Some lecturers in NUS have used blogs for their courses, as well as to keep track of their research students.
Blogs are especially useful for popular courses taken up by a large number of undergraduates. Instead of setting up tutorials for all students, they conduct some of the tutorials online, by adding their comments to a discussion set out in a blog. Marks will be awarded based on their responses at the end of the courses.
Looks like the students are embracing blogs quite well, as seen from the responses. Read the article for the full report in STI.
And thanks Agnes for pointing me to the article 🙂
Games, for education
Chanced upon this website while browsing the orange-covered “Engaging IT” CD produced by ETD in 2004, well, and it happens that this morning during meeting that the big word GAME was brought up.
I/We belong to a generation (may not hold true for everyone of the same age group though) of gamers where we have witnessed computer games giving off only beeps thru the good old PC speakers, to the 3D Live surround sound games today. Looking back, some of the facts that we gathered are from the games we have played. Hmm … let me recall the optimum height to fly a F-16 for maximum fuel efficiency …
Need more time to explore this website in evaluating its educational value, but the games are surely engaging 😛
Funbrain.com, check it out here.
The state of blogging in US
Some figures extracted from this report by Pew Internet & American Life Project enlightened us to the extend of blog awareness in America:
Of the sample size of 1324 pple,
– 38% of people know what a blog is
– 27% of people read blogs (representing 32 million, 58% increase since Feb 04)
– 12% have posted to blogs
– 7% of people own blogs (8 million)
– 5% of people use RSS
Wonder what’s the figures like if a similar survey were done in Singapore, especially if targetted at students. This figure can prove useful for our use of edublogs in teaching and learning.
[Source: Weblogg-ed]
Best of Blogs Awards 2004
Well, if you have some time to spare and want to take a look at some of the most well-liked blogs in the blogosphere, check it out at this URL.
Banning of Instant Messaging (IM)
Organisations as well as educational instituitions all the world have been banning the use of IM, for some reasons which includes security, waste of time, a form of distraction etc.
This post by James F in his blog has reminded us of the global community we are in as well as the world in which our students are growing up.
Quoting findings from a paper “Instant Messaging � Collaborative Tool or Educator�s nightmare!” by Robert Farmer, it is no surprise to me that under “students’ normal usage outside of class activities”, the frequency in use of forums is less than half that of IMs. It’s now 2005 and I believe the trend is there to stay, if not increase.
While IM is relatively new to the educational environment, it is raising many questions and concerns. Clearly students have embraced this technology, while faculty have not.
As a user very much hooked on to IM myself, perhaps it is timely that we (re)look in-depth on the benefits of IM *hmm*