Teaching in Higher Ed

EdTech tools | Spring 2015

May 21, 2015

28:23

Bonni Stachowiak provides an update on some of the edtech tools she experimented with in Spring 2015.

Podcast Notes

Slack

Team communication for the 21st century. Imagine all your team communication in one pace, instantly searchable, available wherever you go.

Create channels, which include messages, files, and comments, inline images and video, rich line summaries, and integration with services you use every day, like Twitter, Dropbox and Google drive.

How did we use it?

Has default channels: #general, #random… added ones for #movienights at our house (address, carpooling, etc.), and for each of the research/service learning projects. Can do private ones that no one else sees, which we did for the business ethics competition, so competitors wouldn’t be able to see the cases we were considering, etc.

Students’ feedback

Really liked it. Searchability. Ease of use.

What they didn’t like was just the number of places they have to remember to check, assuming they weren’t on the web app.

Empathy for our students

A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned

Piazza

Recommended by Doug on episode #035
Watch a video that shows the power of Piazza
Primarily will want to have students use their .edu address to sign up for Piazza
There are also integration options for LMSs, etc.
TextExpander snippet for students who ask a question directly to me, instead of on Piazza