Effective Instructional Explanations

Thanks to Dyeseka at Open Colleges for sending me Customized Instruction: Four Charateristics of Effective Instructional Explanations by Saga Briggs.  Good stuff!

PDF Syllabus Builder is Need-to-Know News

Thanks to Debbie Morrison at the online learning insights blog for featuring the PDF Syllabus Builder in today's post: Need-to-Know News: The Making of a MOOC, College Scorecard and Syllabus Builder Tool.

Tools and Resources for the Flipped Classroom

Julie Schell at the Turn to Your Neighbor (TTYN) blog has shared a great Annotated List of Flipped Class Tools and Resources featuring rising stars like Educreations, NB, PeerWise and the PDF Syllabus Builder :) Thanks Julie!

Beta version of the PDF Content Blueprinting Tool

Today the beta version of the PDF Content Blueprinting Tool was finished. Academic Partnerships has developed the tool as part of its Faculty eCommons, a social learning community for faculty that will be available soon.

The official release of the tool will take place at an upcoming Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) conference.

25 Tools for Tutoring

Here's another great list. This one was was sent to me by the folks at onlinecollegecourses.com: http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2012/08/20/25-tools-that-take-tutoring-to-a-new-level/

From the article:

"Like other areas of education, tutoring has seen some radical changes in the past decade courtesy of new and increasingly innovative technologies. Students and their tutors can now interact at any time and from anywhere in the world, and tutors can create and share educational resources with their students in minutes using high-quality and often low-cost online tools. Learn more about some of the websites and resources that are helping to define the new face of tutoring by reading about a few of the best of these new tools that we've collected here."

50 Indispensable EdTech Tools for 2012

Here's a good list of EdTech Tools from the folks at onlinedegrees.org: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/50-indispensable-edtech-tools-for-2012/ Great place to start if you're looking for new tools, or are asked for an up-to-date list with links!

PDF Assignment Builder videos surpass 15,000 views

Both the original PDF Assignment Builder and the newer PDF Assignment Builder 3.0 continue to add new views. In the year that it has been posted, the PDF AB3 has averaged 670 views per month!

The PDF Assignment Builder allows users to cut and paste information from any word processor into Adobe Reader. The field into which the information is pasted is dynamic--it will grow in size to accommodate 100 lines, or 100 pages. Users will be able to save the PDF form and send it to another user. The form will remain writable, editable, printable and savable.

The PDF Assignment Builder 3.0 allows instructors to create question and answer fields, as well as editable Title and Instruction fields. The question fields are numbered automatically, and specific instructions can be entered into the answer fields, and then typed over by students. Before the form is sent to students, the Title, Instruction and Answer fields are "locked" by changing their type to "read only".

Might be time for a new version. Anyone interested in collaborating?