Five Best Web-Based Conferencing Tools

http://lifehacker.com/5556555/five-best-web+based-conferencing-tools

Increasingly sophisticated but inexpensive webcams, microphones, and speedier broadband make web-based conferencing more economical and attractive than ever. Here's a look at five excellent solutions for web-based conferencing.

Image a composite of photos by svilen001 and dermiller.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite tool for web-based conferencing. Now we're back to highlight the top five tools Lifehacker readers love and share a little about each.

Five Best Web-Based Conferencing Tools

Inside Higher Ed - What Freshmen Will Read

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/04/books

June 4, 2010
College orientation programs don't yet have the power of Oprah's Book Club, but they increasingly feature books that students are asked to read over the summer or during their first week on campus -- and to discuss with their new classmates. The idea is that having every freshman read the same book builds a sense of common experience and adds intellectual content to a week that can easily be consumed by learning a college bureaucracy and socializing.


Some book selections have been controversial. In 2002, critics tried to block the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from a first-year program built around Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, but the university went to court to defend its choice -- only to face more criticism the next year over the selection of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. But despite such debates, the book concept has taken hold on many campuses.


On Thursday, the National Association of Scholars -- a group that advocates for a more rigorous and traditional college curriculum -- released what it says is the most comprehensive analysis of what freshmen are being asked to read. The findings suggest that certain kinds of books -- on multiculturalism and the environment -- dominate these reading selections. And the study, called "Beach Books," questions whether the choices of colleges are too similar, too left-leaning and not sufficiently challenging.



Officials of several of the colleges whose selections fit the pattern the association is criticizing don't dispute the study's findings about trends in the books that get chosen. But they say that the genres that are popular aren't picked for politics, but for the way they connect with large numbers of students -- and that the association is confusing the purposes of reading books in class and (as is the case for orientation book programs) out of class.


What the Freshmen Will Read
What are the freshmen reading? Based on the report's analysis of 290 programs (excluding books that are required parts of courses), the top books this year are This I Believe (an essay collection assigned at 11 colleges), followed by Enrique's Journey (the story of a Honduran boy's struggle to reach his mother in the United States, assigned at 10 colleges) and two books assigned at 9 colleges each, Three Cups of Tea (about building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan) and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (about a poor woman who worked on a tobacco farm whose cells were used, without her knowledge, for research).


These books reflect some of the trends found in "Beach Books" about the genres of choice. Books about multiculturalism, immigration or racism were the most prevalent (60 colleges), followed by environmental issues (36 colleges), the Islamic world (27 colleges), New Age or spiritual books (25 colleges), and issues related to the Holocaust or genocide (25 colleges). Only 6 colleges assigned classics. The study also looked for other patterns in the selections, and reported that 46 of the choices have a film version, 29 are about Africa, 9 are related to Hurricane Katrina and 5 are about dysfunctional families.


The report cites several issues with the selections. "We found the preponderance of reading assignments promotes liberal social causes and liberal sensibilities. Of the 180 books, 126 (70 percent) either explicitly promote a liberal political agenda or advance a liberal interpretation of events. By contrast, the study identifies only three books (less than 2 percent) that promote a conservative sensibility and none that promote conservative political causes."


Moving beyond ideology, the report says that "the books selected for common reading are generally pitched at an intellectual level well below what should be expected of college freshmen. Common reading programs are, in their inception, an attempt to make up for some of the misshapenness of American secondary education -- especially its lack of consistent focus from school to school on books that define our cultural heritage and its failure to insist on high standards."


While one response to this problem might be for colleges to institute a core curriculum, common reading programs "are, in effect, a short‐cut core curriculum," the association says. "They attempt to ensure that students have at least one worthwhile book in common before embarking on a curriculum that quickly separates students into disparate paths of study.

"Can one book really serve as the common foundation of a college education? Perhaps it depends on the book. Homer’s Iliad served a function not unlike that for classical Greece; the Bible was long the foundation for teaching in the Western world. But the common reading programs of today are not modeled on the Greek ideal of Paideia or the Christian conception of Scripture. Rather, common reading as practiced by American colleges seems to be grounded on something more like the idea of Oprah’s Book Club."


Further, the study questions why so few colleges teach "classic works" and anything written before the 20th century. Only four books identified in the survey fit those categories: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. "This is a very meager haul for the common reading programs, and of the four only Walden and Huckleberry Finn really have standing as works that every educated American should read," the report says. "While we are glad to see the inclusion of at least a few classic books, these four are not very challenging texts."


Peter Wood, president of the association, stressed that the association supports the common reading programs, but wants them out of "the rut of promoting trendy causes," adding that something is wrong when "books on Africa outnumber books on Europe nearly six to one.” (This year's biggest controversy over an orientation program involves the University of California at Berkeley, which is asking new students for some of their DNA, rather than reading a book, and to consider the issues raised by genetics. Wood said that he wasn't worried about the privacy issues that some have raised about the experiment, but he said it was "an interesting oddity" and "a bit of campus theatrics," not a substantive improvement on reading.)


The report offers a series of recommendations on how colleges might improve on their selection process, including more consideration of non-contemporary or non-political works. "Alienation and oppression are important themes but so are courage, fidelity, redemption, self‐sacrifice, fellowship, and truth, among others," the study says.

The View From Campuses
At the colleges that have selected the kinds of books that the study finds are popular, officials said that their approach works well -- and that the National Association of Scholars and other critics have confused the idea behind the programs. Several noted, for example, that one reason they don't look for authors from the 19th century (or earlier) is that bringing authors to campus is a key part of the experience -- and one that requires the writers to be alive.


Mabel G. Freeman, assistant vice president for undergraduate admissions and the first year experience at Ohio State University, said that students have embraced the books the association report criticizes. Last year's selection was Three Cups of Tea and there was so much interest in the visit by the author, Greg Mortenson, that he was asked to stay an extra day. If last year's selection would fit two categories that the association says are common (multiculturalism and Islam), this year's selection would fit in the environmental section. The book is No Impact Man, about how individuals can minimize or eliminate their carbon impact.


Freeman said that the program's goal isn't about great books, and that this doesn't mean any lack of respect for that kind of education. "We assume that students in their course work have the opportunity to pursue what would be thought of as the classics by the NAS," she said. "What we are trying to do is create a sense of community."


As to politics, she said, "in the world we live in today, any group can turn almost anything into a political issue." But noting that "we're sitting in the middle of Ohio, we are a large public university and we have middle-of-the-road students," she said the books aren't really viewed as political, but as dealing with current events. "I don't think any of our books have turned heads politically. That's not the goal."


To the extent she has seen students inspired, she said that many students responded to Three Cups of Tea -- about building schools -- by getting involved with local elementary schools. "I thought that was great," she said.


Shannan Mattiace, associate professor of political science at Allegheny College, said that she also viewed the NAS report as not understanding the purpose behind the programs. Allegheny is included in the report for its selection of Enrique's Journey, although that book at Allegheny is part of a year-long theme of "global citizenship" that is for all students, not just those who are new on campus.


Mattiace, who chairs the faculty committee that works on programs for the theme, acknowledged that it would be hard to read that book without feeling sympathy for the immigrant family at its center. But she said it was also the case that this "is not an ideologically charged book, this is not railing against the U.S. government, but is a striking narrative, a real story that doesn't enter the realm of policy."


Contemporary issues and accessible books are key to the program's purposes, she said. "We're asking students to read outside of class," she said. "If we were giving a book that requires a professor to guide students' thought, we would do it in class. It's not like we aren't teaching classic texts in our classes."


Likewise, others said that there were a range of reasons (and not just political) for books focused on diversity. At Framingham State College, this year's selection is Brother, I'm Dying (about a family from Haiti) and last year's was Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East.


Ben Trapanick, director of first year programs, said that "one of our goals is to help students become more aware of their participation in an overall community" and that one way to encourage that realization "is to make students aware of the wide-ranging definition of diversity in the world."
— Scott Jaschik

Inside Higher Ed - What Freshmen Will Read

19 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

http://mashable.com/2010/06/05/essential-social-media-resources-7/

Did you hear that? It’s the sound of another week coming to a close. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “How will I ever get to read all of the social media tips, app reviews, and trend analyses I’ve missed?”



Well, this is the Internet — you could search and scroll your way around in the hopes of finding the resources you’re looking for. Or, you could simply take a peek below at our handy weekly guide to all that was new on the web in the last seven days.


This week’s roundup includes some social media sleuthing tips for that upcoming job interview, the innovative ways that lawyers use the social web to advance their careers, and some Apple-themed products for baby that will have you cooing uncontrollably.

http://mashable.com/tag/features-week-in-review/

19 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed

The New York Times - States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education

June 2, 2010 by SAM DILLON

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/sam_dillon/index.html?inline=nyt-per

The nation’s governors and state school chiefs released on Wednesday a new set of academic standards, their final recommendations for what students should master in English and math as they move from the primary grades through high school graduation. The standards http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards , which took a year to write, have been tweaked and refined in recent weeks in response to some of the 10,000 comments the public sent in after a draft was released in March.

The standards were made public at a news conference on Wednesday in Atlanta.
Leah Lechleiter-Luke http://www.wkbt.com/global/story.asp?s=11042558, a Spanish teacher from Mauston, Wis., who is that state’s 2010 teacher of the year, said at the conference that the new standards were preferable to her home state’s. “It’s not that the standards in Wisconsin are so bad, it’s just that there are so many of them,” she said. “These are more user-friendly.”


The Obama administration hopes that states will quickly adopt the new standards in place of the hodgepodge of current state benchmarks, which vary so significantly that it is impossible to compare test scores from different states. The United States is one of the few developed countries that lacks national standards for its public schools.


Students whose families move from New York to Georgia or California, for example, often have difficulty adjusting to new schools because classroom work is organized around different standards. The problem has become worse, since many states have weakened standards in recent years to make it easier for schools to avoid sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier  law.


The new standards were written by English and math experts convened last year by the National Governors Association http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_governors_association/index.html?inline=nyt-org  and the Council of Chief State School Officers. They are laid out in two documents: Common Core State Standards for Mathematics http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_Math%20Standards.pdf , and Common Core State Standards for English http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI_ELA%20Standards.pdf  Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science and Technical Subjects. With three appendices, the English standards run to nearly 600 pages.


Under the new math standards, eighth graders would be expected to use the Pythagorean theorem to find distances between points on the coordinate plane and to analyze polygons. Under the English standards, sixth-grade students would be expected to describe how a story’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes and how an author develops the narrator’s point of view. “The standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach,” the introduction to the new English standards says. “They do not — indeed, cannot — enumerate all or even most of the content that students should learn. The standards must therefore be complemented by a well-developed, content-rich curriculum.”


In keeping with those principles, the English standards do not prescribe a reading list, but point to classic poems, plays, short stories, novels and essays to demonstrate the advancing complexity of texts that students should be able to master. On the list of exemplary read-aloud books for second and third graders, for instance, is James Thurber http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/t/james_thurber/index.html?inline=nyt-per  “Thirteen Clocks.” One play cited as appropriate for high school students is “Oedipus Rex,” by Sophocles.


Five English texts are required reading. High school juniors and seniors must study the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Also, said Susan Pimentel, a consultant in New Hampshire who was lead writer on the English standards, “Students have to read oneShakespeare http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/william_shakespeare/index.html?inline=nyt-per play — that’s a requirement.”


In a joint letter http://www.cgcs.org/newsroom/CommonCore_Release_Letter.pdf , Joel I. Klein http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/joel_i_klein/index.html?inline=nyt-per , the New York Schools chancellor, and 54 other big-city superintendents who are members of the Council of the Great City Schools urged adoption of the standards.


Just how many states will adopt them remains unclear. Texas and Alaska declined to participate in the standards-writing effort. In the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/index.html , states that adopt by Aug. 2 will stand a higher chance at a piece of the $4 billion in federal grant money to be divided among winning states in September.

“I’m hopeful that a bunch of states with crummy standards will end up with better ones this way,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education who has long called for national standards. But the Obama administration is pressing states to adopt them too fast, he said. His recommendation to states: “Don’t rush to judgment.”

The New York Times - States Receive a Reading List: New Standards for Education

Herald Sun: Funding infrastructure said key for HBCUs By Neil Offen

http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story_news_durham/7805344/article-Funding-infrastructure-said-key-for-HBCUs?instance=main_article

June 4, 2010

DURHAM -- Marybeth Gasman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The development office there -- the school's fundraising arm -- has 600 employees.
Her university also receives more research dollars each year than all of the nation's more than 100 historically black colleges and universities put together.


During the second day of a symposium on the future of HBCUs Friday, Gasman offered advice on how to redress those imbalances.
"Funding is the single most pressing issue for HBCUs," Gasman told several hundred academics and administrators gathered at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel for the symposium hosted by N.C. Central University. "HBCUs have a proven track record of success. It's an absolute necessity for their funding to be increased."
The professor said the institutions must work to beef up both their governmental funding and their private fundraising.
She suggested investing in fundraising infrastructure, including appropriate technology, and grant writing training.
"You have to also invest in data generation," Gasman said. "You can't ask [for money] if you don't know who to ask."


To increase private fundraising, HBCUs simply have to ask earlier and more often, she said.
Many HBCU alumni are rarely, if ever, approached about donating money, Gasman added, although, blacks statistically give more per individual than other racial or ethnic groups.
"But if you don't ask, people don't give," she said. "You have to instill a culture of philanthropic giving in your students when they are students. Every student needs to know why they are there, how they got there, and who funded them."

Frequently, those alumni assume that the school is being funded by the state while "HBCUs have waited too long and have failed to ask [for money] in any systemic way," Gasman said.
The schools need to create what she called a new narrative and create "a serious dialogue with Federal and state officials. If they are serious about increasing the percentage of college graduates in the nation, they must funnel more money to HBCUs."


SANDRA M. PHOENIX
Program Director
HBCU Library Alliance
sphoenix@hbculibraries.org
http://www.hbculibraries.org/
404.592.4820
1438 West Peachtree Street NW
Suite 200
Atlanta, GA 30309
Toll Free: 1.800.999.8558 (Lyrasis)
Fax: 404.892.7879
http://www.lyrasis.org/
Honor the ancestors, honor the children.

Herald Sun: Funding infrastructure said key for HBCUs By Neil Offen

Inside Higher Ed: Reassurance on Health Reform

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/06/07/acha

June 7, 2010
PHILADELPHIA – Just as he was delivering his opening speech to the annual meeting of the American College Health Association here last Wednesday, Jim Turner, the group’s president, got word that he was wanted at the White House that afternoon.


Though he was at his group’s biggest event of the year, Turner dropped everything and went, joining representatives of the American Council on Education, the other five presidential higher education associations, the National Association of College and University Business Officers, and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. He would later tell the ACHA board and many conference attendees that he was pleased with the meeting and with the reassurance he received on the fate of student health insurance plans.

And the physicians, nurses, psychiatrists and others gathered for the convention buzzed. At a Wednesday night meeting of the ACHA Student Health Insurance Coalition, attendees shared what little information they had: Turner had been called to meet with Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform and Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. The meeting, a few said they’d heard, had “gone well.”



Based on what Turner said at a Friday morning at a session on health care reform, that rumor-mill assessment was an understatement. “It was just like a miracle, the Holy Spirit dropping from heaven,” Turner recalled to the chuckles of many of the 250 or so people in the audience.


College health professionals are unsure of what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will mean for them and the students they serve. The ACHA had scheduled the Friday session well before the White House visit came on the horizon, but the readouts coming from Turner and C. Randall Nuckolls, a lobbyist with the Washington firm McKenna Long & Aldridge who works with the ACHA, became the focus. Members wanted to know what the association was doing for them, and the association wanted members to know it was advocating on their behalf.


Turner said that DeParle and Tchen were primarily interested in ensuring that colleges and universities would convey accurate information about the new law – especially its promise of extending dependent coverage under employer-sponsored insurance plans through age 26 -- to their students, parents and employees. “Nancy-Ann DeParle wanted to make sure the higher education community understood and was implementing the age 26 adult children on employee health insurance,” Turner said. “We all at the table said we all understand it, we all support it, we’re all implementing it.”


DeParle’s response, according to Turner, “ ’Oh, OK, well good. What are your issues?’ And everyone kind of turned at me and said, ‘ACHA’s got issues.’”


Following ACHA’s lead, the higher education groups shared with the staffers their concern that, because the new law eliminated the “limited duration” classification, student health insurance plans would, beginning in 2014, be rated as expensive individual plans and likely be priced out of existence.


DeParle had not been aware of the concern, Turner said, and stressed that President Obama’s promise that Americans who like the insurance they have would get to keep it applied to student health insurance plans too. Just as Congressional staffers told the higher education groups months ago, the omission of clarifying language allowing student plans to be rated as more favorable group plans was an oversight.


“It looks like we have an advocate,” Turner said of DeParle. “She said, ‘Tell me what you want written into the regulations and we’ll make it happen.’ ” The crowd applauded.


Nuckolls was a bit more guarded in his analysis. “I am not sure that everything is going to -- Jim says the Holy Spirit came down and said there shalt be no more problems – I’m not sure there’s going to be quite that much clarity,” he said. “I’m not certain that clear regulations are going to suddenly appear on tablets this summer to allay all of our concerns. I am quite clear, however, that there is commitment from the highest levels of the White House that they did not intend to cause colleges and universities problems with insurance offerings.”


One attendee at the White House meeting, M. Matthew Owens, vice president for federal relations at the Association of American Universities, said he thought the White House staffers “were receptive” to higher education’s concerns.


Another attendee, Steven Bloom, the assistant director of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, conveyed a similar message. The well-being of student health insurance plans, he said, had “just fallen through the cracks” of “this huge, complex legislation.” He added: “It was very clear that they did not intend to hurt student plans and were very willing to work with us to resolve the issues.”


Moving forward, a fix might take the form of regulations or subregulatory guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service or the Department of the Treasury, Bloom said. Legislation seems less likely “given where things are on the Hill.”
— Jennifer Epstein

Inside Higher Ed: Reassurance on Health Reform

Distance Education Report: Teach More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences

Featured Higher Education Presenter: Judith Boettcher, Ph.D.

Can learning be personalized for each student in an online class … without burying the instructor in work?

Date: Wednesday, 7/14/10

Time: 12:00-1:15 PM Central Daylight Time

Cost: $239 ($264 after 7/7/10)

Three easy ways to register!

Online: http://www.magnapubsmail.com/ls.cfm?r=260020727&sid=9568082&m=1014242&u=MAGNAPUB&s=http://www.magnapubs.com/calendar/441.html?s=cj&p=email

Phone: 800-433-0499 / 608-227-8182

Email: support@magnapubs.com

Yes–here’s how…
There’s a general belief that online courses need to be “student-generic” … the same instruction for each student. Tailoring the course to the learning needs and ambitions of individual students, the thinking goes, would create impossible demands on a professor’s time.


Not so, says author and consultant Judith Boettcher, Ph.D. Personalized learning is achievable, and can actually save professors time. She’ll explain how in Teach More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences, a brand-new online seminar coming July 14.


In this 75-minute audio presentation, Dr. Boettcher will examine how to create personalized and customizable course content that meets the needs of students and faculty alike. She’ll discuss:
• How to better understand the goals and mental models of individual learners.
• How to integrate the concepts of social, teaching and cognitive presence into course creation.
• How to “design in” choices and options for readings, assignments and projects.
• Where customization makes the most sense within a course.
• How to use rubrics to incorporate self- and peer-review processes.
• And much more.


Includes a Q&A session
Dr. Boettcher, with over two decades of experience in educational technology at institutions including Penn State and the University of Florida, is also lead author of the new book, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips. You’re invited to draw on her considerable expertise by submitting questions during the presentation, for discussion during a dedicated Q&A session. It’s an excellent opportunity for consultation and collaboration.


Who should attend...
• Distance learning deans
• Distance learning directors and coordinators
• Instructional design professionals
• Online faculty
• Program leaders
• Anyone interested in sound online pedagogy
Learn how students and faculty can benefit when personalized learning is part of the online experience. Register for this informative seminar today!

Distance Education Report: Teach More Effectively with Customizing Learning Experiences

Faculty Focus: Blogging to Improve Student Learning - Tips and Tools for Getting Started

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-teaching-strategies/blogging-to-improve-student-learning-tips-and-tools-for-getting-started/?c=FF&t=F100607a

By John Orlando, PhD

Most universities press their faculty to add technology to their classroom by adopting the Learning Management System—Blackboard, Moodle, etc. This is a mistake. Faculty often end up spending hours learning the system and loading the same content that they use in the classroom, and finish wondering if the benefit was worth the effort.


I instead encourage faculty to start by adding a blog to their class. A blog can be set up in minutes and is easy to learn and maintain. Plus, there are a variety of studies proving that blogging can improve educational outcomes. For instance:
• Faculty at the University of Maryland Baltimore County found that when they switched chemistry labs from individual students doing experiments and submitting their results, to groups of students posting their findings to a blog and receiving feedback from other students, the average passing rate in class went from 71.2 percent to 85.6 percent, even as the minimum score needed to pass went up.
• David Wiley at Brigham Young University had his students post their written work to a blog before handing it in. The students received comments from other students and even faculty at other institutions, which improved their work greatly. Wiley found that dozens of other people were effectively doing his job for him by providing students with commentary to improve their work. It multiplied student outcomes without extra effort on his part.

One of the benefits of blogging is that it is public, and we are more attentive to the quality of our work when it is public than if it is just viewed by one other person. Plus, blogging creates a person-centered discussion, as opposed to the topic-centered discussion of the LMS. Students are less invested in LMS discussions and often lend the minimum commentary necessary fulfill the requirement. But students become much more invested in their work when blogging, and thus are more engaged with the material.



Also, Kris Kelly notes that blogging encourages higher levels of reasoning because the “focus is not necessarily on the content of the blog, but more on the process of constructing and evaluating knowledge helping us reach the sometimes elusive upper levels – analyzing, evaluating, and creating – of Bloom’s Taxonomy” (http://tinyurl.com/mtj6kf).


One simple way to incorporate blogging into nearly any course is to create a single class blog and post case studies, news items, or topics for commentary. Another option is to assign students to post notes on each class along with their thoughts on the material, and assign other students to comment on the postings.


Add blogging to your classes with any of the free platforms below:
Blogger - Google’s publishing tool: http://www.blogger.com
Tumblr - A feature rich system: http://www.tumblr.com  
Posterious - Super simple, and with lots of functionality: http://posterous.com
Soup.io - Another powerful product from the “io” people: http://www.soup.io
Edmodo - Good for making password protected groups of blogs: http://www.edmodo.com

John Orlando, PhD, is the Program Director for the online Master of Science in Business Continuity Management and Master of Science in Information Assurance programs at Norwich University. John develops faculty training in online education and is available for consulting at jorlando@norwich.edu

Faculty Focus: Blogging to Improve Student Learning - Tips and Tools for Getting Started