Wikis as Assignments

I attended a very useful online presentation last week by Mike Orey of the University of Georgia (via the Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series). In one of his graduate courses in education, as an assessment activity, he asks students to contribute to a wiki-book that he and his colleagues have developed: Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching and technology. The reason I am making this posting is two-fold.

1. The concept of asking students to contribute to a wiki that will remain for future users is very interesting to me. Clearly an assignment of this nature fits into the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and could even serve as a capstone assignment in some types of courses. In Mike's example, he created a privately owned wiki for this purpose; however, Wikipedia could be used as well.



2. Mike's eBook is excellent from a practitioner’s point of view! Have a look it. It has some interesting sections on topics such as Motivation, Adult Learning, Problem-based Instruction and Learning Communities as an Instructional Model. Chock full of case studies and well referenced with supporting literature. If applicable, Mike encourages you to adopt all or part of this eBook as a textbook in your course. He's so nice (*smile*).

Kudos to Mike & friends on more than one level!

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Project Management using Google Sites

My office has been playing around with the Google Sites wiki for the last few weeks (I’ve written about Google Sites before.) We’ve been using it to collaboratively author mini-reports as well as staff meeting agendas.

I would like to try to use a wiki site to track an online course development project. It would be a place where the project team could define goals, publish milestones, post files and monitor progress on project activities. I think Google Sites would be perfect for this and it is an easy to use and free online application. I am definately going to use it when I start my next project.

Today I came across someone else who has built a nice Google Sites template for project management activity. Check out the link and let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

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Nursing Simulation in Second Life

If you want to be a nurse then you need to go to school. Many schools and registered nurse programs are using technological tools to delivery nursing education; especially in the area of nursing simulations. I came across one particularly interesting example of this just today. John Miller, a Nursing Professor, at Tacoma Community College in Washington is spearheading a nursing simulation hosted within Second Life. He’s also working in collaboration with the nursing school at nearby Centralia Community College. The simulator allows students to react to a situation, to choose what medications to administer, to chart their actions, to monitor the consequences, and to adjust their treatments accordingly. Scenarios can be simulated which reproduce life-threatening conditions in a safe ‘virtual’ environment. I've written about Second Life before and it seems to me with the work of simulation pioneers like John Miller, the potential of Second Life as a simulator are being slowly unveiled.

I contacted John Miller in Second Life (his avatar's name is JS Vavoom) and he let me view the simulator. Here's a screen shot of my avatar lying down on the operating table. Yikes!

Important Update: As of late 2008, John has removed his original 5 part series of YouTube videos (listed below) demonstrating his nursing simulation. He now has new videos. I will write about them in this blog here.

Do you want to check out John Miller's nursing simulator but you don't have a Second Life account? No worries! John has made a video tour of the simulator and posted the tour in a 5 part video series on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5). What do you think about it? Leave a comment below.

PS: Take the time to check out John Miller's blog too.

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Who are your students?

Do you really know who your students are and the challenges they face with education? If you answered 'yes' to this question then you are most likely in the minority. Check out this excellent video made by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. Very thought provoking!



(Click here for the native YouTube page for this video.)

PS: Do you recognize the name 'Micheal Wesch'? Check out this posting I made a year ago on another of his videos.

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Poducate Me!

Micah Ovadia, a digital designer at the University of Cincinnati, provides this excellent and free guide to everything you wanted to know about Podcasting. It is a must-bookmark site. http://poducateme.com/guide/

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Free Wiki Hosting by Google

Google finally gets into the Wiki game by re-launching the product they acquired last year (JotSpot) under a a new name: Google Sites. See this description of the product via TechCrunch blog. I'll be trying it!

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12 Screencasting Tools

Keep this link handy. Sean P. Aune, from Kirksville, Missouri, summarizes 12 Screencasting Tools that are currently available. Half of them are FREE of cost. I have never tried any of the free tools on this list. If anyone has any experience on how well they perform, please leave a comment below.

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Is Second Life 100% experimental?

If you were running a business and your clientele rose from 3 million to 11 million in just one year, then people would be buzzing about you too. That’s what has occurred on Second Life (SL) in the 2007 calendar year.

Maybe there’s been some buzz about Second Life (SL) in distance education circles for awhile now but the massive increase in users is fueling some new excitement.

If anyone is clueless about SL, a quick read of the wikipedia article on the subject would be useful before continuing on with this blog post.

I have been a casual SL user for the last couple of years. Recently a colleague of mine (Thanks Louise!) has had her first experience with SL and in discussions she brought to the forefront some of the most common concerns that distance educators might share about SL:

1. SL is very heavy on the ‘social scene.’ It appears that a great many people in SL are here to meet other people with intentions or striking up more than just a casual friendship. This type of environment could be a distraction to educational pursuits.

2. SL has a very steep learning curve. New users start off at Orientation Island. It can take almost 20 hours to complete the island tasks in order to be reasonably proficient with the SL interface. Being a long time gamer, when I joined SL, I skipped the entire Orientation Island experience and chose to figure out the interface by trial and error. However, I fully understand that non-gamer type people would probably find it very frustrating to proceed in this manner. Orientation Island therefore is a must! However, what distance course can afford to have 20 hours allocated to it on the front end for students to learn a software tool? OUCH!

If I were teaching a graduate-level distance course that required synchronous student-to-student interaction and was on the topic of technology in education, then I would be tempted to run it on SL. The up-front investment of the steep learning curve might be worth it in this special case (i.e. a requirement for synchronous interaction on the topic of education technology). I can see that a dozen students having voice discussions in an immersive world using their custom built avatars could really be fun and could really stimulate some interest in synchronous simulation technologies. However, if I were teaching a graduate-level chemistry course that required synchronous student-to-student interaction, I would not invest the time required for every student to climb the steep SL learning curve. I would choose something like Elluminate Live for my synchronous activities. Elluminate's learning curve is a much more gentle slope. (Not to mention the fact that the potentially distracting 'social scene' is avoided.)

Despite this conclusion, I can’t help but feel that SL has enormous potential to develop into something more useful for education purposes as time progresses. I'm just not sure how much 'time' will be required. Two more years? Ten more years? Who knows. For now, I view it as 100% experimental - it is simply an intriguing social simulation environment.

Are you in SL? What do you think about reality, or the potential, of SL from a distance education perspective? Please leave a comment below.

Also, if you want to look me up in SL, my avatar’s name is EricT Nastula. See you there!

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Putting the microscope on Flickr

Last semester I taught an Introductory Microscopy laboratory course. The course was basically divided into 3 parts:

1. Microscope operation
2. Basic histology
3. Specimen preparation

There was no required textbook for the course and a lab manual containing protocols and theory was provided. In past offerings of this course, students had great difficulty with the 3-week long basic histology section because they had very little resources they could study with at home. The laboratory manual was not detailed enough to compete with commercially available textbooks in histology. So students had difficulty studying away from the lab. A histology textbook was not added to the required readings list because it was difficult to justify the additional cost if this textbook was only to serve a 3-week period in the course. (Histology textbooks are expensive!) In the absence of any significant material to study from at home, it proved difficult for students to assimilate the material with the mandatory laboratory time alone. Some were creative and used Google to surf some online histology sites at other institutions.

This year we tried something different. We (*Thanks Nancy!*) photographed all the histology specimens used in the lab and we posted them all to the Flickr photo sharing website. Additionally, we annotated the photos to give students a guide to the hallmark features of the specimens. With this resource available to students anywhere they could find a computer, all of a sudden studying away from the lab became much more effective. The results were such that the grades went up when compared to last year! Students reportedly loved the online Flickr resource. They found it a major advantage to their studying and they placed great value in being able to visualize on the web the exact slide that they used in class.

From an instructor perspective Flickr was a joy to use. No special technical knowledge was required to use it. No significant photo editing, no HTML coding, very easy to annotate photos, organization of photos was simple and the best part was that it was free. Flickr is completely free if you use less than 250 images. So the effort to create this student resource was very manageable.

So clearly this was a win:win for both students and instructors.

Want to see it? It’s publicly available here.

What do you think? Would this work for you? Post your comment below.

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Technology, Colleges and Community Online Conference

I live in Canada and these days everywhere I look, I see snow. There is about 3 feet of snow outside and I have been shoveling dutifully for several days. You might ask, what do I think about when I'm shoveling? Well, this morning, I was thinking about Hawaii. Wouldn't it be great to go to Hawaii? Where there's no snow! Well, it's a bit out of my budget for the moment; however, I'm going to Hawaii in another sense this spring. The Technology, Colleges and Community (TCC) Conference is hosted by Kapi'olani Community College, in Honolulu, Hawaii. I've heard some good things about this very unique conference. It's a completely virtual conference. All the presenters and attendees stay in their current locations yet everyone joins together in synchronous and asynchronous activities for three days (April 15-17, 2008). Personally I think this is a really great idea!

If you are a college teacher with no budget for conference travels, only $69 USD gets you full access to everything, including the archive of everything presented and recorded for 6 months! Talk about bang for your conference buck! Check out the 2008 Theme:

"TCC will feature papers and general sessions on the continuing evolution of distance learning, online communities and collaboration, social networking, and best practices of instructional technology. [including]:

* Online, hybrid, blended or other modes of technology enhanced learning
* Emerging Internet tools for teaching and learning (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc)
* Technology applications that facilitate communication and collaboration
* Building and sustaining learning communities
* Instructional models for learning in virtual environments (Second Life, etc)
* Distance learning including mobile learning
* Ubiquitous and life-long learning
* Open content and open source
* E-portfolios and other assessment tools
* Student success and assessment strategies in online learning
* Student orientation and preparation
* Student services online (tutoring, advising, mentoring, career planning, etc)
* Online learning resources (library, learning centers, etc)
* Professional development for faculty and staff
* Accessibility for persons with disabilities
* Gender equity, digital divide, intercultural understanding, and open access
* Managing information technology and change in educational institutions
* Institutional planning and pedagogy catalyzed by technology advances
* Global learning and international education
* Educational technology use around the world"

So, I would like to give special thanks to Mother Nature for making me think of Hawaii this morning. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! See you all next April. (*smile*)

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Carnegie-Mellon Shares Its Stuff!

I’ve written before on this blog about science-based educational material available on the web that I have found useful. A colleague of mine (merci Louise!) just brought another website to my attention. It’s part of a long-term initiative by Carnegie-Melon University. The Department of Biological Sciences has published a website chock-full of online resources for Biology.

1. Interactive Animations. Flash-based animations show a variety of biochemistry and modern biology phenomenon from how cell membranes work to how DNA replication occurs.


2. Simulation Labs. These interactive simulations begin to show how some conventional biology labs take place in real life. They could effectively used as ‘pre-labs’ to prepare students for a real life lab.


3. Supplements. Currently there are two available: a glossary and some ICE structures.


4. An online modern biology course that is under construction. It’s an Open Learning Initiative, which is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Definitely worth a look!

The best part about the Carnegie-Melon project is that it is publicly available on the Internet. So if you like any one of these items, you can use it with your students in class or as homework. Direct them to the links you find useful and supplement you lecture and textbook material with more interactive content. Enjoy!

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Learning objects that work!

It's no secret: I don't know everything! (*smile*) In conjunction with the provincial general election, there is an referendum in Ontario on October 10th on electoral reform. I've been hearing about it on TV and on the radio. We have two choices in the referendum. We can vote to keep the current 'Past-the-Post' method or we can choose to adopt a new method: 'Mixed member proportional'. So despite living in Ontario my entire life, I had never heard the expression 'Past-the-Post' and of course, I have no clue what 'Mixed member proportional' even means. Clearly I had some learning to do before October 10th so I can make an informed decision.

There are a couple of ways I can go about to find the answers to my question. I could try to Google those two methods and read about them. However, instead I chose to see what the Elections Ontario was producing to educate citizens on the subject. I'm glad to say I was pleasantly surprised!

In addition to an informative website they created a Flash object that did an excellent job in educating me. It has a few features that I think are best practices in Flash object design:

• The navigation is excellent. The learner quickly understands that there are 7 chapters. It's easy to pause and move around from chapter to chapter at anytime.


• The learner chooses the order in which the chapters are viewed depending on which topics they are seeking information on. This non-linear progression through the learning object is excellent for customizing a learner's learning.


• The people showcased in the learning object also act as the learner's guide. They give the learner tips on how to navigate and they participate in the transition between chapters by clicking, along with the learner, on the buttons on the screen. It really gives you a sense of being 'supported emotionally' in the learning by these people in the learning object.


• Closed-captioning can be toggled to allow the learner to read what is being said in the learning object.


• The learner can even download a printable version of the video in PDF format.


• It is also available in two languages. Here is the French language version.

So after examining this very excellent learning object I can now say I know how I'm going to vote on Oct 10th. Can you see any other excellent features in this learning object? Do you see any weaknesses? If so, please post your feedback as a comment.

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Engaging Interactions!

B.J. Schone, the author of the eLearningWeekly.com blog, has finally released his free eBook called Engaging Interactions For eLearning (downloadable here). BJ sought my opinion on the content of his eBook when it was in an earlier draft and I really liked it from the first read. For instructional designers, professors and instructors working in the field of web-enabled learning this eBook does a good job at highlighting ways to make learning experiences interesting and engaging at the level of student-to-content. It's a challenge we're always faced with as most of us know that when we create a course, we want to avoiding creating a really boring 'page-turner'. BJ has assembled 25 student-to-content interactions suitable for the eLearning context that can improve the learning experience by engaging learners to the content instead of simply having them read mountains and mountains of material. By using some of these examples and also by including a component of student-to-student interaction in your online course, then you'll start to observe the synergy between these two aspects: it's the real 'sweet spot' in student satisfaction and in online learning. You'll build engaging and motivating courses which include a positive and useful sense of community; it's a perfect foundation to learn at a distance. So have a look at this free resource. It's worth a read. Enjoy.

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Definitions: Web-courses

John Gedeon, an Educational Technologist from the University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago), recently contacted me with a question about my opinion regarding the definitions for courses that have different degrees of web-involvement.

As he has discovered there is a great deal of overlap and confusion in the lexicon describing distance learning courses especially when technology is involved. In my mind, there are only 3 types of 'web courses':

1. Web-enhanced F2F. I define this as a face-to-face (F2F) classroom course with a web technology as a resources for it (typically a web-page or LMS). This web-page houses content and resources that support the F2F onsite course.

2. Web-based Online. I define this as an exclusively non-classroom course where some web technology (typically a website, email distribution system or LMS, etc.) fully supports all the infrastructure required for students to complete their work. Students never meet each other, or the instructor, F2F.

3. Hybrid F2F:Online. A mixture of both Web-enhanced F2F and Web-based Online such that at some point during the length of the term students must meet in class AND at some point during the the length of the term students must conduct their work online using some web technology.

What do you think about my three types? Can you think of a 4th type? Did I miss anything here? If so, please leave a comment by clicking 'comment' below.

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Free Images Databases (sorta!)

It's no secret that I work for the Department of National Defence (DND) in Canada. As such, I am part of the Canadian Federal Government. Any images created by staff of the Federal Government can be shared with other staff for the purposes of government business... copyright free! So when I design courses here at the Royal Military College of Canada, I sometimes consult image databases that are held by the Federal Government. So I contacted my buddy Darryl (see his blog here), who's a graphic designer, and asked him for a selection of the databases he finds most useful for this purpose. Here's what he said:

Probably the best site (quality images, supplied by DND so no copyright issue, usually with a full caption so you know the context, on an operation basis, with links to all three branches) is:

http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/gallery/index_e.asp

A site that also falls in the "safe and useful" category (usable and DND-sanctioned) is:

http://www.combatcamera.forces.gc.ca/common/combatcamera/find_e.asp

Of course, the various branches tend to have their own thing going on, such as Army's ...

http://www.army.dnd.ca/Land_Force/English/home.asp

And beyond that, even the particular brigades and fighting groups have identity sites (where you can sometimes find excellent pictures), for example ...

http://www.army.forces.gc.ca/38cbg_hq/Headquarters/units_page/38cbg_home.htm

If you are lucky enough to be a reader of this blog who's in the Canadian Federal Government then the above links might be useful for your work.

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Life by PowerPoint!

Ok, you've all heard by now the expression "Death by PowerPoint". Yup, it's a clever expression and it's also true. As teachers and instructors most of us have used PowerPoint in the classroom. It works for us, but sometimes it doesn't work for the learners. They just see too much of it... and lots of it is just boring and mind-numbing.

I need to constantly remind myself of this. In my teaching life I try to keep PowerPoint to a minimum. However, when I use PowerPoint I have to think of ways in which I can make the PowerPoint better for learners.... not just better for me as the teacher.

Vicky Davis, of 'Cool Cat Teacher Blog' fame, has recently cobbled together some information that provides a good refresher to educational practitioners about creating effective PowerPoint presentations. Everyone could use a refresher, including me.

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Habits of Mind

My brother is a grade school teacher in Toronto. He recently sent a website my way that describes 16 Habits of Mind; where a Habit of Mind is defined as contributing toward "knowing how to behave intelligently when you DON'T know the answer."

I encourage everyone to read the summary of the Habits of Mind concept. Aside from the insightful quotes found in this document, I really found that the information rings true based on my experience in personal, work and educational settings.

How do you feel personally about these 16 Habits of Mind? Which ring true for you? Which do not? Any thoughts? Please leave a comment by clicking 'comments' below, if you have the time.

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TeacherTube!

Ok, we all know what YouTube is and today I learned about TeacherTube. Basically, it's YouTube for education. It has a wide variety of videos that are useful to educational practisioners and students alike. Some of the types of videos you will see there include tutorials on software tools, presentations on education (alternate link), lessons on how to add fractions, and thought provoking videos on a historical concept. TeacherTube hosts many interesting video clips and there is likely something for everyone. Despite some bandwidth and downloading slowness that I experienced while using the site, I still give big kudos to TeacherTube. Keep going.

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The Facebook Addiction

Have you tried Facebook yet?

I’ve been on Facebook for a couple of months now and it is time for me to write something about it in this blog. After thinking about the Facebook phenomenon for quite some time I have to admit that the allure of Facebook for me is that I can be a voyeur and an exhibitionist at the same time. (Get your mind out of the gutter here… while I explain.)

When you’re on Facebook you ‘collect’ friends. At last count I had 88 people on my friend’s list. Honestly, many of them are not ‘friends’ per se but more so acquaintances. However, Facebook doesn’t have any tools that discern the level of friendship you have with someone on your list, so ‘friends’ is what everyone is called. Now these 88 people have Facebook accounts and almost anything they ‘do’ on Facebook gets streamed into a news feed that I can monitor. So every time one of my friend’s joins a group, posts a photo, comments of someone’s wall, post’s a note, charges their status, etc., I can be notified. Now do you see what I mean by being a ‘voyeur’? I can ‘watch’ what all these people are doing on Facebook. So with little effort using Facebook, I can take notice of the fact that my friend Leo was dejected that the Toronto Maple Leafs missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs without even talking to him in real life (*grin*).

So that’s the ‘voyeur’ part of the equation… what about the ‘exhibitionist’ part. That comes into play because I understand that this information sharing on Facebook is a two-way street. I know that if I put a picture of myself on Facebook that all my friends will have access to it. For example, they’ll know I went to that party last weekend if I put the pictures on Facebook. So it’s a way for me to broadcast news to my friends (and acquaintances) in a global shotgun-like fashion.

So you might ask ‘are these the only ‘pay-offs’ when using Facebook?’ No. Here’s a list of ‘payoffs’ that I feel are addicting people to Facebook.

1. You can find long-lost friends. For example, I found a cousin of mine who I had lost touch with. Now I can ‘watch’ his Facebook-life and interact with him on there easily, despite being hundreads of kilometers apart. Big Pay-off.


2. You can feel popular. For example, I’m in a race. I’m in a race with my wife to see who can find the most friends on Facebook. Every time someone asks to be your friend on Facebook or every time you ask for someone’s permission to add them to your friend-list and they say ‘yes’, you get a pay-off. This tangible endorphin-loaded shot of ‘I’m popular’ courses through your veins. Pay-off.


3. You can feel loved. For example, you can feel the love come right through the computer screen when a friend of yours posts a photo on their Facebook that includes you in the picture and then tags it with your name. Your smiling face is now found on someone else’s Facebook photo album and there’s often a nice caption to the photo saying how great/fun/happy your are, or at least were, when the photo was taken. Another example happen to me when I was sick with a cold the other week. I updated my status to explain my illness and a friend of mine spent an actual real-life non-virtual American dollar to send me a virtual Kleenex Box Gift on Facebook. She sent me a virtual gift on Facebook to cheer me up. I felt the love. Pay-off.


4. You can use Facebook as a type of event-invitation software. You can create a real-life event such as ‘party at my place’ and then invite a sub-set of your Facebook pals to it. They get an event notice and they can RSVP directly on the personalized Facebook event page. Much easier (and more fun) than a long series of emails and/or phone calls. Pay-off.


5. You can pipe your blog’s RRS feed directly into Facebook. So if you are already a blogger, you can integrate your efforts with Facebook. Now all your Facebook pals will be advised when you publish new blog postings. Pay-off. (Now if Facebook could do the same integration with Flickr then that would be a big Pay-off to the photographers of the world.)


6. You can join groups of like-minded people. There are many social groups on Facebook. For example, the local watering hole that I frequent has a group. So not only can I interact with the regulars in person at the bar, but I can also embarrass them virtually by putting funny pictures of them online on Facebook. Pay-off!

So there’s a few pay-offs that I can think of. One point I haven’t touched upon that is certainly giving Facebook momentum is that you can do all of the above with great ease. Facebook is dirt easy to use. The interfaces are intuitive, the system is very reliable technically and the functions do what you think they do. So kudos to the Facebook team…. this social software is definitely giving MySpace a run for its money.

Do you use Facebook? Can you think of a Pay-off I haven’t listed above? Do you have an ideal for using Facebook in an educational setting? The readers of this blog would love to hear any comments you might have about these issues. Click ‘comment’ below. Oh and I almost forgot… do you consider me a ‘friend’ or ‘acquaintance’, if you do please add me to your Facebook friend list. I want to win this race I have with my wife HAHA!

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Find files instantly with Google

I work in a military university that has a military computer network. This network has a firewall that is very stringent. Some file types are blocked by the firewall. In fact, the list is quite long and that makes me very frustrated at times. But I digress... haha.

I was asked by one of my colleagues to try and put together a list of file types that are blocked by the firewall. So I now had the challenge of quickly finding different files on the internet to test if they passed through the firewall of not.

A quick search of Google found this fascinating Tech Recipe for doing just that. It's an amazing trick of syntax with Google that lets you find any file type you are looking for.

For example,

Are you looking for some WAV files? To find unprotected directories on the Internet that house WAV files use this syntax in Google:

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" "Last modified" wav

Are you looking for some SWF files? To find unprotected directories on the Internet that house SWF files use this syntax in Google:

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" "Last modified" swf

Are you looking for some MP3 files? And not just any MP3 files but MP3 files of your favorite band? To find unprotected directories on the Internet that house MP3s of 'The Tragically Hip' as an example, simply modify the Google syntax as such:

-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "the tragically hip"

Try it for yourself. Isn't Google interesting?

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