Instructional Technology Blog - Department of Psychology

"The Rise of the Networked Individual"
Lee Rainie, Director - Pew Internet & American Life Project

April 22, 2010 4:00- 5:30 p.m.
Rapson 100, College of Design

Free Online Registration at http://z.umn.edu/leerainie
SPACE IS LIMITED * Register by April 15, 2010

OVERVIEW
Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life
Project, will discuss the latest research findings on people's use of social
media (social networking sites, blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and, yes, even
email) and how technology has affected some of the ways people learn, make
decisions, and offer social supports to others. He will highlight the ways
in which those who use participatory media are changing the ways communities
of all kinds form and perform.

SPONSORED BY:
The Institute for Advanced Study * www.ias.umn.edu

ORGANIZED BY:
The Social Networks Research Collaborative
http://www.socialnetresearch.org

WITH CO-SPONSORS:
The Institute for New Media Studies, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
http://inms.umn.edu

The Office of Information Technology
http://www.oit.umn.edu

As always, you can find me in Elliot N108. If you can't make my office hours but would still like to meet, please email me at walt0412@umn.edu to set up a time.

Tuesday: 9-11, 3-5
Wednesday: 1-2:15
Thursday: 1-4
Friday: 9-1

Wednesday: 12-2:15
Thursday: 1-5
Friday: 10-4

OIT will upgrade our UMConnect service on March 14, during spring break. The upgrade is welcome because it will offer new utility, but it is also necessary to replace out-of-warranty hardware, and to increase disk space which was reaching its limit. In addition, the new equipment is configured to be redundant for fail over and disaster recovery, making it more reliable for users.

Adding value

The upgrade offers useful new functionality including:

* Breakout rooms
* Editable recordings
* Offline, downloadable recordings

A more complete list of functions and their descriptions is available on the UMConnect Upgrade New Features page.

Changes to service

After the upgrade, there will be a few differences in service:

* Only the instructor teaching a course will be able to add enrolled students. Staff will no longer have this capability and will need to ask students to initiate their accounts (i.e., log in).
* Adobe Presenter will no longer be available for download on UMConnect, but is offered at a substantial discount as part of the Adobe Acrobat Pro package offered through UTools. Faculty and staff can still publish presentations.
* Due to limited use of the UMConnect training module, it will be available only by request.

Migration for current UMConnect users

There are a few things current UMConnect account holders should know:

* Most content can be migrated from an account holder's content folder by request. In most cases, this will preserve URLs for content used in courses or for other purposes.
* Meeting rooms, groups, and training cannot be migrated. These will have to be recreated by account holders after the upgrade.
* If an account holder has a meeting recording on the current system and would like to edit or download it after the upgrade, the recording must be moved to a content folder before migration.

Please see the UMConnect Upgrade FAQ for additional information on the upgrade.

I'll be in Elliot N108 from 1-3:15 today. Please feel free to contact me by email if you can't have questions and aren't able to drop in. I'll be posting my office hours for spring break toward the end of the week.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) invites University of
Minnesota faculty and P&A instructors to submit applications for the
2010-2011 OIT Faculty Fellowship Program. This 18-month program fosters
a multidisciplinary learning community that explores possibilities and
best practices in technology-rich learning environments, produces
scholarship in this area, generates organizational awareness, and
advances faculty leadership around these issues.

During the 10th iteration of our program we anticipate funding up to
eight participants from the University of Minnesota system with awards
of $10,000 each. The 2010-2011 program will focus on technology-rich
transformation and innovation in teaching and learning through course
(re)design as well as scholarly investigation. Across higher education
there is increasing pressure to mount thoroughgoing change in response
to myriad, sometimes contradictory, forces, including diminished
resources, changing student expectations, emerging technologies, and
evolving professional practices. In this iteration of the program,
fellows will address the question, What are the conditions that promote
or inhibit innovation and transformation in teaching and learning with
technology? The results of our efforts should help our colleagues,
colleges, and departments create conditions for positive change in the
area of teaching and learning with technology.

Applicants' projects must be of strategic importance to the department
and the college. Applications are due no later than 5:00 pm, Friday
March 5, 2010.

The program description and application materials are available through
the following links:
Program Description: http://dmc.umn.edu/fellowship/
Call for Proposals: http://dmc.umn.edu/fellowship/2010/ffp-cfp10.pdf
Application Instructions:
http://dmc.umn.edu/fellowship/2010/ffp-instructions10.pdf
Cover Sheet: http://dmc.umn.edu/fellowship/2010/ffp-cover10.docx

If you are eligible and interested, we hope that you will consider
applying for one of these fellowships. In addition, please forward this
information to others who might be interested in applying. We look
forward to reviewing the creative and transformative applications that
instructors will be submitting. In the meantime, questions about the
2010-11 Faculty Fellowship Program should be directed to Kim Wilcox,
co-coordinator, at (612) 624-3528 or wilco001@umn.edu or Lauren Marsh,
co-coordinator, at (612) 625-9348 or lauren@umn.edu.

Those of you who regularly use webvista are probably aware of the weekend maintenance downtime, but if you aren't, see the message below from the webvista site

Maintenance: 2nd and 4th Sundays, 9 a.m. to Noon

To provide the best possible performance of WebVista, the systems will be unavailable the second and fourth Sunday of every month from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. for regular maintenance.

Office hours, held in Elliot N108, are listed below. Contact me at to set up a meeting outside of the listed times.

Monday: 8-10, 1-5
Tuesday: 9-11
Wednesday: 11:15-2:15
Thursday: 9-11
Friday: 10-1

This week I will be holding office hours in Elliot N108 on the following days:

Monday: 1-5
Tuesday: 1-5
Wednesday: 11:30-2
Thursday: 1-5

To arrange an appointment outside of these times, email me at walt0412@umn.edu

An interesting opportunity for faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in learning more about Web 2.0

Educational Technology Workshop certificate program

*Educational Technology Workshop, Spring 2010*

* *

The Educational Technology Workshop (ETW) is a six-week certificate
program that explores Web 2.0 tools and pedagogies. We'll explore
methods for researching, sharing, collaborating, annotating, and
establishing social presence using blogs, wikis, reference managers,
podcasts, annotation tools, and more. A partnership between the Office
of Information Technology and the University Libraries, the ETW will
blend instructor presentations with collaborative problem solving. The
ETW is open to faculty, staff, and graduate students.

The advent of a rapidly expanding set of Web 2.0 tools challenges us to
understand each new application's potential for enhancing learning and
research. Many of these tools are designed for interactions in a group
setting, so the ETW presents us with an opportunity to explore them
together. Participants will have a chance to interact with the tools in
a group setting and discuss what opportunities and challenges each presents.

The ETW will meet each Monday morning from 9-11 a.m. over six weeks
(February 22 - April 5). Most of the work will occur during the
workshop, though participants will be encouraged to continue their
explorations between sessions.

*Goals*

* To experience a suite of centrally supported and freely available
cloud-based tools that can support teaching and learning.
* to develop a flexible method for exploring and evaluating the
utility of new technologies to enhance teaching and learning
environments and become aware of University policy issues and
support structures; and
* to master an effective process for designing technology-rich
learning activities that includes planning, engagement, and
evaluation.

Please join us this semester. Register by February 15 at
http://dmc.umn.edu/etw. Space is limited, and you must be available to
attend all sessions. All sessions will meet in room 210 Walter Library*. *

*Tentative Schedule*

2/22 *Introduction*

3/1 *Collaborating*

3/8 *Researching*

3/15 *SPRING BREAK*

3/22 *Sharing*

3/29 *Annotating*

4/5 *Establishing Social Presence*