FITSI 2006 Session Summaries
Today's Students: BTW I'll CUL8tr. LOL.
Presenter: Don Knezek, International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
Moderator: Marshall White, Student & Academic Infrastructure Support
NEWS FLASH: Today’s students may not remember life without computers. They live in a world of text messaging, email, chat, Instant Messaging, and Google. Get us what we want, and only what we want, in the format we want, and do it now. They have been called the Millenial Generation, Generation Y, and Digital Natives.
How do we adapt to this 21st-century learner? Should we adapt to them? Should we be training them to change their learning modes – and if so, to what extent? In this session, we will examine the changing learning styles of students entering UNH in September. Then in the afternoon, we’ll follow up with a panel of faculty who will help us analyze how today’s students are impacting teaching and learning here at UNH.
Presentaion | Interesting Links | Growing Up Digital -- Article | Do We Have to Talk the Talk -- Article
GeekSpeak Suite
Presenter: Laurie Turfant, Instructional Development Center
Panel:
Dan Beller-McKenna, Music
Isabel Gray & Michael Pellecchia, Music
Every discipline has its own specialized vocabulary - and technology is no exception. In this session, a panel of experts will help you master some of the terms and concepts you will encounter during the week.
Bringing Learning to Life:
Healthy Classroom Ecology
Presenters:
Laurie Turfant, Instructional Development Center
Andy Dolph, Audiovisual Services
The features of learning environments profoundly constrain, shape, and direct how students think (Marchionin 1988). In fact, many decisions are made for you through the physical features of your classroom space before you even start to design your curriculum: lighting, acoustics, furniture, windows, displays, temperature, surfaces. Moreover, students and faculty make certain assumptions about traditional classroom environments that further impact learning.
This workshop will explore simple ways that technology can support healthy classroom ecologies and create actual and virtual spaces that encourage active learning. We’ll look at research on learning spaces, model simple technology-based mitigation strategies, and engage in activities that illustrate how easy it can be to transform the average classroom into a supportive learning ecology.
Then one UNH faculty member will describe how he “took the next step” in technology integration by building on these models.
Templates
Download the template files for each template into a directory for that template. Each template should have it's own directory.
Intro Template:
PowerPoint Template |
Step-by-Step |
Audio File
Jeopardy Template:
PowerPoint Template |
Step-by-Step |
Jeopardy Theme |
Applause Audio
Jumble Template:
PowerPoint Template |
Step-by-Step |
Let's Jumble Audio |
Jumble Timer Audio |
Jumble End Audio
Live Annotation Template:
PowerPoint Template |
Step-by-Step
Building on the Model:
Augmentative & Alternative Communication
Presenter: Michael Fraas
Although many faculty use PowerPoint effectively to enhance classroom lectures, they rarely go beyond straightforward, linear presentations to explore other, more creative, uses of the tool. This session will build on game templates used in the previous session to demonstrate how PowerPoint can become an effective tool for addressing the needs of individuals with impaired communication and cognitive function. We’ll look at two different templates that transform PowerPoint into a portable and customizable Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) device.
AAC devices, which can be quite expensive, allow individuals with severe expressive language deficits to communicate their wants and needs at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse. The tools you’ll see here, built on PowerPoint templates, let users express ideas about nutrition, medical needs, relationships, and other topics. They also provide clinicians with a method for assessing language and cognitive abilities. Because the tools are built as templates, they can be customized to meet specific clinical needs and support a wide range of communication deficits. And the best part? They are easy to use, and virtually cost-free.
Lend Me Your Ears:
Digital Audio You Can Use
Presenter: Andy Dolph, Audiovisual Services
Sound is powerful. Just a few seconds of pounding surf and seagulls transports us to the ocean. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is impressive on paper or read aloud, but so much more moving when experienced through his voice. The music of an early jazz band helps us understand why the era was called the “Roaring” 20s.
There are a variety of easy-to-use tools available that let you bring the power of audio to your classroom using your computer. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll explore how integrated audio can enhance your teaching and survey some of the learning situations and formats in which audio can be effective.
Resources | Session 1 Presentation | Session 2 Presentation
Working with Video:
Editing, Compression & Distribution
Presenters: Marquis Walsh & Scott Jones, Video Services
Today’s students are steeped in multimedia from an early age. They are adept at processing and manipulating visual images and information. Moreover, they expect their information to be delivered to them in dynamic and rich formats. In this session, we will work hands-on to show you how to bring high-quality multimedia experiences to your students. We’ll work in two groups – Apple and Windows – so you can learn to use these tools on your new laptops.
We will begin with a brief overview of desktop video editing and a demonstration of how to capture video and audio from a video camera using Firewire (iLink-1394) connections. Then we’ll explore basic editing techniques, and experiment with compressing video files for use on the Web or in Blackboard.
We’ll go step by step, first reviewing how to digitize clips using the camera and cables. Then we’ll import video, audio, and music clips from a CD into your video project. Once the elements are all in the computer, we’ll try some editing. When we are finished, we will export the video to either a QuickTime or Windows Media Player movie. You’ll have plenty of time to ask questions.
Movie Maker 2 | Apple's iMovie | Presentation
Images & Digital Photography:
Using Images in the Classroom
Presenters: Doug Prince & Lisa Nugent, Photographic Services
Images can be used to illustrate concepts, inspire discussion, document events, and even teach diagnoses and treatment. However, the process of creating and using images can be a challenge. This workshop will deconstruct the steps to create and manage digital images for use in a variety of media. After a quick review of camera operations, you’ll work with scanners, scanning software, and the Internet to acquire images. Finally, you’ll use Adobe Photoshop to experiment with preparing these photos for output to the Web, PowerPoint, Blackboard, or print materials.
Presentation 1 | Presentation 2 | Handout | Digital Scanning Services | Dig My Pics | Slide Scanning.com | www.imagerylab.com | Creating Posters
Oh Yeah! I Remember That:
Adding Lasting Impact with Images & Sound
Presenters:
Lori Nolan, Multimedia & Web Services
Scott Jones, Video Services
Doug Prince, Photographic Services
Andy Dolph, Audiovisual Services
Music, voice, movies, and images are powerful tools for communicating information. They impact our memory, our emotions, our thought processes, and our ability to retain knowledge. Most people can recall their favorite song, a piece of dialog from a film that moved them, or the impact a photographic image had on them. When we hear or see those sounds or images, we experience an “Oh yeah!” moment that re-immerses us in the original experience and reinforces our connection to it.
Now try to remember some of the content of that boring class you took in your Junior year in college. Any luck?
This session will explore how to build those “Oh Yeah!” moments into your teaching. We’ll investigate how you can use media to incorporate memory triggers into your course that ensure greater knowledge retention. We’ll look at ways to deliver lasting impressions to your students that can illustrate, enrich, and contextualize your content. Then we’ll examine some examples of how faculty are using these tools and techniques here at UNH.
Faculty Panel
Moderator: Lori Nolan, Multimedia & Web Services
Panel:
Don Chandler, Zoology
Lisa Miller, English
Beth Olshansky, Project Director, Picture & Writing
Peter Masucci, Marketing & Management
Cindy Pulkkinen, Languages, Literatures & Cultures
Faculty from several disciplines will share how they use multimedia in their teaching. We’ll look at the different technologies faculty have implemented and learn how they incorporated them into their teaching. Then we’ll have an open exchange about what worked – and what didn’t – and examine student learning outcomes.
Passing It Around in Blackboard:
Brought to You by NETSN
Presenters:
Joanne Adams, Portal Administration & Development
Tim Ashwell, Kinesiology
Blackboard contains a number of different features for exchanging files – each with its own distinct purpose. Sometimes it’s difficult to know which tool to use. Are you exchanging files with a single student? With many students? Are students exchanging files among themselves? In groups? Are you working with the files in the classroom? Do they support out-of-class assignments?
Here, we’ll explore a variety of ways to “pass it around” in Blackboard. We’ll discuss how each of Blackboard’s file-exchange features supports different types of learning activities, in and out of the classroom. And we’ll examine a new Blackboard feature — Adaptive Release. This important new tool, which will be available to you in the fall, allows you to set conditions for releasing documents to individuals or groups of users.
Tune us in! We’re the best game in town.
JITTs for TIGGs:
Online Assessments for Just-in-Time Testing
Presenters:
Denise Littlefield, Instructional Development Center
Mark Wrighton, Political Science
Elise Sullivan, Microbiology
The Instant Gratification Generation (TIGGs) want immediate feedback in all they do. Video games, email, Instant Messaging, online shopping and banking, and 24/7 access to entertainment of all types have conditioned them to expect instant response and reinforcement. These are the students who email you the same day they take an exam and wonder why their grades aren’t posted. How do you keep up with them — especially as class size grows and teaching loads increase?
In the classroom, TIGGs express their desire for immediate feedback as a desire for more self-directed learning. TIGGs want to control the pace and direction of their learning. They want to know where they fall short, where they need additional help, and where they are meeting class expectations. And they want to know it NOW!
Just-in-time testing can help today’s students direct and assess their own learning based on immediate feedback provided – virtually – by the instructor. In this session, we will take a look at how Blackboard can make JITTers out of your TIGGs.
Multiple Choice Question Tips | Creating Bb Quizzes | Bb Question Types | Making Bb Quizzes Available | Bb Quiz & Survey Best Practices
Move Over Socrates:
Online Discussion is Here
Presenter: Gaf Fitch, Portal Administration & Development
Although the assumption is often made that online communication is impersonal and superficial, research shows that it can support a deeper understanding of content than can be achieved in a classroom setting. Asynchronous online discussion supports the goals of critical thought by analyzing complex issues from many points of view.
There’s nothing new here. This is simply the Socratic method brought forward to a new environment. A key advantage of online discussions, however, is that they make the Socratic method scaleable by facilitating its implicit reciprocity and inquiry. If carefully crafted, these exchanges can expand students’ horizons and deepen their understanding.
We will identify the unique characteristics of online discussions that support critical thought, and define the requirements for successful facilitation of online exchanges.
Discovery, Inquiry & Writing:
Building the First-Year Experience @ UNH
Presenters:
Joanne Curran-Celentano & Michelle Holt-Shannon, UNH Discovery Program
Elliott Gruner, UNH Writing Program
The Discovery Program is the signature liberal education program that reflects our vision and embodies the Academic Plan for the University of New Hampshire. The program provides a common and unifying framework for the UNH undergraduate experience. It focuses on first-year students, interdisciplinary learning experiences, and integration with the academic major.
This session will give you an overview of initiatives underway at UNH to promote inquiry and dialog in undergraduate study, and describe how the UNH Writing Program is helping to promote literacy and writing skills in the disciplines.
PresentationThe Cultura Project: Cross-cultural Communication
Presenter: Sabine Levet, Brandeis University
This session will present Cultura, a Web-based methodology and accompanying online tools designed to help students in a language course gradually build their understanding of a foreign culture. Participants will gain insights into the pedagogical concepts, design, and content principles that have informed the development of Cultura.
Faculty Panel
Moderator: Mark Yacovone, Browne Center
Panel:
Claire Malarte-Feldman, French
Karen Niland, Nursing
Ron Croce & Tim Ashwell, Kinesiology
Eleanor Abrams, Education
Join a panel of your colleagues to discuss real-world examples of how Blackboard can impact your teaching and your students’ learning. You will see and hear practical examples of how Blackboard features can help facilitate writing projects, classroom discussion, peer review, and assessments.
Clicker Nation:
Integrating Student Feedback in the Classroom
Presenters:
Denise Littlefield, Instructional Development Center
Chris Way, Audiovisual Services
Panel:
Russ Congalton, Natural Resources
Katherine Lockwood, Zoology
Ruth Reilly, Animal & Nutrition Sciences
Students want to be heard. One way to keep them engaged in the classroom is to let them “speak.” This session focuses on the e-Instruction classroom participation system, better known on campus as “the Clickers.” e-Instruction has been used in select classrooms across campus since 2002. This fall, UNH will pilot an enhanced “clicker” system that takes advantage of RF (radio frequency) technology to make gathering student feedback in the classroom even easier and more accurate.
In this session, we’ll look at how this technology has been used on this and other campuses across the country. We’ll explore best practices and then you’ll have an opportunity to let yourself be heard in an interactive hands-on activity using the clickers. Faculty members who have used e-Instruction in their classes will share their experiences and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the tool.
Writing to Learn & Learning to Write:
Technology and Writing in the Disciplines
Presenters: Jeff Ringer & Laura Waldon, Connors Writing Center
A central concern of faculty across the disciplines is how to help students improve their ability to communicate effectively through writing. Budget cuts and swelling class sizes present a dilemma for faculty that often results in their incorporating fewer writing assignments or even none at all. The unfortunate reality is that responding effectively to fifty or more student papers consumes a significant amount of time.
Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is one possible solution to this problem. CPR is a Web-based program that allows instructors to design and implement writing assignments in a way that can dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on providing feedback. Most important, by placing students at the center of the response and assessment process, CPR helps hone their critical reading and writing abilities.
In this session, we will explore CPR technology, highlighting both its benefits and its limitations. Then we’ll take a look at another technology-based service – the Online Writing Lab (OWL) — that is helping to support writing in the disciplines at UNH.
Coursecasting: Mobile, Automated Content Delivery
Presenter: David Blezard, Academic Computing Systems
Take your course content. Digitize it. Stir in some RSS. Add an iPod or two. Voila, you have “Coursecasting.”
Podcasting is the latest delivery medium to hit college campuses. Now you can use the same technologies your students use to make their own media feeds of music, commentary, news, or videos to deliver your course materials. Some colleges and universities already have programs in place to record lectures and make them accessible to students after class – literally anyplace, anytime. Others are using Podcasts to make a variety of core or supplementary course materials available. The fact that Podcasting can automate content delivery and make that content mobile via a digital media player makes it an appealing and promising technology for teaching.
This session will focus on how to create, distribute, and access content for Podcasting. We will look at what you, as an instructor, need to do to get audio, video, or other materials ready for Podcasting. Then we will examine the technology of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and some of the software packages designed to automate publication of and additions to your Podcasts. Finally, we will look at how students can access your course materials via a Podcast using either their computers or their iPods.
Coursecasting Session Podcast | Coursecasting Presentation with Notes (PDF)
How Did They Do That?
Low-threshold Apps for Using Tablets in the Classroom
Presenters:
Marshall White, Student & Academic Infrastructure Support
Lori Nolan, Multimedia & Web Services
Joanne Adams & Gaf Fitch, Portal Administration & Development
Laurie Trufant & Denise Littlefield, Instructional Development Center
Remember some of the neat tricks you saw during the week that had you scratching your heads and asking: Where did that text come from? Where did that image go? How did they do that from there? Did you see that?
In this session, we will revisit some of the low-threshold techniques employed by presenters throughout the week and show you just “how they did that.” We’ll discuss best practices for tablet integration and explore how tablets can impact your classroom environment in positive ways. Then we’ll reflect on other potential uses for tablet technology in your own disciplines.
So You Want to Be a Blogger?
Asynchronous Online Collaboration
Presenter: Terri Winters, Director, CIS Academic Technology
A blog is a Web site with postings and associated comments listed chronologically by posting (most recent first). Although blogs first appeared in 1999, there are now about 20 million blogs on the Internet. A Pew Survey in 2004 reported that 8 million American adults had created a blog. Typically, a blog contains the personal musings of a blogger, is frequently updated and searchable, and has links to other blogs and Web sites.
Blogging software is free and easy to use. No special skills—like HTML—are required. As a course tool, blogs can be used to comment on topics from class, post summaries of readings, share ideas about student work, debate issues, or provide a forum for student journaling. A link to a blog can placed in a Blackboard course. Blogs can be written by one person (and shared) or by many blog “members.”
This session will help you create your own blog and post to it, post comments to other blogs, invite other people to join your blog, and make your blog accessible through Blackboard.
MyUNH: Tomorrow's Blackboard
Presenters:
Terri Winters, Director, CIS Academic Technology
Bill Baber, Portal & Instructional Services
Panel:
Eleta Exline, Digital Librarian
Jennifer Carroll, Electronic Resources Librarian
Judy Miller, UNH Business Services
Dmitry Sadykov, Portal Administration & Development
MyUNH provides an integrated electronic workspace for faculty, students, and staff. This session will introduce current and planned projects that can extend the functionality of this electronic environment. We will give brief overviews of content management, federated searching of the Library’s electronic resources, e-portfolios for students, directed communication, online training, and providing access to MyUNH for UNH parents.
Plagiarism Prevention @ UNH: Helping Students Write & Cite
Presenters:
Terri Winters, Director, CIS Academic Technology
Laurie Trufant, Instructional Development Center
Panel:
Thomas Pistole, Microbiology
David Hiley, Philosophy
Charles Putnam, Justice Studies
Prompted by a resolution passed by the Faculty Senate, CIS Academic Technology has, during the spring semester, administered a pilot of plagiarism prevention software at UNH. This software recognizes and reports on text deliberately or inadvertently cited from a wide range of electronic sources. Volunteers from all six schools and colleges in Durham and at UNH-Manchester have tested this software in their courses and reported on their experiences. The goal of the pilot was to recommend a product for a one-year trial license that would make the software available to all UNH faculty.
In this session, we will describe the pilot findings, discuss some of the implications of plagiarism prevention tools, and demonstrate the product chosen for use in the fall. You’ll see how easy it is to create assignments, and have an opportunity to submit papers to the software as if you were students. A panel of pilot participants will share their thoughts on the software.
Tomorrow's Professor:
Desktop Faculty Development 100 Times a Year
Presenter: Rick Reis, Stanford University and Moderator of Tomorrow's Professor List
The Tomorrow’s Professor electronic list, sponsored by the Center for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University, is an unconventional faculty development program that uses the resources of a research university to emphasize the importance of teaching and learning, and to energize faculty interest across the global higher education community. The list has more than 25,000 subscribers at more than 650 academic institutions in 100 countries around the world. The 725th list posting appeared on May 31, 2006.
The goal of the Tomorrow’s Professor list — “desk-top faculty development 100 times a year” — is achieved through the sharing of provocative and practical material on current issues and problems in academia, as well as insights from scholars on how to prepare for, find, and succeed at careers that effectively combine teaching, research, and service in higher education.
Professor Reis will discuss the development of the list, its use by faculty, and the new Tomorrow’s Professor blog, recently inaugurated at MIT.