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 new 4 minute tutorial that I recorded highlights the steps to enabling guest access to a Wimba Classroom.The free QuickTime player is required. It is also available on YouTube or as a podcast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDYMnOv96rE

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.

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.

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.

Full-time 12-month position responsible for developing and delivering programs and consultations on teaching, technology integration, and related areas for faculty, teaching staff and teaching assistants; providing training and support on the use of web course management system; preparing online and hard copy materials; working closely with various academic and support units at NIU to address their needs on instructional technologies; and participating in various activities of the Center.

Required: Master’s degree in instructional technology or related field, with knowledge of instructional design principles, pedagogical techniques, Web-based course management system and office productivity tools; experience in developing and delivering workshops in a university; ability to develop training materials and documentation, handle multiple tasks and function collaboratively and collegially in a team environment.

Preferred: Doctoral degree; experience in teaching in a higher education environment, offering training programs on web course management systems, ability to learn and show how to use new instructional technologies in teaching, and plan and coordinate programs.

Send: Letter of application, resume and three current letters of professional references related to this position to: Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, Instructional Technologies Coordinator Search, NIU, DeKalb, IL 60115. Preference will be given to complete applications received by July 31, 2008, however, applications will be accepted until position is filled. AA/EEO Institution.

To download a complete position description, visit http://www.niu.edu/facdev/positions/instructechcoord.shtml

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

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.