GSA eLearning News

Most of us still use PowerPoint to make presentations, and with good reason: It is awesome, and continues to have new features with each Office update. GSA IT has been updating all computers on the network, and any staff computers (Mac or PC) who request it, with the latest versions of Office. It is easier than ever to create a narrated PowerPoint. You can even edit the narration slide-by-slide after you create it, so you don't have to re-record the whole thing if you want to make corrections.  Uploading this to Canvas will provide your students with a great learning resource. Recorded lectures or presentations, even if they are just short recaps, make your course more accessible and inclusive because they help students with all learning styles. Here's a video that explains how to create a narrated PowerPoint, save it as a video, and upload it to your GSA Canvas course. Lastly, take a look at the 1 Minute CPD video post below. If you haven't use...

Hi, This post is inspired by a recent 1 Minute CPD blogpost TAKEN FROM 1 MUNUTE CPD #5MinuteReflection 3: Open Education Resources (OERs) by @heydftba In the third instalment of our monthly #5minutereflection, we will look at Open Educational Resources (OERs). Open educational resources (OERs) are ' free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching, learning, research, and other purposes '. They can be in any format, and they can range from individual items to full courses. #1minuteCPD is an example of an OER. Open practice has guided the creation of this blog from the decision of which technologies to use to create the resource (WordPress, YouTube, Creative Commons images), how to manage the resource (Gmail, Google Drive) and to determine the contents of the resource (free and open technologies available to all). You can read more about this here . Why use OERs? The latest NMC Horizon Report (commissioned by Educause, which identifi...

APPS Remote Collaboration Trello Google Apps Google Hangout Github Zoom Padlet Trello How it can be used Trello can be used to create Kanban style boards for group work. Users are able to create bespoke categories and add and move notes added to these. ‘Power-ups’ can also be downloaded, adding additional features to the Trello boards, including Google Calendars (mentioned below), and imagery such as ‘gifs’ and popular survey sites such as ‘SurveyMonkey’. How to get started Create a Trello account & add users to the board, setting privacy settings where necessary. Start building categories and notes within these, adding additional features where you see fit. Adjust the Trello board as you continue through a project. Further support 2. Google Apps How it can be used Google applications contain a wide variety of collaboration tools, spanning from Google Drive, where shared folders, documents and presentation slides can be added; to Google Calendar where group meetings and Goo...

Looking for some professional development?  Online courses abound, and they are a great way to inject some new ideas or skills into your teaching. Coffee Courses anyone?  The Australian National University has developed  Coffee courses - open to all, these provide an easy way to learn new ideas for using technology in your teaching. Each coffee course covers a new topic in education technology, teaching online, digital tools, pedagogy, or trends in technology. It is equivalent to a one- or two-hour face-to-face training session, but is done at your own pace from your own desk.You can do them live or dip into the archive of past coffee courses. Some suggested 'Coffee courses' : Enhancing your lecture: strategies for student engagement Practical strategies for enhancing a lecture-based class. The course explores discussion techniques to promote active learning among students within the lecture format, and look at how technologies can effectively facilitate this...

Delayed Announcement If you want to send an announcement to class, but not immediately, try to “delay posting,” which will release your announcement exactly at the time you want. You can also release modules, quizzes, assignments and discussions at specific times too. For more information,  check here .

December 18 th  was the second annual GSA Canvas Showcase! Members of the GSA staff community shared mince pies and a wide array of insights into some of the innovative ways in which Canvas is being used across the institution.  The topics under discussion included: The ways in which Canvas has streamlined the process of student sign-ups and enrolments for elective courses; The lessons learned from inviting students to submit images for display in the Design Domain course;   Some of the features of the Cross School course, including the embedding of Padlet images galleries, and the use of sections to assist with the functioning of the Attendance tool; The new Virtual Classroom tool (Collaborate), with a demonstration of using it for remote teaching at Forres. Collaborate allows distant learning that remains live, interactive, and face-to-face; Using Canvas as a launchpad into other social media and web spaces; The value of academic reading lists, which ...