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I had a student come by my office yesterday. She has a website where she’d like to have a discussion board for her visitors to use. I knew that there must be some discussion board services out there that will give you html code so that you can embed the board on your website. Of course I couldn’t recommend something without trying it out myself. I decided to go with Nabble.com. In the navigation bar at the top of this blog click on the new discussion board link to see it in action. The discussion board is for you to post questions and suggestions. IRead More →

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You’re probably familiar with student response systems (aka clickers). Perhaps you even use PollEverywhere (see this blog post). Both allow you to get feedback from your students in real time. Back channel communication also lets your students communicate with you, but without you asking a question. And everyone else can see what others are saying. In real time. There are a few different systems out there, but Backchan.nl (open source from MIT; free) is, of the ones I’ve seen, the one I like the most. What it looks like Give students the URL. It works fine with both computers and mobile devices. Here’s one I’veRead More →

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Yesterday I gave you a tour of the main page of my website. Today I want to give you a tour of my Psych 100 course site. The link to my syllabus will download a pdf of it. The first page of the syllabus contains two QR codes for students who want to use their smartphones to quickly bookmark my website or have a copy of the syllabus on their phones. (See this post on QR codes.) I created a Google calendar for my course. This is brand new for Winter 2011. Following the link opens the Psych 100 calendar, which I created as aRead More →

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I’ve been writing about technology and education for almost two years now, and I thought I’d take some time to show you how I’m using these various tools on my website. Of course you’re welcome to visit the live site and try them out. At the top of my main page, there’s a quote. Every time you reload the page, another quote is chosen at random from the 25 I’ve selected. It’s produced with a little javascript I got at JavaScript Source. I can’t find the original there anymore, but you can find the same script I used and installation instructions here. To schedule anRead More →

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Last month I wrote about BridgeURL, a service that lets you bundle links together into one URL. Controls appear on either side of your browser window that allow you to cycle through the links. Here’s an example of a BridgeURL link. For those of you who are fans of bit.ly, the URL shortener service, they’ve recently added the ability to bundle URLs together. Log in to your bit.ly account. Check the boxes next to the links you’d like to bundle together, and click ‘Bundle.’ Clicking ‘Bundle’ generates this page where you can add links to your newly created bundle. In this screenshot, you only seeRead More →

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Want to give out your cell phone or home phone number to students but you don’t want them to have your phone number in perpetuity? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could, in effect, change your phone number every term? Check out Babble.ly. How it works You give students a randomly-generated URL or QR code to that URL. (If you’re unfamiliar with QR codes, start with this post.) That takes them to the website below. The student enters their phone number and name (optional). The student clicks ‘Call.’ Babble.ly will call the student’s phone. When the student answers, Babble.ly will call your phone. The studentRead More →

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Back in March, I wrote about QR codes. I just came across this document which offers some interesting ideas on how to use QR codes. It was written for a K-12 audience, but there are a bunch of ideas that are relevant to higher education. I learned a couple things I didn’t know. First, the size of the QR code is correlated with the size of the URL. Makes sense. I just didn’t know that. If you have a long URL but want a small QR code, use a URL shortener like bit.ly or goo.gl then create your QR code. Actually, bit.ly and goo.gl makeRead More →

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BridgeURL lets you save multiple web addresses in one web address. Send your students to one URL, and they can flip through them in a slideshow. BridgeURL is a brand new tool, and they are continuing to add features. To create a BridgeURL, visit the BridgeURL website, create a title for your link, then enter your web addresses. Click “Create Link.” Here’s the link I created: http://bridgeurl.com/Sue-s-Favorite-Email-Tools. Follow this to see the links in ‘slideshow’ view. This is what it looks like in my browser. When I took this screenshot, I had my mouse hovering over the right side of the screen. Clicking ‘next’ willRead More →

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I have an assignment where I ask students to read a NY Times article on what constitutes good study habits. I ask students to identify the recommendations in the article and then evaluate their own study habits, noting any changes they intend to make. Since this is for an intro psych course, I also ask students to identify the independent variable and dependent variable in one of the studies described in the article. Right now I just let students pick from the few studies that are reported. If I wanted students to identify the variables in a particular study, I would have to describe theRead More →

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[UPDATED 12/8/2010: For further tips, tricks, and ideas for using QR codes, see this more recent post.] With the number of smartphones on the rise, such as AT&T’s iPhone or Verizon’s Droid, more and more of our students have this technology in our classrooms. Can you harness this power for your own use? In this post I’m going to introduce you to QR codes and barcode scanner software for cell phones, and how they might be useful to you and your students. If you have an iPhone/Droid, search the App Store/Market for barcode scanners. If you have a different web-enabled phone, here’s a handy listRead More →