FITS Newsletter Home

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.

Contributed by Dave Berque

Background on DePauw’s Tablet PC Grants from Hewlett-Packard

In May, 2006, DePauw received an HP Technology for Teaching grant to encourage the transformation of teaching and learning using HP Tablet PCs (essentially laptops that are augmented with digital pens) and DyKnow software in Computer Science courses taught by Dave Berque. In July, 2007, DePauw University received a follow-up HP Technology for Teaching Leadership grant. This grant recognized the success of the earlier award and provided support to transform Terri Bonebright’s offering of “Cognitive Psychology” and Tom Dickinson’s offering of “Foundations of Education” (see related article in this issue about Tom’s work).

Combined, the two grants are valued at more than $189,000 and have provided more than 60 Tablet PCs and supporting equipment. While the Computer Science, Psychology, and Education Studies courses listed above were the focus of the HP Grant activities, a total of 23 courses enrolling 395 students in 9 disciplines (Biology, Computer Science, Chemistry, Education Studies, Economics, Geosciences, Japanese language, Physics and Psychology) have used the granted equipment to date. We expect students in an additional 11 courses to use the equipment during the spring of 2008.

Convertible Tablets: The Best of Both Worlds

DePauw has been using a Tablet PC form factor known as a “Convertible”. When a convertible Tablet PC is first opened it looks just like a standard laptop, complete with a keyboard. However, the screen can be swiveled and closed over the keyboard so that its display faces up as show below. When converted to this mode the Tablet is easy to draw on with a special stylus. When many standard Windows applications (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) are run on a Tablet PC they expose extra functionality that takes advantage of the pen interface.

Using Tablet PCs to Support Teaching and Learning

Imagine being asked how a traditional laptop or desktop computer can be used to support teaching and learning. The question is hard to answer because the list of potential uses is so long. Students can write papers with Microsoft-Word, classes can share information with Moodle and E-mail, presentations can be given with PowerPoint. Of course many discipline specific applications are also available in specific domains.

The potential uses of Tablet PCs are just as varied. For example, students can submit typed papers in Word and faculty members can use a stylus to make electronic annotations directly on the document (see related article in this issue). Similarly, the electronic pen can be used to annotate PowerPoint slides during a presentation (watch a video that demonstrates this on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeUp38UcbD4 ).

Additionally, using software such as LectureScribe or Camtasia a teacher can record a handwritten answer key to a problem while orally explaining the problems’ solution. The resulting ink and sound video can be posted to a web site for student review. This allows the students to see and hear the process that was used to solve the problem. If students have Tablets (or even laptops) during class DyKnow Vision software will let students and teachers share typed and pen-based notes (each student leave class with a personalized and replayable electronic notebook consisting of the teacher’s content augmented with the student’s personal annotations). This software also supports a variety of classroom interactions ranging from multiple choice polls to sharing of pen-based sketches and problems solutions produced by students in and outside of class. Finally, as is the case for traditional laptops, a variety of discipline specific applications are available.

If you are interested in learning more about how Tablet PCs can support teaching and learning consider attending the Tablet PC track of the FITS workshop on November 17^th(See next article for more information).  Also, a Tablet PC is available in the FITS lab for you to explore.

Contributed by David Diedriech

1. Office 2007 User Interface is dramatically different from previous versions.

The old menus and toolbars (e.g., File, Edit, and View) have been replaced with the “Ribbon” and the “Office Button”. This new interface is designed to give you all the options you would need in an easily navigable tabbed environment. Also new is the Microsoft Office Button in the top left corner. Not unlike the Start button, this is where users may change global options and settings for the program.

2. The default file formats (.docx, .xlsx, .mdbx, and .pptx) for Office 2007 files are incompatible with older versions of Office, including Windows Office 2003 and Office 2004 for Mac[DU1] .

• If you already have Office 2007 installed on your computer, you should use the “Save As” option to save files in the older format (e.g., “Word 97-2003 Document”) to ensure that those who don’t have Office 2007 can read your files. If you are a faculty member, remind your students who have Office 2007 to use the “Save As” option described above when preparing files that they submit to you electronically.
• If you have Windows Office 2003 or Office 2004 for Mac, you should download and install the following compatibility pack or file converter. When you install these, you can open, edit, and save files that were originally saved in the default Office 2007 formats (.docx, .xlsx, .mdbx, and .pptx).
  • ForWindows Office 2003:
    Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
  • For Office 2004 for Mac
    Microsoft Office Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 0.2
    (Please Note:This Beta version ONLY supports Word and PowerPoint files)

• For additional information on Office 2007 at DePauw, please visit our website at http://www.depauw.edu/it/helpdesk/office2007/.

Contributed by Veronica Pejril

Web-based content is becoming a mainstream fixture in many curricula’s arsenals of learning resources that faculty members provide their students. Because that content can include articles from scholarly journals, emerging stories in the news/blogosphere, or multimedia content such as audio/video podcasts or presentations, navigating through these data can easily overwhelm even a seasoned instructor or researcher. Controlling the flow and delivery of this information with an “RSS reader” can make this daunting task simple and manageable.

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, is a protocol that drives the delivery of subscribed content to you, or your students’, desktops. Instead of taking the time to fetch new journal articles, blog entries, news stories or podcasts from the websites they reside on, you can use RSS to subscribe to content streams you’d like fed to you or your students automatically.

Google Reader, Netvibes and Firefox’s own “Live Bookmarks” are but a few of the hundreds of free tools available for subscribing to RSS-delivered content. Some sophisticated RSS readers allow you to rank or filter subscribed content (e.g., subscribing to articles from a music-history journal, but only displaying content that features Mozart). Web-based RSS readers such as Google Reader are portable. Your personalized content is available to you by logging into an account, from any web browser on any computer, anywhere.

Faculty members can share RSS-based content such as journal articles, breaking news and audio podcasts via their course management system. Moodle offers an “RSS Feed” block, so a professor can provide automatically-updated topical content to her students.

If you are interested in using RSS for your research or instructional goals, I invite you to contact any of our DePauw FITS staff. Listed below are some online resources to help you get started.

RSS in Plain English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

Tour of Google Reader

http://www.google.com/help/reader/help.html

Finding and Subscribing to RSS feeds

http://www.google.com/help/reader/feeds.html