June 1st, 2009 by Kate Lehnhof
With an influx of new Facebook applications being created everyday, we are seeing many different types come out of the woodworks. The interesting part: some of them are actually USEFUL and might even help you with your homework.
This trend correlates with the increased use of online resources for education. Long gone are the days of chalkboards and wooden desks; the internet is the new frontier of education. This means we need a new set of tools to work with and we’re seeing the development of those tools right before our eyes. The Facebook field of educational opportunity is ripe and ready to harvest. So dig in and take a look at our list of the the top educational Facebook apps.
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Tags: facebook, online education tools, technology
Posted in Tools | 2 Comments »
June 1st, 2009 by Brandon Buttars
So the latest craze and development at Google and on the internet now is Google Wave.
If you haven’t seen the Google Wave Developer Preview from Google I/O, you have to watch it. Google is going to change the face of the internet as we know it with Google Wave. Google Wave is going to be released open source for developers to add onto. I’m sure after you watch the Google Wave Preview you will hopefully have your mind blown and see as I see Google Wave.
One major issue that online education has is real time collaboration. Education institutions are communities to collaborate and learn from one another. People often times say the major weaknesses of online education is that you don’t learn some of the same team building skills and social skills that normal students do that get a traditional on campus degree. Depending on what career you are looking into and training for, that face to face collaboration may be important. Most collaboration now a days is either done through a digital medium or documented through some type of a digital medium. Google Wave is going to help make real time, online, cross platform collaboration a reality. It’s going to take the elements of many different applications that have been separate from one another and bring them together. It will allow the extending of other applications through the Google Wave interface.
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Tags: google, technology
Posted in Online Education, Tools | 9 Comments »
June 1st, 2009 by Brandon Buttars
I’m sure you’ve all seen the lists of FREE open source software and maybe even the specific lists of FREE open source software that will help students. Well that’s great and all but what happens when you jump from computer to computer? You have to install the software on those computers. Well we thought we’d put together a list of web based applications that could help students. Specifically, Google web based applications that can help students earning their online degrees. We’ve decided to create an initial list, but we’ll visit each application one at a time and explain what it does and how it can benefit students.
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Tags: applications, online degree, organization, technology
Posted in Online Education, Software, Tools | No Comments »
May 7th, 2009 by Brandon Buttars
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of articles that have been dugg and that have been floating around some social communities out there. One example is “Education reform: Let’s start by burning all the textbooks”. This article discusses a focus on digital/electronic education and getting rid of textbooks. The great thing about digg is all the opinions that come to surface.
One argument seems to be the inability to provide all students with a laptop. There were a bunch of other arguments, but I thought I would run with that one, but focus on elementary school students. I decided to put together a list of laptops / notebooks / netbooks that I felt would work well for elementary schools students. Let’s face it, most teenagers now have a laptop or want their own so the biggest issue would be getting the elementary kids computers.
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Tags: technology
Posted in Elementary Education | 3 Comments »