June 2009 Archives

A couple of years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a couple of national academic conferences. I was totally fascinated at how the keynote speakers were able to hold the attention of the audience and vowed to become a dynamic presenter to establish some type of professional identity for myself. Well, as life would have it, priorities change however my interest has still been there, just lying dormant. I tell you this story because in doing research for the Summer Technology Series day, Standing out in a Crowd, Wednesday July 15, I discovered that great presenters always start with a story. In fact, presenting is about having a story to tell that matters.

Picasso once said that "computers are useless for they can only give answers". In today's world, Google can give us most of the routine information we need. I would argue that what we really want from people who stand in front of us and give a talk is what data and information alone cannot; meaning. What I learned is that there are some tricks to doing this well.

If any of this peaked your interest, come on July 15. Consider leaving your old ideas at the door; you will want to enter with an open mind. I promise your presentations will never be the same; I know mine will forever be changed as a result of preparing for the day. Topics for the day include Effective Presentations, Graphic Design Basics for Presentations and Posters and PowerPoint Tips. Take a risk .... learn how to stand out in a crowd.

As we build more and more online courses, a common tool to facilitate dialogue between faculty/student and student/student is the Discussion Forum. The important thing to remember when developing any online course is that the method of achieving a goal will be different from what faculty are used to but it is by no means any less effective. As long as students are able to achieve the stated goals and objectives of the course, it doesn't matter how they get there. Below are three essential items to consider when developing a discussion forum for an online course.

Discussion forums are great sources of interaction for select groups or full class discussions. They can be used for debates, peer review of documents, collaboration, and general discussions based on course readings or current events. First, for students to be engaged and the discussion to flourish, the discussion question should stimulate thought rather than the regurgitation of content. For example,

Now that the Microsoft Outlook email migration project is coming to an end for all of our personal email accounts, I wanted to remind everyone of what they should be doing now that their Lotus Notes account no longer receives email.

Over the years, we've all accumulated lots of email and I'm betting that a lot of it we just don't need to hold onto anymore. So, over the next several months you should go into Lotus Notes periodically and pare away any documents that you really don't need. Try to whittle this account down as much as you can so that when the time comes to transfer the data to your MS Outlook account, it does not take up a lot of time and space in your new email account.

I know there are items you need to hold onto, and I certainly wouldn't want you to delete those. Concentrate on deleting the items that are really not relevant anymore. Lotus Notes will be around for a while yet, but if you start deleting things now, you'll be surprised just how many items you actually can get rid of and that will make the final transfer of data a lot smoother.

Do you want to try Twitter but are not sure how to find people to follow? Take a look at the latest Common Craft video which explains the #hashtag concept and demonstrates how to search for people, topics, and organizations.

On Tuesday, June 16th the Digital Media Services team conducted a hands-on session entitled: SHU Tube & iTunes U for the TLT Center's annual Summer Series. Practical applications were provided for incorporating video in the college classroom. SHU faculty have an awesome opportunity to take advantage of iTunes U, Seton Hall's personal space on Apple's iTunes. Faculty can request to have a course added and use iTunes U to manage all of their educational video and visual clips. For more inforamtion contact Michael Soupios, Associate Director of the Digital Media Services team at soupiomi@shu.edu or visit: http://tltc.shu.edu/itunesu/.

The use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook are quickly changing how we interact with our local community and the larger world.

Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

It's time to gear up for the highly anticipated release of Blackboard 9 this July! Take advantage of these newly created courses that will highlight the major changes taking place in Blackboard 9. This summer the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center will be offering courses to soothe the transition to the newly updated interface by holding a series of courses centered on technology in teaching and learning through the use of Blackboard. The series of classes will be offered on Mondays and Thursdays throughout the month of June. To register today go to http://tltc.shu.edu/projects/bbtraining!
We hope to see you there.

Each day there are many, many resources made available for free on the Internet that can be a wonderful resource for students and faculty studying or teaching in specific fields. Below are just two such resources that contain a wealth of information that would be of particular interest to those in the History, Art, and Medical/Health Science fields.

The first resource comes from Emory University's Woodruff Health Sciences Center. The center now has about 50 health education videos available on You Tube at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=3D62BAE25BAAC108. Topics range from the Genetics of Autism to Acupuncture to Shoulder Surgery. The video below discusses a device designed to detect early stages of Alzheimer's Disease and is one example of the types of videos available.

The second resource is http://smarthistory.org, which is a website featuring art history multimedia resources that can supplement or replace art history textbooks. The site includes images, video, podcasts, and text to deliver content in an engaging way. This excellent website recently won the "Webby Award" for Best Education Website. Webby Awards are granted to exceptional websites by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.

Take advantage of the excellent educational resources available at just the click of a mouse!

Twitter is a free service for individuals to communicate via short (140 character) messages answering the question "What are you doing" or "What are you thinking"

Twitter is unique in that it is designed to be used from a number of different devices including Laptop PC's, Smartphone's (either via stand-alone applications or the web browser), and traditional cell phones via text messaging.

What are some potential educational uses of this technology?
At UT Dallas, Dr. Rankin, professor of History, wanted to increase student involvement in class discussion in her U.S. History course with an enrollment of 90. Below is an overview of the project:

Dr. Rankin has also written a summary of the project, available at: http://www.utdallas.edu/~mar046000/usweb/twitterconclusions.htm

How to get started:

1. Visit http://twitter.com and sign up for a free account


2. Use the Find People search feature to look for colleagues or groups that you are interested in


3. Read how the people you are following are answering the question "What are you doing" or "What are you thinking"

If you are interested in learning more about Twitter and how it might be incorporated into your classes, please contact your Instructional Design Liaison.

A couple weeks ago I visited an evening graduate class Rosemary Skeele was teaching in the College of Education in Instructional Design. One of the assignments for this course was to find a Learning Style Inventory that was applicable for a particular group of students. Suddenly, it occurred to me that in higher education I have rarely seen student learning style inventories used by faculty or even in our own Teaching Learning and Technology Center.

Learning Style Inventories are often associated with the development of learning strategies for students having academic difficulties in the K-12 venue through the IEP process however I was struck by how powerful they could be in assisting us in designing instruction in higher education. Traditionally academic courses in most disciplines focus on reading and writing assignments and assessments. I wondered that night if we gave a learning style inventory to our undergraduate/graduate students we would find that this is the preferred preference for taking in and "putting out" of information in a learning context. I would venture to say we would be very surprised. If all the assignments in a course are text based as I have often observed, then what happens to those students with other preferences (i.e. visual or kinetic)? Are we really providing all students the opportunity to learn the material or show us they have indeed achieved the objectives we have laid out for them?

If you are interested in exploring learning style inventories in more detail, just Google "Adult" + "Learning Style Inventory". There are a number of different tools out there. Don't be surprised if one day if I ask you to fill out a "Learning Style Inventory" some day in an effort to know my "students" better! :-)

The latest version of DyKnow, v5.2, is currently available for download!

http://www.dyknow.com/download/

One of the most exciting new feature is the ability to export audio that was recorded during a DyKnow session!

Audio Export - Export captured Windows Media files to mobile devices for true anytime-anywhere learning.

For additional information regarding DyKnow, please see previous ePirate blog entries and the DyKnow website.

If you are interested in learning more about DyKnow and how it might be incorporated into your classes, please contact your Instructional Design Liaison.