For our first SPARK Community of Practice lunch of the semester Ellen Pader, Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture and regional planning, and Michael Young, graduate instructor in the English department, joined us to present on their use of the communication tools in SPARK. Professor Pader discussed how her use of the discussion tools has not…
Category: Faculty Spotlight
Faculty Spotlight: Facebook for Instruction
For our first Emerging Technology & Pie event of the semester Steve Fox, lecturer in the Journalism Department, joined us to present on his use of Facebook and Twitter in undergraduate Journalism courses. We had a good number of new faces showed up, and a wide range of ages and departments were represented in the…
Journalism Students use Twitter to Cover Debate
The Amherst Wire has an article discussing the use of micro-blogging tool Twitter by UMass Journalism students to cover the presidential debate. UMass journalism professors Steve Fox, Scott Brodeur and BJ Roche asked their students to contribute to a “#umassprez2” topic that would group all of their posts together. Posts were automatically grouped on an…
Faculty Spotlight: Having Students Podcast
Professor BJ Roche from the UMass Amherst Journalism Program shares her thoughts on the benefits of student-created podcasts as well as tips for other instructors considering having students podcast:
Video Spotlight: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Teaching Initiative
In the first of what we hope to be a series of video spotlights we look at the UMass Amherst Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Teaching Initiative. This group is making use of inking, screencasting, and wireless technology with the intent of improving instruction science classes with an emphasis on large lecture courses. Check out the…
Journaling in SPARK
For those of you that may have missed our SPARK Community of Practice gathering on the Journaling tool; our presenters have copies of their handouts and slides that you should take a look at. Journaling can be a powerful pedagogical tool and the Journal and Discussion tools in SPARK provides one way to implement journaling…
Faculty Spotlight: Wikis for group projects
After attending an Emerging Technologies workshop Psychology professor Lisa Scott decided to have her students use a wiki for a class project. Professor Scott selected PBwiki, a free wiki service that we recommend as one of the more user-friendly wikis. Her students used PBWiki to build informational Web resources about the effects of different teratogens…