Today I tuned into a DyKnow webcast in which several professors from another university talked about how they’re using laptops (without pen technology) instead of tablets. The audio was a little rough and I have to admit I didn’t learn much, but I think the audio capabilities are very promising.
If you’re not familiar with DyKnow, it’s a piece of software heavily used in education as a teaching aide. It combines various presentation technologies, presenting text and images, polling, chat, feedback, user submissions, along with monitoring software to block applications, web access, etc. It’s a pretty useful tool that has come a very long way since we first started using it.
I’d like to see how well this would work in a distance learning or online course application. It’s easy to post some notes, PowerPoint slides, and have a couple of assignments online for students to login and look at. I haven’t seen too many people using the internet for innovative ways to teach. If you didn’t catch it earlier, DyKnow has been working on the integration of audio along with its already useful software package. Now the audio wasn’t necessarily perfect in what I experienced today, but there were a lot of factors affecting that and I know it’s only going to get better in the future.
Just imagine the teaching possibilities of being able to interact with students from afar using DyKnow. Instead of posting some material and assigning some homework, teachers can now interact with their students with audio, video, text, etc. I think this is a big step in making online teaching worthwhile.
Chalupa,
You bring up some very interesting points, and, as “DyKnow insiders”, we thought we might be able to provide some insight on how others are using DyKnow successfully in a non-traditional way. In several situations, an instructor has used DyKnow from a remote location (e.g. a conference, overseas, or at home) while the students were in class as normal with a teacher’s aide piping the audio through speakers (or each student had headsets). Another institution is coupling iLinc (Skype like software) with DyKnow for their distance learning classes. Yet another is using DyKnow in their academic help center to facilitate student tutoring sessions. In this situation, students call into the help center and use DyKnow’s collaborative workspace to work through problems with the tutors.
Feel free to contact us and we would be happy to share some additional (offline) information about these creative DyKnow uses.
Good luck with your future DyKnow use.
Bryan and Cami - Thanks for the examples. We’re currently looking for ways to possibly enhance our online and distance learning at Taylor. These are definitely some avenues to explore.