February 5, 2007
Upcoming events: Podcast Academy V, Gaming for Learning workshop
Service or program spotlight: Visualization Exploration Grants, Instructional Technology Showcase, Elluminate Live!
Teaching resource of the month: Libraries' Course Planning Guide website
New and cool: Interactive data visualization websites
Project profile: Duke Scrobbler - Social software for sharing music interests
Upcoming events
Podcast Academy V (conference)
http://www.isis.duke.edu/events/podcastacademy/
February 14-15, 2007
Free for Duke affiliates
This conference will highlight academic applications of podcasting, targeting both beginners and experts in the field. We'll focus on both pedagogical and technical considerations, and provide hands-on training as well as best-practice and student showcases. If you're interested in academic podcasting, you should register for Podcast Academy V.
Gaming for learning: Using commercial games in education (workshop)
http://cit.duke.edu/events/explore.do#395
February 8, 2007
10:30 am-12 pm
Register by Tuesday 2/6/2007.
This session, a joint effort of ISIS and CIT, will examine three commercial games available for desktop computers and game consoles, considering ways that each could be used as a basis for class activities. There will also be opportunity to discuss other ways that faculty are using commercial games for classes.
Service or program spotlight
Visualization Exploration grants
http://cit.duke.edu/help/funding/visual_explore_grant.do
Deadline: Friday March 9, 2007
CIT is seeking proposals from faculty wishing to explore visualization, including use of the Duke Immersive Virtual Environment (DiVE), in teaching and learning. Visit the URL above for more information about the grant, or visit CIT's "Ideas for Technology Use" page for links to three pages of ideas about visualization (http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/best_practices.do). We encourage potential applicants or other interested faculty to contact CIT for more information and a consultation, by emailing cit@duke.edu.
Instructional Technology Showcase, now accepting poster proposals
http://cit.duke.edu/events/proposal.do
Thursday April 26, 2007
CIT presents its 7th annual Instructional Technology Showcase in April, and is currently seeking proposals for presenters at the Showcase poster session. If you have used technology in your teaching recently, please consider presenting a poster (CIT will make the poster for you!).
Elluminate Live! pilot
Duke University has licensed Elluminate Live! to provide feature-rich and cross platform Web conferencing for Duke faculty, staff, and students. To learn more about the Elluminate product, visit http://www.elluminate.com/support/training/. To learn more about Elluminate at Duke, visit http://www.oit.duke.edu/dms/web_conferencing.html or contact Ben Rogers in OIT (ben.rogers@duke.edu) to request an account.
Teaching resource of the month
Libraries' Course Planning Guide website
http://library.duke.edu/faculty
When you are planning and teaching a course, the Library and CIT can help. Visit the new Course Planning Guide website for information on using online readings, multimedia assignments, helping students improve their research skills, and more.
New and cool
Interactive data visualization websites
http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/vis_datavis.do
Recently there have been a growing number of websites that use interactive visualization techniques which allow users to explore textual, numeric or spatial data in new ways. A couple of examples are:
- Tag cloud of US presidential speeches: http://chir.ag/phernalia/preztags/.
- Visualizing relationships between population, GDP, life expectancies, etc in either a map or graph form: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/.
Members of the CIT staff are exploring how some of these sites might be used in the classroom and have created an "Ideas" page about Interactive Data Visualization at http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/vis_datavis.do.
Project profile
Duke Scrobbler: Social software for sharing music interests
http://www.cs.duke.edu/csed/socialnet/scrobbler/
Assistant Professor of the Practice Jeff Forbes (Computer Science) has recently developed a Duke version of the social software "AudioScrobbler," called Duke Scrobbler. Duke Scrobbler allows students to share their listening habits and discover "musical neighbors" (those with similar musical tastes). Professor Forbes uses Duke Scrobbler in his course this fall, and welcomes other faculty interested in trying out the software (email him at forbes@cs.duke.edu for more information).
