Comments for Teach Technology

Comment on Online Students Outperform Classroom Students by Miss LindyLou

Miss LindyLou — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:21:46 +0000

One has to wonder a couple of things about this.

I wonder what ages of students perform better.
I wonder what there is about classroom experiences that are different. On one hand people in the same place have the opportunity/challenge of getting along with other people. That may not be included in assessments of performance of material learned, but is important. Of course, students who are stressed by non-acceptance or who are easily distracted or are themselves distractions to others can find presence in a classroom a handicap.

I think of homeschooled children I’ve had contact with in the past ten years. They often excel–I’m thinking of their performance on musical instruments here and how many first chairs in youth symphony are homeschooled.

Obviously you’ve gotten me to think here. Thank you.

Comment on College Computer Skills Requirements by Ken Baldauf

Ken Baldauf — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:29:00 +0000

Hi Ron, The test is created in SAM software (samcentral.course.com )and has four components: three are hands-on, in the app exams: a Windows XP test, a Word 2003 test, an Excel 2003 test, and a 50 question multiple choice test. It would be quite a chore to try to pull all the tasks and share them.

Comment on Cross-platform Teaching by Ken Baldauf

Ken Baldauf — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 01:20:00 +0000

Thanks Kaj, for finding this blog and sharing your thoughts and suggestions. I have developed similar animated learning tools for MS Office. You can check them out at http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~baldauf/projects/10min.
All the best!
KB

Comment on College Computer Skills Requirements by Ron Bannon

Ron Bannon — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 22:01:00 +0000

Hello, I am interested in taking a look at your computer literacy test. Are you willing to share?

-Ron Bannon

rbannon @ mac . com

Comment on Cross-platform Teaching by Kaj Kandler

Kaj Kandler — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 03:37:00 +0000

Very interesting experience Ken. Thanks for sharing it with your readers.

I whole heartedly agree with your thoughts on OpenOffice.org and the MS centric teaching of student at all levels of education. This is especially sad as MS Office is not ISO 26300 (ODF) compliant. Although MS make some decent baby steps in that direction.

May I offer another experiment for your adventurous mind? May I introduce you to "Plan-B for OpenOffice.org?"

It is a new support system designed for non-technical users. It teaches software through screencasts (short videos). It also utilizes smart search technology to help users find the right topic, even if they do not know the precise keyword to search for.

Please check it out and let me know what you think about it. If you like it, recommend it to your students and register at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org

Full disclosure: I'm the owner of Conficio, the business that develops the Plan-B technology.