Owen Astrachan (Professor, Computer Science at Duke) invited a graduate of Duke, Ge Wang, to be a guest speaker to his Technical and Social Foundations of the Internet course (CS 82). Dr. Wang, at Stanford University, used Skype to connect with the 340 students at Duke, alternating between a video of himself talking, and sharing his computer screen for his presentation.

Astrachan reported “it just worked” and was delighted with how easily he was able to share a guest speaker with his students.

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After this was posted, Heidi Madden directed me to a video showing a Duke German history class using Skype to talk to photographer Vince Cianni about his original photographs of the fall of the Berlin wall.  Join them by watching the video.

OIT’s Learn IT @ Lunch series offers Duke faculty, students and staff an opportunity to get some information on new technologies in a relaxed setting. Two upcoming session might be of particular interest to Duke faculty:

• Wiki Tricks: DukeWiki Advanced Formatting – highly recommended for those interested in using Duke’s Wiki tool to better manage research groups, projects and documentation.
• VoiceThread – this session will be led by the developers of the VoiceThread tool: Monte Evans & Andrew Synowiez

Most students have cell phones, and more than half of all US undergraduates own an internet-capable handheld device and more plan to purchase one in the next 12 months (ECAR Research Study 2009). Why not use them?

How?  Here are three ideas:

Cell phones and internet-capable phones can be used as polling devices, like clickers, to engage students during class. Poll Everywhere will supply an easy to use interface for small classes for free, or large classes for a fee.

Students could access information during class, to contribute to discussions or to inform critical thinking. How? Students could query Google or Google Scholar, access the library or librarian, use news sources, or specific applications for your topic.

Leverage student interest in texting to learn about their thinking during class, by setting up a backchannel, like Hotseat at Purdue University. A teaching assistant or other instructor can monitor the backchannel, and alert you to questions, problems, and student interest at appropriate points in the class.

Come to a discussion of using mobile devices for education, both in and out of class, on the second Tuesday of each month.

ProfHacker “delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.” Recent posts focus on topics such as not making assumptions about students’ technical skills, simple ways to enhance in-class group work, and handling Twitter spam. ProfHacker’s editors Jason B. Jones (associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University) and George H. Williams (assistant professor of English at the University of South Carolina Upstate) are joined by a cadre of faculty and student authors from a variety of institutions to provide 2 or 3 useful posts a day.

In 2009-10, Duke’s elearning Roadmap Committee is actively gathering input from Duke instructors and students about tools they use for teaching and learning. The Committee will assess the needs of the campus community to identify tools, support and infrastructure that should be centrally provided. Whether you use blogs or wikis, Blackboard or VoiceThread, Micrograde or Maple TA, Second Life or Flickr, the Committee needs your insight and ideas about what’s most important for the Duke community. What works well for the kind of courses you teach? What could be improved?  What’s missing? Learn about the Committee’s process, findings and ways to get involved and share your ideas at a new web site, http://elearning.duke.edu. At this site, you can…

• learn more about events we’re sponsoring and ways you can participate in the conversation (Get Involved), including an event for faculty coming up soon on Thursday, November 12 (register)
• stay in touch with (and comment on!) what we’re hearing from members of the campus community (Your Feedback)
• monitor our activities for the 2009-2010 academic year (Our Goal and Our Timeline)

Duke faculty  Jennifer Ahern-Dodson (Writing) and Kevin Caves (Biomedical Engineering) are featured in the article How Tiny Camcorders are Changing Education published in eLearn Magazine.

Ahern-Dodson and Caves participated in CIT’s  Instructional Technology Faculty Fellows program, to share ideas about teaching with video with other faculty.  In the article, they describe how they used Flip cameras from the Duke Digital Initiative for student projects in their courses.

Meet with other  Duke faculty and talk about ideas for using cell phones (or any small, mobile devices) in teaching, both in and outside the classroom.

At a previous meeting, participants discussed using these devices in class to engage students and foster interaction.  Owen Astrachan demonstrated how he used Poll Everywhere with his class of 344 students.  Poll Everywhere allows students to use their own devices as personal response systems, to give answers electronically in class.

Other participants discussed using applications that provide information relevant to the course, like Epocrates for accessing drug information, Labs 360 as a medical laboratory guide, or other applications for medical students.  Other examples might be using the mobile version of the Wall Street Journal in a business class,  flash cards for organic chemistry reactions, or spreadsheet applications for laboratories.

We discussed how instructors could incorporate the social networking and connectedness of applications like Smule’s Ocarina to engage students, and how Twitter could be used to build a community of students in an educational program.

Join us:

• Register for our next discussion at 10 am on October 13.
• E-mail Andrea Novicki to suggest topics.

Earlier in September, several of us met as part of the monthly DDI Twitter program brown bag lunch discussion series.  One of the overall goals of the program is to encourage a few faculty members to actively use Twitter in their courses, but another goal is to have meaningful discussions among interested faculty on academic uses of Twitter.

Julie Reynolds, in Duke’s Biology Department, was recently showcased on the Techsmith’s education blog for her innovative use of Jing, a program that captures images and video of your computer screen.

Dr. Reynolds uses Jing to comment on her students’ writing, and to have students comment on each others’ writing projects.  Dr. Reynolds pointed out that when it’s impossible to schedule face-to-face conferences, she can talk about students’ writing rather than simply to write comments in the margins.  Jing allows her to record highlighted passages for students to see while she talks about them. Her students also use Jing to comment on each others papers.

Read a fuller description on Techsmith’s blog.

See examples of Dr. Reynolds’ review and student peer review.