A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

teaching with technology

FERPA and Social Media

FERPA is one of the most misunderstood regulations in education. It is commonly assumed that FERPA requires all student coursework to be kept private at all times, and thus prevents the use of social media in the classroom, but this is wrong. FERPA does not prevent instructors from assigning students to create public content as part of their course requirements. If it did, then video documentaries produced in a communications class and shown on TV or the Web, or public art shows of student work from an art class, would be illegal. As one higher education lawyer put it:

John Orlando, PhD February 7, 2011

Professors Use Twitter to Increase Student Engagement and Grades

Keeping college students off social media sites and focused on the course material is a daily challenge for many of today’s college faculty. But what if you could harness the power of today’s technologies and students’ proclivity toward social networking to enhance the learning experience rather than distract from it?

Mary Bart January 18, 2011

Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning

Whether the courses you teach are face-to-face, online, blended, or all of the above, this report explains effective ways to incorporate technology into your courses to create a rich learning experience for students, and a rewarding teaching experience for you.

Faculty Focus January 13, 2011

Tapping into the Power of Open Education to Improve Teaching and Learning

Aristotle was wrong. He thought that knowledge was passed from person to person like water is transferred between vessels. Aristotle believed in education through reading great texts and listening to great teachers, with the knowledge filling the learner’s mind.

John Orlando, PhD January 10, 2011

Effective Uses of Video in the Classroom

Social media has allowed anyone to become a video producer. The result is an explosion of high-quality teaching videos. Thirty years ago a teacher might show a PBS video in class every once in a while, mostly just as a break from the usual routine. But today there are thousands of videos from which to choose.

John Orlando, PhD December 15, 2010

Using Wikis for Collaborative Learning

If you are looking for ways to facilitate collaboration among students, consider using a wiki—a website that contains pages that can be easily created and edited by multiple users. Several characteristics of Wikis make them excellent choices for projects that involve brainstorming and research and that require a final report, says Rhonda Ficek, director of instructional technology services at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Rob Kelly December 9, 2010

Education Remix: Unlocking Creativity to Boost Learning

When considering the major advances in communication — from the printing press, to the telephone, to television — each medium shared the characteristic of allowing either one-to-one communication or one-to-many communication. But social media changed all that. For the first time in history “many” can speak to “many,” and this has radically changed our world.

John Orlando, PhD December 1, 2010

Students on the Go: What’s an Instructor to Do?

Mobile learning is defined as any sort of learning that happens when the learner is not at a fixed, predetermined location, or learning that happens when the learner takes advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Eileen Narozny November 22, 2010

Solving the Problem of Online Problem Solving

When first visualizing an online mathematics course, I saw a barren, text-only environment where students learned primarily from the textbook and where instructors provided text-based direction, clarification, and assistance. But typing is not teaching and reading is not learning. Students deserve more from online courses than regurgitated textbooks and opportunities to teach themselves. With today’s technology, we can create a rich learning environment.

Ellen Smyth November 8, 2010

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teaching with technology

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