Tag Archives: social media

Study Abroad Blogs

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Recently I was asked for information on blogs associated with abroad programs. I’m posting the information here in case it is useful to anyone else. It’s just a few links that came to mind. I know there are many others and I will post them when I remember them. Please, also, post them in the comments if you know of any.

Student blogging from abroad, in a structured manner, is common. What is less common is innovative or pedagogically sound uses of it. There is a very interesting project supported by National Geographic called Glimpse. This is a user-generated, professionally edited website in which students and others post blogs, images, travel tips, etc. In addition to the site, there is a magazine that you can pick up a newsstands here and there. It’s a handsome, glossy publication.

One of the earliest projects of this sort (2005-2006) that I am aware of was the Blogging the World project involving Middlebury, Haverford and Dickinson.

Some International Education offices use a blog for practical reasons, simply to post news, such as this from my undergraduate alma mater, VCU.

Others, like Bucknell, consolidate student postings into a central blog.
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At Cornell students maintain blogs and the links are collected on a central page.

There are some study abroad podcasts, too. Here’s the Japan Study Abroad podcast.
I haven’t listened to it because I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t tell you what is it about.

Here are Pacific University’s Study Abroad Podcasts.

There are more study abroad podcasts in the iTunes podcast directory, if you go to iTunes and simply search on “study abroad.”

Glimpse – Your Stories From Abroad

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This is an interesting site, supported largely by National Geographic.  It’s composed of user-generated content, but it is professionally edited which, to be honest, I find to be a nice balance.

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via share your story – Glimpse – Your Stories From Abroad.

Silicon Valley should step up, help Iranians

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In a recent SF Gate Open Forum Post, Cyrus Farivar, a freelance technology journalist from California, looks at the ways in which technology has been used as a tool in the pro-democracy movement, official efforts to thrwart that, and technology developments that had made it more difficult for them to do so. He writes

But now that Iran has been experiencing turmoil surrounding its recent election, many Bay Area technology leaders finally realize the importance their technology and services can play in shaping world events. As foreign media have been kicked out of the country, information technology services suddenly have become a crucial tool to get and receive information from Iran.

Twitter famously received a call from the U.S. Department of State nearly two weeks ago asking the company to postpone its scheduled maintenance to suit those in Tehran’s time zone, rather than those on Pacific time.

Facebook recently added Persian language support for its iconic social networking site. Google took things to an entirely new level by launching its Persian version of Google translate, which allows for decent machine translation between English and Persian and vice versa. But why this newfound attention to the Persian language (and Iran) took so long remains a mystery. Google’s translation capability for Estonian even came online before Persian.

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So instead of superficial support, like Twitter users changing their avatars to green to support Iran’s reformist movement, Silicon Valley minds and money should pool resources as a way to help Iranians get around this information blockade by providing easier-to-use proxies, anonymizers and maybe even unfiltered Internet access through hardware.

Long-range Wi-Fi, 3G, satellite or other wireless communications devices from Iran’s neighboring countries or even the Persian Gulf could be used to get faster and better information in and out of Iran. One Arizona company, Space Data, even advertises the capability to use helium-filled balloons to provide Internet and mobile phone access. Much of Iran could theoretically be covered with one or two such balloons.

All of that may sound crazy, but not helping Iranian reformers at their darkest hour would be even crazier.

Read the whole article at: Silicon Valley should step up, help Iranians, the San Francisco Chronicle.

NITLE Event: Video Conferencing for Global Education

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Videoconferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration
August 13, 2009, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM. EDT.

This session considers the uses of real-time audio and video communication tools in higher education, for both pedagogical and administrative purposes, with a particular focus on the widely used, free internet videoconferencing application, Skype. Todd Bryant, language technology specialist at Dickinson College, will discuss uses of the tool for the instruction of language, and present the Mixxer, an online application he developed for finding conversation partners for language learning. David Clapp, director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies at Wabash College, will discuss the use of Skype by his office to connect with students in advance of, during, and after programs, and the impact its use has had on recruitment for programs, student satisfaction, administrative effectiveness, and the costs of running programs.

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Registration Deadline, Friday, July 31st.

When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom

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There is something of a backlash against the use of technology in the classroom, and this article,  “When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom,” from The  Chronicle of Higher Education is one example of it.

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked” — by which he means, sans machines.

More than anything else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.

Bowen makes good points.  It is an interesting article with a fair amount of food for thought.  For example, it is interesting, though not surprising, that in a study published in the April Issue of British Educational Research, students gave low marks to computer-assisted classroom learning activities.  Nor does it surprise me that,

“The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions,” said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

I am an advocate of teaching with technology, one might even say an evangelist.  But it is not used effectively and it is for this reason that students find it boring.  A great deal of the technology that is developed for pedagogical purposes is developed for individual learning and is not meant to be brought into the classroom to begin with.  That is not to say it is not appropriate for a course, but it should be integrated for the purposes for which it was intended.
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The second thing to remember is that technology for technology’s sake is never the end, so  technology should never be used for its own sake.  Unless technology is the subject of the course such as it might be in a course on new media or something of that nature, then it is a tool and should attract no more attention than the chalk board.   It should serve an end.

The one thing to always keep in mind is to put pedagogy first.  Before making use of any technology or tool from a DVD player to a complex video simulation, ask yourself what it will teach students and if the technology is the most effective way to do it..  You use a specific tool for a specific purpose, so that is the rule to love by.  One should never teach with blogs just to be teaching with them or with any technology simply for purposes of teaching with that technology, but rather for purposes of teaching, full stop.

Anyway, the expderiment at SMU is an interesting one.  Read the full article to check it out.

A Good Article on Liz Cheney and Her Criticism of Obama on Foreign Policy

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Well this is comforting.  In my RSS feed from The Guardian I found this article by Matthew Harwood analyzing another article by Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice-President, criticizing recent speeches made by President Obama on US relations with the rest of the world.  Apparently Cheney has declared herself open to running for political office and it appears her philosophies are very close to those of her father.

So to the extent that familiarity is comforting and better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, we’ll have the possibility of a continuing dynasty including both the Bush girls AND the Cheneys!  Well, at least it will be progress in that the heirs to the dynasty will be women.

Cheney sees the view in simple us v. them terms, just like her father.  Harwood explains,

Her argument is as simplistic as it is ridiculous: Obama doesn’t spread the myth of American exceptionalism and thus engages in historical revisionism, which emboldens our enemies and hurts America. A high-level official in the Bush state department and a ferocious defender of her father’s legacy, Cheney sees Obama’s recent speeches in Trinidad and Tobago, Cairo and Moscow as either “an attempt to push ‘reset’ – or maybe to curry favour” with our enemies.

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According to Cheney, Obama should tell our adversaries:

“America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the cold war. The Soviets were not. The cold war ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat communism.”

I won’t go on.  Harwood’s article is the thing to read.  It’s good.

International Bac chooses Epals

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International Baccalaureate has selected ePals, Inc., to implement and manage a customized hosted learning community for it’s students, teachers and other community members including administration and alumni. The International Baccalaureate is a nonprofit educational foundation with programs for students aged 3 to 19 that can be found in 2,704 schools in 138 countries. Programs aim to

help develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.

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A Good Month for Twitter

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Here’s a great collection of posting about Twitter. In part because of the role it played in the crisis in Iran, it is suddenly being talked about everywhere. The Social Networking Weblog has consolidated a lot of the coverage in one posting. Well erectile dysfunction is not a daily issue it only arises when one feels to perform sex cheapest viagra with their partner. Herbs like ashwaganda, muira puama, damina or gingko biloba are cialis france very effective. We know well that super cheap viagra is a well known medicine producing companies have stretched their hands to make this medication work for you. These pharmacies invest a very negligible amount of their cialis without prescription profits on the advertising and promotion of the product as generic drugs are sold under the name of Tadacip by the Indian pharmaceutical company called Ranbaxy by the name of Eriacta. The most interesting perspective is Iran: Just What Twitter Needed?

Of course what all this coverage of Twitter and other social networking sites is neglecting is the large number of Farsi/Persian social networking sites. But that is for another post.

Iran Election Dispute Plays Out Online – A Guide to Web Coverage

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Share photos on twitter with TwitpicThe Washington Post has published a very useful “guide to web coverage” called Iran Election Dispute Plays Out Online.  The links it includes are definitely worth following if you are interested in keeping up with the situation in Iran first hand.

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