U-TELL

The next Educational Technologists Forum (ETF) session is scheduled for December 13, 2007 from 3:00 - 4:30 p.m. in 402 Walter. We encourage you to come at 3:00 for snacks and conversation with your fellow educational technologists.

Our group session will feature a discussion about best practices in video for teaching and learning. Peter McCauley and Brad Hosack (CE+HD) and Paul Bernhardt (School of Public Health) will demonstrate some of the video projects they've developed in their colleges. Topics include using video to deliver compelling content, and the use of an annotation tool to make video more interactive.

Posted by Aimee Whiteside at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Call for Proposals:

DigitalStream 2008 

The Next Decade--Vision and Transformation

Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Cultures

10th Annual DigitalStream Conference

California State University, Monterey Bay

March 17-19, 2008

The School for World Languages and Cultures at CSU Monterey Bay is pleased to announce the Call for Proposals for the 10th Annual DigitalStream Conference on Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Culture, on the CSUMB campus, March 17-19, 2008. We hope you are able to join us for this unique forum of scheduled presentations, panel discussions, hands-on workshops and technology exhibitions where language teachers, technologists, administrators and vendors can share useful and cutting-edge information and learn from one another.

More info: http://csumb.edu/digitalstream

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Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Learning Strategies in the Digital Age*

Wednesday, November 28, 12:20–1:10 p.m.

Location: Nolte 140, U of MN

The Digital Age has changed the way we learn foreign and second languages. This presentation offers examples of the general types of changes that are shaping new learning styles and strategies in "digital natives," those born after the Internet arrived. It also presents Dr. Oxford's research on learning strategies associated with six models of web-based L2 learning. Finally, it shares suggestions for making the most of web-based L2 learning.  

Presenter: Rebecca Oxford is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Professor at the University of Maryland. Technology-enhanced language learning is among her major research areas, along with language learning strategies. She is the advisor to the Language Resource Center project on Grammar Strategies headed up by Andrew Cohen.

Co-sponsored by CARLA and the ESL Forum.

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The Office of Classroom Management has constructed two pilot project central classrooms that are designed as student-centered, integrated, flexible, active learning spaces. John Knowles of the Office of Classroom Management will give short tours of their new technology-rich "Active Learning Classrooms" on November 28 and November 29. The two central/general purpose classrooms are Electri­cal Engineering/Computer Science 2-260, which seats 45, on the East Bank and Biological Sciences Center 64, which seats 117, on the St Paul campus.

Electri­cal Engineering/Computer Science 2-260

- Wednesday, November 28, 10:00 - 11:00

Biological Sciences Center 64

- Thursday, November 29, 10:00 - 11:00

For more information on the Active Learning Classrooms:

This is an opportunity to see the future of university classrooms! Join us at one or both events. Please reply to Kellie Greaves at kellie@umn.edu if you are able to join us.

Posted by Aimee Whiteside at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another great use of a Web 2.0 tool - making podcasting more accessible to faculty members without having to teach them how to do all the "tech stuff". Another thing to add to my list of tech tools to try.

Colleges Collaborate on Software to Help Capture and Archive Recordings of Lectures - Chronicle.com

Officials at the University of California at Berkeley are leading a cooperative effort to develop free, open-source software to make it easier for professors around the world to podcast their lectures.

The university recently started the effort, called OpenCast, and officials at more than 30 colleges and other institutions have joined an e-mail list to discuss the next steps. A sketch of the OpenCast system and list of participating colleges can be found on the project's home page.

The fledgling project is far from producing any software, but participants say the discussions indicate that colleges are serious about making coursecasting more mainstream.

"We're hoping schools can jump on board and contribute to it because there's so many different models at different schools" for how to manage podcasts, said Adam Hochman, a product manager at Berkeley's Learning Systems Group.

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Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is a test to see if I can get ScribeFire to work with my blog so I can update "on the fly".

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Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 2:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wiki about using wikis in education. It would be nice if this were available under a Creative Commons license; however, you can read a couple of the chapters for free.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the TEL workshop I attended a couple weeks ago, I heard about an online course on alcohol use and college life that was developed at the U and has since been used at other universities and colleges. Here are a couple links that tell you more:

Online Course on Alcohol And College Life Valuable to Students in Two University Systems

http://dmc.umn.edu/projects/rothenberger/

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Innovations in Educational Technology
BROWN BAG LUNCH SERIES

Presents the WORLD PREMIERE of VideoANT
Video Annotation Program & Online Student Speech - Peer Review

This new web program developed by CEHD's Academic Technologies allows students & instructors to add text-based comments during a streaming video! The applications of this technology in education are limitless! Meet the developers & speak with the first instructor to ever use VideoANT in the classroom.

Nov 30 @ 12:15-1:30p.m., Appleby Hall, Room 201

Everyone is welcome! Bring your lunch! Dessert will be served (ants not included).

Presenters: Brad Hosack, Flash Media Developer, Academic Technologies, CEHD
Jill Trites, Senior Teaching Specialist, Dept of PsTL
David Ernst, Director, Academic Technologies, CEHD
Moderator: Caroline Hilk, Instructional Technology Fellow, Dept of PsTL

Sponsored by CEHD Academic Technologies & the IT Fellows program

If you have questions or would like additional information please contact Caroline Hilk by email at hilkx006@umn.edu.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now, here's a tool I want to use within our department. It is a free tool (for light users) that keeps track of where all of the people accessing your site come from and reports that information to you in a map form. It would be interesting to see if our map changes dramatically in the near future when we revise all of our websites.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the TEL Seminar yesterday (see previous post) on the new Technology-enhanced learning platform at the U. Little did I know it was MyU that they were talking about. I must admit when I first saw MyU, I wasn't too impressed, but after hearing from the TEL participants yesterday, and seeing what you can do with MyU when someone has the time to make it work, I have changed my mind.

1) Think of MyU as a portal, from where you can go anywhere you need to get any resource/information you need. In the department, there is some talk of a virtual community for each program area - we could create these through MyU. Just an idea.

2) I love what the library is proposing with the MyLibrary tab ... they can customize it to your role at the U. However, this customization falls flat when you have the status "staff". Since "staff" encompasses many different things here, they can't see your status and create a page just for you. This is a shame. Since I am an instructor in EdPA, I would love to be able to have the resources already identified for me like the customization for a faculty member in EdPA. Instead, I get the generic search and resource list. Something to think about though, and introduce to faculty and students, potentially.

More to come when I have time to think about it again. Off to a meeting.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The University of Minnesota Libraries present a special workshop series on ARTstor, a digital library of nearly 550,000 images from a range of disciplines—art, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. ARTstor includes images of sculpture, paintings, photography, drawings, decorative arts, and design and covers a range cultures and time periods. ARTstor is used worldwide by educators, scholars, and students at universities, museums, public libraries, and K-12 schools for research, presentations, and image sharing.

Students, faculty, and staff have free access to ARTstor through the University of Minnesota's site-wide license. Users can search, view, download, organize, group, and share images. Users can also upload personal visual collections to combine with ARTstor's collections.

The workshops are this week, Thursday and Friday. Click here for more details.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tuesday, November 13th, 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
402 Walter Library, UMN-East Bank

There is a powerful connection between play, learning, and comprehension. In the course of this CRDEUL forum, Brock Dubbels will make a case for the creation of learning environments that structure play and what cognitive and behavioral processes can be observed and designed into instruction to develop complex problem solving, adaptive comprehension, and how to teach for reflection and transfer through connecting games and play to more traditional notions of education, learning, and problem solving, thus making learning in school more productive and enjoyable.

Play and Interaction are the focus of video games, and games can be used as models for designing classroom instruction. In addition to this, games can be objects for study in the classroom, as tools to make film (often called machinima), to make new games, to conduct experimentation and test hypotheses, and for new communication tools and potential new markets for new products. Along with these elements for activities for classroom instruction, Mr. Dubbels will explain the practice of teaching for transfer.

Presenter: Brock Dubbels is a teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools.

No RSVP is required to attend this event.

For further information, please contact Bob Copeland, 612-625-6411, copeland@umn.edu, or visit our website, www.cehd.umn.edu/crdeul/.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new Liberal Ed requirements for the University include the theme of Technology and Society.

Here are some excerpts from the recommendations. You can find more information on the Liberal Ed website, as well as comment on the recommendations.

Advances in science and engineering produce technologies that have a profound impact on society. Informed and engaged citizens must be thoughtful rather than passive consumers of new technology. As a major research institution, the University is not merely a witness to, but is also a conspicuous participant in, the tide of technological change. Because developing innovative technologies is essential to the University‘s mission, it is crucial that students and faculty reflect upon the complex and compelling ethical issues raised by technological change and its effects on society. Society, explicitly or indirectly, defines the context in which new technologies are developed, the ways in which they are adopted and implemented, and the rules by which they are used. Undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota must prepare students to make sense of, evaluate, and respond to present and future technological changes that will shape their workplaces and their personal and public lives.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The next session of the Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) Seminar Series will be held November 7. We invite you to attend and join in the discussions in person or online via UMConnect Meeting. The schedule is below.

In preparation, check out http://dmc.umn.edu/issues.shtml. It will include links to an overview of the topic with citations to related readings and information about relevant campus resources, plus instructions about how to participate via UMConnect Meeting. After each session, we will add on this page a link to the UMConnect recording of the event. The seminars also will be podcast after each event.

The TEL Seminar Series is sponsored by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and organized by Academic and Distributed Computing Services (ADCS) and the Digital Media Center (DMC). Sessions are cosponsored by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost (SVPP) and collegiate units. All University faculty members, staff members, students, and members of the general public are invited to attend at no charge.

THE U OF M LEARNING TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM: INTEGRATING ONLINE TOOLS TO SUPPORT HYBRID EDUCATION
Wednesday, November 7, 2007, 12:00-1:30 p.m.
155 Peters Hall, St. Paul

The University of Minnesota is developing an integrated "learning technology platform" to provide personalized access to a suite of online teaching and learning tools. Panelists will discuss how this new approach better supports academic collaboration, research, instructional content development, and learner assessment.

Moderator: Billie Wahlstrom, Distributed Education & Instructional Technology, SVPP, TC
Panelists: Janet Shanedling, Education, AHC, TC * Shane Nackerud, University Libraries, TC * Heather Aagesen-Huebner, Distributed Education & Instructional Technology, SVPP, TC * John Butler, University Libraries, TC * Tayne DeNeui, Epidemiology & Community Health, SPH, AHC, TC * Vicki Field, Graduate School, TC

I'll be there ... it will be interesting to see what is up-and-coming and to brainstorm how it might help in my current position.

Posted by Amy Garrett Dikkers at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)