Pam's Instructional Technology Blog

Adobe Connect -- referred to as UMConnect at the U of M (formerly Macromedia Breeze) -- is a web conferencing and data collaboration tool. It provides you with a virtual meeting/classroom environment for sharing your presentations, images, and desktop applications with remote participants. You can also take advantage of features like a digital whiteboard, text chat, polling, and audio/video broadcasting. To attend your web meeting, your students need only a Web browser with the Flash plugin (almost all computers have this already) and a broadband Internet connection.

Here's a link to an informative and idea-generating video that was created at Purdue University. Faculty describe their use of Adobe Connect.
http://streamer.ics.purdue.edu/koshea/adobe_connect.wmv

If you'd like to get started with UMConnect, please visit:
http://umconnect-support.umn.edu/

Posted by Pam Gades at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

By relying on the familiar ways students use communication tools on their own time, with their friends, faculty can engage students in the classroom. " Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in meaningful ways that help them learn." (Educause Learning Initiative, August 2008, "Collaboration Tools").

Posted by Pam Gades at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new myUMM Faculty Technology Selector allows University of Minnesota teaching faculty to easily provide web links and class messages for their students. The links and messages will appear to students when they are viewing their myCourses tab in the myUMM portal. Below is a link to a simple instruction sheet for using the tool, and a link to a document containing screenshots of the tool.

Faculty Technology Selector Guide
Screen Shots

Posted by Pam Gades at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are two ways to submit student work to the SafeAssign service. The SafeAssign Assignment tool allows students to submit work themselves. The SafeAssign Direct Submit tool allows instructors to submit papers for evaluation on a case-by-case basis, without student involvement.

Student work submitted to SafeAssign tools are checked against databases that include:
* A comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet
* A store of more than 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from the 1990s to the present, updated weekly
* Archives containing all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions (e.g. the University of Minnesota)
* The Global Reference Database which contains papers volunteered by students from client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

After student work is checked, both tools produce a report that shows matching sequences of words in the submitted assignment, any matching sources, and the percentage of matching words in the report.

See the U of M's website for SafeAssign: http://webvista.umn.edu/instructors/tools/safeassign.shtml
or view the
SafeAssign Online Orientation

Posted by Pam Gades at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you thought about how wikis can be used to enhance learning? Stewart Mader has staked his career on the power of wikis. Mader first worked on wiki adoption in the IT department at Brown University and now is with his own company as a consultant. He says that in higher ed, there are really three ways he thinks a wiki can be useful: teaching, research, and administration.

Read more of the Campus Technology article at:

http://campustechnology.com/articles/66505/

Check out the University of Minnesota's supported wiki tool, UMWiki, at http://wiki.umn.edu

Posted by Pam Gades at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Synchronous Collaboration Tools are revolutionizing traditional faculty office hours and allowing students to redefine teamwork in virtual space.

Chat room tools, such as those included in Moodle or WebVista, work amazingly well for online office hours and students meeting online to collaborate on a class project. More advanced tools, such as the U's (Adobe) UMConnect (formerly Macromedia Breeze) include additional features -- such as screen sharing and whiteboards. Students can work together online, at any time of the day or night in these virtual spaces. Faculty are seeing much-improved results in student projects because their students are enjoying the convenience of being able to connect with their fellow classmates online at just about any time. For more information, please see, "Taking the 'A' Out of Asynchronous" in the July 2008 issue of Campus Technology http://campustechnology.com/articles/64817/

Posted by Pam Gades at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Texas State University - San Marcos holds an annual two-week workshop for faculty. The faculty participants receive a $1,200 stipend. Across the country, a growing number of colleges and universities are offering similar programs and stipends designed to incent educators to embrace technology. The thinking behind most of these programs is simple: By offering educators an immediate motivation to embrace technology, colleges and universities hope to ensure that faculty will implement the latest and greatest technologies, and innovate with them, to bring new levels of learning to their students.

Continue reading "Two-Week Technology Integration Workshop" »

Posted by Pam Gades at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class

This Chronicle of Higher Education article discusses the pros and cons of allowing students to use their laptops during class. Some say the students have even approved the improvement in class discussions once the laptops were banned. Others say that sometimes the discussion is enhanced by what the students have access to on their laptops. What do you think?

Posted by Pam Gades at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An announcement will be coming out soon from the U of M regarding U-wide licensing for SafeAssign -- an anti-plagiarism tool that is now included in the course management system, Blackboard/Vista.

See information about SafeAssign

Posted by Pam Gades at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Want to give your students a little bit further information about a concept? Maybe something you would like to tell them to help clarify a certain point? Some faculty are creating short video clips from their own office computer. Students are finding the videos helpful and tend to tune in to view them more than they tend to watch full captured lectures.

Find out more about this idea by reading the Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Film School: To Spice Up Course Work, Professors Make Their Own Videos."

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i34/34a01301.htm

Posted by Pam Gades at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College, in Claremont, CA, taught an entire semester's class on YouTube. This piece consolidates lengthier blog entries about a course she ran on YouTube, called “Learning from YouTube,�? in Fall 2007. The whole goal was to better understand this new media/cultural phenomenon, and how it can be used in the classroom. How did she set up this class? And what did she learn? Find out at:
http://www.oculture.com/2008/04/teaching_on_youtube.html

Posted by Pam Gades at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new kind of eReader -- Amazon's Kindle -- is here. But is higher education ready for it? Kindle is a portable eReader that wirelessly downloads books, blogs, magazines, and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution display. There is a waiting list of several months. Cost is $399 at Amazon.com.

When we talk about emerging technologies in higher ed, electronic textbooks has been a topic of discussion for a few years now. With the Kindle, a suite of interactive features makes this a tool beyond a simple book reader. Features include the ability to add notes, highlight text, and search, which makes the device ideal for college students. Rich media -- audio, video, animations, and 3D simulations -- are also possible on the Kindle.

Another huge advantage to students (and the rest of us), is that we don't have to haul around a backpack full of heavy textbooks! The Kindle weighs 10.3 ounces. Publishers will sell eBooks for far less than they would sell printed books, either used or new.

Excerpt from Campus Technology, April 2008 issue.

Posted by Pam Gades at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Clickers: Spring 2008 Update for TurningPoint Student Response Systems

TurningPoint Student Response Systems (SRS) are small handheld devices coupled with receiving hardware and presentation software. The system allows an instructor to present questions, usually via a computer projector, and collect student answers immediately during the lecture.

WebVista Powerlink is Live!

At long last the powerlink has been added to allow us to integrate clickers into WebVista. In addition to being an alternative way to get your students' clicker IDs into a class list on your laptop, WebVista will allow you to upload session files and give more immediate feedback to your students.

Version Confusion Prevention

* Be aware that the version of Microsoft Office you are using dictates which version of TurningPoint you will use and which receiver.
* If you use Office 2003, then you need TurningPoint 2006 (with 2008 drivers).
* If you use Office 2007, then you need TurningPoint 2008 and you also need a receiver with an updated license.
* If you are comfortable using the version of TurningPoint you have already used in previous semesters, then there is no reason to update.
* Please don't hesitate to contact me (x6376) if you need help sorting this out.

Posted by Pam Gades at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been practicing with the Wimba Voice Tools plug-in for WebVista. Some of our foreign language faculty have begun using these voice tools, and I wanted to become more familiar with them myself. In my previous blog entry, I introduced Jing. I've used Jing to create a video to demonstrate how easy it is to add a Wimba Voice Discussion Board to a WebVista course.

Here is the URL to that demonstration video:

http://screencast.com/t/b7ZY9l0h9LS

Posted by Pam Gades at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you tried Jing yet? Here's a link to my first try using Jing. This is a video of my screen as I am showing someone how to do the one-time setup for NetFiles.

http://screencast.com/t/LMyXAbCUZ

Then I used Jing to do a screen capture of the dirtools or myaccount page, using the Jing tools to highlight areas of the page, the arrow to point to the specific link on the page that the user must click on to set up NetFiles. Here is the result:
http://screencast.com/t/W8wVj7GBAdh

Posted by Pam Gades at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)