Online audio and video course
reserves
Access to instructional media titles...on
reserve, online, and on demand
ATS is exploring opportunities to provide on-demand access to appropriate
instructional audio and video titles for the College
community. On-demand means  the
material is available when you want it...24 hours a day, seven days
a week, 365 days per year...media "streamed" to
your computer via the internet!
During the 2005-06 academic year, ATS and about a dozen
faculty are pilot-testing a new service to offer online
course reserves for audio and video. Bruce Gustafson, Charles
A. Dana Professor of Music, and students in his First Year Seminar,
Music and Stage, are participating in the pilot
project. "I asked my [students] how many had used the streaming videos,
and it was 100%,
even though I presented it as a backup option to the group screenings — they're
doing both!"
In order for the College to be in compliance with distributor
contracts and copyright law, specific criteria must be met. One of
the criteria is "course restricted access." This means that
the material must be made available only to students registered in
current
College
courses. When students attempt to access a title online, they will
be prompted for their unified-College username and password. Once access
is approved, the material begins.
One of the
videos Professor Gustafson uses in his course is West Side Story.
Take a sneak
peak online now of the complete performance...don't forget
to use your F&M username and password at the prompt! More...
Faculty Showcase
Dorothy Merritts
 Dorothy
Merritts, Professor of Earth
and Environment,
has completely transitioned to using digital teaching materials
in her courses – PowerPoint presentations, digital
images, digital video, computer animations. Because
of the digitization, materials are now more easily shared by the
class, and her students can review experiments they saw in class
or out in the field at any time. "It's
a totally different way of teaching than just going in and doing
a lecture." More...
Blogging Abroad
Reality show blog promotes study abroad
 Four
college students have landed their own interactive educational reality
show called BlogAbroad.com.
They are: Jonathan Jackson, a 20-year-old Rice University junior studying
in Dunedin, New Zealand; Vanessa Ruiz*,
a 22-year-old photography major at the Rhode Island School of Design
studying in ten countries on Semester at Sea; Amy White, a 24-year-old
grad student at the University of Colorado studying post-colonial North
African history in Cairo, Egypt; and Keri James, a 20-year-old
from Wellington, New Zealand, who us completing her degree abroad at
Hartwick College
in
Oneonta, N.Y. They are blogging their stories to entertain people and
to inform them about the realities of studying abroad.
The four bloggers were chosen by three judges from over 100 students
studying abroad who competed for the parts. They are given tasks to
complete and they post new episodes at least three times a week, which
are available for viewing 24 hours a day.
This is the second season of the show. "The second season will
continue to innovate and give the audience an influence over the show
like never before," said Mark Shay, president of StudyAbroad.com. "Plus,
while highly entertaining, BlogAbroad.com is a terrific educational
tool. It is a way to show firsthand what it's like to study abroad." For
more information, visit http://www.blogabroad.com.
[*Vanessa Ruiz, studying a Semester
at Sea, is on
the same program - and ship - that F&M's Michael
Penn is currently teaching on while
on sabbatical!]
Faculty Technology Tips
F&M faculty offer ideas for using technology
to enhance teaching and research
Krista
Casler, Psychology
Using Blackboard's Survey Feature to Collect Student Feedback
“It is nearly always valuable to get feedback from students regarding
various components of a course. As a *new* faculty member, such feedback
is particularly relevant for me, and I imagine it is equally important
to anyone -- even veteran faculty -- developing and teaching a course
for the first time. Unfortunately, though, it's difficult to avoid
having an initial "guinea pig" semester prior to receiving
the first round of SPOTs. I have found that the survey option on
Blackboard is a great way to help solve this problem. It took less
than 20 minutes
for me to create my own mid-semester "mini-SPOT," post
it on the course site, and request that students take 2 or 3 minutes
to
fill it out at their leisure during the week. Because student responses
are anonymous and a range of response types are possible, one can
quickly gather information on what students are learning, what they
are enjoying,
and their overall satisfaction with different aspects of the course
and teaching style. Bottom line? I get good feedback and students
feel empowered knowing their learning experience is taken seriously!”
Trex Proffitt, Business, Organizations & Society
Video feedback for students
“I've found that sometimes, it's easier to talk through feedback
to students than to write copious comments somewhere. For group projects
in particular, where there are many drafts of the projects, and
group
presentations, I've found that sometimes you can talk your comments,
and make more comments, that help the group along the way. While
there may be a paper at the end of it, video feedback can help
student with
the public part of their project. You can make a DVD for each group
that includes video of their presentation, your comments, and even
other presentations they might learn from. Once the routine is
down, it's got unlimited possibility.”
Rob Sternberg, Earth and Environment
Using eDisk to facilitate student collaboration
“I'm having my students write a short paper
on our field trip to the beautiful Chickies Rock. I posted on eDisk
a PDF file of
a required
reading published by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation
and Natural Resources. The students were asked to use figures
from this
publication to add to the paper. My preceptor took digital photos
of Chickies
Rock and us
at work during
the field trip. These have also been posted to eDisk for possible
inclusion in the paper.”
Around the Web
A snapshot of what's going on around
the World Wide Web
Filmmaker's Foundation to Transfer Vast Archive of Holocaust Testimonies
to U. of Southern California
An archive of 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and liberators,
collected by a foundation started by Steven Spielberg, is moving to
the University of Southern California. At a ceremony on Thursday, the
filmmaker said the move would help fulfill his vision of the archive
as a teaching tool.
University of Southern California
Yahoo
to Digitize Public Domain Books
Yahoo is working with the Internet
Archive, the University
of California and others on a project to digitize books in archives around the
world and make them searchable through any web search engine and
downloadable for free.
CNET News.com
Stanford,
Apple team up to offer audio content through iTunes
Stanford University is making hundreds of Stanford podcasts available
free to anyone through Apple Computer's popular iTunes
Music Store. The podcasts include lectures by the university's professors,
music from its students, and play-by-play descriptions of its football games.
Stanford University
Films Media Group Launches FMG ON DEMAND
Films Media Group, North America’s
leader in educational video, announced that it is launching FMG
ON DEMAND, a proprietary digital
video system offering colleges and universities access to the superior
content offerings of FMG’s quality collection of programs.
Films Media Group
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How many bytes in a yottabyte?
The basic unit used in computer data storage is called a bit (binary digit).
Computers use these little bits, which are composed of ones and zeros, to do
things and talk to other computers. All computer files are stored as binary
files (represented as ones and zeros).
Although computer data and file size is normally measured
in binary code using the binary number system (counted
by factors of two 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc), the prefixes
for the multiples are based on the metric system. The
nearest binary number to 1,000 is 2^10 or 1,024; thus
1,024 bytes was named a Kilobyte. So, although a metric "kilo" equals
1,000 (e.g. one kilogram = 1,000 grams), a binary "Kilo" equals
1,024 (e.g. one Kilobyte = 1,024 bytes).
1 byte = 8 bits
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes
1 gigabyte = 1024 megabytes
1 terabyte = 1024 gigabytes
1 petabyte = 1024 terabytes
1 exabyte = 1024 petabytes
1 zettabyte = 1024 exabytes
1 yottabyte = 1024 zettabytes
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Creating
a Survey in Blackboard
The Survey Manager feature in Blackboard allows
instructors to administer surveys to those students enrolled
in a course.
Students' names are not attached to survey results.
ATS
QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions
for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by ATS.
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Weblog
A weblog, or blog, is a web-based publication consisting primarily
of periodic articles (normally in reverse chronological order).
Although most early weblogs were manually updated, tools to
automate the maintenance of such sites made them accessible
to a much larger population, and the use of some sort of browser-
based software is now a typical aspect of "blogging."
For more information on blogging in higher education, see
the EDUCAUSE Series: 7
Things You Should Know About Blogs.
Wikipedia
is a free encyclopedia
that is being written collaboratively by people from around
the world in several languages.
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If you're using Apple Computer's latest operating system, Tiger (OS
X 10.4 or greater), place your cursor over a word in many applications
like Safari or Apple Mail, then hit Command + Control +
D. Instant
dictionary definition!
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Professor Jay Anderson, Mathematics and Computer
Science, along
with students Chris Crawford ’08, Allison Stadtmueller ’08,
and Laura Selway ’07 participate in a live videoconference
from Hamburg, Germany with Professor Hannes Beeken.
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Click to view larger image and description...
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 ATS
eNews
November, 2005
Volume 1, Issue 3
Tips, techniques, and tools for using technology
to enhance teaching and research
ATS eNews is published by Academic Technology
Services. http://ats.fandm.edu/enews/
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