I seem to have become obsessed with learning new technologies for teaching and learning in the past few months. Primarily through attendance at the 2006 UBC Learning Conference”, and through attending several seminars at the TAG Institute (TAG=The Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth at UBC, which conducts workshops and collects resources for the teaching staff at UBC), I have begun to learn about the following things…
* wikis (see my test wiki)
* blogs (e.g., this one)
* elgg as a means of getting a quick and easy blog and networking with others
* Keep Toolkit as a means of creating a teaching portfolio
Here are things I’m considering so far:
— using a wiki for my Social and Political Philosophy course, as a means for students to work together on organizing an in-class presentation–without having to meet in person, which can be difficult outside of class time.
— using elgg as a way for students to get a free and very easy-to-setup-and-use blog, if they want to do so (I am thinking of having them either do a paper journal or a blog–one they already have, or they can set one up on elgg for free). I will then use an RSS aggregator (already set up on elgg) to collect their entries all in one place
In the next few weeks I expect to post some further reflections on why any of these could be useful tools for a Philosophy course.
— using KEEP toolkit to set up a teaching portfolio. I had started one using iwebfolio software, but was not finding it very straightforward to use (quite time-consuming). I think I’ll try KEEP
— working on PhilosoPedaWiki as a collaborative way to organize teaching and learning resources in Philosophy, for myself and others who are interested
