Teaching with Technology @ Tufts

Much has been written about the characteristics of these learners - one excellent resource is the online (of course) EDUCAUSE ebook Educating the Net Generation at http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=5989&bhcp=1. Millenials prefer experiential, hands-on, team-based learning and multitasking is a given. They are used to 24/7 access to an ever expanding world of information, blogging, wikis, and social networking and file sharing sites. These are not the kind of students we were seeing at our universities 10 years or even 5 years ago.

This blog will be dedicated to sharing some of what I learn daily about the world of the 21st century learner, scholar, researcher, and instructor. For more in-depth coverage of topics in this blog, I will also be working on a knowledgebase wiki sponsored by Tufts University Information Technology (UIT).

FYI -

• Treemo

(http://www.treemo.com/) is a social network and media sharing site with a focus on cellphones;

• Twango

(http://www.twango.com/ ) is a similar site started up by former Microsoft employees for sharing audio, video, photos, creating instant slideshows and posting to social network sites;

• MMORPGs

are Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games sometimes also called Multi-User Virtual Environements (MUVEs) such as Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) where users are represented by animated avatars in 3-D environments. More than 50 universities now have representation "in-world" see http://secondlife.com/education;

• Mashup

is a website or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service such as a mapping mashup - see 7 Things You Should Know About Mapping Mashups http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=666&ID=ELI7016&bhcp=1.