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If you use interactive activities in Moodle, such as quizzes, questionnaires, or assignments, there is an easy way to send a reminder message to all students who haven’t completed the activity yet.
This works even with anonymous questionnaires! Dragon Naturally Speaking: advantages for students of all abilities Students of all abilities can benefit from dictating text to their computer. Dragon Naturally Speaking gives much support for multiple learning styles. English language learners can use dictation for speaking and writing practice. Students have been known to show significant improvements in speech skills such as enunciation. Dragon is an aid for improving composition, grammar, and vocabulary. Students are reporting that their attention to their writing is increased if they dictate text. Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 has a “Read That” function that professors can set up to read instructions to students. All Naturally Speaking users can use “Play That Back” to hear their dictated words read back to them. http://www.nuance.com Instructors and professors have discovered that using Dragon Naturally Speaking is a great time saver for grading assignments. It is faster and easier to dictate comments than manual typing. Dragon can be used to create lecture notes and handouts. Sending emails becomes a more efficient task if dictated to the computer. Some professors are recording their lectures and then importing the digital recording into Dragon Naturally Speaking. The result is a usable transcription. http://www.nuance.com See Smith College Computer Store for purchase. Note: At this time, Dragon Naturally Speaking is only installed on computers in the Assistive Technology Lab, lower level Seelye. It is not available in the general labs. Wolfram, the maker of Mathematica, has now come out with Wolfram Alpha. It’s not a search engine; it’s a computation engine. As its homepage proclaims:
This is an incredibly powerful tool: enter any mathematical formula, and Wolfram Alpha will not only calculate it for you, but will also graph it and pull up any other relevant information it knows. It can do a lot more than math, too: it can pull up health knowledge geographical information, and even find matches for partial words, crossword-puzzle style. To really see what Wolfram Alpha can do, I recommend watching Steven Wolfram’s introductory video. It’s an amazing new tool with a lot of potential pedagogical uses. If you teach in the science or math fields, chances are you need to use special symbols, such as Greek characters. Moodle supports LaTEX, which allows one to type in special codes which are translated automatically into mathematical symbols. LaTEX can be used in any text editor in Moodle, and can be integrated with regular text. To use LaTEX, enclose your mathematical formulae inside two pairs of dollar signs, e.g.: $$ \sqrt{x + y} $$
To use Greek characters in LaTEX, type a backslash ( \ ) before the letter name (e.g. theta), and enclose it all in two pairs of dollar signs, e.g.: $$ \theta $$ Here is a reference which lists the LaTEX codes for all Greek characters. Think of “collaborative writing” as creating a single written document authored by more than one writer. Now, add the unique feature of all writers to the document get to add and erase and, otherwise, edit all words and a wiki is born. Wikis are electronic or online spaces for multiple authors to write or add other content such as video clips, hyperlinks, audio links, photos. Wikis can be used for project management. They offer a single and highly accessible location for keeping project materials. For classroom use, wikis offer creative space for collaborative thinking. Wiki participants can write and edit one document OR another model of collaboration is separate documents held in a single wiki space joined further by a single theme. CET 2008 Symposium May 7, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. One day may not be enough time to create your entire lesson, but we can get a good start. Staff will be on hand to explore and create with you. CET 2008 Symposium May 7, 10:45 – 12:00 p.m. You have a plan. You’ll need some objects, scripts and resources. Now is the time to begin creating them. We’ll be learning together and sharing what we create. CET 2008 Symposium May 7, 9:00 – 10:30 a.m. How does the virtual world interact with your teaching? You’ll have the opportunity to create a lesson plan in your own field that could be created in and may benefit from virtual reality. |
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