Audio-Tips News

Talking Communities will be providing a free weeklong series of workshops on on-line teaching using web conferencing software. During the week of January 7 from 4:30 to 5:30 CST, Talking Communities will be giving a free workshop on one aspect of synchronous on-line teaching, which are open to the public at http://www.talkingcomunities.com/moodle. 

January 7 - This workshop will explain document sharing in an on-line classroom. Steven Hoffmann, the instructor for these workshops, will demonstrate how to use the Document Center to display PowerPoint, Word, Excel, PDF, and images in real time for classroom instruction. “Possibly the most important aspect of any on-line classroom is the ability to properly give presentations and share documents with the students”, explains Hoffmann, who taught English as a Second Language for eight years.

January 8: This workshop will demonstrate the use of the whiteboard. The whiteboard allows you to capture and display anything on your screen instantly and the mark it up with highlights and drawings. In addition, the whiteboard allows displaying of  PowerPoint in a dynamic manner. “The whiteboard is very effective for visually explaining things during discussion sessions”, Hoffmann adds.

January 9: This workshop will focus on how to use recorded lectures in a live classroom. By using pre-recorded lectures, and playing them using “streaming” technology to the students in a live classroom, the instructor not only maximizes his time, but also guarantees perfect lectures every time. “Teachers are used to giving the exact same class instruction to different groups over and over”, says Hoffmann. “But using recorded lecture material, the teacher leverages technology to his or her advantage and actually improves on the traditional face-to-face classroom, which is something of a rarity”, he concludes.

January 10: This will be a continuation of the use of pre-recorded material in a live classroom. In this workshop, Hoffmann demonstrates how to effectively create perfectly recorded lectures using a combination of tools. The workshop includes instruction of where to get the necessary free software for making audio recordings as well as basic instruction on how to create and edit audio recordings. The workshop finishes with an explanation of how to merge audio recordings with PowerPoint to create a complete lecture that can be used over and over in a live on-line classroom to different students.

The weeklong workshops conclude by focusing on additional on-line technology that may be necessary for a complete on-line course, including discussions on asynchronous technologies such as Moodle, Desire2Learn, and LetsGoExpo. Hoffmann will also demonstrate how to utilize other synchronous technology such as live video streaming into on-line classrooms. Through the combination of web conferencing software and pre-recorded material, on-line teaching is opening opportunities to teachers and students alike.

Every participant will be eligible for his or her own 10-seat live on-line classroom absolutely free for one month. “This will give all the participants a sandbox in which to practice what they have learned in the series of workshops”, explains Hoffmann. 

Most of us do one or more things a little differently than other people. Some of us wear eyeglasses or contact lenses to see a little better. Some of us put cushions on our chairs so we can sit more comfortably. Some of us type everything because we don’t like writing things out longhand.

If a person is in a situation where performing a function in the usual way is difficult, no one thinks much about it if that person amends the situation–and his own procedures–to enhance his performance.

Most of us do it so often that we don’t even consider that we’re adapting a situation to fit our own abilities–or disabilities. We’re just making things a little more comfortable, a little easier on ourselves.

That’s what adaptive computing technology is all about. Using special computing software and hardware to make things easier and more accessible for people with disabilities. (more…)