June 2008 Archives

As the new pirate server has begun to get itself situated and interests for it have become more heightened, I would like to share with you a few of the basics to get you on your way to maintaining your website. The new pirate server has allowed for more website capacity and an increased amount of speed for publishing web pages. This, coupled with the new web design tool to help people get started has made the pirate website server more accessible to everyone on campus.

In Spring of 2008, students in Strategic Management and Governance, a graduate course in the Masters of Public Administration (MPA) taught by Matt Hale, used a combination of technology and situated learning to develop skills, knowledge and ways of thinking necessary for becoming effective leaders in organizations and communities through a proposed land-battle simulation. Working in teams, students created a detailed development plan from the perspective of the organization they were representing using Google SketchUp.

In a June 9, 2008 Star Ledger article Tony Loviscek's use of Echo360, a lecture capture system. Instead of using the taped lectures to skip class, students take advantage of the technology by utlizing different note taking strategies.

At Seton Hall, graduate student Rahul Dang has changed his note-taking habits in his class that uses the new technology. While sitting in class, he breaks his notes into half-hour segments, jotting down the exact time the professor mentions key topics.

Then, Dang, 26, goes home and fast-forwards the online video to those times to review.

"It's really easy," said Dang, of Woodbridge. "You select from this list of lectures ... You can fast-forward it, rewind."

The system also allows students to miss a class or two without falling too far behind. If you are interested in finding out more about Echo360 at Seton Hall please contact your Instructional Designer.

Voki is a free Web 2.0 tool that enables you to express yourself on the web in your own voice. Creating a Voki is quick and easy. The first step is to create an avatar and then record your voice. You can record audio by calling a toll-free number, having the Voki website call your phone, record your voice through your laptop (or microphone), or upload an audio file.
Click the play button on the player below to hear what Voki Melissa has to say:

Get a Voki now!


Once you've created your Voki, it can be added to your blog, website, social network, or even sent to your cell phone. To learn more about Voki and to get started now, go to http://www.voki.com/

Earlier this week, the Idaho Business Review posted an article, Play2Train virtual world provides disaster training.

The article describes how the Play2Train environment (developed under the Idaho Bioterrorism Awareness and Preparedness program - IBAPP) in the virtual world Second Life has been utilized by graduate students at Seton Hall enrolled in the Master of Healthcare Administration program.

Drs. Anne Hewitt and Susan Spencer incorporated this virtual world training experience in March 2008, and are planning a second exercise in early July.

For additional information regarding the use of Second Life in the Master of Healthcare Administration program, please see these earlier ePirate posts:

Learning in a Virtual Environment
Bioterrorism Awareness Using Virtual Worlds

If you are interested in exploring the potential of utilizing Second Life in your classes, please contact your Instructional Designer.

MERLOT ELIXR sounds like a delicious drink but it???s really a site dedicated to the sharing of resources within the higher education community. You might be familiar with MERLOT, a collection of learning objects created by faculty and peer reviewed in order to provide feedback on quality of content and instructional delivery. ELIXR is based on a similar idea except that instead of learning objects faculty are sharing stories of the adoption on new teaching practices. As described on the ELIXR website,

The ELIXR program team supports faculty creating case stories for target themes in high priority areas of faculty and professional development in higher education, and also supports theme leaders who champion and coordinate a particular theme topic.

Case stories are currently organized into the following topics, but additional topics are welcome:

• a teaching context (First Day of Class, Preparing Students for Blended and Online Learning)


• a design/assessment method (Transforming Course Design, Universal Design for Learning)


• a teaching approach (Active Learning with Cooperative Learning Groups)


• an educational goal (Integrative Learning, Community Service Learning)

Digital case stories can be located at http://elixr.merlot.org/. The TLT Center would like your feedback on the use of such case stories for our faculty ??? please contact Danielle Mirliss with any comments or suggestions.

On Tuesday, June 10th, the TLT Center held it's third Summer Series Day. The full-day workshop was entitled, Virtual Worlds: Don't Let Your Second Life Pass You By. We had a record attendance of 19 faculty and administrators. The session was led by Danielle Mirliss, Associate Director of the TLT Center and Heidi Trotta, Instructional Designer. Barry Joseph, Director of Global Kids, and Meghan Deana were the guest speakers from Global Kids, Inc. in New York City. They shared projects they are working on with high school students in Second Life and provided examples of ways that faculty in higher education can incorporate Virtual Worlds into their courses. To learn more about Global Kids visit them at: www.globalkids.org. If you haven't already experienced Second Life it's not too late, check out the ePirate blog frequently for upcoming training dates.

Call for Proposals and Save the Date: Northeast Connect Fourth Annual Conference!

Conference Details
Conference Theme: Leading and Inspiring Change for Successful Learning!
Date: November 14, 2008
Location: Montclair State University Conference Center
(Registration will be available soon)
Visit the Northeast Connect website for more details.

Keynote Speaker
Curt Garbett
Vice President, Spencer Johnson Partners
Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, M.D.

Themes
The four tracks for proposals include:

1. Technology Literacy (Innovative Pedagogy, Emerging Technology, Learning Styles, Course Design/Development)
2. Social Networking & Collaborative Tools (Wikis and Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Content Sharing, Google Tools, del.icio.us, Mashups)
3. Ethics in the Digital Age (Copyright, Plagiarism, Intellectual Property, Appropriate Use)
4. Assessment and Digital Competencies (ePortfolio, Case Studies, Digital Storytelling, Course/Institutional Assessment)

Submit your proposal!
Deadline for Proposals: June 27, 2008
Please click here to submit your abstract (250 words or less).

Web Publishing is becoming a hot topic around Seton Hall University these days in the form of Microsoft's Expressions Web and the creation of blogs. Faculty, students and administrators were recently notified about their personal websites moving to a new Pirate server. This means that you will be editing these sites with Microsoft's Expressions Web, the replacement software for FrontPage. Expressions Web is a powerful software similar to FrontPage but with some significant differences, such as using frames instead of tables and publishing the site via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) rather than "publishing" it as you did in FrontPage.

Creating a blog is an easy way to gain a web presence for your department or organization and to keep the general public informed about new programs you may be instituting, event schedules, or just putting out general information. If you are reading this article, you are on TLTC's e-Pirate blog right now and you can see how it offers users another resource for information. Blogs offer a new and effective method of dispensing pertinent information to your user community viewable at their leisure.

The CTC is offering classes on both Expressions Web and creating public blogs this month, so click here to see the list of classes you can register for.

Two quick and easy online tools to explore: Text2MindMap and Forex Flower


Text2MindMap is an online application where you can create mind maps/graphic organizers by entering text in an outline that is then converted to a mind map. Maps can be customized and may also be saved to your computer as picture files (jpgs). Quick, fun, and easy...great for brainstorming a topic in class.

Forex Flower (sister site to Text2MindMap) is an online currency converter. Type in the number of US dollars you would like to convert and watch all the exchange rates pop up. The exchange rates are updated daily and are drawn from the US Federal Reserve Economic Data database.

On Monday, June 2, 2008, the TLTC hosted its weekly Summer Series event, attended by 16 faculty and staff members. This week's event was entitled Electronic Survey Research and involved a hands-on workshop on creating an electronic survey in Asset, the online survey creation tool available at SHU. In the morning session, participants learned about some of the features of Asset and other online survey tools. Dr. Wendiann Sethi, Director of Developmental Math, also provided some tips and best practices for creating electronic surveys, including question types, survey methods, sample considerations, and question content.

During lunch, materials were presented from the Information Literacy core proficiency committee. Finally, in the afternoon session, participants were led through the process of exporting their data from Asset into Excel and SPSS for further statistical analysis. Follow-up classes and training opportunities in both Asset and SPSS will be offered in the future, so be sure to sign up for one of these if you are interested in creating an electronic survey! Materials from the session are provided below:

Asset User's Manual

Asset Quick Start Guide

Virtual Worlds News reported that the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation is awarding over $2 million in research grants to 12 teams "to help strengthen the evidence base that supports the development and use of digital interactive games to improve players' health behaviors and outcomes." Recipients will be named later in the week but some studies will focus on how people can practice good behaviors in dangerous settings in the virtual worlds. Additional information on previous studies can be found at:
Virtual Reality Real Enough to Spark Addiction Cravings and
Virtual Worlds Fight Drug Addiction