On April 12, 2013, Academic Computing staff from UMass Amherst attended The 21st Century Classroom: Online and Blended Learning, a one-day conference sponsored by UMassOnline and the Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Chair, Jeannette E. Riley. The keynote speaker for the event was Dr. Cable Green, Director of Global Learning from Creative Commons. Dr. Green delivered…
Category: Tools & Technologies
April 2013 i>clicker Updates
As we come into the final weeks of the Spring 2013 semester, we would like to provide you with some important updates regarding i>clicker.
Google Reader to Be Retired July 1, 2013- Find a Replacement!
Do you use Google Reader? If so, it’s time to start thinking about finding a replacement. Google has announced that it will retire Google Reader (along with 70 other products and services) on July 1, 2013 due to declining usage and a need to focus company resources on innovative computing solutions.
OIT’s First Video Community of Practice
On Friday, February 15 the Office of Information Technologies (OIT) hosted the first Video Community of Practice, a planned ongoing series of events to support and encourage faculty and graduate student research projects involving video and multimedia. Moderated by award by award-winning documentary filmmaker Sarah Elder, participants showed examples of their work, which included:
So, what, exactly, is a “MOOC”?
In 2012 and 2013, so far, there has been a lot of talk about massively open online courses, which are commonly known as “MOOCs”. Almost every session that we attended at the 2013 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Annual Meeting mentioned MOOCs, and the 2013 Horizon Report predicts that MOOCs will see widespread adoption in higher…
2013 NMC- ELI Horizon Report
On February 4, the NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition was released. The Horizon Report is a joint initiative between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). Topics covered in this year’s report include:
February 15th Video Community of Practice: Peer Forum with Sarah Elder
On Friday, February 15 from 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., please join us for a discussion of video and multimedia use for research, moderated by award-winning documentary filmmaker Sarah Elder. This is the first in an ongoing series of Video Community of Practice events hosted by the Office of Information Technologies (OIT) to support and…
Spring 2013 i>clicker Updates
As the Spring 2013 semester is well underway, we would like to reminder i>clicker users about some important updates.
A Short History of SPARK at UMass Amherst
The SPARK Learning Management System (LMS) was in use for on-campus courses at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from January 2006 until January 2013.
i>clicker: Transforming Student Learning through Technology- A Presentation by Dr. Mats Selen
Watch our video of Professor Selen’s talk to see how he and his colleagues have streamlined and improved their teaching, and increased student engagement and outcomes by introducing Web-based multimedia pre-lectures, online assessments of student understanding prior to lecture, and clicker technology to assess and facilitate student understanding during lecture. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/57088418[/vimeo]
Make The “Moo-ove” to Moodle Starting April 2, 2012
Instructors can request Fall 2012 Moodle courses in SPIRE starting on April 2 2012. Requests for Fall 2012 SPARK courses will be approved under special circumstances. We recommend making the “moo-0ve” to Moodle now! Moodle will replace SPARK (Blackboard Vista) as the LMS for campus-based courses at the end ofthis calendar year. While SPARK will…
SPARK to SPIRE Grade Upload Support
The SPARK to SPIRE Grade Upload process began just after at 11:59 pm on the evening of Monday, December 12. Because grades are due Tuesday, December 27, grades will need to be posted in SPARK before 11:59 pm on Monday, December 26 in order to make the last grade transfer from SPARK to SPIRE. OIT…