Jason Rhode, Ph.D.

I’m currently preparing for an online workshop I’m leading on Thu., Oct. 16th from 12-1pm CDT entitled, “Conducting Online Office Hours Using Wimba Classroom.”  Here’s the description of the session:

Whether teaching in a traditional face-to-face, hybrid, or online course, offering optional office hours provides students with the opportunity to seek further clarification and assistance, enriching the learning experience. The Wimba Classroom online collaboration suite is one technology that integrates seamlessly with Blackboard and can be utilized to offer online office hours, allowing students to communicate in real time with faculty at a mutually convenient time and location. This online workshop will provide a brief introduction of Wimba Classroom and explore best practices of conducting online office hours using Wimba Classroom.

Anyone else interested in joining us for this session?  Drop me an email at jrhode@niu.edu and I can provide the login information to join us.

This fall quarter I am teaching 2 courses for Seattle Pacific University and I’m incorporating an wide array of different Web 2.0 tools, including the Learning Objects Podcast, Wiki, and Blog tools that SPU has licensed into Blackboard as well as Google Calendar and Twitter.

If you’d like to take a listen to the podcasts for either courses or check out any of the other available resources, here’s all the info to access and/or subscribe either via RSS or iTunes:

EDTC 6535 – Issues and Advances in Educational Technology

• Course Podcast RSS Feed: http://tinyurl.com/4wo5cs
• Course Podcast iTunes Feed: http://tinyurl.com/3htqka
• Course Calendar/Schedule: http://tinyurl.com/44cpbh
• Course Tweets: http://twitter.com/edtc6535
• Course Bookmarks: http://delicious.com/tag/edtc6535

EDTC 6536 – Instructional Technology and Information Management

• Course Podcast RSS Feed: http://tinyurl.com/4764aa
• Course Podcast iTunes Feed: http://tinyurl.com/4pjd84
• Course Calendar/Schedule: http://tinyurl.com/4l76y2
• Course Tweets: http://twitter.com/edtc6536
• Course Bookmarks: http://delicious.com/tag/edtc6536

While I’m not newbie to any of these technologies, I am trying some new approaches to using these technologies in my courses this fall, including enhanced and video podcast episodes and syncing the course blog postings to the class twitter feed using twitterfeed.  So, if you’d like to take a peek, I’d love to hear any comments or suggestions for improvement in the future.  I plan to report back here as to my experience with these technologies this quarter.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from the being the “ideal blogger” that writes detailed, lengthy, insightful posts on a regular basis.  I hope to one day become more faithful and substantive in my blog postings.  However, right now, I find that the primary purpose I have for blogging is to share and archive quick information updates as well as post concerning new technology, tools, or approaches that I find interesting.

Often, what I want to do is to quickly tag a blog posting and aggregate it somehow with my other favorites.  Google Reader has a very easy-to-use sharing feature that allows me to either on the web of mobile interface to mark a posting as starred and/or shared.

Shared postings are aggregated in a convenient location so that others can quickly see what I’m reading.  To catch a glimpse of my recent shared items, click here.

While I will continue to post to my blog with select new tools or approaches that I find worth mentioning, I now have a much easier way to simply flag a posting as one I’ve found of interest and want to share with others.  This is even easier than bookmarking a posting and adding it to my collection of delicious bookmarks.

If you are a Google Reader user and you’d like to follow my shared items from within Google Reader, just post a comment or shoot me an email with your email address and I’ll get you added.

Want to share your own favorites via Google Reader?  Click here for details on getting started sharing via Google Reader.

It’s been several months since this blog has seen any activity, mainly due to the fact that my wife and I welcomed our first child in July and I’ve also been juggling some additional teaching responsibilities.  Now that I’m finding a new routine, I look forward to returning to the blogosphere.

I happened to notice recently that Google is planning to shut down Google Pages and move users to Google Sites, explaining,

We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google docs.

Therefore, I decided to be proactive and migrate my institution-neutral e-portfolio from Google Pages to its new location on Google Sites.  You can find my new e-portolio here.

I’m among the many that have been enamored with the iPhone since it first released a year ago. When it first launched, while I really wanted one, I couldn’t justify the steep price for one. Now that the price is coming down and with the promise of 3G and Apps, I’m tempted again to consider getting one despite the hefty cost of a service plan.

We have an opening at the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at NIU for an Instructional Technology Coordinator. Below I’ve included the ad and link to download the complete position description. Come join our team!

(more…)

I spent June 13-20th with my brother-in-law Justin and father-in-law Terry riding across Colorado on our motorcycles. We loaded the motorcycles on my trailer and left Friday evening, June 13th after work and towed them 18 hours to Colorado Springs where we spent the night at Justin’s cousin, Travis & Britta’s house. From there, we drove on the bikes to Pagosa Springs to spend a couple of days with Justin’s family and in-laws before hitting the road and spending 3 more days on the road en route back to Colorado Springs and then finally home. In total, we put on 1,027 miles on the motorcycles and another nearly 2,000 miles in the Explorer towing the motorcycles to Colorado and back. All in all, we had a great trip and many fond memories that will no double be talking about for years to come.

All the photos from our trip are available here. For the slideshow, click here.

Anyone interested in the route we took, here are the maps for our routes that Justin planned out using Google Maps:

• Day 1 (Sun, June 15): Colorado Springs to Pagosa Springs
• Day 2 (Tue, June 17): Pagosa Springs to Hotchkiss
• Day 3 (Wed, June 18): Hotchkiss to Fairplay
• Day 4 (Thu, June 19): Fairplay to Colorado Springs

I’m currently preparing to teach my first course with the Illinois Online Network’s “Making the Virtual Classroom a Reality” (MVCR) series entitled, “Web Design Principles for Online Educators” that begins June 2nd. The MVCR series of online faculty development courses is designed to help faculty members acquire skills and knowledge needed to teach online.

Registration closes for this course May 30th, but in the meantime, details are available for anyone interested in registering for the course or just find out more about this course.

I recently received an email invitation to Nfomedia, a new free social networking utility designed especially for faculty and their courses. I’ve setup a free account and poked around a bit, but since NIU isn’t yet listed as one of the home institutions, I’ve not dabbled any further. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time until many more institutions are listed and I look forward to eventually giving this a try.This certainly does look intriguing…if you have already tried this new tool, please post a comment with your experience.

I’m at Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign preparing for several sessions I will be leading over the next few days.  As I posted earlier, I’m going to attempt to stream 4 sessions I’m leading live online via Ustream as well as record the audio to post to my podcast. This will be an interesting experiment and I look forward to seeing how the quality of the live streams and recordings turn out.

Here are the days/times for these upcoming sessions for anyone who might be interested in taking a peek at any of the sessions online:

• Getting Started Creating Web Pages with Google Page Creator: Tue., May 13, 2008, 8:30am-9:45am (CDT)
• Introduction to Social Bookmarking: Tue., May 13, 2008, 1:30pm-2:45pm (CDT)
• Media Mashups Using Kaltura: Wed., May 14, 2008, 8:30am-9:45am (CDT)
• Getting Started Creating Web Pages with Google Page Creator: Wed., May 14, 2008, 10:15am-11:30am (CDT)

No guarantees,  but if all goes well, I’ll be streaming these sessions at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fsi08

I’m experimenting with quite a few new social networking technologies during this week at FSI but will refrain from posting much more about them here.  If interested in keeping posted on these adventures, you can follow me on Twitter.