Apps/Drive.  This time with the eye toward higher education here at UTK.  I really like the idea of them - free and easy to use and forever improving.  Education tools should be free.  If you provide good tools to students and teachers to use, them you have a loyal following for life.  Unfortunately dear Microsoft hasn't figured that out. Nor has Apple.  Of course, we all love our Apple iPad, iPhone and various tools for the ease of use that we are willing to shell out the dough to get them!

Anyway back to Google. I've been playing with Hangout to test capabilities and settings. I found this article today in Educause's website:  "How Educators and Schools Can Make the Most of Google Hangout". Good ideas, just not enough of them. Does Google for Education increase the limit beyond 10? Are there archive capabilities inside Hangout without using another tool? 

I especially like the idea of using Hangout for office hours. I like it because you can have 10 people online at a time and again, it's free and easy to use. I've tested it with friends on campus - it is easy easy!
While exploring Google tools/drive/resources (What DO you call this thing?) I found this article on their Course Builder on Edutopia:
Google's Open Course Builder: A Giant Leap into 21st-Century Online Learning  which led be on to this online course in Constructivist Pedagogy: http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/index.html .

I truly could surf articles related to online education, pedagogy and instructional technology for days, weeks and years!  Did I mention that's what I've been doing since the late 80's? I remember struggling with the concepts of Industrial Technology (my undergraduate major) and Instructional Technology. To me these were the same species of animal minus a table saw. As graduate schools continued and I began to work in the field, I continued to see the overlap but the line became more defined and then blurred.  This is what I try to help our professors do - draw the line then smudge it as they integrate technology into their courses or when the redesign their courses to being online. It's fascinating watching the faculty change their teaching processes and seeing the difference in method over time impact student learning.  It's a slow process but one which is infinitely interesting!

So what do Google tools offer the teaching professor or classroom teacher?  Stay tuned - I'm working on that! What do you think?

Technology changes

Since I had to work the 11:00 am-7:00 pm shift today, I spent some off time reading journals.  One was about the changes in technology and possible impacts on Higher Ed.  That came full circle as I walked in to my office and saw a colleague balancing a pile of video tapes. Not long ago, tape was the new best thing in video and audio storage media. It came right after the 8 mm and 16 mm film rage for homeowners and educators.  I've spent the last couple of years trying to share family memories with my siblings in the form of scanning stills and film to digital formats and annotating the result.  Then I realized that will be as useful to my grand kids as a Zip drive or floppy disk is to me now - NOT.  Who knows what technology impact media and the sharing of ideas, memories and images.Certainly not me!