Teaching, Learning, Technology & Reflection

John Medina's great new book entitled "brain rules" ECS or Emotionally Competent Stimuli, a.k.a., "the hook". A hook is a relevant story or anecdote designed to stimulate emotion such as fear, happiness, laughter, or incredulity. The hook can be used to summarize the last key concept or to introduce the next module, but most importantly, it "touches" your audience. from TGI Newsletter 44

Today I heard a new concept (not really) "teacher 2.0". See this blog: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/schoolnet-unvei.html For me, teacher 2.0 does not necessarily mean teacher who use Web 2.0 tools in their teaching. It means an approach and ideology of teaching that keeps updated with the progress of the world. Interestingly, this blog also have some ideas on Administrator 2.0. This makes me think of many other 2.0s, such as learner 2.0, employer 2.0, employee 2.0, family 2.0, lover 2.0, friend 2.0...:-)

Today I went to an Instructional Consulting session on "Using Breeze to Connect with Students". It is presented by Dr. Roberto Garcia from Kelly School of Business. He introduced his experience with using Breeze in his online course. I have used Breeze briefly when Skype failed to hold more than 4 people for an online conference. It is one of the best online communication tools I have used. Very easy to use (at least as a participant). There are some fun episodes Dr. Roberto Garcia talked about. For example one student was able to view everything but to type in the chat. After many investigations it is found that it is all caused by the apostrophe in the student's log on name! Another fun episode was about the social presence. While Dr. Garcia was lecturing in his home office with his camera, his wife and kids come in with a cake with candles on. It happened to be his birthday that day! Facing this surprise, he turned the camera to his kids and the cake for about five min...