Resources from How to Make Smart Choices About Tech for Your Course

This is extracted from How to Make Smart Choices About Tech for Your Course. While published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, it has not be reviewed.

Resources

What follows isn’t a definitive list but includes some of the most useful sources of information about choosing technology for your teaching.

Websites

• Merlot: Part of the California State University system, the acronym stands for Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching. It offers thousands of online learning materials for educators around the world.
• Top Tools for Learning: This is an annual list of the best ed-tech tools as compiled by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies in Britain.
• Directory of Learning & Performance Tools: Another useful resource from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies in Britain.
• Backward Design: Choosing Technology Tools for Teaching: A program to help you develop learning goals and choose the tech to support them, created via the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium.
• Which Technology Tool Do I Choose?: This is Edutopia.org’s version of how to choose ed tech. 
• PBL (Problem-Based Learning) Clearinghouse: Here is a wealth of realistic problem scenarios that you can use in assignments across a wide variety of disciplines, curated via the University of Delaware.

Organizations and Conferences

• OLC stands for the Online Learning Consortium; this Massachusetts-based organization offers conferences, online workshops, and publications.
• Pod Network stands for the Professional and Organizational Development Network; this group offers conferences and publications.
• DT&L Conference: The annual Distance Teaching & Learning Conference is in its 35th year at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Books

• Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology Out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning, by José Antonio Bowen.
• Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments, by Derek Bruff.
• Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching, forthcoming in November 2019, also by Derek Bruff.
• Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes, published this year by Flower Darby and James M. Lang.
• Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses, by L. Dee Fink.
• Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone: Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education, by Thomas J. Tobin and Kirsten T. Behling.

Podcasts

• Leading Lines focuses exclusively on instructional technology in higher education.
• Teaching in Higher Ed covers myriad topics relevant to higher education, with an excellent collection of episodes specifically about technology.
• Tea for Teaching frequently focuses on teaching with technology, including episodes about augmented reality, VoiceThread, the culture of ed tech, intentional technology choices, and social presence in online courses.

Choosing technology isn’t simple, but it is important. Do all of the things I’ve listed in this guide, and you’ll become not merely an early adopter of technology, but also a thoughtful one.