27 Videos About Teaching Online

Curtis Bonk, whose excellent book The World Is Open I reviewed last year, recently released a twenty-seven video series about teaching online courses. The videos were produced by Bonk in collaboration with the Instructional Consulting and IST departments in the School of Education at Indiana University. From planning a course to reducing plagiarism to building learning communities to collaborative projects, the videos cover a wide range of topics related to teaching online.

The videos can be viewed on Curtis Bonk's YouTube channel. You can also view the videos on the Indiana University School of Education V-Portal site where you will find additional supplementary materials. I also encourage you to read Curtis Bonk's blog post announcing the release of these videos.

Below you will see the first video in the series, Planning an Online Course.

Yummy Math - Making Mathematics Relevant

Yummy Math is a website designed for the purpose of sharing mathematics problems and scenarios based on things happening in the world today. For example, the activity for December 4th was based on Lebron James's return to Cleveland. Yummy Math lists activities chronologically as well as by mathematics subject area. Two mathematics teachers, Brian Marks and Leslie Lewis, developed Yummy Math and welcome suggestions from other mathematics teachers.

Applications for Education

Making mathematics relevant to students is a challenge that a lot of teachers face. Yummy Math could be a good place to find some help making mathematics relevant.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Math Class Needs a Makeover
38 Weeks of Algebra Lessons
Computational Thinking Lessons from Google

Meetzi - Make Meetings More Productive

Meetings... love them or hate them, we all have to go to them. Meetzi is a free service that wants to help you make your meetings more productive. At its core Meetzi is a meeting planner. In Meetzi you can plan out the purpose(s) of your meeting and set time limits for each item on your agenda. While actually in your meeting Meetzi counts down the time left for each agenda item. Also while in your meeting you can take notes in Meetzi and assign action items to people in the meeting. Watch the video below to learn more about Meetzi. Update May 2012: Meetzi has been shutdown.

60 Second Civics - Listen and Learn

In my post about the 2010 Edublog Awards (voting is still open by the way) I mentioned that looking through the lists of nominees is a good way to discover new blogs, people, and podcasts to add to your list of learning resources. I didn't just write that advice, I took it and discovered a new podcast that I really like.

60 Second Civics is a daily podcast produced by the Center for Civic Education. Each 60 Second Civics episode offers a short lesson about US Civics. Along with each episode is a one question quiz about that day's episode. Currently, the podcasts are focused on a comparison of British Parliament and US Congress.

Applications for Education
Playing 60 Second Civics could be a good "starter activity" at the beginning of a US History or Civics class. You might consider combining and or alternating the use of 60 Second Civics with a resource like CNN Student News or The Week in Rap.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Interactive Activities about US Government
60+ Virtual Tours & Webcams for Social Studies
Which Founder of the United States are You Most Like?

The Lifespan of the Dollar Bill

Curious About George: What is the Lifespan of the Dollar Bill? is an interesting an informative infographic from CreditLoan.com. The infographic offers provides flow charts of the production, distribution, and eventual removal from circulation of currency. Some statistics about the quantity of dollar bills produced every year is also included in the infographic.

Applications for Education

Curious About George could be a useful little resource to work into an introductory economics lesson. You could print the infographic for classroom display. 

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:

How Much is One Trillion Dollars?

The History of Credit Cards in the United States

The History of Counterfeiting