June 2, 2008
Upcoming events: CIT June workshops and meetings, and Elon University's Innovation in Instruction Conference
Service or program spotlight: Last call for Jump Start Grants this academic year
Teaching resource of the month: 50 tips and tricks to create a learning space in Second Life
New and cool: Jing screen capture and sharing
Project profile: Learning science with team-based learning and a tablet PC
Blackboard tip of the month: Fast, easy and built-in audio recording in Blackboard
Upcoming events
CIT June sessions
Digital Media Writing as Academic Authorship
Wed, Jun 4, 2008 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Google Earth
Thu, Jun 5, 2008 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Blackboard Advisory Group Meeting
Tue, Jun 17, 2008 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Elon University's Innovation in Instruction Conference, Aug. 21, 2008
http://idd.elon.edu/catl/conference/index.html
Kansas State University cultural anthropologist and "media ecologist" Michael Wesch will keynote this year's conference, which will explore the role of higher education in the 21st Century. Our students come to us from vastly different peoples, cultures, and perspectives. They leave us to face ever changing challenges and the opportunities of a new global age. As twenty-first century educators, we must not only help our students to read, write and calculate, but set their skills into larger frameworks of teaching and learning. Within the widening horizons of the "real world," our work must be engaging, interactive, contextual. We must learn to think globally, while we teach locally.
Service or program spotlight
Last call for Jump Start Grants this academic year
http://cit.duke.edu/help/grants/jumpstart.html
Teaching resource of the month
50 tips and tricks to create a learning space in Second Life
http://www.collegedegrees.com/blog/2008/05/27/50-tips-and-tricks-to-create-a-learning-space-in-second-life/
This site describes the educational possibilities of Second Life for reaching out beyond traditional classrooms and school districts, connecting with people around the world, having interactive discussions, practicing real-world skills and keeping students engaged in a technologically-driven society. The list offers examples of educational uses of Second Life in a variety of subject areas. You also can find tips and tools for getting started and then making the most of using Second Life. For those who do not want to do development work, there are examples of already-created spaces useful in teaching.
New and cool
Jing screen capture and sharing
http://www.jingproject.com/
Jing is an always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video from your computer to share anywhere. You can make recordings (screencasts) of anything on your computer screen (PowerPoint, how-tos for using software, explanations of data or text, tours of websites). Your video is hosted by the Jing service, and you are provided with a URL to email, use in a chat or blog, or post to Blackboard. You can also save your video as a Flash file your own computer. Jing is from TechSmith (the makers of Camtasia) and is available for Mac and Windows machines. Please note that Jing is available on an experimental basis, and that the product may change, based on user feedback.
Project profile
Learning science with team-based learning and a tablet PC
http://cit.duke.edu/ideas/projects/2008/05/30/tbltabletpc/
Alyssa Perz-Edwards (Biology) teaches cell biology in a six-week summer academic enrichment program at Duke. Students use class time to concentrate on critical thinking and problem solving skills, while learning relevant facts and terminology outside of class. Alyssa uses team based learning (http://www.ou.edu/pii/teamlearning/) to motivate students to learn outside of class, and uses her tablet PC for just in time teaching.
Blackboard tip of the month
Fast, easy and built-in audio recording in Blackboard
http://cit.duke.edu/tools/digital_media/wimba.html
Wimba Voice Tools provide toolbars (called "applets") that can be embedded in a Blackboard page to offer seven different ways of including live voice recording in the page, most notably as a small recording toolbar to allow one to record short audio clips that can be immediately saved and played back.
To explore and discover additional Blackboard features, see the Blackboard support website at http://blackboard.duke.edu/. If you need a tutorial for the Wimba Voice Tools and Blackboard, request an office visit (http://blackboard.duke.edu/forms/officevisit_begin.do) and we will come to you.
