As the semester is upon us, being prepared to teach on Zoom is essential. The synchronous time you spend in Zoom with your students should be reconsidered to provide the best learning experience possible. We encourage you to do so! This week we hosted our first Teach Talk webinar for the Fall 2020 semester, presented by School of Life Sciences Instructional Designers, Lenora Ott and Sarah Prosory .  We discussed the process of teaching using Zoom, by focusing more specifically on using Google Slides and its features, live captioning, as well as creating activities for students to do during the synchronous session within breakout rooms in Zoom. The key take-away is to plan for what the students need to do before , during , and after the synchronous sessions, and that will guide you in the preparation for your class meetings too.  The Process Before Class: Share on Canvas any links that students will need for the sync session. Pre-assign breakout rooms if needed, otherwise ro...

One of the great things about a project-based course is that students can bring fresh, creative angles to the standard topics in a field. Unfortunately, their contributions often don’t have a lifespan beyond the semester or a good way to reach a broader audience. Google recently revamped its aging Google Sites service, and I found it to offer an effective solution for this challenge in my course this semester, especially in combination with the rest of Google’s cloud services .  If you’re interested in sharing student projects on a public-facing site, I also found some licensing tools from Creative Commons nicely address some important concerns about credit and reuse. Engaging Students As a philosopher teaching in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, I’m always looking for creative ways to engage students with philosophy as an activity – something we can do together as a group -- rather than a bunch of theories disconnected from what they’re studying. I’ve been teaching an upper-level ...

Last year Arizona State University switched to Canvas in order to leverage a cloud-based system that is available 24x7. In that same spirit of innovation, we explore using Google's cloud-based tools in our classes. Our first Teach T@lk webinar of 2020 tried to go interstellar with a presentation titled “Gravitate Toward Google in the Classroom”. Lucy Wolski , Instructional Design Specialist for the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, shared an overview of G Suite for Education and Course kit, practical applications for workflow efficiency, and classroom engagement examples using Google products. Cloud Based Tools G Suite for Education is a suite of communication, production, and collaboration tools for learning anywhere, anytime, on any device. G Suite for Education is available to all students, faculty, and staff at https://drive.google.com ! Course kit is a set of tools that enhances Canvas LMS to help instructors collect, assess, and analyze coursework wi...