2018_IT_Newsletter_Spring_4_30_page view

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The annual EDUCAUSE conference is where innovative higher education CIOs go to learn about new industry trends and compare notes on the latest breakthroughs. This year was no exception as 7,300 IT leaders from more than 50 countries gathered in Orlando along with 260 educational technology exhibitors. Discussions took place in session rooms, on the exhibition floor, after the keynotes, and throughout the hallways. These are the common threads that permeated those discussions; the ten hottest topics for CIOs in higher education.

See #6 for special mention.  Colgate’s CIO Kevin Lynch and Instructional Technologist Ahmad Khazaee presented on “Just Don’t Call It a Drone” @ Educause this past year.

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Video dubbing project with REST121A Marijeta Bozovic

• 10 students, dubbing Russian animations in FCPX

Silent movie scoring project

• Mary Simonson, iMovie projects for FMST340A

Video Narrative projects

• Marijeta Bozovic creating video narratives for FSEM 168
• Sheila Clonan Special Ed class w/, 21 students individual projects EDUC307A
• Meg Worley video narratives for WRIT340A
• Anna Rios-Rojas, 27 students individual projects on educational reflections regarding theories studied for EDUC101B
• Catherine Herne 16 students  working in pairs for PHYS105A
• Jessica Graybill and 20 students working in pairs for GEOG311
• Alicia Simmons, 25 students working in pairs for SOAN 375
• Ashli Baker iMovie project w/ stills, narrative, sound effects for CLAS224A
• Ryan Solomon, group video narrative projects for WRIT115
• Jen Stob, 24 individual video narrative projects for ARTS287

Read more

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Wikipedia

Students Authoring Research-Based Wikipedia Pages for HIST459
In the Spring 2010 semester, Professor Noor Khan, working with a CEL team members Clarence Maybee from the Libraries and Dave Baird from ITS, developed a method involving establishing objectives, an assessment rubric, and research methodology to challenge her senior seminar students to improve sections of Wikipedia as part of her History 459 course on Modern Middle East History. Course requirements also included active participation in class discussions, oral presentations, and a lengthy traditional research paper.  http://youtu.be/kydWpRChIMM Read more

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Google has been working at upgrading what was formerly known as Google Docs. Their new and improved product is Google Drive. Drive is Google’s cloud storage solution, very similar to Dropbox. You get 5GB of storage and can sync and manage files across multiple computers with a desktop app. A huge benefit to Drive over other solutions is the ability to collaborate on work from your computer and the Drive viewer which supports viewing a variety of file types like Adobe’s Illustrator or CAD files without needing the software installed. Click here for more Drive features. 

Google has just updated its app for iPads and iPhones.In Google Drive’s first release on the iPad/iPhone, you were only be able to view items that you had in Google Drive/Docs and edit the document’s permissions. With the newest version, you can now create and edit documents too!

If you are collaborating with someone on a document, the app will continue to refresh every couple of seconds so that you have a similar experience as you do when collaborating on documents from your computer.

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In a blog post, Derek Bruff describes some potential uses of Twitter in the classroom that include:

1. Notetaking
2. Sharing Resources
3. Commenting
4. Amplifying
5. Asking Questions
6. Helping One Another
7. Offering Suggestions
8. Building Community
9. Opening the Classroom

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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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Now 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.

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Do you login to the Portal to connect to Moodle? Do you Copy/Cut/Paste text by going to the File menu? Do you never use your right mouse button (or does your Mac not even have a right mouse button)? Do you stop your PowerPoint presentation to open a web page or media clip and then stumble back to your presentation? Does the existence of the Control key make you suspicious? Does your twelve-year-old cringe whenever you start to work on your computer?

If you answered “Yes” to any of the above, then this post is for you (and for many others out there). And even if you are a computer whiz who knows all about these topics you may still find my message motivating.

First I offer a disclaimer – my message is not one of “shame on you” for seeing so much of yourself in the introductory paragraph or generally not knowing enough about your computer. We are all busy and its so very easy to keep doing what we’ve been doing for so long.

That said, we all know that computer technology has tremendous capacity for saving us time and effort and realize that we could be much more efficient using it. We know this but usually don’t take the time to really take advantage. And, yes, we usually must spend some time to learn a new technique or setting; all this technology is not intuitive (no, not even the famous Mac interface is all that intuitive, and forget the iPad where the “i” most definitely does not stand for “intuitive”).

From the introductory questions above you should realize that I’m thinking about some basic things requiring a minimum of effort to learn, not those looming, greater tasks like tackling the Moodle Gradebook or the right Excel functions to do your grade calculations. I will wager that most you could spend a few minutes learning one or two much more basic functions which could save you hours over a semester.

There are hundreds of things that you might learn to save you time and effort, so when and where do you start? My philosophy is —  if some process seems to take “too long,”  or seems “too hard,” or seems to lead to “too many mistakes,” or just seems “too complex,”  then we should check to see if there is a better way.  

How might you learn some of these things?  Certainly you could ask your friendly ITS staffer or administrative assistant or a colleague or a “geek” friend. Some of these topics may be good to address during instructional technologist office hours, perhaps, or when a TSA is working on your computer.  You can also submit an ITSHelp request, conduct an on-line search, or spend a minute using the Help menu (yep, they are still there and they have improved over the years).  You may also be able to attend an appropriate ITS  technology workshop – check our schedule here.

Here’s to more efficient computing for all of us! Please take a minute to improve your efficiency or reduce your frustration!

In the meantime, here are some interesting on-line sites with technology tips and tricks:

• LifeHacker
• TechnoFile
• Tool Kit (a bit premature to mention, perhaps, but it looks promising; I will update this link soon)

Please comment with your favorite tech tip sites.

…dan wheeler

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For those wondering about the alternatives for the opening paragraph’s scenarios:

• Moodle is always accessible at the address moodle.colgate.edu – type it in the address box at the top of your browser — and then Bookmark it
• Simple editing and much more can be done via keyboard shortcuts – press and hold Ctrl for Windows or Command for Mac  and then press – C to copy, X to cut, or V to paste (and while you’re there check out S for save, Z for undo, and …)
• Simple editing can be done it both Windows and Mac using the right mouse click – select some text and right click on it to see the options to copy, cut, paste, and more.  If your Mac doesn’t seem to have a right mouse button, it can be configured in System Preferences, or simulated by pressing Ctrl and then clicking.
• The right-click has many options beyond editing text. Try a right-click on a document or a desktop icon or something in or at the top of a list or …
• Switching to another application is another keystroke option. Hold Alt (Windows) or Command (Mac) and press Tab to switch from and back to your running PowerPoint Slide Show. 
• The Control (Ctrl) key is one of several keys, such as Alt and Option, which let us do more with fewer keystrokes (at the cost of memorizing some odd combinations) 
• Wait 12 years

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Poll Everywhere is a popular polling application that enables one to post a question and have everyone in the class post their answer via a smartphone, an iPad, or any type of computing device that has access to the web.  It uses a simple text messaging system so even a flip-phone can be used to submit an answer.   The poll is displayed to the audience, they can then vote by sending SMS messages to a special short number.  Participants’ responses can be displayed in real-time on a large screen in your class. Additionally, you can import your results into PowerPoint or Apple Keynote without any additional software. You can also download your results as an Excel file.

The free version is limited to an audience of 40 participants.

Note:  since cell phone network access is spotty in some of Colgate’s classrooms, you should definitely run some tests prior to attempting to use in your course.

http://www.polleverywhere.com/

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