Resources for Teaching & Learning
Many academic librarians, particularly those doing bibliographic instruction, find their work often crosses over into the field of instructional technology. We are either making use of web and multimedia technology in our own teaching efforts or are assisting faculty who are integrating these technologies into their courses. The resources included on this page will be of interest to both instructional or educational technologies - and those librarians crossing over into this field. There are several good sources of information related to teaching and technology. Some are more technology than teaching. Some are focusing on broader higher education issues. Sources on this page include:
Innovate: Journal of Online Education
TL InfoBits
Learning Technology
EducatorsPortal.com
From Now On: Educational Technology Journal
SideBars
Learning MarketSpace
SmartClassroom
The Grapevine (plus Journal of Online Learning and Teaching)
Faculty Focus
Association for Learning Technology Online Newsletter
Connectivism
Learning Technologies
ICT in Education
Recommended Blogs for Instructional Technologists
Not quite newsletters, these blogs are still worthwhile reading. Some, such as Edu_RSS are, in their own right, good sources for keeping up to date in the field of educational technology. Few offer e-mail alerts so use a page change detection service (set to a weekly frequency) or subscribe to their RSS feeds through your news aggregator.
Edu_RSS (news about and related to education retrieved from RSS feeds)
EdTechPost (posts about technologies for learning, thinking and collaborating
EduResources Weblog (links and information about educational technology resources)
Weblogg-ed: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom (thoughts and resources about blogging, rss, podcasting, etc. in the classroom)
Creating Passionate Users (not currently active but hundreds of great posts on teaching, learning, creativity and innovation)
Innovate: The Journal of Online Education
This is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed online periodical published by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University. The journal focuses on the creative use of information technology (IT) to enhance educational processes in academic, commercial, and government settings. Innovate is dedicated to presenting articles via the most dynamic, interactive technology that is available. For each article, the journal provides an online discussion forum, an interactive webcast that connects authors and readers, and a "read-related" feature that links visitors to articles on similar topics
Suggested strategy: There are two strategies for keeping up with this title. If you use a web page change detection service you can monitor the journal home page at https://innovateonline.info . If you use a news aggregator, you can also subscribe to Innovate's RSS feed found at: https://www.innovateonline.info/innovate.rss.
Produced by the Center for Instructional Technology at the University for North Carolina (Chapel Hill), this free monthly monitors and presents news items drawn from numerous information technology and instructional technology sources. Topics cover distance learning, finding Internet resources, policy issues and it includes book and web sites reviews. To view past issues go to:
https://www.unc.edu/cit/infobits
Suggested strategy: To sign-up for the newsletter send an e-mail message to listserv@unc.edu with the following message:
SUBSCRIBE INFOBITS firstname lastname (substituting your own first and last names).
This is a free, quarterly publication of the Learning Technology Task Force of the IEEE Computer Society. It aims to report on the activities of the Task Force, and in doing so reports on some unusual applications of technology for learning (e.g., how legos are being used in teaching technology skills). Some of the articles do have an engineering focus, but this isn't a newsletter that requires you to be an engineer. To get a better idea of what Learning Technology is like, go to:
https://lttf.ieee.org/learn_tech/issues.html
Suggested strategy: To sign-up to receive e-mail notices of new issues send an e-mail message to majordomo@majordomo.iee.org with the following message: SUBSCRIBE learning_technology your_email_address (substituting your own e-mail address).
The free, daily Enewsletter from EducatorsPortal.com is a fast and easy way to get a regular feed of new developments in the field of education (all levels) with a technology slant. Issues have two or three line story summaries with a link to the story, and average less than 20 stories per issue (there is a lot of education news).
Suggested strategy: You can subscribe to this newsletter from the EducatorsPortal.com home page at https://www.educatorsportal.com. On the left side of the page, you'll find a box where you can enter your e-mail address to subscribe.
From Now On: Educational Technology Journal
Though targeted to the K-12 audience, I find this journal worthwhile to follow. Many of the articles are written by Jamie McKenzie, the editor, and he has a lot of interesting things to say. For example, his discussion of "powerpointlessness", in an article on how to improve presentations. This is a non-scholarly journal, and at least one article per issue should be attractive to the librarian audience.
Suggested strategy: This journal does not offer any sort of e-mail alert when a new issue is available, so you will need to monitor it for change using a Web page change detection service. To examine the latest issue plus archives, point your browser to https://www.fno.org/index.html
The National Learning Infrastructure Initiative (NLII) is a coalition dedicated to the strategic use of information technology to improve teaching and learning. NLII News is a quarterly electronic publication that provides information about NLII activities.This online newsletter summarizes and links to news and information on topics of interest to NLII members.
Suggested strategy: You can subscribe by either sending an email message to: listserv@listserv.educause.edu (leave the subject line blank and type SUBSCRIBE NLII NEWS in the body of the message) or point your browser to: https://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?SUBED1=NLII-NEWS&A=1 and subscribe online.
This occasional newsletter (anywhere from 4-7 per year) is published by the Learning Resources Unit of the British Columbia Institute of Technology to support and recognize innovative practice in distributed learning at BCIT, and the greater educational community. Issues are built around themes such as the millenial student, online communities, or courseware systems.
Suggested strategy: You can subscribe by either sending an email message to:
majordomo@listserv.bcit.ca (leave the subject line blank and type the words "subscribe sidebars" in the body of your message) or point your browser to: https://online.bcit.ca/sidebars/subcribe.html and subscribe online.
This is a free quarterly e-newsletter from the Center for Academic Transformation. The Center conducts research and programs into ways in which technology can be used in the redesign of courses and curriculums. The newsletter highlights ongoing examples of redesigned learning environments using technology and examines issues related to development and implementation of redesign projects.
Suggested strategy: To subscribe point your browser to:
https://www.thencat.org/subscribe.htm . Archival issues can also be found on this page.
SmartClassroom (Previously Technology Enabled Teaching)
Another newsletter from the publishers of Campus Technology magazine (formerly Syllabus). This one is a free, bi-weekly service that reports on developments related to E-learning, presentation software and hardware, display technology, and course management software. It is the only (free) newsletter that focuses on course management software. As such it is an excellent resource for keeping up-to-date on the latest offerings from the courseware vendors, technology updates, and case study reports.
Suggested strategy: To subscribe to receive each issue in your e-mail inbox, point your browser to: https://campustechnology.com/mcv/newsletters/newsletters/ To see a sample issue point your browser to:
https://campustechnology.com/mcv/newsletters/smartclassroom/
This is a free bimonthly e-newsletter from MERLOT. MERLOT is a repository of learning objects, lesson plans, and other educational resources that faculty share with colleagues. It's a great resource for finding electronic learning resources. Each issue provides MERLOT news, features about faculty and institutions, upcoming teaching and learning events, and tips for using MERLOT. If you want to monitor new resources being added to MERLOT the recommended method is to look at their RSS feeds and subscribe to them with your news aggregator. Also, when you subscribe to The Grapevine you'll know when new issues of the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) become available. JOLT is a peer-reviewed, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in education. JOLT is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December.
Suggested strategy: Subscribe to this newsletter at: https://lists.merlot.org/newsletter/index.htm?action=add
This is a free monthly email newsletter covering academic issues for teaching instructors, faculty, department chairs, academic deans, and academic administrators.There are about four decent articles per issue. They tend to lean towards information about ways in which faculty can improve their teaching methods, as well as the use of teaching technology. In addition, there may be announcements for conferences or workshops. It's published by the for-profit publisher Magna Publications so there are some tie-ins to materials the publisher is offereing, but it's nothing overwhelming.
Suggested trategy: This publication is available only as an email newsletter. To subscribe just point your browser to https://www.magnapubs.com/subscribe/register.html and complete the registration form.
Association for Learning Technology Online Newsletter
This is a free, web-based newsletter from the UK Association for Learning Technology. Upon subscribing they will send an email to notify subscribers when a new issue is available. The frequency is unknown; it might be quarterly. But it's a good source of brief articles about different learning technologies, including clickers, courseware, accessibility issues, and e-learning. It also provides access to case studies, software reviews, conference reports, and global education news.
Suggested strategy: Point your browser to https://newsletter.alt.ac.uk and look for the "Subscribe" option on the left-side of the web page. Just add your email address and submit.
This is a bi-weekly blog summary report from George Siemens, the innovator behind Connectivism. Connectivism is an alternate school of thought on how learning occurs (e.g., behavioralism, cognitivism, contructivism). Connectivism holds that learning occurs through networks and the interaction that occurs within those networks. It makes for intereting reading for those who would like to follow new thinking in the area of learning theory. The news is usually pretty sparse so this one definitely won't overwhelm anyone.
Suggested strategy: Go to https://www.connectivism.ca/ and type your email address into the box on the page to subscribe to the report.
Published three times per year, this magazine contains in-depth articles on the latest learning trends and developments as well as covering all the major issues affecting organizational learning and learning technology. Topics covered include blended learning solutions, learning games, managing classroom technology and other aspects of teaching technology. The articles are available in full-text format at the Learning Technologies website.
Suggested strategy: While one can register to obtain a free copy, using a web page change detection service may be best for monitoring when new issues are available; monitor the "latest issue" page. Past issues can be viewed as well.
ICT in Education
This is a daily (or near daily) e-mail digest that reports headlines from a website called The Educational Technology Site: ICT in Education. To get the full articles you often need to be a subscriber, but there can still be value in keeping up with developments in the ICT area. Consider it a marginal news source, but perhaps worth giving a try.
Suggested strategy: Point your browswer to the home page of the Educational Technology Site and you will see the various options for subscribing - both email and RSS.