Nicholas Gessler, Information Science & Information Studies

What if you could create your own world, which followed your own rules, a world with agents whose perceptions and behaviors you designed, who lived in environments that you constructed?  What if you could put evolution to work inside that world?  How would that society change through time?  In ISIS (Information Science & Information Studies) 72, in LINK Classroom #6, and as part of the Visual Studies Initiative at Duke, we do just that.  We build highly interactive, visually compelling computer simulations that introduce participants to the philosophies and practices of the emerging “New Sciences of Complexity” and “Evolutionary Computation.”  Most students began with no previous programming and yet all of them have fashioned creative and imaginative experimental worlds relevant to the biological and social sciences, the humanities and arts.  Come see what we have done and where we’re going next.

Lucy Haagen, Program in Education

This session will provide an introduction and overview to the m-learning - that is, teaching and learning using cell phones and/or other mobile devices. Haagen will draw on examples from her experiences working first in Durham (with Duke students and Southern High School students) and then in Vietnam (with Duke students and students in Hanoi schools).

PowerPoint: Less is More

Jennifer Kim, Undergraduate Student

What makes some blogs successful and others not? Class blogging is a cool idea but often does not work. Students view it as a chore and students stop blogging when there is no response and the blog is not seen as relevant. On the other hand, there are successful and enjoyable class blogs. Jennifer will share her student perspective and talk about factors that keep students engaged, so that faculty can successfully use blogs in the classroom.

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Hugh Crumley, CIT and Graduate School

The mobile furniture in the Link classrooms allows instructors to easily reconfigure classroom spaces to facilitate different kinds of student activities. In this brief presentation, you can see a number of different arrangements and talk with other instructors about how to take advantage of this flexibility.

Susan Wynn,  Program in Education

Today’s students create, consume, and share information using an array of technologies. This is true for both university students and students in K-12 schools. Undergraduate and graduate students in the teaching licensure program explored a variety of ways to integrate technology into instruction. This session specifically focuses on storytelling through the use of digital video editing software. Users can synchronize images and sound and add special effects with iMovie. I will share the process for getting started with digital storytelling, showcase some sample stories students created, and provide some resources for those interested in further exploring this technology.

Julie Reynolds, Biology

One of the most significant challenges of working with student writers is communicating the subtleties of how their writing is perceived and understood by readers. In this presentation, I will demonstrate some of the ways in which I have tried to address this challenge. I will demonstrate our use of FlipVideos to record interviews of faculty discussing what makes an honors thesis exceptional, and I will discuss how we used these videos in class to deepen our understanding of readers’ expectations. I will also demonstrate how we used the software Voicethreads and Jing to respond to student writing, and describe how these technologies gave reviewers an efficient way to explain some of the nuances of their comments. Finally, I will present preliminary results of a study in which I examine the effectiveness of these technologies at improving students’ understanding of the feedback offered by faculty and peer reviewers.

Richard Lucic, ISIS and Computer Science

Virtual Peace: Turning Swords to Ploughshares brings together digital learning technologies and international humanitarian assistance efforts. Students and educators enter an immersive, multi-sensory game-based environment that simulates real disaster relief and conflict resolution conditions in order to learn first-hand the necessary tools for sensitive and timely crisis response.

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Cary Moskovitz, Thompson Writing Program

The Duke Writing in the Disciplines program and Office of Alumni Affairs are collaborating in this unique educational initiative. Students in participating classes get feedback on drafts of a class writing assignment from a Duke alum or employee who has professional experience relevant to their assignment. Through this project, members of the broader Duke community help our students learn to anticipate the needs and expectations of readers and to revise their writing to make it more effective for the intended audience - key communication skills for both professional and civic life. Participants have three main interactions: First, student and reader get together - in person or by web conference - to meet and to discuss the aim and scope of the student project. Second, the student e-mails a draft to the reader, who uses a Wimba voice tool to record a “think-aloud response”, reading the student paper (or parts of the paper) aloud, pausing frequently to describe their reaction to what they are reading. Third, the student revises the paper with the reader’s comments in mind, followed by a second meeting to discuss the revised draft.