July 11, 2007
Upcoming events: Fall semester instructional technology kick-off
Service or program spotlight: Duke Digital Initiative support available for Fall 2007 courses
Teaching resource of the month: Communications sites from "Nature"
New and cool: More from Google Earth
Upcoming events
Fall semester instructional technology kick-off
Keep your calendar clear on August 22 - 24, 2007 for a CIT Instructional Technology Semester Kick-Off. We are planning instructional technology workshops and demonstrations for faculty and other instructors on topics such as:
- making your lectures more engaging,
- assessing student group work,
- Google Maps in teaching,
- new features in Blackboard, and
- web conferencing with Elluminate Live!
Full schedule will be available two weeks prior to the events on the CIT events webpage, but block some time now for these sessions, which will be immediately useful in your fall teaching.
Service or program spotlight
Duke Digital Initiative support available for Fall 2007 courseshttp://cit.duke.edu/help/ddi/0708_ddi_overview.do
Duke Digital Initiative support for innovative uses of technology in undergraduate education and research will continue to be available in Fall 2007. Programs are available for instructional use of iPods; faculty exploration of Tablet PCs for classroom presentation; student creation of instructional digital video projects; and for audio and video recording and digitization of significant academic content. For questions about DDI support, or to request a consultation on these or any other uses of instructional technology, please contact us at cit@duke.edu.
Teaching resource of the month
Communications sites from "Nature"
The journal "Nature" has three sites for communicating the latest science news in an accessible yet authoritative format, useful for discussions of policy, society, politics, ethics, and the economy, as well as science. The slogan: "the news behind the science, the science behind the news."
- Nature Reports: Climate Change "...is dedicated to authoritative in-depth reporting on climate change and its wider implications for policy, society and the economy" (http://www.nature.com/climate).
- Nature Reports: Stem Cells features research, discussions, information and interviews about stem cell research (http://www.nature.com/stemcells/).
- Nature Reports: Avian Flu includes research reports, news, faqs and a timeline of outbreaks (http://www.nature.com/avianflu).
New and cool
More from Google Earth
http://www.google.com/earth/outreach/tutorials.html
If you have dabbled in Google Earth and want to know more, there are new tutorials created for nonprofits to effectively use this resource.
For example, a tutorial describes how to use TimeStamps or TimeSpans to create a fourth dimension in Google Earth, so that your viewers can explore and animate your content through time.
If you are a new user, you might want to start with these:
- Google Earth users guide http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/
- Google Earth basics http://www.gearthblog.com/basics.html
