MERLOT Leadership Meeting

I've just returned from the MERLOT Leadership meeting in Long Beach, California. It's an opportunity for editors of the various boards and project directors to meet together with the MERLOT leaders. At the meeting (February 4-5), we discussed the upcoming Emerging Technologies for Online Learning conference in July (20-23) in San Jose, a joint venture of MERLOT, Sloan, and Moodle. Information on the conference can be found at http://sloanconsortium.org/et4online.

One of the highlights of the meeting was sharing the MERLOT Classics Winners for 2010. They are quite fabulous! Unfortunately, you'll have to wait until the conference to find out which ones the editorial boards selected.

In the meantime, though, I wanted to highlight our 2009 Classics Winner, Jing. The Jing Project, a free site, allows users to capture screen shots, create video, and upload video to screencast.com. Then, instructors can insert the URL and students can access the video their professors have created.

Members of the editorial board have used Jing extensively. One example is to use it to illustrate to students (either face-to-face or online) how to use a particular website or a piece of software. Jing will capture examples up to five minutes in length. For example, I used Jing to show my students how to access the discussion board in our course management system and how to post a discussion response. Another board member has students use Jing to capture problems they are having with software or websites. They send the link to him and he can then help them sort through the difficulties.

Members can upgrade from free accounts to Jing Pro for only $14.95 a year. The free version, however, has been quite adequate for my needs over the past two years.

I hope you'll try Jing (if you haven't already) and comment on the ways you've used it here.

Jane

Cool Tools for Schools

So many of us in higher education are overwhelmed by budget cuts, time constraints and more and more "to do" items. We still want to keep up with integration of technology, but there's so much out there and limited time to explore.

One of our favorite Teacher Education sites this year is Cool Tools for Schools . The site, created by a New Zealand educator, Lenva Shearing, includes many, many tools that are useful for educators. Lenva keeps up with the blog, so links work, and materials are organized in a easy to follow manner.

So, if you're looking for a Presentation tool, for instance, Lenva has linked 41 annotated sites. You can look through them and choose the tool that's right for your situation.

Be sure to read the MERLOT review to get insights into ways in which you might use "Cool Tools for Schools.

Join MERLOT and have access to Personal Collections (Cool Tools is in mine!), and the ability to post comments and use MERLOT to the fullest.

Jane