Thanks so much to Rebecca Johnson, Director of Instructional Technologies and New Pedagogies at eTech for her workshop, “Using Social Media in the Classroom” last week. She gave a great presentation and started an interesting discussion with participants about the pros and cons of various approaches to social media for pedagogy. We appreciate her contribution to the workshop effort. Her presentation slides and resources can be found here.
pedagogy
Bibliographic Management Tools
Barb Dahlbach and Mark Robison of the UA Libraries gave a great team-taught workshop last week that compared two online bibliographic management systems–RefWorks and Zotero. Although RefWorks is the system currently supported by UA, there are some compelling reasons to work with Zotero too. Check out their resources for weighing the pros and cons.
Introduction to WordPress: Building a Class Online
Today’s workshop, led by David Ainsworth, focused on building and using a WordPress site in a pedagogical context. This teaching focus was an important part of the workshop since, as Dr. Ainsworth pointed out, WordPress sites can be used to build almost any kind of website (more and less effectively). He also made a strong case for the advantages of the public orientation of WordPress sites (as opposed to those on Blackboard) and the opportunities they create for student engagement with new audiences. He has made his slides and handout available for those who couldn’t make it or want to know more. There are lots of resources for working with WordPress – if you are in Arts & Sciences then e-Tech can help (with course sites and research sites) and of course the ADHC can always help you get started. Thanks for your contribution to our workshops, Dr. Ainsworth!