Converting From Passive to Active Learning

by Hong Kha

Converting From Passive to Active Learning

This week we'll be discussing best practices for converting your lessons for online learning.

The process of converting your classroom activities for online learning should be more thought out than just taking what you do in the classroom and doing it online. Faculty who are new to teaching online often make initial attempts of converting lessons for their new teaching environment by moving an in-classroom discussion to an online discussion forum after giving a reading assignment. Or they opt to create a video lecture of what they would normally deliver to a room full of students and assign a discussion topic after watching the video. While these types of activities can give you an idea of how well your students understand the content, it may not be a process that will help your students retain the information because it isn't engaging enough.

Here are some handouts to help you identify what you're doing now that works well in the classroom and what can be converted for online activities and the tools that can be used to do it.

Database Tech Tools

Flip Teaching 101

Mobile Development Options - Part 2: MIT App Inventor

by Mark Giglione

Mobile Development Options - Part 2: MIT App Inventor

MIT App Inventor is a web based, visual programming environment for creating Android apps.  App Inventor’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is web based with a graphical user interface. Application programming is accomplished by stacking and connecting graphical building block components, reminiscent of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

App Inventor was originally developed by Google but the project is now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The intent of the App Inventor project is to provide an environment in which non-technical users can learn application development concepts without initially learning a formal programming language. The initial target audience was high school and college students but the software is open source and free to use by any interested party.

App Inventor is also representative of a class of web based, graphical development environments for building both Android and iOS applications. Many of these environments are commercial; typically the commercial services have a low entry cost initially but subsequently additional services for developing and publishing applications may need to be purchased. However, these services are broadly similar in concept to the MIT App Inventor and App Inventor can provide a “free” introduction for exploring and evaluating this type of mobile app development environment.

MIT App Inventor
http://appinventor.mit.edu/

Wikipedia: App Inventor for Android
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_inventor