February 2009 Archives

On Wednesday February 25th the TLT Center held a Wiki workshop. The presentation is available online, click here.
Additional session handouts are available for download at the end of this post.

A video describing the functional overview of how a Wiki works has been produced by CommonCraft, and is available below:

As we all settle in with using the new Pirate Net portal, you might not have noticed a very useful technology resource available to the entire SHU community called Element K.

Element K is a free, computer based training solution that anyone at Seton Hall can access and use to improve their tech skills in a particular software package or maybe learn something entirely new. The great part about Element K courses is that you take them at you own pace and at your own convenience. Since the resource is internet based, it's available whenever you have time.

The login module is located on the Offices & Services tab of the Pirate Net portal. Just click the link and you have access to 120 different self-paced courses and there all not just on technology.

Of course, the Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 courses are offered, but there are also some business "soft-skills" courses and some higher end technical courses as well. It's a great resource to have at your fingertips.

The Computer Training Center regularly offers classes on university-supported software, but sometimes you may not be able to fit a class into your busy schedule. If that's the case, Element K is an excellent substitute for instructor-led training. Try it out today and contact me, otskeybi@shu.edu, with any problems or for more information.

Here are some tips to clean up you Bb courses:

• Copy material from old courses into new ones.

• Archive course material you don't want to lose.

• Save space in your email by collecting students' work using the assignment tool

• Download your grade center to save grade information.

Academic Earth is a collection of recorded lectures from a number of universities in the United States, including Yale, MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.

While the recorded lectures are available directly from each institutions website, Academic Earth allows for searching by university, subject, top rated professor, top rated lecture, and top rated courses. The ability search and rate content from multiple sources distinguishes this website from the experience of directly visiting the universities website directly.

Below is an embedded video from Stanford eCorner:

Google Latitude is a new application introduced recently by Google that allows individuals using laptops and smartphones to track the location of their friends/family through their phone or online through Google Maps. The program uses GPS technology to allow you to view a general location of your friends/family that you have invited to share information.

There are very detailed privacy options that you can customize with this program, including the option not to accept a friend's invitation to join Latitude, hide your status from your friends temporarily, etc. To view more information about Latitude and ideas for its use in educational settings, click here.

Explore global fishing trends, shipwrecks, and underwater volcanoes with Google Ocean, a recently released as part of Google Earth 5, currently available as a free download.

Google Ocean includes ocean floor and surface data from marine experts. The map currently includes 20 content layers, containing information from organizations Google has partnered with, including National Geographic, the BBC, Cousteau's Ocean World, and others.

Are you new to Blackboard and unfamiliar with the various tools at your disposable? Learning to use the available tools on Blackboard will surely enhance your teaching and your students' learning experiences. This training session covers all of the tools in Blackboard to help you get started in any course. This includes all of the file management capabilities, communications tools, assignments and discussion board, and organization tools. Learn to manage your courses by disabling and enabling course tools. You can manage files by creating folders to organize content items; backup files; use the Content System to Add Items, Links, Bookmarks, Files, Folders, and Search; and learn how to download and install the Webdrive program. In addition, we will be covering topics related to issuing and collecting assignments and interacting with the Discussion Board.

This course is being offered as a face-to-face session on Monday, February 23rd from 4:00-5:00pm in the CTC Lab of the Walsh Library. Please click HERE to register.

This course is also being offered as a WebEx Session on February 24th from 10-11am. Click HERE to register.

Are you worried that your students aren't producing their own work? Or maybe they have never been taught how to cite properly? SafeAssign allows you to protect the originality of work and ensure a fair playing ground for all of your students. SafeAssign is integrated with the Blackboard Learning System products, enabling you to prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers right within your existing teaching and learning environment. SafeAssign can also further deter plagiarism by helping to create opportunities to educate students on proper attribution and citations and help them to effectively take advantage of the wealth of information out there.

This course is being offered as a face-to-face instruction on Monday, February 9th from 4:00-5:00pm. To register for this course at the CTC Lab in the lower level of the Walsh Library, please click HERE.

To register for the WebEx Session on February 10th from 10-11am, please click HERE.