Free Range Learning

Our other presentation at this year's Jenzabar Annual Meeting (JAM) was on our redesign process of MyLutherNet. Here are some of the helpful resources from that presentation:

• A List Apart - A website for people who make websites. We especially found helpful the article In Defense of Eye Candy , by Stephen Anderson
• Designing with Web Standards , by Jeffrey Zeldman
• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions , by Simon Collison, Andy Budd, and Cameron Moll
• Practical Guide to Usability Testing …

In our presentation Thursday at the Jenzabar Annual Meeting (JAM), we talked about how we use MyLutherNet to create engaging online courses. We wanted to highlight a few resources that we have found helpful, so here is our (incomplete) list:

• Understanding by Design , by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
• Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses , by L. Dee Fink
• Multimedia Learning , by Richard Mayer
• Designing for Learners, Designing for Users …

Here is our Tech Talk from May 6, 2010. In it, I talk about why you might want to read blogs, how to find some interesting blogs and, finally, how to keep track of all the blogs you want to read by using an RSS reader.

Since its inception, hip-hop has sampled from previously produced music to create something brand new. Using two turntables and a microphone , a disco, rock, or folk song could be transformed into rap. The digital internet culture has made this even easier over the past decade. People don't even need turntables, just a laptop. This took a huge leap forward when DJ Danger Mouse (in)famously remixed The Beatles' White Album with Jay-Z's Black Album to create the Grey Album .

Until recently I had mostly …

Sorry for the delay in posting this Tech Talk (the recording got misplaced). Jennie Bartholomew takes us through issues surrounding digital images: finding images, copyright issues, and helpful resources.

Here's the Tech Talk from April 29, 2010. In it I talk about some basic concepts for video editing, show a rough process, and talk a little bit about how to export videos based on how you might want to use them.

I have a love/hate relationship with the comments sections on the web. The more time I spend reading blogs and online news, the more I end up interacting with the comments. But I can't make up my mind; one day I find the ability to comment to be the most interesting thing to have happened to public media in a long time, the next day I find myself closing my laptop in dismay over the oversimplification and extreme hyperbole of so many comments.

I regularly read blogs and news that cover a …

ChatRoulette is this decade's version of the very first online chat rooms of the 1990s. But rather than just a simple chat interface, it adds video to both ends of the conversation, and the ability to quickly move from one random conversation to the next.

Users sign in and are randomly directed to another user, with whom they can chat (both through video and text-based chat). The catch is, as soon as one member gets even a little bored, they can click "Next" and instantly be taken …

Luther Seminary offers quite a few online courses, and even more if one counts residential courses that have an online component. But many students are nervous about online learning for one reason or another.

In this Tech Talk, I discuss some common myths about online learning and explore what a typical online course at Luther Seminary consists of.