Any teacher that has taught a face-to-face class understands the preciousness of that first class meeting. So much rides on those first impressions.  As educators, we too can reflect on our own experiences as students and recall how a first class meeting formed impressions about what a class would be like -- I can remember thinking all of these thoughts in college on day one:"This instructor is so disorganized!" "I can tell this class is going to be really interesting!" "That was the most boring 50 minutes of my life." "This instructor totally inspires me."When you teach online, there is no "first session" in which all students are together at the first same moment with you.  Students come to the online course at different times and interact with the content you have prepared for them.  What is important to consider about that content? How do you ensure it is effectively communicating what you want them to take away?While there are many elements that influence an online students first encounters in an online class (ease of navigation, overall color choice and design aesthetics), their target is "The Syllabus."  College students want to get to the meat and bones of a class, understand what it consists of, and how it stacks up against other classes.  For this reason, I put a lot of time and energy into my syllabi.  Populr - a simple micropublishing tool (free for educators) with some nifty features!I have been wanting to find a way to develop a living, breathing syllabus that is mobile friendly and conveys more about who I am -- my personality, my style of teaching, as well as communicate how my class is different from other online classes.  This month I learned about a tool called Populr. Populr is a startup company based in Nashville that launched last January 2013. Their product is a which is a micropublishing tool, similar to Smore.  Micropublishing enables the creation and publication of single page websites, which is perfectly suited for creating a course syllabus!  If you've found yourself creating Google Sites or Google Docs to share with presentation or webinar audiences (I often use BagTheWeb), that is a perfect example of a purpose that a micropublishing tool could fill for you. Micropublishing is an upcoming industry and what's great about these new tools are the slick analytics and beautiful layouts and design features that enable a person with little to no design sense to create a really beautiful product.  While Populr is like Smore, it does not yet feature the ability to print to a PDF (although that feature is supposed to be available very soon) and embedding of "Pops" is not yet available yet (both features that are available through Smore).  What I like about Populr, however, are these very cool features that make it stand out from Smore:A free, robust account for educators. Click here to generate the Education Coupon. Read more about Populr's support for education here.The ability to password protect sites.The option to make sites collaborative or allow others to make a copy of them.A rich collection of beautiful designs and layouts to start with! The ability to record video directly into a page using your webcam.The option to add up to three custom domains to an account.Deep analytics that allow you to track how many times each link inside each of your "Pops" has been clicked.So, here is a link to my humanized syllabus created with Populr -- what do you think? http://page.teachingwithoutwalls.com/SyllabusHOSP Accessibility While I really like Populr and plan to use it, there are some areas that need to be improved. First, like most startups Populr does not have its arms around the essentials of web accessibility.  For example, there is no way to add alt-tags to the images, recording a video from my webcam was super easy but there was no way to add captions (so I chose to record into YouTube, caption there, and embed it in Populr instead). This is a typical gap between the standards of higher education and business.  While it's not ideal, I opted to post a text version of my syllabus at the bottom of the Populr version to provide a screenreader accessible version for any learner who may need it.I reached out to Nicholas Holland, CEO of Populr, to share some of my concerns about the accessibility gaps and he responded with appreciation and interest.  I believe if educators partner with startups to communicate our interests and needs, the existing gaps in our technological infrastructure will, over time, begin to decrease.I'd love to hear your thoughts about how you might use Populr -- for a syllabus or any other instructional content or learning activity! It's a great way to promote events on campus, develop newsletters, create rich media book or media reports, or an ePortfolio as a capstone for a course even!

SLN SOLsummit 2014February 26-28, 2014SUNY Global Center New York, CityClick here for more details.Follow on Twitter. Thank you to Alex Pickett and the rest of the leadership team at SUNY Learning Network for inviting me to present a workshop at the 15th annual SLN SOLsummit in New York City.  If you will be in New York City on February 26-28, 2014, you are invited to register for the event, which is open to everyone.  The SLN SOLsummit, sponsored by the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), is an annual conference that brings together the SUNY community.  The sessions are designed for online instructional designers, directors of online learning, and those interested in learning more about online learning environment support, services, and best practices.I'll be facilitating a half-day workshop  titled "How to help online faculty humanize the online teaching and learning experience" on Wed, February 26th from 1:00-5:15.  I've got lots of great things planned!

With improved bandwidth and availability of high-speed wifi, advances in assistive technology, lower-cost hardware (laptops, handheld devices, touch-screen monitors, etc.) and new, easy-to-use web applications, the elderly have more access to a wide array of information and services, from email to lifelong learning.There is no reason keep the elderly isolated and out of touch from their families,

Recently, I self-published my first eBook, How to Humanize Your Online Class with VoiceThread, which is a curation of my teaching practices, videos, and VoiceThreads wrapped into a pedagogical framework.  One of the reasons I wrote the eBook was to leverage my experiences as an educator teaching with VoiceThread and communicate them in an accessible way to a diverse group of educators who may be using VoiceThread independently without institutional support (as I did for many years) or with institutional support but with little to no training. We all understand the deep cuts faculty development programs have experienced in recent years, while the speed of technological change has increased and instruction has become increasingly blended.  New forms of faculty support are clearly needed.Today, I shared a free PDF guide that functions as a companion to the eBook. It may serve as a starting point to review the framework that is used in the eBook or it may serve as a helpful resource as you read the eBook and begin to implement the concepts into your own class.The free PDF guide, Strategies for Humanizing Your Online Class with VoiceThread, is available here.As always, I value feedback about my work.  I am accessible on Twitter @brocansky, Google+, or you may message directly on my blog through the form in the right column. 

Welcome to an interview with Frederic Aknin, CEO of Sparkeo, a new video platform designed to enable more flexible uses of video with e-learning.1. What is your name, your affiliation, and your history with e-learning? My name is Frederic Aknin, I am an internet addict and a passionate continuous learner. I believe in the power of the Internet to broadcast knowledge, fertilize ideas, and bring

Today I was reading a post over at +Vicki Davis' great Cool Cat Teacher blog and noticed a pop out on the right hand side that prompted me to to "leave a voicemail" for her.  I was on my iPhone at the time so I clicked on it, recorded a simple message for her, entered my email address and name and clicked send. Then I was intrigued to learn more about this cool little app that facilitated this rather humanized connection between Vicki and I. I've learned a lot from the Cool Cat Teacher over the years -- on her blog, on Twitter, and in online keynotes she has presented -- so it was especially nice to be able to share a hello and thank you with Vicki with my personal voice.I ended up signing up for a free account with SpeakPipe, and downloading the free iOS app.  Then I followed the steps for embedding the widget on my own blog that allows my readers to leave me voicemails from their mobile phones or computers (without needing an account at SpeakPipe).SpeakPipe has free and premium accounts (which may be reviewed here).  With my free account, I can send up to 20 voicemails per month, up to 90 seconds each. Users may message me by clicking on the widget on my blog (which can be installed on any webpage that accepts html code -- yes, even an LMS) or go directly to my personalized SpeakPipe voicemail page at https://www.speakpipe.com/Mpb. I took the liberty of adding the link to my customized SpeakPipe voicemail page to my new humanized syllabus, which I wrote about in this post.  It's a super option for online educators and students!Loving the new humanized online communication options available to educators today!

A portfolio can be one of the most useful tools you can use to showcase your abilities for potential employers, or simply to keep up to date with useful web applications. You can use the "digital competency portfolio" for course projects and capstones. The personal portfolio is a great way to show your creativity as well as your skill, and to guide people to an understanding of who you are. As

CC-BY Michelle Pacansky-Brock(made with Canva.com)One of the things I am loving the most of about our creation-centered culture is how much easier it is getting to create beautiful content! But I still find myself longing to be able to create dreamy looking graphics for my online classes, blog, and more -- without spending a lot of money on fancy tools and lots of time on figuring out how to use them.So, falling head over heads for Canva.com wasn't too difficult for me.  Canva is still in beta -- so don't get too excited, as it's not yet open to the general public -- but you should definitely know about it if you are a content creator with a flair for the visual. It touts itself as "amazingly simple graphic design," which it is for the most part. There's a learning curve, yes, like any tool.  And who knows if I'm doing things right but so far I like what I'm making and that's all that really matters to me.I sent a Tweet to the kind folks at Canva requesting to be included in their beta and they set me up with an account.  Here are a couple of banners I created for a new online faculty development class I'm teaching this quarter. What do you think?Two Sample Graphics Created with Canva.comCanva includes templates for getting started with business cards, Facebook banners, posters, cards, blog graphics, flyers, and more! Collaborating with others on a project is simple too. Happy creating!

Health care for the elderly is of deep concern to millions of families, as populations age, and younger generations are pulled in many directions, or "sandwiched." Finding competent and compassionate care for elderly family members can be a very difficult challenge. Knowing that the professionals who work in an assisted living facility are well-trained is important. Home health care professionals

Welcome to an interview with John Bittleston, originator of the Wiglington and Wenks series of e-learning simulations, games, and interactive media for young learners. He has helped establish virtual mentoring programs for young learners as well.1. What is your name and your affiliation?John Bittleston (Lord Bittleston of Newnham - a very old British Manorial title).A British Citizen, half