Wiki's, blogs, oh my....are you using Web 2.0 applications in your classroom? This seminar will provide an overview of some of the Web 2.0 applications most useful for both face-to-face and online classes. The CTL Seminar is scheduled for March 11 at 12:00 p.m. To register and for more information, visit the CTL website.
Manuscripts for the July 2009 issue of the Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (IJ-SoTL) will be accepted through May 19, 2009. For additional information, consult the journal's website.
From time to time, we'll highlight articles and news stories related to higher education and learning. Today, we're focusing on James Lang's "Try and Fail". Lang relates his experiences learning a new skill (scuba diving!) to his teaching in the classroom. The article is available on the Chronicle of Higher Education's career section (which is open to nonsubscribers.)
The 2009 Pod (Professional and Organizational Development) Network Conference is accepting proposals for workshops, discussion sessions, and poster sessions. POD is one of the most prominent national organizations dedicated to the study and practice of teaching and learning in higher education. The 2009 conference will be held in Houston, TX. Proposals are due by April 6, 2009. For more information, consult the conference website.
Have you ever wished you could attend a CTL seminar or brown bag but had a conflict? Audio-only podcast are available of all our seminars and brown bags. Check them out to see what you may have missed!
Here is a great YouTube video that Dean Lynne Richardson forwarded to her faculty. It was created by a class at K-State. It is worth viewing to get a student perspective of the higher education classroom. In order for students to learn they must be an active part of the teaching process. What are you doing to make sure your students are engaged learners?
I've had a couple of questions recently about Second Life. I've found a website that might provide additional information....it's the Annotated Bibliography of Second Life Educational Online Resources.
If you've experimented with your class in Second Life, I would love to hear about your experiences----drop me a line!
When contacting CTL for help in myCourses, please have your CRN (Course Registration Number) available. This is a five-digit number that is assigned to your course via Banner. To determine your course CRN, log-in to onCampus and enter the Banner tab. From your Banner for Faculty channel, select the option Faculty Class Schedule under the Registration column. All the courses you are teaching will appear and CRNs will be displayed.
Spring CRNs start with a 1, Summer CRNs start with a 2 and Fall CRNs start with a 3.
This will help us provide more timely service.
When using an eInstruction database in class, it is best to move the database to the desktop rather than run the system from a flash drive or network drive. This will minimize the chance of your database being corrupted. Just remember to always place the database back on the drive so that your class data will be saved.
The New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative have announced the release of the 2009 Horizon Report. Each year, the Horizon Report identifies some of the key trends in technology that are likely to have an impact on teaching, learning, and research within higher education. Some of these technologies are expected to have an impact in the near future; others are projected to have an impact within four to five years. If you're interested in the future of technology in higher education, the Horizon Report is a must read!
Interested in podcasting? All 65 technology lecterns are podcast-ready. This allows you to walk into class and with a few simple steps record your lecture for your students. This is a great idea for those who teach the same class to traditional and online students. It allows the online students to feel as if they were in the classroom.
myCourses training is available this spring. A listing of the current offerings is available at:
In this Chronicle of Higher Education, David Shieh highlights strategies for using clickers in the classroom from Derek Bruff. Bruff is the assistant director of Vanderbilt University’s Center for Teaching.
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=BJkdzckhgfpWw3Vkwnf8QnF65GfryTVr
The Horizon Project is a longstanding collaborative project between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Educause Learning Inititative. For the past six years, they have produced the Horizon Report, which focused on the use of technology in higher education. There is now a K-12 edition, produced by the NMC and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The pdf report, available for free on the web, is a must read for anyone interested in today's and tomorrow's technology in the K-12 system.
Six technologies or tends are highlighted in the 2009 report: collaborative environments, online communication tools, mobiles/mobile computing, cloud computing, smart objects, and the personal web. Each technology is treated in a different section, with an overview, a discussion of the relevance for the classroom, examples of the technology in practice and resources for futher reading.
Have you ever wanted to come to a CTL workshop but had a conflict? Did you know that all workshop handouts are available online? Browse through CTL documentation at:
http://www.ctl.msstate.edu/publications/handouts
Additionally, we are happy to arrange custom scheduled workshops for departments that have a minimum of five participants interested in a session. To arrange a custom workshop, please contact the Center at help@ctl.msstate.edu.
Reminder that President Keenum will be the featured presenter at the March 25, 2009 Brown Bag in Griffis Hall room 401 at noon. This is your chance to ask Dr. Keenum about teaching and learning at MSU. A light lunch will be served beginning at 11:30 while it lasts. We hope to see you there.
The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has issued its call for proposals for the 2009 conference. The conference will be held October 22-25 in Bloomington Indiana. May 15th is the deadline for all proposals and additional information about the conference and the CFP can be found here.
The latest issue of Educause Review (March/April 2009) is now available. This month's issue focuses on the relationship between learning spaces and pedagogy, assessment, and education models. ER articles are freely available on the web.
If you are planning to use myCourses during the Summer or Fall 2009 semesters, it is your responsibility to mark the course(s) in myBanner. Courses can be marked now which will result in your section being created in myCourses. A factsheet with instructions is located at:
www.ctl.msstate.edu/technologies/mycourses/
Additionally the updated training schedule is posted at:
Have an idea for a Fall 2009 CTL event? Please share it with us. We love to hear your ideas and offer programs that interest you. Email your suggestion to us at help@ctl.msstate.edu
The deadline for early bird registration for the 2009 Educause Southeast Regional Conference is May 4. This year's conference will be in Atlanta and the theme is "A Changing World: Rethinking IT Services for a Sustainable Future." The Educause Southeast Regional Conference focuses on information technology and services, teaching and learning, and higher education management. More information about the conference is available online.
In this week's Chronicle of Higher Education there is a good article on using your own classroom for research. I found this to be a win-win situation. It contributes to both your teaching and your scholarly activity. Check out the article at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Last week the Center and Information Technology Services released seven new technology classrooms to the MSU faculty for use. These rooms included Allen 17, Allen 20, Allen 21, Allen 22, Allen 23, Lee 201, and Lee 208. These rooms have recently received technology upgrades and are part of the Classroom Technology Project.
This page contains all entries posted to Center for Teaching and Learning in March 2009. They are listed from oldest to newest.
April 2009 is the next archive.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.