I am sandwiching in (actually eating donuts!) some brief writing time between my two labs for Statistics and Experimental Design (PSY205). The students seem to have indeed come in prepared, having looked at the screen cast I had made using Screenflow for them about how to do a two-way, between subjects ANOVA with SPSS. One of my students offered to use Quizlet to make a review for their fellow students of the “language of statistics.”
Student research assistant Alison has been at work in my office since 8:00 updating our Macs with the new WordPress app. With no formal direction from me, she has reviewed our latest blogs, given thought as to how we can (and if we should) move up in the “elearning feeds ratings” and investigated how to use CreateSpace for the book we shall be writing together. I alert her to several more tools i want her and my other three student assistants to explore: Scoop.it, Paper.li, and either Feedly or Inoreader. She bounces the idea off me of my mentoring a Carroll Pioneer Scholar research program about technology learning tools.
I check my Twitter feed and discover Much Ado about Nothing brouhaha among Wikipedia editors. That might make my colleague and Shakespearean scholar (and Object Lesson author) John Garrison laugh. I share it with John. Time to head back to teaching my 2nd lab. Technology CAN be a tool as long as I don’t allow it to control me.