ITS will be conducting maintenance on the campus wireless network between the hours of 2:00 PM and 4:30 PM on Wednesday July 24th 2013.  During this time, connections to both the Internet and local Colgate network resources via a wireless connection will be sporadically affected. Wired connections will not be affected in any way.

For further questions, please feel free to contact the ITS Help Desk at x7111.

Thank you for your patience as we work to improve your information technology resources.

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Jackson Ang’ong’a
ITS ITAP Intern 2013

The 2013-2014  Instructional Technology Apprenticeship Program (ITAP) participants were announced by the New York 6 consortium on July 11, 2013. Colgate’s ITAP intern this year is Jackson Ang’ong’a ’15.

WHAT IS ITAP?

Under the umbrella of the New York 6 Consortium, the Educational Technology Group has put together the ITAP program to give students practical, hands-on, educational technology experiences in an IT environment. The ITAP program is designed for students who are interested in coupling their liberal arts degree with paraprofessional experiences in the field of instructional technology. ITAP is anchored in the following five goals:

• To implement an apprenticeship model within an educational technology / IT services organization at a NY6 institution.

• To offer practical, skill-based experiences in educational and information technology.

• To teach foundational knowledge regarding the integration of technology with teaching and learning.

• To assist students in communicating their transferable skills, grounded in a liberal arts tradition, as they enter the marketplace.

• To provide a credible portfolio and references endorsed by the New York 6 Liberal Arts Consortium.

Jackson Ang’ong’a is a physics major also interested in computer science. He has worked as a data analyst for Adept Technologies, where he first developed his interest in technology, and has also worked with ITS as a Media Services assistant, and with the Colgate Libraries as a Desk Assistant. Jackson participated in Colgate’s Thought Into Action (TIA) student entrepreneur program last fall, which lead to an interest in web development in general and Moodle in particular. He has worked with faculty, staff, and ITS in developing improved support for Moodle for professors and students. Academically Jackson is interested in computational methods for problem solving; this summer he is a research student working with Prof Crotty on the dynamics of the Josephson Junction Neuron. Jackson is a also member of the ballroom dance club and likes to play soccer.

Jackson will be a part of the Academic Technology team at Colgate  for the 2013-14 academic year, attending bi-monthly ACAD meetings and using office space located in our 4th floor IT suite.  You may also see Jackson at our weekly ITS Tuesday morning meetings as his time permits.

This is the second year of the ITAP collaboration but Colgate’s first full year of participation (last year’s student participation was abbreviated due to unforeseen issues).

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EDUCAUSE ELI (Education and Learning Initiative) publishes a very useful series of short (two-page) summaries on educational technology topics.  Here is an oldie but a goodie about Digital Storytelling

http://www.educause.edu/library/resources/7-things-you-should-know-about-digital-storytelling

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http://files.campus.edublogs.org/blog.nus.edu.sg/dist/7/112/files/2012/07/Digital-Storytelling-in-the-Foreign-Language-Classroom_editforpdf-2jxajft.pdf

Digital Storytelling in the Foreign Language Classroom
by Hayo Reinders
Middlesex University (London, UK)

“Digital storytelling is a compelling activity for the language classroom. Easy to use for both writing and speaking practice, digital storytelling can be a good way to motivate students to use the language both inside and outside the classroom. Many teachers report high motivation levels, and not only for their students”

This article does a good job of explaining the What and Why of Digital Storytelling in Language classrooms.  The How to Start and Limitations portions are less relevant as we have several levels of support here @ Colgate.  Please contact CEL (itss-cel@colgate.edu) or Sarah Kunze (skunze@colgate.edu) if you are interested in using this technology in your courses.

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http://ojs.uwindsor.ca/ojs/leddy/index.php/CELT/article/view/3360/2810

“From a teaching and learning perspective, the practice of digital storytelling privileges intuitive and local knowledge drawn from non-academic sources, most often lived experience and memory. This openness to different forms of knowledge building and the recognition of a multiplicity of voices in the classroom may well be digital storytelling’s most enduring legacy to post-secondary education.”

Digital Storytelling and Diasporic Identities in Higher Education
Gail Benick
Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning

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By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: March 5, 2013

Bottom line: There is still huge value in the residential college experience and the teacher-student and student-student interactions it facilitates. But to thrive, universities will have to nurture even more of those unique experiences while blending in technology to improve education outcomes in measurable ways at lower costs. We still need more research on what works, but standing still is not an option.

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In this short, 2013, Inside Higher Ed blog post, Kenneth C. Green, founding director of The Campus Computing Project, offers some insights into the current state of the LMS. Perhaps we are looking towards a name change, from LMS to SEG (for Student EnGagement platform). 

• LMS 4.0: Will Semantic Remorse Lead to Student Engagement?

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Providing students access to their grades is a frequently touted advantage of an LMS. Is it really an advantage or might a more “manual,” student-centered approach be even more useful?

• Spreadsheets vs. online gradebooks

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This 2011 slide show (not narrated; notes only) presents a nice overview of some trends in the world of the LMS (by Stanley Frielick, Director of Learning and Teaching at Aukland University of Technology)

• Future of the LMS – towards a more open and personalised learning environment 
  

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EDUCAUSE ELI (Education and Learning Initiative) publishes a very useful series of short (two-page) summaries on educational technology topics; several of these relate in some way to conventional Learning Management Systems and their alternatives. Here’s my collection of those 7-Things publications which are somehow related to LMS, ordered by date.

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Navigating the New Learning Ecosystem – May 2012 (PDF)

• Once considered the center of “digital learning,” the LMS is now considered just another component.

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT First-Generation Learning Analytics – December 2011 (PDF)

• An LMS is a primary source of analytics which may be used to understand a student’s learning process

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LMS Evaluation – May 2011 (PDF)

• Evaluating or not, this provides some good LMS background information 

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Privacy in Web 2.0 Learning Environments – September 2010 (PDF)

• One of the advantages of the LMS is to maintain privacy 

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT Personal Learning Environments – May 2009 (PDF)

• Should we switch from a focus on the conventional LMS, an institutional learning environment, towards student-centered, personal environments

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LMS Alternatives – July 2010 (PDF)

• There are good reasons to not use Moodle or another LMS 

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