February 1, 2008
Upcoming events: February workshops
Service or program spotlight: CIT grants program deadline extended to Wednesday February 6, 2008
Teaching resource of the month: Teaching and Learning Commons from the Carnegie Foundation
New and cool: Get local with EveryBlock
Project profile: Microcomputing in Musicology
Upcoming events
CIT sessions in February
Get the scoop: New technology tools for teaching
Wed, Feb 6, 2008 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
OR Thu, Feb 7, 2008 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Introduction to Wimba: Fast, easy and built-in audio recording in Blackboard
Tue, Feb 12, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
OR Wed, Feb 20, 2008 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
OR Thu, Feb 28, 2008 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Blackboard Advisory Group meeting
Thu, Feb 21, 2008 3:00 - 4:00 PM
Lecture busters: Keeping students engaged
Tue, Feb 26, 2008 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Electronically submitted dissertations
Thu, Feb 28, 2008 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Is there a workshop topic you would like, but don't see? We can custom design any session for you - just ask us! cit@duke.edu.
--> Also, we're looking for departments to host a Blackboard Advisory Group meeting, to share their Blackboard "likes and dislikes." Email cit@duke.edu if you are interested in the group visiting your department.
Service or program spotlight
CIT's Spring 2008 faculty grants application call for proposals extended to Wednesday February 6, 2008http://cit.duke.edu/help/grants
Strategic Initiative Grants support instructional innovations with technology, tied to Duke's strategic plan "Making a Difference" (http://stratplan.duke.edu/plan.html). In particular, Chapter 4 of the plan "Academic Goals and Strategies to Build Distinction" focuses on academic and instructionally-related goals which CIT would like to support, such as interdisciplinarity, student engagement in real-world issues, providing engaging and challenging learning experiences for students, transforming the arts, supporting our graduate students, and innovation in creation and delivery of scholarly resources. Information about the grant and examples of potential projects are linked above.
Initial brief application due date: February 6, 2008.
Blackboard Great Ideas Mini-grant seeks submissions of Bb uses which work well from any discipline, in order to create examples and models for other Duke faculty. If you use one or more Blackboard tools in a way which works for you and your course, your colleagues would like to know!
Due date: February 6, 2008.
Teaching resource of the month
Teaching and Learning Commons, from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
http://commons.carnegiefoundation.org/
The Teaching and Learning Commons is an online intellectual community space provided to encourage exchange of knowledge about teaching and learning. Participants can create descriptions and explanations of effective teaching practice, share these with the community, and build on the work of other community members. Members contribute their ideas to the Commons through the "KEEP Toolkit," a set of web-based tools that helps participants document and share their knowledge and experience. The case studies thus created, which are accessed through the online "Gallery of Teaching and Learning," provide examples of effective teaching practice from varied disciplines.
New and cool
Get local with EveryBlock
http://www.everyblock.com/
EveryBlock is a new website that aims to collate localized information for major cities and urban areas. The site, which now includes information on New York, San Francisco, and Chicago brings together publicly available mapped information, such as Flickr photo feeds and restaurant inspections, with local news and other information from providers such as CraigsList entries.
Mapping is a larger trend on the Internet, with services such as Google Maps proving to be extremely popular among users. EveryBlock, as it expands listings for other cities, could prove to be a useful resource for visualizing a wide range of information about cities for discussions and class activities.
Project profile
Microcomputing in Musicology
http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/projects/2007/11/02/micro-computing-for-musicology/
In Brenda Neece’s course on Musicology, a requirement of all incoming PhD candidates in the Music Department, Neece and her students experimented with the use of small form factor Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) for field research. UMPCs - essentially small tablet PCs - gave the students access to a full Windows Vista computer in a small package. CIT supported the project with a loan of the UMPCs, in order to gain an understanding of ways that students and faculty might use this novel new portable computer.
Neece and her students completed common tasks on the UMPCs, such as web browsing and editing of Word documents, but focused primarily on using the devices for research. They accessed library electronic resources via wireless, made notes with the stylus input-based Windows Journal, created and edited short musical examples with the stylus using Sibelius music notation software, and took quick images of sheet music or instruments for reference with the built-in camera.
Despite some technical problems due to the emerging nature of the UMPC platform, the overall reaction of the participants was positive. “It is fantastic to have the power of a full computer in one’s pocket,” Neece said at the end of the project. “This is exactly what I would have loved to have had when I did all of my fieldwork and library research for my doctorate.”
Other faculty interested in borrowing the UMPCs for short-term experimentation should email cit@duke.edu.
