To MOOC or not to MOOC
January 29, 2013
Interesting, albeit typical, perspective about the impact of MOOCs in the liberal arts:
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/alma-mater/mooc-or-not-mooc
Poignant, yet common, theme: “Of course we must reduce our costs — and MOOCs may be a part of that strategy — but we must enhance our students’ experience as we do so, not cheapen it.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/alma-mater/mooc-or-not-mooc#ixzz2JKuBiprI
Inside Higher Ed
Learning@Richmond August 2011
August 3, 2011
Inside the August issue of Learning@Richmond:
Beginning in the fall of 2011, three UR faculty will use Apple’s latest technology, the iPad2, in their classrooms. Learn more about how Dr. Ted Bunn, Dr. Jan French, and Dr. Tom Shields redesigned their courses to fully utilize the iPad2.
Teaching with Blackboard: One of the most essential aspects of getting your Blackboard course set-up is the Grade Center. Taking the time early to think through how you will collect grades and assignments from students will save you time and frustration.
Plus a word from the CTLT Director, the August CTLT Workshop Calendar, and what your CTLT liaisons have been up to this summer.
Click Here to Download this issue.
Links featured in this issue:
CTLT Liaison Blog
Dr. Matthew Trevett-Smith’s Biography
CTLT Fall 2011 Workshop Schedule
CTLT Training & Classes
Voicethread make Powerpoints more powerful!
September 11, 2009
Actually, YOU have to make your PowerPoints more powerful - technology can’t necessarily do that. Take a look at Presentation Zen for great tips, tricks and advice. However! if you’re an avid PowerPoint presenter that email’s .PPT files to students and colleagues, and you’ve never used VoiceThread, prepare for a delightful paradigm shift! VoiceThread.com is a free (and quite useful) web application that will allow you to stream your PowerPoint slides online AND integrate an interactive discussion around your presentation content. One key benefit that faculty will love is the ability to add an audio narration to each slide. This narrative could include more information such as a story, additional context, or relevant examples, etc. There’s even a ‘doodle’ tool that will allow you draw on the slide as you’re emphasizing your points!
Once these initial elements have been mastered, you’ll notice that VoiceThread also opens up a plurality of opportunities for interactive discourse and community participation from students (or the Internet at large!).
Take a look at the following VoiceThread concerning the issue of “Saving Darfur”. You’ll notice how a multi-modal conversations (or threaded voices) have taken place around these political illustrations. Commenters can posit their feedback via text and audio and video recordings. I personally prefer video comments, but you have to have a web-cam on your computer to do this. If you dont have a web-cam or microphone, you can also call a phone number to leave feedback on a VoiceThread. It will record your audio over the phone, and append it to the presentation over the web! Amazing!
For more great information about Using Voicethread for interactive discourse and dialogue, feel free to take a look at Bill Ferriter wiki on what VoiceThread is and how you can use it in your courses.
Enjoy!
–SAMPLE VOICETHREAD FOR WORKSHOP–
Learning 2008 in Review
May 9, 2008
Photo Credit - Sharyn Morrow
Learning 2008 is now officially over. Despite some minor adversity, a great time was had by all. There were lots of exciting conversations and really impressive presentations.
In case you missed something, or just want to revisit something you really liked, here are links to relevant notes, slides and resources for all the presentations I could find. If you have additional material, please leave a comment and link and I’ll add it to the mix.
Thanks to everyone who attended!
Keynote
Networked Academic Conversations and the Liberal Arts - Ruben R. Puentedura, Ph.D.
- Link to Ruben’s keynote slides - PDF
- Link to an audio file of the keynote speech - 64.3 MB MP3
- Link to Ruben’s blog
See other people’s thoughts on this presentation.
- Anna C. has a great summary of the keynote up at her blog.
- Tom W. has some notes as well but they’re more erratic.
Session One
Reflection in Digital Storytelling - Kenneth Warren and Terry Dolson
Tools to Simplify Research - Andy Morton and Laura Horne
See other people’s thoughts on this presentation.
Session Two
A Blogging Bestiary - Tom Woodward, Dr. Patricia Stohr-Hunt, Dr. Darell Walden
See other people’s thoughts on this presentation.
Introducing the Digital Scholarship Lab - Andrew Torget
Session Three
Copywrong: Web 2.0, and Collaborative Multimedia Resources - Allison Czapracki
See other people’s thoughts on this presentation.
WordPress Blogs- More Than Meets The Eye
February 21, 2008
It’s easy to think of blogs as simple online journals. That’s often the way they’re portrayed in the media. The facts, however, are quite different.
Disregard the word “blog” (which sounds silly anyway).
What this server based software allows you to do is:
- quickly and easily publish websites and updates from any computer with an Internet connection
- embed all sorts of files in your site- everything from Word docs to YouTube videos
- make all this contact sortable and searchable by your audience
- build community and allow an online conversation to occur that is controlled by you
If you’d like to see some of the ways the UR community is using Wordpress check out some of the links below.
- Dr. Darrell Walden - Accounting
- Dr. David Kitchen - Paleontology
- Dr. Patricia Stohr-Hunt - Education
If you want to view some tutorials or ask questions regarding UR’s Wordpress blogs we have a support site at http://blog.richmond.edu/wordpress
Yet another
February 13, 2008
This is a test of category Ken
