FITS Newsletter Home

• Two Web 2.0 Tools for Group Projects
  
• 2007 FITS Fall Workshop Report
• 2008 FITS Winter Term Workshop
• EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s “7 Things You Should Know About…” series
• Staff Spotlight: Matthew Champagne, Recording Arts Specialist
  

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START

Wikis and social bookmarking are just two of several Web 2.0 applications that offer potential for improving group collaboration. These tools make the time between meetings more effective for the group as a whole by providing a medium for the exchange of information. This is an improvement over email which often gets messy when used for group communication. These tools subsequently increase the effectiveness of face to face meetings as group members will be more prepared by reviewing the wiki or social bookmarks.

One benefit of using a wiki (web page editable by multiple users) is it allows each group member to update the page while preserving the history of the document. You might have encountered this when reading a wikipedia article. If you wanted to see how many edits have been made to an article within the last few days, you can click on the “history tab” to find this information. Students working on a presentation together could use a wiki to share notes with each other between group meetings. They could review the wiki history and see what each student contributed or removed from the notes. The removal or change in the notes by another student could facilitate a discussion amongst the group during a subsequent meeting or in a discussion forum. Thus, wikis allow for students to collaborate on a document in a way that might not have been possible before. Often a group discussion results which can further enhance the learning outcomes of the project. Below are some recommended wiki applications:

Moodle Wikis (contact moodle@depauw.edu for information)

Pbwiki www.pbwiki.com

Wikispaces www.wikispaces.com

Zoho Wiki www.zoho.com

In addition to wikis, social bookmarking offers groups the ability to tag and share online resources quickly. Delicious http://del.icio.us/ is often the tool of choice for social bookmarking. Group members could share resources by deciding on a unique tag for their group. Then each group member can subscribe to this tag in their Delicious account. Now, every time an article is tagged by a group member with the unique identifier, it will automatically be added to the list for the group to review. The resource can then be discussed during a meeting or in a discussion thread. Resources can also be searched by topic tags as a way to gather more information for the project. More on Delicious can be found in the LIS newsletter article by Tiffany Hebb. http://lisnews.wordpress.depauw.edu/2007/11/12/delicious-%e2%80%93-store-your-
bookmarks-online/

Both wikis and Delicious generate RSS feeds for subscriptions. If you subscribe to a wiki page, you will receive a list of the latest updates to the page and who made the change. With social bookmarking, you can subscribe to a particular tag. For instance, an instructor might designate a unique tag for the class. Students then tag anything they run across that might be useful for class. Then, the instructor could subscribe to the tag in their Moodle course. Now every time a student finds a new article relevant to the course and tags it, the article’s title and possibly a summary will be displayed on the course for the class to see and investigate. If you are interested in using this feature within your course and would like more information, email moodle@depauw.edu.

For more information on how to subscribe to RSS feeds using a feed reader check out:

http://fitsnews.wordpress.depauw.edu/2007/09/17/rss-readers/

More resources on wikis and Social Bookmarking:

Wiki’s in Plain English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Social Bookmarking in Plain English - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU&feature=user

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START, and Dave Berque, Tenzer Family University Professor in Instructional Technology, Professor of Computer Science

Seventeen faculty members participated in the FITS fall workshop on November 17, which consisted of a condensed day-long look at two different technologies gaining use at DePauw, Moodle and Tablet PCs.

Using Moodle

To start the workshop, the 11 faculty members shared their goals for using Moodle in their teaching. Their ideas ranged across a variety of applications using Moodle, such as distributing course materials and library reserves, engaging their students in online discussion outside the classroom, or exchanging students’ papers electronically rather than in printed versions. They then spent the rest of the day in a variety of mini-sessions focused toward those goals.

A sample highlight from the workshop was a hands-on activity focused on how to set up Moodle to enable students to submit completed assignments online The faculty members were able to experience what Moodle is like from both the student and instructor perspectives. They first worked as a student and submitted mock assignments and received feedback on those assignments. Then, during the second half of the activity, they received assignments as an instructor from mock students and sent their feedback to the students.

At the end of the day, many participants were well on their way toward building their own Moodle courses and FITS instructional technologists will follow up with those faculty members throughout the coming weeks help them finish their courses.

FITS will also have a Moodle track during the Winter Term workshop. For more information on the Winter Term workshop see the next article.

Exploring Tablet PCs

The six faculty members who participated in the Tablet PC track had a full day of activities. Each participant was given a Tablet PC to use during the workshop. After learning how to use the Tablet’s digital pen to add ink to documents, participants heard from three colleagues who regularly use Tablet PCs to support their teaching. Participants also had hands-on experience with a variety of Tablet PC software applications and were able to practice annotating Word documents, Power Point presentations, and PDF files with digital ink. Each participant also took a “Tablet PC Deep Dive” which consisted of spending some time grading a student assignment, preparing an actual PowerPoint or DyKnow presentation, or annotating a research article.

The 2008 FITS Winter term workshop is highly flexible and individualized. We encourage faculty members to submit a proposal of what technology-centered curricular goals you would like to accomplish. Plenary sessions on emergent technologies are augmented with individualized guidance, based on faculty members’ needs. Below are some ways these technologies can be used to support your curricular goals.

Pedagogical uses for Social Computing:

a. Wikis
b. Blogs
c. Social Bookmarking
d. RSS feeds

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for:

a. Augmenting student research with GIS data
b. Mapping your own data
c. Creating interactive “what-if” scenarios
d. other

Audio recording and editing for:

a. studio music production
b. podcasting
c. web-based audio clips
d. other

Moodle

The Moodle track is designed to meet the demand of faculty members who wish to begin building their courses with Moodle while upholding the flexibility and project-oriented format of the FITS Winter Term Workshop. Faculty members are still encouraged to submit a proposal or a list of goals that they would like to accomplish for their course. Participants can choose from a variety of Moodle-related workshops to meet their needs. Anticipated topics for the sessions are listed below; however, our itinerary will be largely demand-driven. Participants need not attend every session. In addition to these sessions, a FITS instructional technologist can meet with you to discuss your specific course goals, or to explore a topic that may not be covered in our sessions. Participants may wish to combine the Moodle track with some of the other Winter Term Workshop opportunities as necessary to meet their goals. If you are interested in doing this, be sure to include how you would like to combine such technologies in your proposal.

Moodle Session Topics

Introduction to Moodle, goals and expectations
File Management and Course Organization
Assignments, File Submission, and the Gradebook
Moodle’s Discussion Forums
Moodle and Media
Using Moodle’s Wikis
Converting a Blackboard course to a Moodle Course
Importing previous course materials into a new course
Using Moodle’s Group feature

To participate, we ask that you submit a short proposal no later than December 15th to Veronica Pejril at veronicapejril@depauw.edu, outlining your goals for the Winter Term Workshop. If you have any questions regarding the workshop, or migrating your content to Moodle for Spring 2008, please contact myself, or Michael Gough at michaelgough@depauw.edu.

Contributed by Carol L. Smith, Assoc. CIO for Instructional & Learning Services

YouTube. . . Facebook. . . Google Earth. . . Social Bookmarking. . . Blogs and Wikis… Just a sampling of emerging (or once-emerging!) technologies that have offered opportunities for new ways of learning and teaching in higher education.

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should Know About… series helps demystify these digital tools. Each two-page brief focuses on a single technology or practice and describes What it is, How it works, Where it is going, and Why it matters to teaching and learning. The series provides overviews of emerging technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts.

A recent 7 Things You Should Know About… article focuses on Citizen Journalism, which refers to a wide range of activities in which everyday people contribute information or commentary about news events. As noted in the brief, “Citizen journalism encompasses content ranging from user-submitted reviews on a Web site about movies to wiki-based news. It forces contributors to think objectively, asking probing questions and working to understand the context — the kinds of activities that lead to deeper learning.”

Some of the other topics highlighted in the 7 Things You Should Know About… series include

• Twitter (an online application designed to let people describe what they are doing or thinking at a given moment in 140 characters or less)

• RSS ( a tool that enables you subscribe to online content using a “reader” or “aggregator”)

• Wikipedia You can find the complete list of topics at
  www.educause.edu/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutSeries/7495.

About The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI):

The Educause Learning Initiative (ELI)  http://www.educause.edu/eli) is a community of higher education institutions and organizations committed to advancing learning through information technology innovation.

In my nearly ten years of professional classical music recording production, I’ve always placed a premium on listening beyond the foreground (the musical performance itself) to the contribution made to the recording by the space in which the performance (and recording) occurs. I believe that the acoustic quality of a space (coupled with its appropriateness for the particular instrument or ensemble to be recorded) is the single greatest determining factor to the quality of any recording made in it.

My path here to DePauw began with the study of music composition at Louisiana State University and the University of Louisiana and musicology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where I became interested in the interplay between music and space. I started recording music as a means of studying this interplay, and became sought after by my colleagues at Stony Brook as a recording engineer. Soon I was able to earn a bit of a living from this work and eventually started a freelance classical recording business, working predominately in Northern California’s San Francisco Bay area. Later I was asked to fill an interim position teaching music technology and audio recording techniques at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, during which time I applied for the new Recording Arts Specialist position here at DePauw. When I started recording in music grad school, it became my hope to one day assume the role of recording engineer at a school of music, so my appointment here at DePauw is really a dream come true.

Fun Fact: I can spin a cafeteria tray on my finger.