Faculty Development News This Week:

Faculty Development at Inver Hills


--TLTR SHOWCASE: Tuesday, 20 April, 11:30-2:30, Hertiage Hall 203


The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) Showcase, sponsored by the campus TLTR Committee, will feature faculty and staff demonstrations of learning technology applications and projects. The event is an excellent opportunity to see effective integration of technology and the curriculum at Inver Hills. All faculty, staff and students welcome.

Topics planned :


e-Folio, D2L, Digital Photography online course and skills, Blogs, Streaming media,
Graphing data activities, Scientific data collection, GIS, Map making, Screen capture
videos using Camtasia, Media equipment available, Macromedia Breeze, Using Word Macros, Library databases and breadth of use, Electronic course packs of database articles, PowerPoint as a mind tool, Business Plan Pro, and off-campus access options.


The first fifty people who attend will receive a free deli box lunch.


The committee welcomes your participation in the showcase as well as your suggestions. For further information, contact Mark Peterson or James Deacon. You can also send your ideas to TLTR.

E-Learning


--Strategies for Designing Online Courses to Engage Student Learning


This article is from the University of Hawaii, Manoa.


Strategies for Designing Online Courses


--The Theory and Practice of Online Learning


This book is available online, and you can download the entire book for free.


The Theory and Practice of Online Learning


This is a 454-page PDF file.


--"Logging on for a Degree"


This article is on community colleges offering online associate degrees.


"Logging On for a Degree


--"Implementing Activity-Based E-Learning Learning"


This article is addresses how E-learning and active learning complement and enrich each other.


Implementing Activity-Based E-Learning


--"Community in Online Classes


This article discusses ways to nurture an online community.


"Community in Online Classes"

Game Research


--Web Site: Game Research


"Game Research, a Danish site translated into English, "attempts to bring together knowledge on computer games from the areas of art, business, and science."


Free newsletter available.


--Game Culture


This site is devoted to academic gaming.


Game Culture


--"Up, Up, Down, Down"


Question:


What does Up, Up, Down, Down, Left-Right, Left-Right, BA Start signify?




My thirteen year old son, Elliot, translated this gaming mantra for me: It is the cheat code for Contra and other games for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.


Read more about the place of gaming in American culture today.


Game Research


--"The Muse of the Video Game"


This article from the International Game Developers association) considers the place of the humanities in video games.


"The Muse of the Video Game


Gaming references acquired from HeadSpace J, a blog on technology and education.

Learning Technology


--CCCC 2004 Wiki Proposal


Read the Welcome page:


"Hi! Welcome! Teaching Wiki aspires to be a community for college-level faculty. We imagine our primary audience to be faculty who are interested in writing instruction, perhaps technorhetorians but (as we invoke the wiki way here), we invite all college faculty and instructors to be wikiteachers with us."


CCCC 2004 Wiki Proposal


--Virtual Games for Real Learning: Fast, Cheap, Effective"


"This paper documents our observations and experiences in the use of a games-based methodology using email. It provides background information, a brief description of three of our current collection of 15 games, player reactions and additional findings based on participant responses. It provides an overview of the issues to consider when designing and facilitating email games."


Virtual Games for Real Learning


Recommended.


--Newsgaming.com


Newsgaming is "a word ...coined for describing a genre that is currently emerging: videogames based on news events. Traditionally, videogames have focused on fantasy rather than reality, but we believe that they can be a great tool for better understanding our world. Since newsgaming is so new, it has to find a voice of its own. Therefore, most of our games will be in part experimental."


The game currently posted is titled Madrid.


Go ahead, play!


Newsgaming.com


This article is from Educational Technology & Society 5 (1) 2002, ISSN 1436-4522.


--"Integrating Learning Technology into Classrooms: The Importance of Teachers' Perceptions"


This article considers instructors' perceptions on E-learning.


"Integrating Technology...."


--"Learning Objects and Study Skills"


"Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) as a technology are simultaneously new and yet also embody aspects of learning that are ages old. It could be argued that amongst the first RLOs were text inscriptions, on various media, used by people other that the original author to help them understand a particular aspect of human activity. The current interest in RLOs suggests that they are yet another new form of learning technology and, according to some, and have the potential to transform both the processes of learning and the institutions that are responsible for the management of learning. As ever, claims for the potential of new learning technologies to radically change the ways in which we support our learners, must be treated with caution. If we are to realize the potential of RLOs to offer new ways of supporting learners and avoid yet another cycle of unfulfilled promise, the so called Groundhog Day phenomenon (Mayes, 1995), we must give careful attention to how conceptualizese this technology and the ways in which it may affect learning processes."


"Learning Objects and Study Skills"

Pedagogy


Supporting Flexible Learning Opportunities"


This article focuses on the importance of facilitation.


"Supporting Flexible Learning Opportunities"

--E-Learning Portfolios


This paper discusses E-portfolio applications.


E-Learning Portfolios


This is a 68-page PDF file.

Blogging


--Advanced Blogger


Advanced Blogger is Chapter 6 from the book Essential Blogging: Selecting and Using Weblog Tools (O'Reilly,2002), ISBN: 0-596-00388-9.


Advanced Bloger


This is a 32-page PDF file.

Service Learning


--CommUnity of Minds


"CommUnity of Minds is a Weblog style Manila Site. The focus is on problems and (hopefully) suggestions for solutions to those problems. Its motto is: We each view reality from our own unique perspective, only a community of minds can show us the truth. So the CommUnity of Minds' site features a lot of different writers. We don't seek consensus at CommUnity of Minds. We seek perspective. For contributing editors this means if your article or essay is problem focused or perspective focused it will probably go here. Many of the writers featured here are not synergic scientists. Their words are published to give us the big picture of the whole. This site is thus more controversial."


CommUnity of Minds


--Community Problem Solving


This is a project at Harvard University.


Community Problem Solving


--Community Problem-Solving Dialogues


"Community problem-solving dialogues bring diverse groups into dialogue around mutual problems. The structured Community Think Tank documents its focused exploration of actionable options. Other dialogues found here served more to pose problems, share rival interpretations, and initiate a process of mutual inquiry among people who needed to talk."


Community Problem-Solving Dialogues


--Cool Tools for Change


This site, sponsored by theLBJ School of Public Affairs, offers free and low cost resources for online services.


Ideal for non-profit and low-budget community organizations.


Tools for Change


--Community Solutions


This is a conflict resolution service for communities and individuals.


Community Solutions


--Community Problem Solving Circles


"Circles are not a solution to all problems, but they demonstrate a fundamentally different approach, a missing piece of social technology to tap into the power and resources of unstructured or informal community capacity."


This site is offered by the Minnesota Department of Corrections


Community Problem Solving Circles


--Individual Community Problem Solving


Ideas for integrating community problem solving in college curriculae.


Individual Community Problem Solving


--Community Networking.org


"Low-cost computer networking to build and strengthen communities."


Community Networking.org


--Problem-Solving


This site is sponsored by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Ontario, Canada.


Problem Solving

Students


--"When Our Students Don't Respect Us"


This article is from The Chronicle of Higher Education,5 January 2004.


"When Our Students Don't Respect Us


--"Success Story"


This article profiles students who have gone to community colleges to take technology programs and follows them through to their employment. Although the bias is clear here for community college education vs. a four year liberal arts education, it is interesting reading.

The article is from the site Pathways to Technology,an onlresourceirce of the National Science Foundation and the American Association of Community Colleges


"Success Story.


--"Dearth of Men Felt at Colleges Across the Country"


This article is from Daily Californian, University of California, Berkeley, 19 November 2003.


Dearth of Men....


--Institute for Community Inclusion


This site is "committed to developing resources and supports for people with disabilities and their families, fostering interdependence, productivity, and inclusion in school and community settings. ICI programs carry out this mission through training and consultation, services, and research...."


Free mailing list available.


Institute for Community Inclusion

Multi-Media Applications


--DFILM Moviemaker


"In 1999, DFILM launched the MovieMaker, which let users create a short animated cartoon on a website and email it to their friends. MovieMaker was extremely viral - each person who received a movie would in turn create and send movies to 4 or 5 additional friends. As a result, the application became phenomenally popular, with over 2 million users creating movies in just the first month it was online. MovieMaker won several major web awards, was praised in places like the New York Times and Newsweek, and it was licensed to companies like Yahoo!, Sam Adams Beer, MisticTeas and the Sierra Club for use on their own sites."


Try the Beta version!


DFILM

Blog Grab Bag


--Newspapers in the Digital Age


This article is from the University of South Carolina, Annenberg, Online Journalism Review. Free subscription available to this newsletter.


What Newspapers and Their Web Sites Must Do to Survive


--The Internet and American Life


Read this report from the Pew Research Center to find out how Americans make use of the Internet and with what frequency.


This is a 16-page PDF file.


--The Risks Digest


This is a moderated forum on the risks to the public in computers and related systems.


The Risks Digest


--MoveOn.org


"MoveOn is working to bring ordinary people back into politics. With a system that today revolves around big money and big media, most citizens are left out. When it becomes clear that our "representatives" don't represent the public, the foundations of democracy are in peril. MoveOn is a catalyst for a new kind of grassroots involvement, supporting busy but concerned citizens in finding their political voice. Our nationwide network of more than 1,700,000 online activists is one of the most effective and responsive outlets for democratic participation available today. "


MoveOn.org


--"Compensation Models in Distance Education: National Survey Questionnaire Revisited"


This article considers compensation issues in distance education.


Compensation Models


--"Women's Studies, Student Learning, and Technology"


This article explores how online technology can complement feminist pedagogy.


"Women's Studies...."


--Ogg Vorbis


What on earth is Ogg Vorbis?


Ogg Vorbis is a "completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source."


Ogg Vorbis


Ogg Vorbis Logo

Until next week!


Blog editor

Image sources: (1) "Bird in Tree" : http://www.riniart.org/mainframe.php?s=4; (2) Ogg Vorbis logo: http://www.vorbis.com/