Inspire Blog

Student-Produced Artifacts as Discussion Starters

There are many ways to get engaging discussions started in a discussion board, but my favorite is to have students make something to share with their classmates as discussion starters. The tools students can use to create many types of presentations have become incredibly powerful and easy to use. These tools range from the more traditional presentation tools such as Prezi and Google Presentations (part of Google Drive) to the more creative such as slideshows in Vuvox or Animoto, interactive digital posters such as Pinterest or Padlet, animated cartoons with Go!Animate, or digital multimedia timelines with myHistro. Having students create things to share with classmates leverages the “write” part of the read/write web (also called web 2.0) to turn students … Student-Produced Artifacts as Discussion Starters
by · May 20, 2013

Why you should be scripting your lectures.

Some instructors are surprised when they first hear that they should begin preparing for a recorded lecture by writing a script. Some instructors believe that writing a script will take a lot of time, and that using a script will make the finished recording sound like they are reading, and that they should approach their online lectures the same way they do the on-campus ones – without a script. Preparing a script for an online lecture is an essential step, however, that actually helps to save time and create a higher quality finished lecture. So why script your lectures? To Save Time You will be surprised how much time and frustration you will save yourself when you are recording lectures. … Why you should be scripting your lectures.
by · April 8, 2013

Plant Problem Diagnosis

Here is a series of illustrations done for Neil Bell’s class on Plant Problem Diagnosis. These simple images will be shown along side real photos of diseased or otherwise inflicted plants to help students determine possible causes for the displayed symptoms. Illustrations are important for learning in this situation because the photos alone are so busy that they can be confusing.
by · October 27, 2011