Around the office we’ve been thinking about the future. We have a new boss, some of us will be relocating to the Library in the next year, the UMass Amherst IT strategic planning process is going full tilt, and the New Media Consortium has just released their 2015 Horizon Report. At our most recent staff…
Beloit has published their Class of 2018 “Mindset List” to help inform instructors about the cultural references that will (or will not) make sense to the incoming class of students. While this list can be amusing, and may offer some useful information on what obscure sitcom lines may no longer make sense to 18-year-olds, it is…
Avoid the rush! Request your 2009 SPARK course now on the revised request form in SPIRE. To request a SPARK course, log in to SPIRE. Look in the left menu under Faculty Home > SPARK Course Request. The request process has been revised since Spring 2009 and now provides several improvements in the way you…
Although YouTube’s terms of service still officially prohibit downloading. The weekly addresses and the announcements posted by Obama’s “ChangeDotGov” user on YouTube can now be downloaded. Look for a “Click to Download” link just below the Play button. (This link only appears on the YouTube page for the video, not when the video is embedded,…
Atomic Learning provides a vast collection of short video tutorials about software. These videos cover everything from Word and Photoshop to Access and SPSS; at levels from basics to advanced. The University has a site license which provides everyone on campus free access to these videos. The current license expires on May 31, 2008, so…
Library Guides (http://guides.library.umass.edu/) are Web sites created by Subject Specialist Librarians. These sites contain links and resources which help your students do research by highlighting books, databases and other resources that are most appropriate for the topic. Once a Library Guide has been created for your course, it is possible to “embed” a small, Flash-based…
To start out the semester with a bang, we are offering several events in February related to SPARK and Grading. On February 12 & 13 we are offering a “SPARK Help Clinic” from Noon-3:00 for instructors and TAs who want to drop in and get help. If you want to reserve a specific time slot,…
Nearly lost among the funny animals, back yard science experiments, and music videos in YouTube are short videos that can be useful in the classroom. In some cases these are simply captured bits of pop culture or history that can be shown in class or embedded in course Web pages. There are also well-produced, short…
This week we are offering the last of our fall workshops (or the first of our winter workshops, depending on how you look at it.). On Thursday, November 29, 1:00-2:15 pm we are offering “Overview of Teaching Technologies” and on Friday, November 30, 1:20-2:20 pm we are offering “SPARK Preview” for anyone who wants to…
Cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch and 200 students at Kansas State University created a video about students in today’s college classrooms. It is an example of “digital storytelling” with an interesting mix of low tech (words on paper, chalkboard and walls) and high tech (time-lapse footage of a Google Doc being edited by the 200 students).…
The 2007 OIT Faculty Guides are here! This week we spent a day assembling our annual mailing to faculty. Look for it to arrive in your mailbox in the next week. The packet includes an updated copy of the OIT Faculty Guide and a short newsletter about recent additions and changes to OIT’s services. These…
Once you get interested in following specific news sites or blogs (such as this one), it takes extra time and attention to remember to check in to look for new posts. RSS allows you to subscribe to the site and receive updates as soon as they are posted (which is great if you follow many…