Academic Computing has always offered a slew of workshops during June and January. This semester we are working to expand our offerings of events and workshops during the semester. Two new kinds of events we are offering are the SPARK Community of Practice lunches and the Emerging Technology and Pie series.
Google Announces New Tools, Programs
Google has been busy lately releasing tools and programs that we thought might be of use to instructors at UMass. We’ve listed three of these below, but more of Google’s new products (most are prototypes) can be found by visiting Google Labs. Google Docs (now for presentations) Google’s answer to PowerPoint has arrived. Google recently…
OIT Faculty News for Fall 2007
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…
TIP: Getting Started in SPARK
Here are some suggestions to make getting started in SPARK a little easier: If you plan to upload Word documents We strongly recommend converting any Word documents to PDF or html format prior to uploading them into SPARK. Files in PDF or html format will display in the student’s browser, while files in Word format…
TIP: Subscribe to RSS Feeds via Email
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…
On the Horizon: New Mapping Tools
When looking for a beach in a remote, street sign-free peninsula of Rhode Island, nothing beats Google Maps. Yet Google Maps can be used for much more than finding places. Google Maps (and its three-dimensional sibling, Google Earth) is configured specifically to allow users to post their own data to the maps, or to pull…
On the Horizon: Digital Storytelling
During our audio and video workshops this June we’ve seen several faculty give demonstrations of how they have their students produce short video or audio projects as assignments. In some cases, these are simple personal statements (several based their assigments on the format used in the NPR “This I Believe” Project), others had their students…
On the Horizon: New Devices in Classroom
(excerpt from Emerging Technologies Workshop : June 2007) Devices that let all students respond to questions These devices (like small television remotes) allow students to respond to questions posed by the instructor. The results are collected and tabulated by a computer and can be displayed immediately to the class or used for evaluation later. The…
Learn More: the 2007 Horizon Report
The Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium is a great place to go if you want to see what is coming up that may impact learning and teaching. The consortium looks at the technologies that are being used and talked about and selects a few for further analysis. The final short list is sorted…
Collecting Content in Collaborative Tools
(from the March 2007 Emerging Technologies and Pie Presentation) Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, and similar services, allow users to store their collections (of bookmarks, photos, videos, etc.) online. These files can be shared with individuals, groups, or the world. Each item can also be tagged with keywords supplied by the poster (or other users). This “folksonomy”…
Classroom Radio: Podcasting Course Content
(from the May 2007 Emerging Technologies and Pie Presentation) Audio Episode: Classroom Radio (1 minute) A podcast is a series of audio or video files that the audience can subscribe to in order to receive, or be notified of, new episodes as soon as they are posted. The first part of the process involves…
Syndicating and Subscribing to Course Content (RSS)
(from the April 2007 Emerging Technologies and Pie Presentation) Audio Episode: RSS (1 minute) RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”, among others) is a process that allows people who want to keep track of new content on a site to “subscribe” to the site and receive updates automatically when new information is posted. RSS also allows content…