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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Google Apps by the numbers?

Posted by: ashleytan on: December 3, 2009

I just read in the print copy of Digital Life (2 Dec 09) that MOE’s deal with Google Apps is worth S$650,000 a year over two years. Does that sound like a lot? No, not if you do the math.
Based on MOE’s 2008 corporate brochure, Singapore has 29,000 teachers and an annual education budget of [...]

Teacher or educator?

Posted by: ashleytan on: December 2, 2009

Some time ago, I mentioned that a teacher was not necessarily an educator. One visitor to my blog asked me what the difference was between “teacher” and “educator”.
I think most people would use the terms interchangeably. I don’t. So I thought I’d add to what I said in reply to that visitor…
A teacher probably sees [...]

Plagiarism by numbers

Posted by: ashleytan on: December 1, 2009

One of the things I did prior to grading essays was to submit all 130 of them to SafeAssign (SA). This online tool is embedded within my university’s learning management system (LMS) and it compares each essay with other works in a large database.
Both my trainee teachers and I get to use SA to remove [...]

Tweet Cloud

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 30, 2009

According to Tweet Cloud, the top three things I tweeted about over the last year were Google, videos and learning.
That makes sense since my blog postings automatically generate tweets and I do write about those things. But it was interesting for a tool to let me know objectively what I tend to focus on.
But while [...]

Question the model

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 27, 2009

It’s almost the end of a long teaching semester. For reasons too long and boring to mention, some of my colleagues and I had to start next semester’s teaching this semester.
The two things that usually happen at the semester’s end are I fall ill and I think about what to do next. So I type [...]

Different media…

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 26, 2009

Different literacies!

Video source
‘Nuff said!

Google Forms quiz

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 24, 2009

So far my EdPsych2 classes have been using Google Docs as a platform for collaboratively written articles, personal notes and activity templates. We have also used Google Presentations for (duh!) presentations, and Google Forms and Spreadsheets for surveys and class administration. Everything has been “held together” by a class wiki hosted by Google Sites.
The going [...]

Edifying

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 22, 2009

Last week I shared some personal experiences with my classes and I received feedback from a few participants that they found my accounts edifying. To be honest, I had to look up that word to be absolutely certain of what it meant. It was welcome feedback!
Ad thanks to YouTube, I had an edifying weekend.
[...]

PowerPoint tongue-in-cheek

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 20, 2009

A light-hearted but critical look at PowerPoint.

Video source
But really, it’s not just the fault of PowerPoint. We don’t blame the just the car for killing someone. Look at who’s driving and how.

Cloud computing

Posted by: ashleytan on: November 19, 2009

CommonCraft released a video last week to explain cloud computing. It’s presented well (as most of their videos are) but it is from a business perspective.
A teacher might look at it and not know how cloud computing applies in education. If teachers jump on the Google Ed Apps bandwagon, they might experience this for themselves.
They [...]


Ashley Tan

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