ZaidLearn’s Updated Blog?

Link to my updated blog:

ZaidLearn

10 Secrets to Great Teaching (Part 1)

• TeacherTube version
• YouTube
• Google Video

PART 1
In part 1, I explore 4 (of 10) secrets to great teaching, or ingredients to become a great teacher. What are the ingredients of a great teacher? Well, when I complete the 2-part series you will at least know my standpoint on this issue. My findings is basically based on what I have observed, read, experienced and learned over the last few years in Higher Education.

Yes, you are certainly free to agree or disagree with all my ideas and thoughts about great teaching. What really matters, is not being right or wrong, but taking this wonderful opportunity to be part of a messy global conversation (in audio format) about this issue.

Here, enjoy part 1 (not sure about that!), and hopefully part 2 will be out sometime next week:

Spice Up Your Boring LMS with Google Lively?

• Link to Google Lively
• Google Lively Trailer (YouTube)
• Lively – Google’s Contribution to the 3D Social Web?
• ZaidLearn’s del.icio.us Virtual Worlds

GOOGLE LIVELY?
A free browser-based 3D virtual environment that enables easy integration to social networking tools such as MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial, and Google gadgets like Picasa and Youtube. With Google Lively, users’ friends lists, feeds, and logins are tied directly to the social network. In addition, virtual environments are embeddable on any Web page with a snippet of code that can then be viewed as a full 3D environment, based in part on Emergent’s Gamebryo engine, after downloading a roughly 9 megabyte plugin (Source).

THINGS I LIKE…

Firstly, there is no need to create a new account to get started. With my Gmail account I can simply register using it.

Secondly, you only need to download a small plugin before you can explore Google Lively for real. One up on Second Life! However, comparing Second Life with Google Lively, is like comparing Nintendo Wii with Sony Playstation 3 (or Xbox). Different galaxies and wars, targeting different aliens! While Second Life brought us new 3D virtual learning possibilities, Google Lively will bring virtual worlds to the masses. At least that is what they are targeting with this easy-to-use tool. If we want to compare Google Lively to other virtual worlds, I suppose we could compare it with Vivaty and IMVU, which are more similar.

Thirdly, Google Lively is also really easy to learn and use. No user guide is needed, trust me! Within minutes of discovering it, I was able to create my own cool avatar and virtual room; without much hassle. Basically, you can create or assemble your own stuff from a huge catalog of available shells (rooms), furniture, clothes, etc. Actually, you don’t really create new stuff, but instead mash-up yourself and environment from available virtual goods from the fast growing catalog. This catalog is being nurtured and expanded by Google’s development team (led by Jeff Matsuda, formerly at Warner Bros.) and a 200+-person team of international contractors.

Fourthly, Google Lively can be easily integrated with existing social networking tools such as MySpace and Facebook. Also, users can add content from Google sites like YouTube and Picasa. I suppose Google Lively will eventually be integrated with Google Earth and the rest of the relevant Google gadgets. I can imagine transporting myself to Oxford University (England) in Google Earth and having a Google lively chat with Tim Berners Lee.

Fifthly, you can easily express yourself with a couple of clicks, whether orally or physically. For example, the available portfolio of animations enable you to puke, stick out your tongue, kick someone down, dance, jump, scream, be happy, and even get really angry. In short, I am sure you can evolve your emotional intelligence by exploring your true self with all these animations, which are just a few clicks away.

Sixthly, the virtual rooms operate kind of independently, meaning you can’t build a huge wall or a naked statue in front of another person’s virtual property to annoy or blackmail them. Instead, you can discover new spaces or virtual rooms searching the catalog of rooms. Actually, Google lively is not really a virtual world, but a fast growing bunch of separate virtual rooms.

Finally, it could be a great place to socialize, make friends and have some fun. Enough! let’s move on!

THINGS I DON’T LIKE…
First, I am not going to encourage my young kids to socialize there (at least for now)! Although, we cannot create our own animations and stuff, we are of course allowed to use our imagination to explore the rest. Of course that is exciting, but then again not always appropriate for everyone. For example, one virtual room I found, was entitled “Free S..” (you can guess the rest!) with a metadata description saying, “Title says it all”. I suppose sooner or later the community will self-regulate itself from such things (or encourage more!), or perhaps we could have different virtual worlds consisting of specific themes or areas of interest.

Also, if we strip Google Lively down, it is not much we can do in terms of constructive learning (Then again that is not its main agenda either, as far as I know!). Currently, it is basically avatars, rooms, chat and a growing catalog of all sorts of virtual goods to decorate our virtual spaces. It is basically a chat system that you can visually spice up. Though, being Google I am sure they will increasingly add or integrate more features (e.g. forum, virtual classroom, whiteboard, puzzles, games) and provide more flexibility to users in terms of constructing content and learning possibilities. In short, it is quite limited for synchronous and asynchronous learning. I suppose Second Life is still miles ahead here! Yes, I would like to have my virtual lab enabling me to visualize, demonstrate and collaborate on experiments with my students.

Also, it would be nice if we were provided with more features to protect ourselves from cyber bullies out there. As I was wondering in one of the rooms, I saw with my naked eyes a Russian mafia looking avatar slamming a beautiful young lady several times to the floor. Then he went on to beat up a 3-foot white teddy bear. Although, they were probably having fun exploring all the cool animations we can do, I am not sure a Professor would appreciate such treatment during a visit to the student’s virtual lounge.

I can imagine how a lively lecture or tutorial might turn out in such an environment. When a student gets bored with the Professor’s lecture, he goes over and kicks him to the ground, and then pukes all over him. Then the rest joins in! At least the Professor might get the point that his lecture probably needs improvement. But then again, the Professor was kind of distracted by the beautiful avatar girl in bikini.

You might also get frustrated with a new pop-up for every virtual room you visit (and a request to login again every time). Interestingly, I was in three different rooms at once, using three different avatars. Yes, I can imagine the lecturer being happy with a full class of virtual students, and then later finding out that all the students cloned themselves away to another room.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my Firefox browser slowed down and simply crushed during my Google Lively adventure. This could be due to several reasons, so I will not dwell upon it here.

LMS + LIVELY = LEARNING + JOY
Let’s take off our negative hat, and look at the possibilities a browser-based 3D virtual environment can bring to our online learning environment. I can imagine integrating Google Lively (Student Lounge) with Moodle. Alright, with the existing features it might not be the right place to conduct lectures, tutorials, lab experiments, etc. However, most LMS that I have explored do not have an exciting online space for students to simply to hangout, connect, socialize and make friends. Using a LMS can often be a lonely experience, but tools like Google Lively could spice that up (at least for the students).

But then again some lecturers might get a shock of their life when they visit the virtual student lounge for the first time (Imagine! Perhaps they should be banned from there!). I suppose if some of the avatar animations could be excluded, or educators were given some super powers that would help. At least they might avoid a potential virtual physical or sexual harassment.

Hmm, by the time we establish all the rules of virtual engagement, students would have vanished to other virtual rooms were they can be their virtual self. In other words, perhaps students should set up their own rooms independently from their educational institution and LMS.

Anyway, since Google is behind this Lively 3D virtual world, we can expect a lot of interesting new enhancements and features in the near future. It wouldn’t surprise me if we soon are provided with an easy-to-use virtual learning toolbox, with all sorts of interesting features and tools, empowering us with dynamic possibilities to facilitate engaging learning.

However, I couldn’t help noticing while searching the catalog that every virtual item had a ‘Price’ tag hanging over it. Although, all the virtual goods are free for now, would that remain when things get more juicy?

Show Up to Throw Up! 21st Century Thinking? (Part 5)

• Part 1 – Teaching Habits That Inspire You Out of Learning?
• Part 2 – I Have Bragging Rights, Because I Am …?
• Part 3 – Is PowerPoint Evil?
• Part 4 – No Stupid Questions! I am Serious!
• Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively!

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
- Albert Einstein
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
-Bill Gates
“Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives.
Learning must be experienced.”
- William Glasser

In this 5-part learning series, we have already looked at several teaching habits that could inspire students out of learning, which I am not going to repeat here (read and synthesize the other parts, if you want to know!). In this last part or episode (for sure!), we will explore one of the greatest challenges in teaching today, which is assessing the potential and ability of the student. This time around, I will zoom back to my secondary and high-school days in Norway to share with you some nutty, but useful stories to reflect and draw lessons from.

THE WHITE PAPER!
In secondary school or 7th grade (Norwegian style!), we had a music teacher who was a failed singer. Her voice was simply horrible, but that did not stop her from singing in every class. She would always scold me when I did not sing along, and when I did sing along she would scold me even more for not following the tune. Until today, I still hate singing. Although, I don’t blame her fully, she certainly had some impact on my fear for singing.

In general, I believe sincerely that she hated my guts, and fully deserved to as I was no cup of tea either. She always reminded me how much better my big brother was. As I had a reputation to keep (at that time!) that was fine by me.

However, what struck me until today was not really her singing (or mine for that sake!), but the way she would test our knowledge level on music and instruments. For example, she would hand out to us a piece of paper with definitions of several instruments and then ask us to memorize it for the next class. In the next class, she would give us a blank piece of paper and ask us to basically rewrite the whole paper again without referring to it. Then she would mark us based on how much we had memorized.

No doubt memory and memorization is important today too, but perhaps if we were asked to play and learn an instrument, or be able to discuss our feelings, preferences and experiences with instruments, we might have learned more. Coming to think of it, such exams are not much different from what we often get today. The only major difference is that we have a few hundred pages and a few dozen questions to digest before the exam.

Hmm, let’s move on to the next story before we close this learning series adventure for good.

BRAVO!

The second learning reflection journey takes me back to my French language classes in high school. Now, my French teacher was a person that could outshine Mr. Bean any day. I really felt sorry for this old dude. Not only did he have extremely poor eye-sight and hearing, he was also a real nerve rack. You get kind of stressed out by just looking at him.

In many ways, he was a legend in the making. The rumor has it that he once mistook a sandwich for a blackboard eraser (a student prank!), and then tried to clean the blackboard with it. Students used to always pull pranks on him, such as putting a lot of mayonnaise on the door knob. He would fall for it every time. But he was a good sport, and would continue class as if nothing had happened, every time.

Though, it did not stop there! Since he had poor eyesight, he would map out the students in the classroom on a piece of paper, enabling him to know where who sat. By doing so, he could easily keep track of the students in the class. Or perhaps not! Students being students would always change their positions and he would simply go nuts, reminding us to sit in the same place every class. Some students would also sneak out during class while he was teaching. If he asked questions to missing students, other students would quickly answer on the students’ behalf.

The most memorable funny incident was even posted in the students’ yearbook that year. Since I witnessed it with my bear eyes, I can testify that it really happened. What happened?

During one class while the French teacher was lecturing, one student decided to sneak out. However, this time around the student was really creative. He put his chair (upside down) on the table and then covered it with his thick winter jacket, and sneaked out quietly. Later during the class, the French teacher decided to ask the missing student a question. Oh man, we thought he was busted this time around! The French teacher asked the question, but no one answered. Then he went closer to the missing student’s desk ( probably about 3 meters from it) and asked again, but still no one answered. Alright, now he is busted! But then the teacher said (in Norwegian), “Oh Christian has decided to be quiet today. Usually, he is so talkative. Alright, can anyone else answer the question?”.

We all looked stunned at one another in disbelief. Is this teacher for real? I suppose he discovered what really happened in the students’ yearbook (Hmm, not sure teachers read such books). Or perhaps he always knew, but acted as if nothing had happened (as usual!). Nope, I doubt it!

But then again, nothing could beat his class test or exams. In general, you usually find a few students cheating when there are exams. However, in his class I would argue that 90%+ of the students cheated on his exams. In other words, it is difficult to find students that don’t cheat on his exams.

The French language book we used for the course, also had an accompanying ‘Teacher Guide’. The ‘Teacher Guide’ included sample test questions and answers. Interestingly, our amazing French teacher would basically copy/paste questions for our exams from this guide. Students being book wise knew that the’ Teacher Guide’ is also sold in the bookstore without hassle. Need I say any more!

Since this amazing teacher could hardly see or hear, students would bring the ‘Teacher Guide’ to the exam, and answer the questions with flying colors. You might be thinking, ‘Did you also cheat?’. I am sad to say… Not only did students bring the guide, but they also placed it on the table as if it was an open book exam. Of course, the French teacher never saw or heard any unusual sounds during the photocopying session. Some bright students would deliberately write a few mistakes, or customize things that were easy to change. At least it did not look too obvious.

I once got a ‘BRAVO‘ comment in my exam, and he was really impressed with my answers. I was thinking that the only one that should be getting ‘Bravo’ is the teacher’s ability (or ignorance) to figure out what was going on.

Looking back, I had wished I would have focused more on learning French than just thinking about scoring for the exam. Today, I probably remember less than 10 French words or phrases. And that is after 2 semesters of learning French. What a disaster! But then again after watching Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University it begins to make sense.

In the final analysis, we educators should do more to construct assessment approaches and measures to minimize the possibility for such things from happening. Indirectly, some of our assessment methods might actually encourage students to cheat.

THE ULTIMATE CHALLENGE?

If you ask me, infusing 21st century thinking into the teaching and learning environment is NOT the ultimate learning challenge. These things can be learned and embedded reasonably fast. However, infusing more constructive and relevant assessment methods might actually be the thing that stops many educators from making the necessary changes to nurture 21st century thinking and inspire students to reach their potentials.

The old assessment paradigm of only one correct answer (whether tick or essay!) is more efficient to implement and requires less thinking on the educator’s behalf to administer.

But, how do you measure:

• Creativity in an objective manner?
• Critical thinking in an objective manner?
• The quality and potential of an idea?
• An open ended question?
• An opinion?
• Potential?
• Ability?
• LEARNING?

Today there are several alternative assessment methods we can use to minimize our own subjectivity in evaluating our students creative and innovative work. The fuzzy maps below, provide several assessment and thinking activities to explore, and I will leave it to your ‘Googling’ to find good materials related to them.

Until now, I have been pumping you with tons of learning resources in this 5-part learning series, but now I will only share two excellent resources to inspire you further:

• Teaching Tips Blog
  An excellent venue for inspiration and resources to spark your imagination with new ideas to engage and facilitate effective learning.
• Michael Wesch and the Future of Education
  In this presentation, Michael Wesch breaks down his attempts to integrate Facebook, Netvibes, Diigo, Google Apps, Jott, Twitter, and other emerging technologies to create an education portal of the future. Michael Wesch Course Portal (using Netvibes): Mediated Cultures: Digital Ethnography. In addition, you might and should explore his famous “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Using Us” video, which explores the evolution of knowledge creation, management and sharing in creative and stimulating way.

I suppose I have come to the end of this learning psycho therapy, and I am looking forward now to focus more on the future of learning again. I hope that some of the stories shared can inspire us to reflect our own teaching (although they might be extreme!), and hopefully enable us to weed out things that might inspire students out of learning.

The more I learn, the dumber I realize I am. It is amazing, humbling and refreshing

“Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.”
- Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

Infusing 21st Century Thinking Skills Into the T&L Environment

• Link to Slideshare Version
• Flash/PDF Version
• Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively!

THE SECRET

Now, I know ‘The Secret’, and by believing and practicing the ‘LAW OF ATTRACTION’, I will one day become the Einstein of the East (Hmm, I am kind of mixed, so that might be a problem)! I watched ‘The Secret’, and I have to admit that it is the most disappointing secret I have ever discovered. The opening was exciting, but the rest could have been summed up in a minute or two. I am not revealing the secret, but I can tell you that if you believe in it, it might come true.

Perhaps, if the movie had really discussed some of the great minds of the past, I would have appreciated it more. Instead, we are listening to a bunch of successful people sharing with us how the secret has changed their life (the Law of Attraction!).

Isn’t it obvious (self-fulfilling prophecy?) that if you are positive, believe in yourself, have passion, visualize your dreams, go for it, etc., you are more likely to succeed (perhaps I come from Mars!). If you ask me, there was nothing new to discover in ‘The Secret’, except clever branding and promotion. It is probably the most exciting, clever and exotic branding since ‘Blue Ocean’. The power of ‘The Secret’ is not in the law of attraction, but in the word: “SECRET”. Everyone wants to know a secret. In short, every single motivational guru since I don’t know when has indirectly promoted the so called secret, but has labeled it in a less exotic and mysterious way.

However, if it can help some of the millions of people that have watched it to achieve their dreams, then I suppose it has some value

THE LECTURE
Actually, the real reason I am writing now is not because of the secret, but because I want to share with you my presentation slides for a lecture that was never conducted. Roughly, a month ago I was invited to be a guest speaker at a major workshop (250 participants!) to conduct a lecture about ‘Critical Thinking’. Due to some financial reasons, the workshop was postponed. And since then, I have never conducted this particular lecture. I suppose because no one else knew that I had prepared it. Or perhaps, because I am…. (Use the force! I mean the ‘Law of Attraction’)

Anyway, here are the presentation slides:

View

This lecture (or presentation slides) explores 21st century challenges and possibilities in infusing learning, thinking, creativity and innovation into the teaching and learning environment.

If the presentation slides do not make any sense, perhaps you can invite me to conduct the lecture wherever it may be (The first lecture most be conducted face-to-face. Why? I don’t know!). Since I am in Malaysia, it might be costly if you want me to conduct the lecture in United States or Alaska. However, if you are Oprah Winfrey or Jay Leno I might consider doing it for free. Sorry David Letterman, for you I will not do it for free.

Now, you are perhaps thinking that I have gone POTTY! Nope, I am simply being positive and realistic about my prospects and practicing the law of attraction

On a serious note, after I conduct the first live lecture (if ever! Be positive!), I will record an e-lecture using Adobe Presenter to enlighten (who ever reads my blog!) what I am trying to reveal in the presentation slides.

Until the first live lecture, it will remain a secret. Just exploring the power of ‘The Secret’

ZaidLearn’s New Learning Space = Netvibes?

• Link to ZaidLearn’s New Learning Space
• Netvibes

NO TIME!
I have been kind of busy the last two weeks implementing a lot of work related e-learning crap, and sadly have found no time to sit down, reflect and write something that is even more crap

Hopefully, I can complete my 5-part learning series next week.

EXPLORING NETVIBES
Though, I did manage to find an hour or two during this week to explore Netvibes, and to my surprise it was really fun. In short, Netvibes is a personal news aggregator with RSS and Atom support (That is how Google summarized it, or intelligently extracted it out).

If you ask me, Netvibes is user-friendly, useful, fast, feature-rich, flexible, cool, and you don’t need any user guide to get some results (at least I didn’t!). Now, that is the kind of tool I like!

However, I am still working on it, and hopefully next week I will add some more interesting content (Or RSS feeds) to my new learning space (and spice it up!). Just need to find the time!

CLICK HERE to view what I am babbling about, and find tons of interesting (free) learning content, tools, edugames and blogs in a stimualting manner. Information overload? It depends!

NEXT PAGEFLAKES?
Hmm, I suppose I will also explore Pageflakes before I decide whether Netvibes is one of the right tools to manage my online learning adventure. I like Pageflakes’s short description: “Social personalized homepage – the easiest way to read, see, discover and share your favorite things on the Web (another Google extract).”

Whether it is really the easiest tool enabling us to read, see, discover and share our favorite things on the Web, I really don’t know. I suppose, we will have to explore it to find out! Google, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook (hmm, Bloglines and the rest of the RSS collection dudes are also in the game!) have their own tools to shout about. In short, we are kind of spoilt for choice. The question is not “Whether there is…”, but “Which one should we…”. So, we still have a headache

I suppose I will give you some updates regarding Pageflakes after completing the 5-part learning series.

Until then, have fun exploring ZaidLearn’s New Learning Space

P.S. I had a few problems using Netvibes with Internet Explorer (IE), but it worked like a bull with Mozilla Firefox. Another reason for dumping IE!

University Learning = OCW + OER = FREE!

• Printer-Friendly Version
• OCW/OER Search
• ZaidLearn’s Delicious OCW Adventure
• 130+ Free Learning Tools
• 75 Free EduGames

ZaidLearn is back from another non-blogging vacation (Who cares!)! Excellent point! Anyway, before I get back to my wacky 5-part learning series (in 2 weeks time!), I need to settle something urgently, and that is to compile and organize all my University learning related OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Open Educational Resources (OER) links that are scattered here and there, into one smashing post. In short, this post is about smashing all free University learning related OCW and OER resources and collections discovered into an all-in-one (sounds like shampoo!) quick-to-access/find juicy compilation. Hopefully, it will satisfy my thirst for quick access to free University learning related content.

Interestingly, this post will be a dynamic one, meaning that I will continue to update (and revamp!) it as I discover, or others share ideas and recommend new oceans of free knowledge.

STARTING POINTS
But before we get bogged down by tons of free learning repositories, here are few good starting points to find and know more about OER and OCW:

SEARCH

• OCW/OER Search
  This Google customed search engine enables you to search the sites that are linked from this post (with a few filters, too). Click here to view Tony Hirst’s (Credit to him for the super idea!) OER/OCW search version, which also searches sites linked on this post. Click here to view Scott Leslie’s upgraded version, which brings it to a Do-It-Together level by using a Wiki enabling anyone to add OER/OCW links (URLs).
• OpenCourseWare Finder
  The OCW Finder currently shows results from several collections, including MIT OCW , Utah State University, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health OCW, Tufts University OCW, Foothill De-Anza SOFIA, and Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative.
• OER Recommender
  Makes it easy for open education resource providers to provide links to related resources. A good starting point to search and find relevant OER resources.

DIRECTORIES

• OER Commons
  A global teaching and learning network of free-to-use resources – from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware – for you to use, tag, rate, and review.
• Open Courseware Directory
  You will find 7 groups of subject-specific open courseware, including specialized resources for each subject. It is an annotated listing of publicly available courseware (lecture notes, handouts, slides, tutorial material, exam questions, quizzes, videos, demonstrations, etc) from the world’s universities, colleges and other educational institutions.
• OpenCourseWare Consortium
  The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model.

COMMUNITIES

• WikiEducator
  An evolving community intended for the collaborative planning of education projects linked with the development of OER. development of free content on Wikieducator for e-learning; work on building open education resources (OERs) on how to create OERs.
• Wikiversity
  Wikibooks, Collection of open-content textbooks. Wikiversity is intended for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities.
• UNESCO OER Community
  This site was originally created by the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) as a place where members of the UNESCO OER Community can work together on questions, issues and documents. There are some wonderful resources here providing you with relevant information needed to understand what OER is about, how to use/contribute/collaborate, and how to move forward (e.g. OER: the Way Forward , OER stories, OER presentations and UNESCO OER Toolkit)

NEWS

• OER Blogs
  An initiative from MIT’s OpenCourseWare project to aggregate and stimulate discussion about open educational resources. It is a great resource to keep yourself updated about the latest trends and developments in OCW and OER.
• Open Education News
  A number of individuals from the US, South Africa, and eventually other locations daily monitor the internet for news related to open education. It is essentially a group blog.
• Open Education – Free Education For All
  This site led by Thomas J. Hanson is dedicated to tracking the changes occurring in education today.
• EduResources Weblog
  This weblog by Joseph Hart focuses on locating, evaluating, discussing, and providing guidelines to instructional resources for faculty and students in higher education (HE). The emphasis is on free, shared, HE resources.

AMAZING COLLECTIONS!
Why start bookmarking free learning content out there from scratch, when there are great people out there that have already assembled amazing OCW collections for us to explore (for free!). Here are a few amazing OCW collections shared by special people out there:

• Lecturefox – Free University Lectures (Andreas and Ellen Petersen)
• Free Online Courses from Great Universities (Open Culture)
• Intelligent YouTube Video Collections (Open Culture)
• 30+ List of Computer Science Video Lectures (Over 200 Videos)
• 200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything (Jessica Hupp)
• More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online – and Counting (Jeff Cobb)
• OER – Open Educational Resources (Jeff Cobb)
• 100+ Open Courseware Collections for Aspiring Web Developers (Laura Milligan)
• 100 Free Podcasts from the Best Colleges in the World (Heather Johnson)
• 60+ Killer Open Courseware Collections for Web Designers (Jessica Hupp)
• Top 100 Open Courseware Projects (OEDb)
• 250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives (OEDb)
• 100+ Sources for Free Books & Texts Online (Alisa Miller)
• The Stingy Scholar’s OCW Collection
• Online Neuroscience Lectures

UNIVERSITY LEARNING & OCW

The OCW or University related learning content compilation below is organized according to Country, University and my urge to quick access. Not much metadata here about each University or repository, except quick access to the juicy links. Hopefully, it makes ‘repository finding sense‘ to you. This compilation was influenced by this great list! Yes, some parts were even copy/paste!

UNITED STATES

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  - MIT OCW
  - MIT OCW – Audio/Video Courses
  - MIT OCW – YouTube
  - MIT World
  - MIT TechTV
• Harvard University
  - Harvard Business Online (Podcasts)
  - Harvard – Homeric Odyssey..Justice (Podcasts)
  - Harvard – Kennedy School of Gov (Podcasts)
  - Harvard Law School (Podcasts)
  - Classics Podcasts (Harvard)
  - BerkmanCenter’s Channel (Harvard Law School) (YouTube)
  - BokTube – BokCenter’s YouTube Channel (Harvard) (YouTube)
• Berkeley
  - UC Irvine (OCW)
  - University of California, Berkeley (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley on iTunes (Podcasts)
  - University of California (Berkeley) (YouTube)
  - University of California Television (UCTV) (YouTube)
  - Berkeley YouTube Lectures
  - U California eScholarship Repository
  - CalTech Today (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley Multimedia Research Center (Podcasts)
  - Berkeley Resources (Podcasts)
• Princeton
  - UChannel (Princeton) (YouTube)
  - Princeton U’s Event SM (Podcasts)
  - Princeton U’s New Media Center (Podcasts)
  - Princeton University Channel (Podcasts)
  - Princeton University WebMedia (Podcasts)
• Stanford University
  - Stanford on iTunes (Podcasts)
  - Stanford University (Edu. Corner) (Podcasts)
  - Stanford University Audio/Video (Podcasts)
  - Stanford on YouTube
  - Stanford Center for Professional Development Free Engineering Seminars
• Yale University
  - Open Yale Courses (OCW)
  - Yale University (Podcasts)
• Johns Hopkins University
  - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (OCW)
  - Johns Hopkins U (Podcasts)
• Rice University
  - Connexions (OCW)
  - Rice University (Podcasts)
• Carnegie Mellon University
  - Open Learning Initiative (OCW)
  - Carnegie Mellon (YouTube)

Other OCW:

• Tufts University
• UMass Boston
• University of Notre Dame
• Utah OpenCourseWare Alliance
• Utah State University
• SOFIA Project

Other YouTube Channels:

• University of Southern California (USC)
• University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill
• Vanderbilt University
• University of Chicago Press
• University of Arizona
• Tulane University
• Purdue University
• Old Dominion (US)
• Duke University News
• AuburnUniversity’s Videos

Other Podcast Libraries:

• Knowledge Wharton
• Chicago University GSB
• Alleghany College
• American University (Law)
• Arizona State University
• Boston College (Front Row)
• Buffalo State College
• Butte College
• Carleton University Television
• Case School of Law
• Center for Int. Studies (Chicago)
• College of DuPage
• Dartmouth Chance
• Drexel University
• Duke University Multimedia
• Georgetown University Forum
• Georgetown University Webcasts
• Georgia College & State U
• Kansas State University (Landon)
• Lewis & Clark Law School
• Mathematical Sc. Res. Inst.
• Montclair State University
• Perdue Boilercast
• Rockefeller University
• Southwest Tech’s CourseCasts
• St. Edward’s University
• Swarthmore College U Lectures
• UCLA Bruincast
• UCLA Webcasts
• University of Arizona College of Law
• University of British Columbia
• University of California TV
• University of Connecticut
• University of New South Wales
• University of Oregon
• University of Southern California
• University of Texas
• University of Virginia
• University of Warwick
• University of Washington TV
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Vanderbilt University
• Weber University
• Western Kentucky University
• York College Lectures

EUROPE

UNITED KINGDOM

• The Open University
• Humbul Humanities Hub (Oxford)
• Cambridge University (Podcasts)
• London School of Economics (Podcasts)
• University of Nottingham (Podcasts)
• Oxford Internet University (Podcasts)
• University of Bath (Podcasts)
• Times-Online MBA Broadcasts (Podcasts)
• Oxford University Saïd Business School (YouTube)

FRANCE

• ParisTech “Graduate School” (11 universities – French)
• Grenoble Ecole de Management (French)
• UniversitySurf (French)
• Insead Podcasts

HOLLAND

• Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) (English)
• Open Universiteit Nederland (Dutch)

SPAIN

• OpenCourseWare Universia (10 universities – Spanish, Catalan, Galician)

SWITZERLAND

• European Graduate School (EGS) (YouTube)

ASIA

AUSTRALIA

• University of Southern Queensland

NEW ZEALAND

• New Zealand Open Educational Resources Project

JAPAN

• United Nations University
• Japan OCW Consortium
• Doshisha University
• Hokkaido University
• Kagawa Nutrition University
• Kansai University
• Keio University
• Kyoto University
• Kyoto Seika University
• Kyushu University
• Meiji University
• Nagoya University
• Osaka University
• Ritsumeikan University
• Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
• Tokyo Institute of Technology
• University of Tokyo
• University of Tsukuba
• Waseda University

INDIA

• Indian Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science (YouTube)
• Rai OpenCourseware

KOREA

• Korea University
• Kyung Hee University

TAIWAN

• National Chiao Tung University (Chinese)

VIETNAM

• EduNet OpenCourseWare
• Fulbright Economics Teaching Program OCW

HONG KONG

• LEARNet – Shareable Learning Resources in Hong Kong
  

SOUTH-AMERICA

MEXICO

• Tecnológico de Monterrey (Spanish)
• Universidad de Monterrey (Spanish)

TRANSLATION AFFILIATES

• China Open Resources for Education (Simplified Chinese)
• Chulalongkorn University (Thai)
• Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (Traditional Chinese)
• Universia (Portuguese)
• Universia (Spanish)

OTHERS

• Novell OpenCourseWare
  Novell OpenCourseWare is a collection of educational materials developed by Novell Training Services for authorized courses and other customer training purposes.

OER/FREE REPOSITORIES
Below is a list of OER/FREE learning repositories that are not directly linked with any particular university, but are still wonderful repositories or collections of free content that we can in some way or the other use for our courses:

GENERAL

• Wikipedia
  Wikipedia is an amazing encyclopedia (of anything you can think of!) written collaboratively by many of its readers.
• MERLOT
  Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials.
• Wikinews
  Free-content online news source where any site visitor can add or edit stories.
• Answers.com
  Answers.com offers free access to millions of topics from the world’s leading publishers.
• Internet Archive
  The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form.
• Fathom Archive
  Offers access to the complete range of free content developed for Fathom by its member institutions including lectures, articles, interviews, exhibits and free seminars.
• GLOBE
  The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) is an international consortium that strives to make shared online learning resources available to educators and students around the world.
• dgCommunities
  dgCommunities (Provided by Development Gateway Foundation) is a collaborative space for professionals working to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development worldwide (Members in more than 200 countries).
• HowStuffWorks
  HowStuffWorks explains hundreds of subjects, from car engines to lock-picking to ESP, using clear language and tons of illustrations.
• World Lecture Hall
  An entry point to free online course materials from around the world.
• OpenDOAR
  Is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here.
• AT&T Knowledge Network Explorer – Blue Web’n Homepage
  Blue Web’n is a huge online library categorized by subject, grade level, and format (tools, references, lessons, hotlists, resources, tutorials, activities, projects). The content categories available are: arts, business, education, English, foreign languages, health, history and social studies, maths, science, technology among others.
• Monterey Institute for Technology and Education National Repository of Online Courses (NROC)
  A growing library of high-quality online courses for students and faculty in higher education, high school and Advanced Placement. Courses in the NROC library are contributed by developers from leading online-learning programs across the US.
• Apple Learning Interchange
  Is a social network for educators, where you can find content ranging from simple lesson ideas to in-depth curriculum units for K-12 and Higher Education.
• ARIADNE
  The core of the ARIADNE infrastructure is a distributed network of learning repositories.
• CAREO
  The Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO) project aims to create both an online repository of educational objects for post-secondary educators and a community that both creates and supports those objects.
• Intute
  A free online service providing you with access to Web resources for education and research. Areas: Science and Technology, Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, Health and Life, and Sciences.
• Ideas
  An initiative by the University of Wisconsin to identify, evaluate, catalog, and align to the Wisconsin education standards resources that are already on the Internet, such as lesson plans and reference materials.
• JORUM
  Jorum is a free online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions, helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials.
• LeMill – Learning Mill
  Web community for finding, authoring and sharing learning resources.
• Curriki (K-12)
  Internet site for Open Source Curriculum (OSC), which will provide universal access to free curricula and instructional materials for grades K-12.
• DAREnet
  DAREnet is a search service which gives free access to academic research output in the Netherlands. DAREnet consists of more than 146.000 digital objects.
• EdNA Online (Aus)
  Education Network Australia (edna) is Australia’s leading online resource collection and collaborative network for the education and training community.
• EducaNext
  EducaNext is a service supporting the creation and sharing of knowledge for Higher Education.
• Eureka
  A collective catalog of teaching and learning resources gathered by various organizations involved in the production of ITC educational resources.
• ALISON (Workplace Skills)
  Including Touch Typing Skills, European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), British Computer Society (BCS) Unit E, Financial Literacy and e-Citizen.
• HippoCampus (High School)
  Multimedia and course materials that can help students with their homework and studies.
• Maricopa Learning eXchange
  Is an electronic warehouse of ideas, examples, and resources (represented as “packages”) that support student learning at the Maricopa Community Colleges.
• PEOI
  Professional Educational Organization International (PEOI) was created, and is run by volunteers who believe that it is time for open post secondary education be made available to all free of charge.
• WannaLearn.com
  Here you can find over 350 categories of free, first-rate, family-safe online tutorials, guides and instructionally oriented Websites.
• LoLa Exchange
  LoLa is an exchange for facilitating the sharing of high-quality learning objects. It contains materials for use across the curriculum, with a particular focus on modules for Information Literacy.

EDUCATION

• TeacherTube
  Online community for sharing instructional videos.
• T4 Tips Podcasts
  Audio and video educational technology podcasts providing you tips, guidance and ideas on how to use different learning tools to facilitate effective learning.
• GEM (Gateway to 21st Century Skills)
  Thousands of free lesson plans and other teaching and learning resources.
• SuTree (Educational Videos)
  SuTree is a knowledge community and an aggregator of instructional & educational videos.
• EdTechTalk
  A community of educators interested in discussing and learning about the uses of educational technology. They webcast several live shows each week.

SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

• VideoLectures.Net
  Free access to high-quality scientific video lectures.
• Computer Science Teaching Center
  A digital archive of peer reviewed resources for teaching computer science. Submission restricted to registered users.
• CITIDEL
  Computing and IT Interactive Digital Educational Library Repository (CITIDEL) is a great resource to discover computer Science education and research materials.
• e-LEE (Electrical Engineering)
  e-Learning tools for Electrical Engineering.
• Exploratories
  A project of Brown University’s Computer Graphics Research Group to create a set of exemplary Web-based learning objects (Java applets) that teach concepts in introductory computer graphics at the college and graduate level. Users can download complete Java applets, or build their own from the components collection.
• EEVL (Engineering, Maths & Comp.)
  A guide to engineering, mathematics and computing information on the internet.
• iLumina
  iLumina is a digital library of sharable undergraduate teaching materials for chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics, and computer science.
• SMETE Digital Library
  Here you can access a wealth of teaching and learning materials as well as join this expanding community of science, math, engineering and technology explorers of all ages.
• arXiv.org e-Print archive
  arXiv, set up by Cornell University, is an e-Print archive specializing in Physics, Mathematics, Nonlinear Sciences, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.
• HEAL (Health Education Assets Library)
  HEAL’s mission is to provide free digital resources of the highest quality that meet the needs of today’s health sciences educators.
• College of Health Professions (COHP) Online Learning Resources
  Including Dental Hygiene, Health Science, Communicative Sciences & Disorders Medical Technology, Nursing Radiologic Sciences, Respiratory Therapy and Physical Therapy.

HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES

• The Digital Scriptorium
  Is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research.
• John Locker – Free Documentaries
  Educate yourself with free documentaries online on History, Science, Music, War, Religions, Politics, Conspiracies, and more!

MATHEMATICS

• The Math Forum (Drexel University)
  The Math Forum Is a the leading online resource for improving math learning, teaching, and communication since 1992, created by teachers, mathematicians, researchers, students, and parents. It offers a wealth of problems and puzzles, online mentoring, research, team problem solving, collaborations and professional development.
• Math World
  A mathematical specific repository, created by Wolfram Research. Contains web based (HTML) resources about algebra, applied mathematics, calculus and analysis, discrete mathematics, geometry, history, number theory, probability, statistics and topology, etc.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

• Eduforge
  Eduforge is an open access environment designed for the sharing of ideas, research outcomes, open content and open source software for education.
• W3Schools
  At W3Schools you will find all the Web-building tutorials you need, from basic HTML and XHTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and WAP.
• Edumax
  Edumax is an online learning website that provides free lessons on topics from personal development to computer programming.

TEXTBOOKS

• Google Book Search
  In addition to searching, viewing and downloading books, you also receive links to reviews, references, and even a world map showing every location mentioned in the book.
• Gutenberg Project
  Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks.
• Scribd
  Research, ebooks, poetry, presentations, schoolwork, and more are all available on this site.
• LearnOutLoud.com
  Browse over 15,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos.
• Librivox
  LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Their goal is to make all public domain (under U.S. right) books available as free audio books. It is a volunteer, open source, free content, public domain project.
• Global Text Project
  The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a Web site.
• Textbook Revolution
  All of the books are offered for free by their respective copyright holders for online viewing. The categories of the textbooks are: Biology, Business & Management, Chemistry, Computers-Tech, Earth Sciences, Economics, Engineering, Health Sciences & Medical, History, Math and Physics.
• The Oxford Text Archive
  It collects, catalogues, preserves and distributes high-quality digital resources for research and teaching. They are currently holding thousands of texts in more than 25 different languages, and are actively working to extend their catalogue of holdings.
• freetechbooks.com
  This site offers free books, text books, and lecture notes for computer science, engineering, and computer programming students and professionals.
• Free Online Programming Books
  A list of 300+ free programming books available on the Internet.
• Great Books Index
  Browse by author or title to find text for several books from the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World.
• CIA World Factbook
  Current, in-depth data on every country in the world.

DIGITAL LIBRARIES

• World Digital Library
  Will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.
• ERIC
  The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) provides free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials and, if available, includes links to full text.
• OAISTER
  OAIster is a union catalog for a wide range of digital resources. They provide access to these digital resources by “harvesting” their descriptive metadata (records) using OAI-PMH (the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting).
• Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections
  Find more than 10 different digital collections that range from medieval and early Renaissance manuscripts to architectural drawings or visit the online exhibitions for even more.
• Library of Congress Digital Collections (US)
  It is considered the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections.
• Universal Digital Library
  Their goal is to preserve every printed book digitally in this resource. The library currently holds one million books in its collection.
• NEEDS Digital Library
  A digital library with links to online learning materials in engineering and related areas of science and math.
  NSDL – The National Science Digital Library (US)
  The Nation’s (US) online library for education and research in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics.
• eGranary Digital Library
  Provides millions of digital educational resources to institutions lacking adequate Internet access.

DIGITAL MEDIA

• TED Talks
  Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers.
• Big Think
  A new and growing website, currently in its beta version, with a simple mission: to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you.
• FORA.tv
  FORA.tv delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world’s most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation.
• WGBH (Free Public Lectures)
  Free live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world’s foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leaders.
• Annenberg Media Resources
  Annenberg Media’s multimedia resources help teachers increase their expertise in their fields and assist them in improving their teaching methods.
• Flickr
  Flickr is photo distributed classification system. It is useful for managing and sharing photos over the Internet. If users want to use a photo of another photographer, if they have created an account they can contact each other through the Flickr intranet. Copyright issues are solved with Creative Commons Licences. You can find millions of free images here, which we can use to spice up our learning content.
• Education Podcast Network
  The Education Podcast Network is an effort to bring together into one place, the wide range of podcast programming that may be helpful to teachers looking for content to teach with and about, and to explore issues of teaching and learning in the 21st century.
• Creative Commons
  Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

• GoogleTalks
  Google events featuring everyone from newsmakers to bestselling authors (Joseph Stieglitz, Obama, Richard Florida, etc.).
• Google Tech Talks
  There are a large number of technical talks at Google. Many of these are videotaped, and some are made available for external viewing right here.
• The Nobel Prize
  It brings you fascinating insights into the minds of current and past Nobel Laureates.
• TED Talks
  This is the YouTube version of TED Talks, which is a collection of inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers.
• FORA.tv
  The YouTube version of FORA.tv, which delivers discourse, discussions and debates on the world’s most interesting political, social and cultural issues, and enables viewers to join the conversation.
• Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
  It’s mission is to promote in-depth coverage of international affairs, focusing on topics that have been under-reported, mis-reported – or not reported at all. The videos you see in this YouTube collection are one part of larger reporting projects from around the world.
• BBC Worldwide
  The Best of British TV. Top Gear, Mighty Boosh, Doctor Who, Attenborough, Parkinson, Catherine Tate & the rest from BBC Worldwide!
• National Geographic
  Inspiring People To Care About The Planet!

WOW! Where to start! Alright, I have to admit that this post is not a smashing one yet. Give me a few weeks of reflection, feedback and smashing, and hopefully the compilation will be a useful starting point and quick access to OER and OCW (Just keep in mind that OCW is OER, but OER is not necessarily OCW! Whatever!). I am beginning to sense OER/OCW information overload here. If I am not mistaken, it would take me approximately 754 years to digest all the resources currently linked here. However, if we connect, network, collaborate, learn and reflect together we might manage to digest (to innovate and improve) these free learning resources in less than 24 hours. Let’s use our connective intelligence to educate the world about OER and OCW

Until we explore, we will never know! Have fun learning!

No Stupid Questions! I am Serious! (Part 4)

• Part 1 – Teaching Habits That Inspire You Out of Learning?
• Part 2 – I Have Bragging Rights, Because I Am …?
• Part 3 – Is PowerPoint Evil?
• Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively!
• ZaidLearn’s Del.icio.us ‘Thinking’ Links

“Some people study all their life and at their death they have learned everything except to THINK”
– Francois Domergue

“A person who asks questions is a person who thinks.”’
- William Wilen

In this 5-part learning series, we have already looked at several teaching habits that could inspire students out of learning, such as speed-teaching, bragging, lack of engagement, and slide reading. In part four (4), we will explore a couple of teaching habits that could be quite destructive to the students’ learning process.

First, I will project myself back-to-the-past to my high school days in Norway, and reflect a few learning experiences that I still can’t get out of my head (Perhaps after sharing them with you, they can rest in peace on the web!). After that, I will reflect a few more incidents from my graduate days in Malaysia.

The thing about my schooling experience in Norway, whether it was primary, secondary or high school, is that many of my teachers seemed so miserable and frustrated with their lives. I kind of got the feeling that the majority of the teachers I experienced, never really wanted to be teachers, but became so, because they failed in their first choice careers. I hope that I am wrong about this (Faulty memory!) and that things have changed for the better at the schools I studied (Marienlyst and Ullern). Let’s transport myself back to the past…

THE SPIDER…
I can’t remember the name of the teacher, nor can I remember the subject that she taught (high school subject). However, I do remember that she would always come to class with a serious and angry face carrying a big sulk. It was as if she hated us (probably herself, too!). Her serious and angry face could wipe your smile off with the blink of an eye.

As for me, I dreaded going to her classes. Not only did she look serious and angry, she also had a great pleasure of giving us impromptu oral tests during classes. Although, I actually support these kinds of instructional approaches to encourage students to prepare for class, I believe she also had other hidden reasons for giving us such tests. She seemed to get pleasure out of giving us a BIG ZERO (out of 5, if I remember correctly!) when we couldn’t answer her questions.

This is how it worked: She would ask a question in class, and then students would raise their right hand if they knew the answer. Nope, she would not pick any of the raised hands, but instead she would pick one student who didn’t raise the hand. And obviously that student would struggle, or not be able to answer the question. Then she would suddenly decide that this is an impromptu oral test and write a big zero in her grade book. And naturally I would get a big zero the first couple of times, but then after a few classes I would raise my hand even if I didn’t know the answer. It at least saved me from a few zeros.

So, naturally many students hated her guts, and wanted to take their own revenge in a less psychological damaging way! And one day a few students brought a quite big spider (Norwegian standards!) to class (I am not sure where it can from). They placed it on the top of the teacher’s desk; smack in the middle. Although, I was not involved in this silly little prank, I did witness it. We all expected that the teacher would freak out and scream for help, but ‘Oh Boy’ were we wrong.

That day she came to class holding a book in her right hand. While walking towards her desk, she spotted the spider. She initially screamed a bit in a freakish manner, and then she lifted her book with both hands and slammed that spider several times until it was completely crushed and dead. Then she picked it up with a face of rage and disgust and walked to nearest classroom window. She opened the classroom window, and threw it out! After this incident she began the class as if it never happened.

“Who cares! People on ‘Fear Factor’ eat them alive all the time!” Yes, I also have a small phobia for spiders, and I really don’t like them. But somehow for that spider I wouldn’t have mind risking my phobia to save it. It was a bizarre moment and murder that I probably will never forget. So, next time you want to pull a prank on your annoying and serious teacher, think twice about using living creatures, because you never know. It is not worth the risk!

Dear spider, may you rest in peace! Hopefully, we can learn a lesson or two from this story.

NO STUPID QUESTIONS!
Hopefully, the spider incident can rest in peace (from my mind!), and let’s move on. For the next habit or behavior, I am not going to zoom in on a particular teacher, but reflect how destructive some teachers can be in discouraging students to ask questions without often realizing it (I suppose I am guilty, too!).

It is strange that I need to talk about this topic in the 21st century, but I still come across teachers or lecturers that would do all sorts of things or tricks to avoid questions in class. Is it their lack of preparedness for the topic that causes this? Or perhaps they are scared to lose control? Maybe, it is that fear of not knowing the answer to a question? Perhaps they don’t want to put themselves in a position, which could make them look stupid? Or is it simply a cultural or authority issue that we can’t do much about (except educate the next generation).

Here is a list of statements or questions to could discourage students from asking questions during class:

• Please don’t ask stupid questions!
• That is a stupid question! Any other questions?
• That was not a good question! Ask proper questions!
• Anyone got a better question!
• Haven’t you read the book!
• Please read the book before asking questions!
• I don’t entertain such questions! You can find the answer easily in the book!
• I have already told you that! Aren’t you listening!
• Didn’t I make that clear just know!
• I just answered you that question!
• Are you making fun of me!
• What! How many times do I have to explain it, before you get it!
• We don’t have time for this question! Please find the answer on your own.
• Think before you ask!

These are some of the statements or questions that I experienced from some of my lecturers during my undergraduate and graduate studies in Malaysia. Don’t get me wrong, I had many good lecturers during these years too, but this series is about the bad experiences.

POSSIBILITIES!
Whether we do it consciously or not, we should think a bit before making statements that might indirectly or directly discourage students from asking questions. If no one is asking questions in your class, you might actually be part of the problem. For example, some might argue that Malaysian students don’t usually ask questions in class, or that they are happy with a one-way lecture approach. “No thinking required, just need to look awake! Anyway I got the slides, so there is no need to really listen.”

However, all students have subject related questions, and I believe it is up to the lecturer to explore creative ways on how to encourage more students to ask these questions to facilitate the learning process. If you ask me, no matter how resistant students are to asking questions and participating in discussions, there are ways to overcome it. In short, if you are creative, passionate and encouraging you can unlock any student to ask questions.

Alright, I am not going to give you a written lecture of the importance and secret recipe of nurturing the students’ mind to ask and reflect questions and ideas (Not qualified yet!). Instead, I will link you up with a few videos for you to reflect. The videos below are also excellent for stimulating discussion with your colleagues on how the world of technology, knowledge and learning is evolving, and the necessary changes we need to carry out to facilitate effective learning, and nurture the foundation for students to succeed in the 21st century. Here we go:

• Shift Happens
  The impact of ICT and globalisation on education. It provides some interesting things to ponder regarding globalization and fast evolving changes we need to consider as we plan and prepare students for the future.
• Pay Attention
  This presentation, simply entitled Pay Attention, was created by Darren Draper in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.
• Five Minute University
  Father Guido Sarducci teaches what an average college graduate knows after five years from graduation in five minutes. A great video to facilitate discussion about effective learning with a bit of humor.
• “Do Schools Kill Creativity“
  Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.
• “Web 2.0 … The Machine is Using Us“
  The evolution of knowledge creation, management and sharing in creative and stimulating way.
• Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding
  A 19-minute award-winning short-film about teaching at the University. It shows examples of good and bad teaching, and promotes constructive alignment learning approach using Solo Taxonomy to test students’ level of understanding (deep understanding?).
• Five Minds for the Future
  Howard Gardner speaks about his book, Five Minds for the Future explaining why, in the future, it will be important to develop five kinds of minds, both in school and in other educational environments.

In addition to these interesting videos, here are a few sites that can stimulate some new ideas on how to facilitate effective learning in your course:

• Route 21
  A one-stop-resource center for 21st century skills-related information, resources and community tools. You can even find videos here of 21st century skills in action in today’s classrooms.
• New Horizons for Learning
  Presents articles and information on special issues in education, from restructuring schools to technology and adult education.
• EDUCAUSE
  A nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. You can find hundreds of interesting resources, research papers and articles exploring everything from Second Life to lecturing.
• Creativity Techniques
  A central repository for Creativity and Innovation on the Internet by Mycoted with a summary of tools, techniques, mind exercises, puzzles, book reviews, etc. Concise, precise and easy to digest. I love it!
• Mind Tools
  More than 100 free essential life, career training and management training skill-builder articles and tools to explore.
• Successful Learning – This e-book discusses philosophies of learning, thinking skills, presentations skills, learning strategies, e-Learning, motivation, reading/writing skills and learning styles. Published by CDTL, National University of Singapore.
• Brain Rules
  12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. In Brain Rules, Dr. John Medina, a molecular biologist, shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work.
• Critical Thinking Web
  Provides over 100 free online tutorials on critical thinking, logic, scientific reasoning, creativity, and other aspects of thinking skills. This site is maintained by Dr. Joe Lau at the Philosophy Department, The University of Hong Kong.
• Critical Evaluation Tookit
  Griffith University provides tips on helping students to develop critical evaluation skills.
• Argumentation and Critical Thinking Tutorial
  The tutorials consist of a series of tests to help reinforce your knowledge and understanding of some basic concepts associated with making arguments and thinking critically (Humboldt State University).
• Empowering the 21st Century Superintendent
  Of all the challenges you face as a superintendent, technology leadership may be the one that leaves you feeling the most unprepared, uncertain and vulnerable. This site provides you with a lot of valuable resources and ideas on how to deal with it.
• Interactive Thinking Tools
  Intel provides online tools designed to promote higher-order thinking in any subject. Each tool features an online workspace where students create and save visual representations of their thinking.
• CoRT & Six Thinking Hats
  Two wonderful thinking tools by Edward de Bono, which we can use in the classroom, at work, or any place where we need to collaboratively solve problems, make decisions, and nurture innovative ideas.
• Work-Learning Research
  Dr. Will Thalheimer’s goal has been to compile research from the world’s preeminent refereed journals and translate that research with practical wisdom to help learning professionals create more effective learning. Check it out!
• WebQuest
  Is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web.

Finally, here is an article I wrote a couple of months back entitled: Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively!, which might also be useful.

A FEW TIPS!

“Take your course seriously! Take course preparation seriously! Take learning seriously! Take asssessment seriously! Take your students seriously! But don’t take yourself seriously!” – Zaid Ali Alsagoff

Better yet, have fun making fun of yourself during class, and make it a point that we all do mistakes. Anyway, the greatness of a lecturer or a leader is not whether he or she does a mistake (surely will!), but how he or she responds to it. If you are not doing any mistakes or failing once a while, you are perhaps not trying hard enough. Finally, celebrate students who ask you questions, even if you don’t know the answer. Not only will they inspire you to learn and get a deeper understanding of the subject, they will also nurture you to become a better lecturer.

We all say funny things and ask stupid questions in our short life on this planet, but if we learn from them and move on we might just…

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”
-Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
-Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
-Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
-H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
-Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.”
- Bill Gates, 1981

“If at first, the idea is not absurd, there is no hope for it.”
- Albert Einstein

75 Free EduGames to Spice Up Your Course!

• ZaidLearn’s Del.icio.us Games Links
• OpenCourseWare and Open Educational Resources
• Free Learning Tools
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“Engage Me or Enrage Me” – Marc Prensky (2005)

“Never play a video game that’s trying to teach you something.” – Justin Peters (2007)

Terms like educational games, game-based gaming, and social impact games don’t sound too bad. But, Serious Games sounds awful! I mean, who wants to get serious about playing games (I want to relax and have some fun!). The name itself is capable of killing the joy of playing games before even wanting to. I suppose some innovative name rebranding could help to facilitate and globalize the idea of using games to facilitate the (formal) learning process. Though, I think the term ‘Edutainment‘ is quite good. My favorite would probably be EduGames. But, I believe we have yet to discover an attractive term for educational gaming that reach the ‘Yummy’ factor.

Anyway, this post is not about attacking or supporting the idea of EduGames to facilitate Higher Learning. There are tons of articles out there (Google it!) talking about the potential of EduGames (e.g. Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century – Joel Foreman). Although many articles and papers talk about EduGames, they often don’t include a comprehensive directory or list of juicy free EduGames. So, this post will skip all the theoretical Mambo-Jumbo, and link you right to the juice (that I have managed to discover!).

In short, this article (or post) is about exploring and discovering free educational games that could be useful to embed within or across courses (and programs) to spark more engagement, challenge, mystery, exploration, collaboration, problem-solving, decision making, imagination, fun and thinking into the learning process.

EDUGAMES SITES?
But, before we explore 75 EduGames! Here are a few online resources that you might want to explore first (Macro-level):

• Educational Games Research
  Research and discussion concerning instructional video games.
• Serious Games Initiative
  Is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector.
• Serious Games
  A web portal to serious games news, resources and companies. Its secondary goal is to enable networking between anyone with an interest in serious games.
• Social Impact Games
  It is designed as a community resource for all those interested in games with non-entertainment goals. You can find more than 200 educational games here (free, commercial, coming soon, etc).
• The Education Arcade
  Represents a consortium of international game designers, publishers, scholars, educators, and policy makers who are exploring the new frontiers of educational media that have been opened by computer and video games.
• 26 Learning Games to Change the World
  A great post by Jeff Cobb about 26 educational games out there that are geared towards making a difference in the world.
• The Top 10 Free Educational Video Games
  Check it out! If you find the list below overwhelming and stressful, this list is simply wonderful!

75 FREE EDUGAMES!
Initially, I wanted to compile an EduGame list, which included metadata, categories, chunking, screenshots, and tags. But, then I kind of realized it would require a lot more work from me, and less thinking and effort from you to find something useful. In other words, it would minimize the challenge and discovery aspect of finding what you want in the list (if there!). It would take way the challenge and might even hinder you from finding what you are looking for (especially, if my categorization and tagging is poor!). Yes, it would take away the gameplay challenge of mystery, suspense, joy, exploration, fun and incidental learning. “WHATEVER! Just get on with it!”

Here are 75 FREE EduGames (including 3 interesting tools at the end) that sounds and looks interesting for Higher Education (Haven’t tried all yet!):

1. Gwap
   When you play a game at Gwap (e.g. ESP Game), you aren’t just having fun. You’re helping the world become a better place. By playing their games, you’re training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world.
2. WFP Foodforce
   Understand world hunger and efforts to alleviate it.
3. Virtual U
   Is a management education game, a simulation of a university, in which the user takes the role of a university administrator. It is designed to foster better understanding of management practices in American colleges and universities.
4. Revolution
   Experience historical incentives for the American Revolution from the grassroots level.
5. Discover Babylon
   Uses sophisticated video gaming strategies and realistic digital environments to engage the learner in challenges and mysteries that can only be solved through developing an understanding of Mesopotamian society, business practices, and trade.
6. FreeCol
   Is a turn-based strategy game based on the old game Colonization, and similar to Civilization. The objective of the game is to create an independent nation.
7. FreeCiv
   Is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the stone age to the space age.
8. Tropical America
   A journey to unravel the mysteries of the Americas. Developed in collaboration with Los Angeles artists, teachers, writers and high school students, the game features a bilingual, thematic gameplay, accompanied by an online database of edu-resources.
9. Ayiti – The Cost of Life
   What is it like to live in poverty? Find out now in this challenging role playing game in which you take responsibility for a family of five in rural Haiti. From UNICEF with Microsoft support.
10. EyeWitness
    Is an Interactive Situation Simulation Software (ISSS) that let users experience the 1937 Nanking Massacre personally, when over the course of 6 weeks, over 300,000 civilians were killed by Japanese troops invading the city.
11. The History Canada Game
    Understand social forces surrounding Canadian history since 1534. Modification of Civilization III
12. Road to Revolution Game
    Test your knowledge about the American Revolution, and see if you can navigate your way to independence. Every correct answer gets you closer to liberty!
13. Conflict Map
    In the course of the 20th century, mankind experienced some of the most devastating wars of all times. Where, what, How, When, Why? This map gives you the opportunity to answer these questions. It displays wars with at least 1,000 military battle deaths.
14. Prisoners of War
    Can people behave as they like during times of war? No, they can’t. The Geneva Conventions of written rules and articles make some acts unlawful. Play the prisoners of war game to learn more.
15. The Peace Doves
    Take on the mission to disarm the world of nuclear weapons! You have eight “Peace Doves” to help you, each able to disarm one of the eight countries possessing nuclear weapons.
16. America’s Army
    Players are bound by Rules of Engagement (ROE) and grow in experience as they navigate challenges emphasizing team play, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage.
17. Stop Disasters
    The online game aims at teaching people on how to build safer villages and cities against disasters. Multiple languages. Good teacher resources.
18. World Without Oil
    An alternate reality event, a serious game for the public good. It invites everyone to help simulate a global oil shock. People participate by contributing original online stories, created as though the oil shock were really happening.
19. Real Life Simulations
    That let you experience life as, for example, a peasant farmer in Bangladesh, a factory worker in Brazil, a policeman in Nigeria, a lawyer in the US, or a computer operator in Poland, among others.
20. 3rd World Farmer
    It aims at simulating the real-world mechanisms that cause and sustain poverty in 3rd World countries. In the game, the player gets to manage an African farm, and is soon confronted with the often difficult choices that poverty and conflict necessitate.
21. Trade Ruler
    Bertil Ohlin, awarded the Prize in Economics in 1977, showed that countries engage in and benefit from trade if their production resources differ from each other. Play the Trade Ruler game to learn more.
22. Wasteland Adventure
    Time: 3010 AD. After humans destroyed the ecosystem. The earth lost the ability to heal and the environment continues to get worse. The fresh air and clean water are polluted. Just play the game!!!
23. Climate Challenge
    A game where you are president of the European Nations. You must tackle climate change and stay popular enough with the voters to remain in office.
24. Global Warming Interactive
    Is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions (intended for the high school user).
25. Quest Atlantis
    Help students understand social studies, environmental concerns, current events, and scientific standards.
26. FreeRice
    A cool game to learn vocabulary and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free (Made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the site).
27. Anagramarama
    The aim of the game is to find as many words as possible in the time available. Get the longest word and you’ll advance to the next level.
28. Re-Mission
    Understand cancer better and develop a positive attitude toward defeating it.
29. The POD Game
    Dispense drugs and medical advice to people during an emergency. Using this game, you can enhance your efforts to teach staff and volunteers to work efficiently and sensitively with the public to maximize throughput in times of crisis.
30. Deliver The Net Game
    Race the sun and hand out as many insecticide-treated bed nets as you can to African families. The more nets you deliver – before the mosquitoes come out – the more lives you save.
31. Immune Attack
    An educational video game that introduces basic concepts of human immunology to high school and entry-level college students. It aims to excite students about the subject, while also illuminating general principles and detailed concepts of immunology.
32. The Immune System Defender
    Ilya Mechnikov, inserted a thorn into a larva and noticed strange cells gathering around the thorn. The cells were eating any foreign substances entering the ruptured skin (devouring cells). Play the game to learn more!
33. Whack TB (Tuberculosis)
    There are almost 9 million new cases of TB each year; about 500,000 of these cases are resistant to the best TB drugs available to fight them. Play this game and learn more about fighting TB!” From the Families USA Global Health Initiative.
34. Blood Typing
    In this game you have to blood type each patient and give them a blood transfusion.
35. Virtual Hip Surgery – Total Hip Replacement Surgery
    Take on the role of the Surgeon throughout a hip replacement surgery!
36. Virtual Knee Surgery – Total Knee Replacement
    Take on the role of the Surgeon throughout a total knee replacement surgery.
37. The Ear Pages
    Sound is caused by changes of pressure in the air that is transformed into nerve impulses in the inner ear. Explore “The Ear Pages” and collect the snail shaped symbols to gain points in the quiz!
38. The Incredible Adventures of the Amazing Food Detective
    There has been a mysterious outbreak of unhealthy habits among kids, and we need to solve these cases. All junior food detectives will get secret training on how to eat right and exercise. Have fun playing the game!
39. The Food Detectives Fight BAC!
    The game gives kids a fun way to learn about foodborne illness. From New Mexico State University.
40. Fatworld
    A video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.
41. WaterBusters!
    A game to teach tips for water conservation around the home.
42. NitroGenius
    Is a multi-player, multi-stakeholder game about solving nitrogen problems. A free single-player (demo) version is available.
43. Binary Game (Cisco)
    The game teaches strategies related to the binary system, a foundation knowledge used by CCNAs to install, configure and operate networks.
44. Plan Your Future Park!
    You get to plan your future New York City park, making choices that communities all over the city have been making.
45. The Conductive Valley
    We have been taught that plastics, unlike metals, do not conduct electricity. However, plastic can, after certain modifications, be made electrically conductive. Play the game to learn more.
46. Chirality
    Chiral molecules can be used to control or speed up different chemical reactions. In this game you can learn the basic principles of chirality.
47. Invar & Steel Alloys
    Steel, brass and amalgam are a few examples of an alloy. Invar, from the word “invariable”, is a special steel alloy – used today in toasters and CRT-monitors for example. Play the game to learn more.
48. Heating Plastics
    There are two major groups of plastics – some melt when heated and others don’t. Find out why by playing the Heating Plastics Game.
49. The Recycler (Transistors)
    Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain, the men behind the transistor, were awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. Today, transistors are found in virtually every electronic device. Play the recycling game to learn more.
50. The Laser Challenge
    Laser is used in many areas, such as research, communication, industry, medicine, and environmental care. Learn more about the laser by playing this game.
51. Fold It – Solve Puzzles for Science
    Is a computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research. Foldit uses spare computer time, via a screensaver, to work out how proteins fold. Players use their computers to fold proteins.
52. Lord of the Flies
    The game is supposed to be played after one has read the book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. The aim is to introduce some basic analytical aspects concerning the book and to challenge the reader’s memory through play.
53. Find the Authors
    Among hundreds of letters, the names of Literature Laureates are hidden. Pick a period and search for the authors mentioned on the list beside the puzzle. The names may be written in all directions.
54. Arden – World of William Shakespeare
    Attain an appreciation of Shakespearean authorship and Elizabethan England. Modification of Neverwinter Nights Diamond.
55. Globulation2
    Is an innovative Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game which reduces micro-management by automatically assigning tasks to units.
56. Crash Scene Investigation
    Help the highway patrol recreate a deadly crash by examining the evidence and calculating the forces. Use trigonometry, physics, and geometry to figure out what happened at an auto crash scene.
57. Airport Security
    You’re an airport screener. Can you correctly identify risky items hidden in baggage? Uses actual X-ray images of dangerous devices.
58. Bricks or Clicks
    You are put in the role of CEO at a traditional toy manufacturer. The company, called ToyBlocks Co., must confront the challenges of launching an online sales channel while managing and maintaining their current traditional sales channels.
59. Harpooned
    Harpooned is a free game for Windows. It is a Cetacean Research Simulator, where you play the role of a Japanese scientist performing research on whales around Antarctica.
60. Stop Whaling Game
    Steer the Greenpeace inflatable boat around the seas and intercept the dangerous harpoons from the whaling ship. To make the whaling ship stop whaling, you must try and get your activists on board the whaling ship.
61. WolfQuest
    Learn about wolf ecology by living the life of a wild wolf in Yellowstone National Park. Play alone or with friends in on-line multiplayer missions, explore the wilderness, hunt elk, and encounter stranger wolves in your quest to find a mate.
62. McDonald’s Video Game
    You’ll discover in this game all the dirty secrets that made McDonald’s one of the biggest companies of the world. Interesting stuff man! Multiple languages. Offline version available.
63. Corporate Greed
    A 3-minute mini-game about the corporate executives accused and/or convicted of greed-related crimes.
64. Better Business Games
    A basic in-box simulation game from British Telecom about managing social and environmental issues in a business. The player takes on the role of corporate CEO. The games contents are drawn from general business dilemmas across all industries.
65. Karma Tycoon
    Is a free Online RPG that rocks the gaming world by offering you a thrilling ride through the world of social entrepreneurship as you earn Karma in virtual communities across the US. Teachers curriculum available.
66. Googolopoly
    The goal of the game, produced by Box.net, is to use Google shares to buy as many properties as you can without landing in the deadpool and losing your stock. You can download the game in its entirety as a PDF.
67. SimCity
    Understand variable manipulations for urban management while having fun building a simulated city.
68. Virtual Trader – Investment Game (UK)
    Virtual Trader is a free Investment Simulation Game, offering its users the opportunity to gain practical experience trading stocks under real market conditions (London Stock Exchange), against their actual and current prices.
69. INNOV8 – Business Process Management (BPM) Simulator
    Innov8 is a FREE interactive 3D business simulator (Registration required), which takes participants through the entire lifecycle of discovery, collaboration, optimization, and innovation of a fictional company’s business processes.
70. eLECTIONS – Your Adventure in Politics
    Inspired by the classic board game “The Game of Life,” players will role-play their own virtual candidates running for President.
71. My US Rep – Role Play Congress!
    This game enables you to play your favorite (or not so) House of Representative and help them become more popular! Based on real voting data, My US Rep allows you to discover your Rep’s hopes and dreams within an engaging game experience.
72. Whyville
    Provide a student-centered, hands-on environment for exploring various school subjects.
73. Hot Potatoes
    The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises.
74. jQuizShow
    Is based on the popular “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” TV game show. You can customize the questions to what you want. It is written in Java , and can run on any platform that supports Java.
75. ClassTools.net
    Create your own free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! Host them on your own blog, website or intranet!

“Oh man, I don’t even have time to try one (or even read this list!), and now you give me 75. Come on!” Who said you need to try out or read this list. Just share it (the URL) with your students, and tell them the kind of game you might want for your course (Challenge), and let them individually or in groups explore, discover, reflect, select and write a recommendation report. In short, this EduGames list could be a good starting point to start the EduGame discovery journey.

If you are looking for a list that will actually grow (as I discover), please go here: GAMES GALORE.

This post is dead and buried (for now!), but my del.icio.us adventure will continue. Finally, please don’t take EduGames too seriously, don’t get addicted, but have fun playing them while learning

Is PowerPoint Evil? (Part 3)

• Part 1 – Teaching Habits That Inspire You Out of Learning?
• Part 2 – I Have Bragging Rights, Because I Am …?
• ZaidLearn’s Del.icio.us PowerPoint Links

“It’s the way people depend on all those bells and whistles that come with the software to try to shore up a weak presentation.” – Chris Oakes (1998)

“…To critics, PowerPoint serves largely the same role in the classroom as pre-processed snack food does in the lunchroom: a conveniently packaged morsel that looks good but doesn’t match the intellectual or corporeal nourishment of, say, a critical essay or a plate of steamed spinach.” – Joanna Glasner (2002)

“The practical conclusions are clear. PowerPoint is a competent slide manager and projector. But rather than supplementing a presentation, it has become a substitute for it. Such misuse ignores the most important rule of speaking: Respect your audience.” – Edward Tufte (2003)

“The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster…It should be ditched.” – Professor Sweller (2007)

IS POWERPOINT EVIL?

Edward Tufte (2003) even explains in his “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” book, how PowerPoint caused the destruction of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003. I suppose PowerPoint is evil! Wait a minute! Isn’t also the Internet evil! What about chocolate? Yes, cars are certainly evil! Motor bikes are even worse! Certainly, sex is evil! Actually, everything I can think of is evil!

Should we blame PowerPoint on our own failure to create compelling content and engage students to learn? Or perhaps PowerPoint is the problem as it lacks the features needed to enable us to express ourselves effectively (Perhaps we should use Apple’s Keynote)? Or is it a combination? Perhaps we could blame the students? We could probably ask questions and argue all day long without getting anywhere. If I was a psychologist, I would probably use the famous statement that is practically used for every argument: “It depends.” And for this case, I would probably have to agree.

But instead of getting into a logical and/or emotional argument about the constructiveness or destructiveness of PowerPoint, I will instead put on my student experience goggles, immerse myself into my learning mind, and transport myself back to a blended learning graduate course I took a few years back entitled ‘System Analysis & Design’, which was a learning experience worth sharing and reflecting. For the name protection sake, I will simply call my lecturer, Dr. PowerPoint.

READING SLIDES

“…Lecturers who know nothing else except their PowerPoint slides…They are just PowerPoint notes, not process. They have no stories, no biographies, no histories…” – Professor Bajunid (2005)

As this was a blended learning course, we only had eight (8) 2-hour tutorials with Dr. PowerPoint. Four tutorials were conducted online (using Centra) and four were conducted face-to-face (F2F). Interestingly, we had to cover 17 topics in this ‘System Analysis & Design’ course, which means theoretically we had to cover around 2 topics per class. Although, we had 17 topics to cover, it was relieving to know that we had PowerPoint to rescue us from the giant book (It takes you one page to fall asleep!).

As usual, Dr. PowerPoint would always be late for the F2F tutorials (4 out of 4!). The great thing was that we always finished classes early, too. Start late, finish early! Please, tell me a student who wouldn’t love that? ME! I remember one class, she was around 15 minutes late, and managed to cover 3 topics and complete the tutorial (or lecture!) 15 minutes before time. It was amazing; it was like watching Speedy Gonzales swoosh through the slides.

What is wrong with that? Just imagine. We come to class, and then we watch Dr. PowerPoint read the bullets out loud for 1 1/2 hour. As she was late and had to cover 3 topics this time, she rushed more than usual. The best part was when we reached areas in the slides that she thought we could read on our own. She would ironically say, “Oh, this part is easy! You can read this at home!“ One poor student had to travel for 3 hours to attend these tutorials, and that is what he gets. Come on! This is a graduate course (Masters!), and that is what we get!

And you know what, several of my graduate courses that I took, followed the same PowerPoint reading routine and pattern. If the PowerPoint slides were more attractive, engaging and stimulating, it would at least provide some fun during the learning process. Just watching bullets and text can get kind of boring after a while, especially if the lecturer can’t read properly. Actually, that part was really funny. Sometimes we would come to certain parts of the slides, which Dr. PowerPoint read out incorrectly, or seemed not to understand what she read. How is that possible? Well, since all the topics of the book come with slides, I suppose the lecturer conveniently used them (guessing here!). Come on, be prepared at least!

Today it is so easy to be a lecturer, if we use this formula:

1. No need to prepare content (slides come with the book)
2. Come to class
3. Read the slides out loud
4. Ask at the end of the class: “Any questions?”
5. No questions (needed, students got the PowerPoint slides!)
6. The END (of learning!)

Come on! In short, PowerPoint is evil! Wait a minute! Can we blame PowerPoint for this?

MEMORIZING SLIDES
Does reading and memorizing PowerPoint slides facilitate learning? How do you measure learning? Assessment! If we use written exams as a measure, I can share with you that with some of the subjects I took; I could amazingly score an ‘A’ by basically reading and memorizing the slides. Why bother reading the book, when we can score good grades by simply reading and memorizing the PowerPoint slides! Strangely, when I engrossed myself in a subject (reading and reflecting the book and required materials), my exam results seemed to suffer. I suppose information overload enabled me to forget the key points needed to score an ‘A’.

Luckily I learned a few tricks from my Bosnian friend. This guy never really studied, and he always did very well on exams. What was his secret? When he saw me one day stressed out preparing for exams, he told me to read a book that would unleash the genius in me (or help me score good grades without much effort): Quantum Learning. After reading that book, I learned a few cool tricks (Not telling! read it!) and exams became a breeze, but learning seemed to suffer. In the end, I decided to sacrifice a few ‘As’ for the sake of learning. Not kidding!

If we were required to take the same exam again a few months (or weeks!) after the semester was completed, it wouldn’t surprise me if we fail, or at least get a much worse grade. It is strange! I thought that when you learned something, it sticks (for a while!). Just like learning to ride a bicycle. I suppose some formal courses are more complex.

THE FIVE MINUTE UNIVERSITY!

The idea is that in five minutes you learn what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she has graduated. Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University (video) is probably applicable until today for some courses out there (Too much focus on memorization!). If it is still happening in some of your courses, use this incredibly funny video to spice up the discussion about effective learning.

Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University video could bring to light the seriousness with a bit of laughter. Actually, I have now watched it more than a dozen times, and I am still laughing (and crying!). Then, we can together laugh a bit at ourselves, and move on to more effective teaching, facilitation and learning.

EFFECTIVE LEARNING?

Today, millions of people around the world use presentation tools like PowerPoint to create content to persuade, explain, illustrate and facilitate learning. So, until something better comes along that appeal to the masses, we might as well do the best with what we have. Anyway, if you ask me, I would argue that PowerPoint is actually a constructive tool to facilitate learning, if you know how to use it (Still learning!). If you don’t know how to use it, it can also be a very destructive tool (Same goes for any other learning tool!).

Now, I am not going to give you a written lecture on how to get it right. The reason is that I want you to learn from the real masters in preparing and giving presentations (or lectures). Learn from them, and then reflect, adapt, and do your own thing. First, here are a few wonderful PowerPoint resource sites to explore:

• PowerPoint – On-Line Technology Practice Modules
  A comprehensive directory of links (URLs) to tutorials, sites, game templates and articles on how to use PowerPoint effectively.
• Sonia Coleman’s Digital Studio
  Free PowerPoint templates and tutorials!
• PowerPoint 2007 Tutorials (Florida Gulf Coast University)
  Including graphics, tables, charts, formatting text, printing and slide effects.
• PowerPoint Tutorials (Wikivid)
  PowerPoint tutorials are broken down by topic so that you can navigate the list to find exactly what you need or watch them all from start to finish to become a PowerPoint expert.

Alright, that is the macro stuff. What about some super tips on creating compelling presentation slides?

Have you heard of Tom Kuhlmann? Check out his Rapid eLearning Blog, which shares practical tips and tricks on creating excellent presentation slides. Also, download his free 46-page ebook: The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro. It is an amazing resource that could spark your slides to life. He has already more than 21,000 subscribed readers (free!), so perhaps it is time to become one, too!

Great, but I want to see one example of great presentation slides? Death by PowerPoint (Alexei Kapterev). Also, you might want to check out an example of presentation slides for a full-blown course: Critical Thinking (links to all the slides are included in the article). Oops, that is my article and slides. Just had to! It is not great, but I am kind of satisfied with it. I think you will actually find it quite interesting, too

To see many more examples, I would advise you to explore Slideshare, which is an amazing repository of both excellent and poor presentation slides. If you need some inspiration to create engaging slides, that is a great starting point.

Alright, great stuff! But, I want a learning resource to inspire me to become a great presenter?

Have you heard of Garr Reynolds? Check this out: Google Talk – Presentation Zen. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making “slide presentations” in today’s world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Watch and Learn!

Did you like it? If you did, you could always explore his juicy blog for further nourishment: Presentation Zen

By the way, PowerPoint Extreme Makeover by Dean Shareski, is another excellent recorded lecture worth watching a couple of times (At least 3!). While you are getting into the groove, you could also watch: How To Create a Great PowerPoint without Breaking the Law, by Alvin Trusty.

That is cool! But what if I don’t want to use presentation slides, and simply want to inspire my students to learn. Any examples to benchmark myself with? Do Schools Kill Creativity?, by Ken Robinson is one great example. If you want many more, TED Talks is simply an amazing learning adventure.

Here are two incredible TED talks by Hans Rosling that I wouldn’t want to miss:

• Debunks Myths about the so-called “Developing World” (2006)
• New Insights on Poverty and Life around the World (2007)

Now, if you are teaching statistics or need to visualize your data, Hans Rosling with his Gapminder is certainly a great role model or benchmark. Although, Gapminder is a great data visualization tool, it was Hans Rosling’s passionate, energetic, and inspirational talk that really blew me away (I mean in learning terms!). He is what I call a great presenter!

While you are at TED talks, check out Jill Bolte Taylor’s inspiring talk: Stroke of insight. She uses a real brain to make a point. I am not kidding! Now, that is an attention (brain) grabber!

Wait a minute! I am a lecturer, and I teach physics. I mean, how engaging can you be with such an inherently boring course? Well, perhaps Professor Lewin could teach you a trick or two.

Whether you use PowerPoint (Windows), Keynote (Apple), OpenOffice, or no presentation tool at all, there are endless of possibilities of what you can do to create compelling content, and engage the student’s mind to learn.

Yes, PowerPoint or presentation slides can be destructive (and perhaps even evil at times!). But with a bit of creativity and flavor, I believe presentation slides can assist in facilitating effective learning, and awaken our creative side to express ourselves beyond words.

However, if your content is poor, no fancy design or flying dogs are going to save you. Get the substance content right, be creative and passionate, and engage your students with a lot of relevant and challenging learning activities and mind boggling puzzles (embed them within the presentation slides). However, remember: If you are hopeless (Can’t read, write or talk!), teaching is going to get tough, no matter how cool your slides are. Even if you are a hopeless teacher, don’t worry! If you have the desire and passion to learn, you can overcome all your weaknesses, and nurture them into strengths. Learn, practice, reflect, improve, practice, reflect, etc.

So, is PowerPoint evil? I don’t know, and I don’t care (Got better things to reflect)! Since we are stuck with it for now until something better comes along (I kind of like it anyway, so no worries mate!), we better focus instead on how to make the most of it to facilitate engaging and effective learning

“Of course, PowerPoint is not inherently evil, it is just poorly used...”
- Stephen Downes