Reading Time: 2 minutesIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles continue to talk about the “how” of tech integration, but they discuss it from the perspective of accessibility with Lauren Eissler–User Experience Designer and Editor for the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University. In their conversation, they define accessibility and discuss best practices for making more content accessible to students. Check out the episode to hear more about how structuring written content with headings, captioning videos, and using alt text can help your students in their learning. Podcast links Show Notes Before digging into how to effectively make content accessible, it’s important to ask: “what is…
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Transform Your Teaching: The What, the Why, and the How of Technology Integration – The How & SAMR
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles discuss the “how” of technology integration and the practical framework SAMR. Check out this episode to hear about how instructors can utilize this framework to integrate technology with their courses. Podcast links Show notes SAMR, an acronym for the four levels of technology integration, was created by Ruben Puentedura and is a practical framework for technology integration. According to Puentedura, substitution is the lowest level of integration; redefinition is the highest. Substitution and augmentation are seen as methods of improving learning tasks. Modification and redefinition can lead to transformed learning tasks. Research has shown that educators integrate…
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Transform Your Teaching: The What, the Why, and the How of Technology Integration – The Why
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles discuss the “why” of technology integration and how it directly relates to servant teaching. Check out the episode to hear how effective technology integration can improve student engagement and help them understand content better. Podcast links Show notes Technology integration directly relates to servant teaching—it’s a great way for us to prepare our students for their future. We can demonstrate proper technology usage and practice through our instruction. Our goal should be to impart wisdom and to help students work through the proper use of technology and develop 21st Century skills. Using technology effectively serves students because…
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Transform Your Teaching: The What, the Why, and the How of Technology Integration – The What
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles discuss the “what” of technology integration. They delve into the definition of technology integration and best practices, using ChatGPT as their co-pilot. Check out the episode to hear about enhancing teaching and learning through appropriate technology integration. We would love to get your feedback! Please fill out our survey to help improve our podcast and serve you better. Podcast links Show notes Webster’s definition of technology is expansive. For the sake of our series, we will be limiting our discussion to the use of electronic hardware or software in educational settings that enhance the learning experience. It…
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Transform Your Teaching: The What, the Why, and the How of Technology Integration – Introduction
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn this episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Jared Pyles introduce their next series on technology integration. Check out the episode to hear about using technology as a teaching method to enhance a student’s understanding of the content rather than just integrating it for its own sake. Additionally, we would love to get your feedback! Please fill out our survey to help improve our podcast and serve you better. Podcast links Show notes Early on as a teacher, Jared started exploring how technology integration could be used in his classes. He discovered that embracing technology integration allows both students to engage the content in a new way and…
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Turnitin Adds AI Writing Indicator to Similarity Report
Reading Time: 3 minutesIt’s no secret that ChatGPT’s popularity is growing. And plagiarism detecting tools are aware of that – and the need to adjust their offerings to help identify when student work may have been supplemented or entirely created by AI. Turnitin recently announced that it will now display a score to instructors within the Similarity Report to indicate what percentage of a paper is highly likely to be generated by AI. Turnitin is quick to say that their detection isn’t foolproof and the percentage displayed “should not be used as a definitive measure of misconduct or punitive tool.” The AI percentage is presented to inform instructors and give…
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Canvas Update: Grade by Question in SpeedGrader
Reading Time: 2 minutesWith the update releasing April 15, Canvas is adjusting how instructors can review and grade New Quiz questions in SpeedGrader. Previously when scoring questions that needed manual grading, instructors could only view results organized by student. Now, Canvas will allow instructors to flip between students to grade by question. This is controlled by a setting in the “options” menu when you’re in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz. Turning on grade by question When in SpeedGrader for a New Quiz, click the settings gear at the top left, then click “options” in the menu. In the window that pops up, check the box for “grade by question,” then…
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ChatGPT: What’s Next?
Reading Time: 3 minutesVaulting onto my stand-up stool, I contorted into a jockey’s position while piping the Classical Motivation playlist from Apple’s freshly minted Classical Music app–off to the races of the new, new frontier. Using the old to discuss the new isn’t unfamiliar, but Apple isn’t the only tech company to release something recently. OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, released ChatGPT-4 last week–a total paradigm shift. Below is an example of the power of ChatGPT-4. I fed it my first two ChatGPT blog posts and asked it to write the next post. As we continue to grapple with the integration of AI tools like ChatGPT into our educational…
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Canvas Update: Instructors Can Upload Files to Assignments for Students
Reading Time: 2 minutesCanvas has recently added a feature to allow instructors to upload files to assignments for students. To use this feature, you need to start in the gradebook. Click on the student’s cell for the assignment you want to upload, then click the arrow. Canvas will slide out a panel from the right side of your screen. Click the “Submit for Student” link. Drag and drop or use the file picker to add the assignment file(s), then click “submit.” If you upload multiple files, they will be added as one submission. The file is now available to be graded in SpeedGrader! Any files uploaded using this method will…
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Canvas Updates: Rich Content Editor
Reading Time: 1 minuteIt’s been a bit since we last wrote about Canvas updates, but some cool things have been happening. Canvas is always working on tweaking or adding things (you can keep up with them in the Canvas Release Notes!), but today we’re focusing on what’s changed in the Rich Content Editor (RCE) over the past few months. Access to detailed word/character count statistics The RCE displays word count at the bottom of the editor, but it’s expanded that functionality a bit. Now when you click on that word count, Canvas will pop a window and show you detailed word and character count. Dragging-and-dropping/pasting of content Previously, to add…