Academic Technologies team has created a new short instructional video on using Colgate’s EMS. The video goes through the process of standard room reservations, and it points out some of the best practices, as well as some of the challenges that one may encounter while using Colgate’s Event Management System. The link to the video is here, but it can also be viewed right after this break.
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Using EMS
By zlatko grozl on June 27, 2012E-books
By ahmad khazaee on June 26, 2012Customization Is the Future of Teaching, Harvard Researcher Says
By David Terrazas on June 26, 2012From THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
June 25, 2012
By Jeffrey R. Young
Most college courses are one-size-fits-all—a lecturer delivers the same information to everyone in the room, regardless of whether some students already know the material or others are utterly lost.
It doesn’t have to be that way, says Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University. He outlines a vision of how technology can help personalize learning in a new book that he co-edited, called Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student.
His research focuses on elementary- and high-school classrooms, but he says the approach has implications for colleges as well. The Chronicle talked with Mr. Dede about his strategy, and why he sees big changes on the horizon. And edited version of the conversation follows.
Q. Do you think we’ve reached a tipping point for education technology? Have we hit a moment where things will change in a big way?
A. I do. It’s a little like the tipping point a century ago, when America shifted from the rural one-room schoolhouse to the industrial-era school. We now have the kinds of technology that would let us develop a 21st-century education system if we have the political will to go ahead and do that.
Q. So it’s not a sure thing, then. You’re saying it’s up to individual policy makers and educators, right?
A. Exactly. These are transitions that don’t take place automatically. Just because you have a technology doesn’t mean you’re going to use it or use it well. But just as people made the shift a century ago—because the rural one-room schoolhouse was not capable of meeting the demands of an industrial-era economy—so many people, including myself, feel now that an industrial-era school system is also not capable of meeting the demands of a global, knowledge-based, innovation-centered economy. To the extent that people come to believe that, and come to see that we could redesign education based around new technologies and more sophisticated ideas about learning and teaching that have evolved over the last century, then the chance is there to do that.
Q. You say in the conclusion of your book that schools will not be able to teach the growing class sizes forced by recent budget cuts without a technology platform to make teaching more efficient.
A. Yes, as year after year of cuts hit districts, the vast majority of the budget is people. All the fat is gone, all the muscle is gone. We’re now cutting into bone. And if you don’t have some set of power tools that the teachers can use, at some point class size becomes unmanageable.
Q. And you think that with these digital “power tools,” teachers can handle class sizes of 40 or more students?
A. I do. Obviously, it would be better not to have a class of that size. I’m not saying that this is a desirable alternative. But if you have a differentiated curriculum in digital form, and if you haveformative evaluation interwoven with that so the teacher is getting a steady stream of information about where each student is, then the teacher at the center of this digital teaching platform can assign the parts of the curriculum to each student that make the most sense as the next step.
Of course, there are parallels in other social services. The days of a doctor making house calls are long gone. In modern medical care you have a differentiated system of both people and technology that allows a single physician to see a very large number of patients.
Q. What would you say is the most promising technology for teachers?
A. What technology does is it enables collecting a very rich set of information about student behaviors. So you have a digital curriculum that is designed to be highly interactive. As students interact, there’s a time-stamped record of everything they’re doing that lives on a server. And if you have a system that’s set up to analyze that kind of information, it can provide very valuable diagnostic data for the teacher to personalize instruction. If I’m a teacher, and 70 percent of the class is benefiting from what I’m saying in class now—which is a pretty good number—then I’m losing the 15 percent at the top end who are bored, already know this stuff, and are just being warehoused. And I’m losing the 15 percent at the bottom end who have no clue what I’m talking about. That’s a lot of people to lose.
Now I’m able to have different instructional streams, so instead of a one-size-fits-all strategy, I’ve got enrichment opportunities that the top group can participate in, and I’ve got remedial activities that the bottom group can participate in. And I still have activities for that big middle group, and they’re all happening at the same time because of this digital teaching-platform idea.
Q. What do you think the takeaways are for higher education?
A. They’re largely for the huge freshman and sophomore introductory courses that are a lot of the economic engines of higher education, the 600- or 700-person lectures, where we can imagine this being part of a “flipped classroom” model of higher education. So yes, you’re able to go view the lecture before the class on streaming video, but beyond that there may be exercises of different kinds that you can take that really help you, depending on how much or how little you got out of the lecture.
Say at the end of the lecture you take some sort of a quick assessment, and then the teaching platform says, “OK, you should look at these additional materials.” But it tells another student to look at other additional materials. And then when you come into class, everyone is closer to the same point, and the teacher can have some kind of a dialogue or exercise, or small-group work, or interacting through clickers, or so on. It opens up a much broader range of teaching possibilities.
Q. What is the biggest challenge for the vision to emerge?
A. It’s a different kind of pedagogy for the teacher to master. Now you’re not up there giving a lecture and just trying to keep everybody hanging in there whether it’s at the right level for them or not. You’re managing, if you will an orchestra, where some students are hearing one melody and some students are hearing another melody. You’re maybe working with some individuals who need more help than the teaching platform can provide, and you’re coming over to this other group doing small-group work, listening to them for a minute, and keeping them on task. It’s a more complicated model of teacher performance that, when they know how to do it, teachers are going to appreciate. Because frankly, it’s much more interesting than to stand up and give the same lecture five times a day. But I think professional development will be the biggest single challenge.
A glimpse into the not so distant future.
By Ray Nardelli on June 21, 2012These two videos produced by Corning Glass are really well done and provide some insight on what the world might look like in the not so distant future.
Moodle 2
By on June 20, 2012Technology change is inevitable and Colgate’s Moodle is no exception. Moodle version 2 will be in place for the fall 2012 semester after two years of version 1.
Why must we change? Security updates, software support, and new or improved functionality are the primary drivers. Why don’t we want to change? Lost or reduced functionality, new interfaces, time to migrate and re-learn. Simple resistance to change is probably also somewhere in the mix of your, and my, reluctance to switch.
And yes, we in ITS are along for the ride with this change, learning and re-learning and flustering and cursing with you. Much has changed behind the Moodle scenes and we are struggling to understand the new software and create a functional version.
We are maintaining the link http://moodle2.colgate.edu as our starting point for information on the transition to the new version. Check there for the latest server links, Moodle news, and how-to files.
So what about this new Moodle version are we likely to praise? Curse?
Below are some of the changes we are expecting.
Nice…
Moodle v2 developers have spent a lot of time trying to make Moodle look and work better, offering:
- better themes for improved “look and feel,” including options for hiding all those extraneous icons when you “Turn editing on”
- a more consistent user interface – more appropriate names, groupings, and locations for various functions
- reduction in the numbers and complexity of Moodle objects, including content (Resources) and Activities
Moodle v2 has more connections with the non-Moodle world, including access to documents in:
- Google Docs
- Dropbox
- Picasa, YouTube, Box, Wikimedia, and more
Moodle v2 will have all your old Moodle courses with almost all their content (wikis are problematic) available for use and re-use in the future. We can also restore old Blackboard archives to Moodle v2.
Naughty…
We will lose some things.
- with all those document options comes a return to the complex, “multiple-clicks-from-hell” document upload
- an improved user interface means forces us to learn where our favorite functions are and what they are now named; consistent or not they aren’t where they were for two years
- some of our old themes have not been updated for v2
The timing of change doesn’t always fit our academic schedule. This means that some even nicer… features, not quite ready yet, will probably need to wait for spring 2013.
- drag and drop document uploads – drag a file from your computer into your Moodle
- single assignment type – change your assignment type at any time (and you can forget those differences among single file upload, multiple file upload, …)
Google Docs Research Tool
By ahmad khazaee on June 18, 2012Google Forms
By ahmad khazaee on June 14, 2012Google Forms is a tool that you can utilize to simplify the collection and organization of information. On campus we have used Forms as surveys, checklists, rosters, and a way to collect RSVPs. After you’ve created a form in Google Docs you share it and as people fill it out all the responses are collected in a spreadsheet by the same name. This saves having to sift through emails and manually creating a spreadsheet. I’ve linked a video of one of it’s uses here at Colgate, and if you want more information on Forms or need help getting started send an email to itshelp@colgate.edu.
Google Calendar and the Webinar Wednesdays
By zlatko grozl on June 13, 2012Now that the summer has started, and all the papers are graded, everyone is certainly highly excited about the upcoming Webinar Wednedsdays! At least I hope that this is the case, but nonetheless, Academic Technologies team will continue the Webinar Wednesdays all Summer on different topics. For instance, today’s topic will be Gmail Management, facilitated by Ahmad Khazaee. I will be facilitating a Webinar session next Wednesday, where we’ll discuss different aspects of Google Blogger. Please keep in mind that our summer Webinar Wednesdays takes place at 11 AM, rather than at our usual time.
As a followup to my last webinar, i thought it would be interesting to share the following three Google Calendar videos, which outline some of the topics that we covered recently. I hope to see you there.
Interesting Links…
By Ray Nardelli on June 13, 2012Scrivener Makes a Good Transcription Tool http://bit.ly/KBb3GU
Google Tasks
By ahmad khazaee on June 11, 2012There are several books out there on how to get things done and how to make to-do’s that work. I found some to be very helpful and some that made a lot of sense but just weren’t convenient enough that I could stick to them. So here is one that I like. Google along with all of its other features also offers Tasks, a way to keep track of what you need to do. I personally find Tasks very simple to use and they are accessible right from your email which is very convenient.
Here are some of the features I find useful:
- Converting emails into tasks
- Access Tasks from a mobile device
- Tasks with due dates automatically appear on you calendar
- Can have multiple tasks lists
For more information click here. If you would like assistance with Google Tasks email itshelp@colgate.edu