Using Backchannels in Your Classroom

Earlier this evening I gave a presentation for the 2010 Reform Symposium. The topic of the presentation was using backchannels in your classroom. During the presentation I explored some of the problems that using backchannels can solve for teachers. The recording of the presentation should be available here soon. In the meantime, I promised that I would post the slides from the presentation. The second to last slide contains a list of tools that can be used for hosting backchannel chats.
(Yes, something weird happened when I uploaded to SlideShare to cause my first slide to get a bit off).

Backchannels in the classroom

View more presentations from Richard Byrne.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Neat Chat - Quickly Create an Ad-Free Chatroom
Five Platforms for Classroom Back-channel Chat
Back-channeling During a Class Viewing of Glory

Week in Review - Blocked from my Google Account

This week I was at the Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine for MLTI's Summer Institute. I was there to talk about Google Maps, Blogger, and some lesser-known Google tools like Google Books. Everything went well the first day. On the second day, the day that I was to run two workshops about Blogger, I was blocked from my Google Account just minutes before the start time. Without getting into a bunch of networking geek-speak, let's just say that some computers could get through the network to Google accounts while others couldn't.

Just when I thought it was going be a flop of a day for presentations, my friend Harold Shaw rescued me by letting me use his MacBook Pro for the first morning session. Alice Barr let me use her MacBook for the second morning session. And in the afternoon computer science guru Tim Hart created a work-around for my machine that got me onto the network. I barely understood what Tim did so I just nodded my head while he went to work typing a series of commands. Thank you to these fine folks who made it possible for me to go on and have a great conference.

Here are the seven most popular items of the last week:
1. Learn It In 5 - Tech How-to Videos for Teachers
2. Ten Uses for Drop.io In Education
3. Nine Survey Tools for Teachers and Students
4. 3 Common Craft Videos That Should Be In Your Training Library
5. How to Use Drop.io for Free
6. Copyright Office Clarifies Fair Use Rules
7. Weekly Video Tip - Cheap Whiteboards

Thank you to everyone that helped spread the word about the great resources listed above. Together we can help spread the word to other teachers about the great free resources that can make our students' learning experiences better.

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Infographic - College Drinking, More than a Problem

Degree Scout has recently published an infographic illustrating the problems that are caused by college students' drinking behaviors. The infographic contains statistics and citations to support the information presented.

You can view the whole infographic and grab the embed code for it here.

Applications for Education
This infographic might be useful for health and wellness educators to provide their students with a quick visual reminder of some lessons they're teaching.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Food Play - Resources About Food and Diet
Sugar Stacks - How Much Sugar is in Your Snack?
Cool Food Kidz Teaches Kids About Diet & Fitness