While Ally is a great tool for assessing if the content items in your course are accessible, it doesn’t check everything. What about the content of webpages that you’re using in your course (or, gasp, your course page itself)? How do you assess if the contrast is good, you have all images tagged with alt-text,[…]
Google Hangouts is an amazing tool for keeping in touch with groups of people with a shared interest–students, colleagues, or even a professional network. Unfortunately, Google plans to phase out the platform by October of 2019. So what can you use in its place? There are actually quite a few options that can fit the[…]
Camtasia is a great piece of software and we use it often here in Learning Technologies. However, it’s not the right tool for every job, and because it’s a bit pricey, it’s less than ideal for those just doing basic video recording and editing who probably don’t actually need anything as robust as Camtasia. So[…]
If you follow ed tech news, you know that augmented and virtual reality are huge buzzwords these days. But while the tech may look cool, cost and availability often make it something that most classrooms simply can’t support. That doesn’t have to be the case, however, as there are options for lower cost, readily available[…]
Adobe Spark launched in May of 2016, so it’s relatively new technology, but if you haven’t heard of it or tried it out yet, you definitely should. In its first year it was awarded Best App of the Year by Apple (notable, considering the past animosity between Adobe and Apple) and it’s since been downloaded[…]
What Is Mentimeter? Mentimeter is an interactive presentation, workshop and meeting tool, designed to help make sharing information with students or colleagues innovative and memorable. Right now you might be thinking, oh boy, another presentation tool. As if I need ANOTHER one to remember and learn how to use. But Mentimeter can actually help simplify[…]
What Is Flipgrid? Flipgrid is a website that allows instructors to create a grid of 240-character-or-less discussion questions that students respond to using equally short recorded videos. Grids can be made up of classes, sections, faculty groups, cohorts, or any assortment of users who are interested in discussing a shared set of questions, usually with[…]
Both students and instructors at College of DuPage have access to Lynda.com (if you haven’t yet signed up, the Library explains how here). A division of the popular social networking site LinkedIn, the site offers training videos and courses on a wide range of topics, from creating Excel spreadsheets to editing high-quality videos in Adobe[…]
An Introduction to Gameblox For those interesting in exploring gamification in their courses, Gameblox can be a powerful free tool for getting started. So what is Gameblox? Gameblox is a game editor that uses a block-based programming language to allow anyone, even those with limited programming knowledge, to make and share games. It is free[…]
Scientists have long known that visual cues play an important role in helping learners to retrieve and remember information. This makes sense, as the brain itself is essentially an image processing machine. In fact, some studies suggest that up to 90 percent of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. This extra brain power dedicated to[…]