Google-Day

As you can see above the title for this day is Google-Day. Or perhaps it should be “Jon-Day”, because the input Jon gave us about google was absolutely astonishing! In preparation for this week I made my google-account and visited google documents and played a little bit with it, but I have to admit that I was not too impressed. But Jons lecture today gave all the insight I needed to generate a thousand ideas how to use this in my teaching. More and more I realize that this whole week here is not only about e-teaching, but aswell about using e-tools in teaching anyway. As I told Anne Karin I would like it best to make a seminar for my students immediately, only to show them all these fantastic tools: google documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, vitero, blogs, flickr, youtube, google-maps (I would have liked to work with Jon for another hour or so on maps, that seemed to be really cool stuff either), it´s learning, MSN, slideshare, delicious, … I tried to give a complete list, but I am sure I left something out. Perhaps my colleagues can add what I have forgotten?

I don’t know if it´s possible to make such a seminar for the students, because at least this would be not my area, but the one of a colleague of mine. But I will ask. Another interesting idea would be to make a workshop for the colleagues, because I am pretty sure that most of them do not know about all these tools. When I am getting it right I am one of those in Mannheim most familiar with computers, but there are so many tools I have never heard of…

Ok, but enough on this topic. The first part of the day was the working session with Vitero. That was very interesting, too, but I have to admit that I was very disappointed when I realized later in the discussion with Anne Karin that we obviously wouldn’t be able to use Vitero on our own. If I understood it right we can only use vitero in relation to the Virclass or Vircamp project; but I wouldn’t be able to use it for my own courses in Mannheim, at least not without including Anne Karin as a coordinator. And this obviously cannot be a standard procedure. I surfed a little bit on the internet, and I do not exactly remember which tools Andras showed on his last slide, but I found “Moodle” (search via google, you will easily find it), and this seems to be a completely free alternative to vitero, and especially the most frequently used one worldwide. I had no time to read more on moodle, but it seems to be a complete package, similar to it´s learning, but including course rooms for online sessions like the one we had today in vitero. But please don’t blame me if I am completely wrong and moodle is useless, as I said: I had no time to check it further. But I want to say: I like those tools I can use completely on my own (like google documents or blog) very much, and the usefulness of tools like it´s learning or vitero is very limited if I have to be part of a specific program. Perhaps my courses will not fit into this program, so I am very glad that in these days we had it all: access to professional tools linked to specific programs, and hints and training on freeware tools.

Another very important topic today was the theme of “screen lectures”. Xavier gave us important insight in this material, and especially the short session inside the studio room at the media center was instructive. His “noise” concept made very much sense to me, and one of the first things I will do when I am back in Mannheim will be to search for the media center there in order to get the information I need to make screen lectures myself 

So, that’s it for the day, with a pleasant last event remaining: our dinner at half past seven. But now I have time to read a little bit, and I can assure you that my lecture will have nothing to do with e-learning, internet or teaching whatsoever! Bye!