321 Free Tools for Teachers

What's in your teacher toolbox?  I know that overtime we accumuluate various tools, some are free and some we had to purchase.  A few of these tools we continue to use, but some of them, are outdated. Well, this is an excellent time to update your toolbox!  Here’s a recently posted list of 321 free tools for teachers categorized in 18 educational technology areas, including tools for creating infographics, text to speech, digital storytelling, podcasts, survey, polls and quizzes, screen capturing, social bookmarking, bibliography and citation, sticky notes, photo and image editing, testing and quizzing, web conferencing, authoring, annotation, video, PDF, Royalty free and Creative Commons music, and stock photos.  They’re all available in the article, 321 Free Tools for Teachers on eLearning Industry’s website.

Open Educational Resources LibGuide

Do you often find yourself asking, “Can I include this image in my presentation? Do I have permission to share this video in my Blackboard shell?” Learn the basics of Open Educational Resources (OER) and how to access free, sharable images, audio files, course texts, recorded lectures and more using the newly created OER LibGuide. Created by Triton College Librarian Lauren Kosrow and Instructional Design Specialist Sara Gallagher, this online guide is an introduction to OER for faculty, students and staff who are interested in incorporating OER into teaching and learning.  And don’t forget that there are more LibGuides on many subjects available, and you can work with the library to create LibGuides specifically for your courses. For more information about LibGuides, contact Lauren Kosrow Ext. 3478 or laurenkosrow@triton.edu.

For more help with this tool and many others, stop by the CTE, send an email at cte@triton.edu or call extension 3371.

Blackboard's Mashups

Did you know that by simply adding media to your course that you add visual appeal and engage a wider student body?  Adding media to your courses in Blackboard is easy with Mashups!  Triton’s Blackboard Learn supports files from YouTube, SlideShare and Flickr.  Once you intentionally select your media, it only takes a few clicks and automagically, the media is there.  Blackboard offers step by step instructions and the video below for help.

Check out these step by step instructions on how to incorporate Blackboard Mashups.  Prefer to view a video?  Blackboard presents How to Create a Mashups in just over 2 minutes.  

For more help with this Blackboard tool and many others, stop by the CTE, send an email at cte@triton.edu or call extension 3371.

Growing Online Learning: Faculty Share Lessons Learned

Happy New Year!  Spring 2015 is officially on its way.  I know we’re all busy checking on students and responding to emails, but we wanted to share a free web-based conference opportunity focusing on Illinois community colleges beginning February 9 through February 12, 2015.  Illinois Community Colleges Online (ILCCO) is hosting a free web-based conference with a Faculty Shared Lessons Learned theme.  This is an excellent opportunity for current faculty teaching online or those who are interested.  For more information on individual sessions and to register (did I mention it was free?) visit http://ilcco.net/ILCCO/index.cfm?p=conferences

See you there!

OER Publication: PLOS

Whew…it’s been a busy few months and this blog has been on my mind.  So, here’s a quick resource for online science oriented publications.  The Public Library of Science, better known as PLOS, describes itself as “a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization located in San Francisco, CA, USA and Cambridge, UK.  Our mission is to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Everything that we publish is Open-Access – freely available online for anyone to use and we maximize the value of this resource through technology.”  They have a variety of peer-reviewed publications across all areas of science and medicine.  

This is another excellent opportunity to provide students free and open resources that are high quality and up to date.  Are you currently using other great resources?  Let us know!
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy holiday season!

Tech Tip: Backing Up and Syncing Documents

SyncToy logo

There are many golden gems on Microsoft’s web site, like SyncToy, which is a free application that allows the user to sync files and folders between two places. I use it on both my thumb drive and my primary computer to save time by automatically syncing my files for me when I decide to work on my laptop or on any other computer. It also works as a backup. There’s another bonus: it’s absolutely free to download at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15155!

This "little" program has saved me so much time & frustration. I use three or four computers in different locations; however, I need access to the same set of files for each location. Unfortunately, not all of the computers have stable Internet services (or any Internet); therefore, I can place my files on my thumb drive and just “sync” it when I get back to my primary workstation. According to the system requirements listed on SyncToy, this application is compatible with Windows 7, Windows Vista and XP.

Other options for backing up assignments and documents can be to email yourself the assignment or sign up for one of many web synchronization (and/or file sharing) software programs such as http://www.google.com/drive/index.html or https://www.dropbox.com/.  Google Drive and Dropbox are cloud storage services that allow you to access them via a browser, app or designated folder. Currently, Google Drive offers 15 GB of free cloud storage and Dropbox offers 2 GB.

7 OER Sites Every Faculty Member Should Visit

In preparation for conferences and training sessions, I wanted to develop a list of my top 10 OER sites for faculty members to visit.  As it turns out, I don't have that many.  So, here's my top 7 OER sites that every faculty member should visit (in no specific order).

Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN)

In support of Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded OPEN and encourages grantees to reuse existing OER to save time and effort.  OPEN provides specific sources for grantee use for photo/images, video, audio/music, general education searches, such as repositories, open textbooks and complete courses, including the ones listed below. Select the “Find OER” tab at the top of the page for a list of OER.

College Open Textbooks

College Open Textbooks is dedicated to increasing awareness and adopting OER for community colleges and two-year colleges.  The College Open Textbooks Collaborative consists of twenty-non for-profit and non-profit organizations with over 200 colleges.  Furthermore, the organization provides training opportunities for instructors and peer reviews textbooks.  These efforts are focused on decreasing textbook costs by offering high-quality open source textbooks.

MERLOT II

MERLOT is a program of the California State University.  It contains thousands of learning materials, including textbooks, animations, assessment tools, presentations and much, much more!

MIT OpenCourseWare

In 1999, MIT Faculty developed and launched OpenCourseWare (OCW).  The pilot version ran in 2002 with 50 courses published.  A decade later, 2150 courses have been published with numerous translations available including Spanish and Portuguese.  Additionally, as of September 2013, MIT reported that OCW has tracked over 49 million YouTube views, 43 million iTunesU downloads and over 182 million visits to their website (MITOCW dashboard report). 

OER Commons

This site provides access to OER, as well as tools to organize, create and save.  Allows free registration and advanced search features including Education Level, Material Type and Media Format to name a few.

Open Course Library

The Open Course Library (OCL) was launched in 2011 by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges in order to combat the effect of textbook costs on student success and completion.  OCL created new course material using Creative Commons licenses for 81 of its highest-enrolled courses.

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that hosts numerous projects including Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia and Wiktionary, all of which are available under a Creative Commons License.  Commons has over 19 million media files including images, sound and videos that can be used at no charge. 

Please feel free to share any of your go-to resources.