Communication Tools
UA YouTube Channel
Mon, 2009-07-20 14:44 — maritzaqThe UA's YouTube channel is a resource directed largely to high school students and college undergraduates who might turn to YouTube for information about student life and academic programs at the UA, as well as view promotional videos about the UA. In addition, we are uploading selected public lectures that have found a broad audience in the UA on iTunes U and could be helpful to high school and undergraduate students researching related topics.
There are approximately 5 billion YouTube videos downloaded each month making it by far the most popular video site on the Web. By promoting your UA program, department, or college in YouTube, you can reach current and prospective students, their families, and the general population. It is a way to leverage cost invested in making videos distributed as DVDs and realize a huge ROI.
UA's YouTube Channel FAQs and Best Practices
Contact an OIA consultant for more information.
Visit the UA's YouTube Channel and check out our varied playlists. YouTube's educational channels directory.
Podcasting
Mon, 2009-07-20 13:52 — maritzaqThe UA supports podcasting through its participation in Apple Inc.'s iTunes U, a resource to thousands of free educational audio and video tracks. Over 400 colleges and universities in North America and around the world are participating. Podcasts can be audio or video recordings of classroom lectures, a series of videos on a particular topic, and presentations using Powerpoint or Keynote that are exported to Apple's iTunes U format.
Podcasts use RSS feeds to push new tracks to subscribers.
Recorded lectures enable the UA to fulfill ADA guidelines by aiding students with disabilities. They give students additional opportunities to learn new or difficult material. Faculty may create podcasts that complement course lectures in which they discuss more complex problems, real-world experiences, and other topics that further engage students in learning.
A UA professor teaches a course on general microbiology to approximately 200 students. He records audio of his lectures on a digital recorder and uploads each lecture to iTunes U. Students listen to all or parts of the lectures to prepare for exams or better understand course content. A survey of UA faculty podcasting their course lectures has found no real or perceived increase in students cutting class.
A faculty member in the Linguistics Department records guest speakers giving presentations at the department's lecture series. There are over 120 lectures recorded between fall semester 2007 and spring semester 2011. The first week that a new recorded lecture is added it is downloaded over 250 times. Consider the exposure your department's lectures will receive on iTunes U!
What is the UA on iTunes U, UA on iTunes U FAQ, OIA's Podcasting website
Contact an OIA consultant to discuss how you can use podcasting in your courses.
Visit Apple Inc.'s iTunes U
Instructional Blogging
Mon, 2009-07-20 13:04 — maritzaqA number of faculty and instructors at the UA have introduced instructional blogging into their courses. Blogs are simple educational technology tools that lend themselves to a wide range of pedagogical styles, disciplines and course levels. There are a number of free blogging resources available: Blogger, TypePad, Live Journal and Wordpress are four of the most popular. The Office of Instruction and Assessment has installed and maintained Movable Type on a server and maintains that for the campus.
Blogs are easy to use. Entries may be created in the display area much like composing in word processing sofware. Text is typed and words may be selected by highlighting to add hyperlinks and format with bold or italics. A powerful stylesheet controls the published entry's appearance.
In hybrid and fully online courses, blogs can promote community, provide a virtual space to discuss course readings, share ideas and further knowledge. Instructors may find having one place to address course activities is convenient.
A Journalism professor uses student-created blogs to augment the teaching of abstract skills and values (truth telling, ethics, and critical thinking) as well as practical skills (the integration of multimedia into news story telling) that are necessary for new professionals in journalism as well as many other fields.
An English 101/102 instructor has students submit their assignments via their blog. He teaches them ways to provide constructive feedback to each other's writing and make substantive comments using the entry's comments feature.
Blogging @ the OIA: Best Practices & Case Studies
Request more information from an OIA Consultant
Skype
Mon, 2009-07-20 12:01 — maritzaqSkype is free software that enables you talk to someone on another computer anywhere on the Internet who is also running Skype. Skype includes chat and the capability to play realtime video during your conversation. Value added features enable calling landlines and cell phones.
With Skype you can make free calls over the internet to other people on Skype for as long as you like, to wherever you like. It is free to download. Skype also offers pay as you go or pay monthly plans for unlimited calls to over 40 countries worldwide. Skype runs on computers running Windows, Linux and Mac and has apps for mobile devices.
International students are using Skype computer-to-computer to talk to family members. Faculty teaching online course can use Skype to answer student questions as they arise, rather than asynchronously over email. Using video on Skype can also personalize the experience between student and professor.
Go to Skype.com to create an account and then download and install the free software.
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Posts in Twitter are called tweets.
Tweets are limited to 140 characters. Twitter uses RSS feeds, like blogs and other news feeds. Because it emphasizes real-time broadcasts, it has rapidly become popular with mass media organizations like NPR, CNN, Fox, and ESPN. There are free and inexpensive downloadable applications for iPhones, Blackberries, and other mobile devices that enable you to subscribe to Twitter accounts and post to your own. You may embed links to web pages, images and videos through free third-party resources. Twitter trending topics can bring up-to-the-moment national and international news to your computer or mobile device.
Twitter builds community among professionals and researchers through its "Follow" feature and enables you to share information quickly and simply with others. A tweet using a hash symbol (#) before a word in a post allows you to tag that post to a Twitter trending topic. During the June 2009 election in Iran, #iranelection drew realtime tweets from Iran and across the world.
Instructors can use Twitter to push information to students about coursework, exams, calendar changes, and content updates. Instructors can tweet questions to students during a class to gauge how well students understand a particular topic. Students can use it as a "backchannel" discussion during classes. Programs and departments can push information to students and their families, to alumni, and the community. Examples at the UA: UA News, Office of Instruction & Assessment, UA Press
Go to Twitter to create an account.
yfrog shares images and videos on Twitter; 12seconds records 12 seconds of video that uploads to your Twitter account; TinyURL! and bitly take long URLs and shorten them; OIA's "Twitter How-To"
