The New Media Center Media Center in ATS enhanced to support digital media and group study The Media Center provides access to the College collection of non-print educational audio and video resources. In order to accommodate the gradual transition from analog to digital media, the Media Center was completely renovated last year to support both analog and digital media formats, as well as to provide spaces for both individual and small group study. Media Center prior to renovation In addition to the traditional, physical media collection, ATS is also exploring opportunities to provide on-demand access to appropriate instructional audio and video titles for the College community. For example, Classical Music Library offers an impressive classical music collection enabling one to listen to a continually growing collection - currently over 50,000 tracks. ATS Video Select provides selected titles from the College's instructional video collection - licensed for on-demand access to all members of the College community. The ATS Media Vault archives audio and video from the past, including such classics as Are you Popular (1947), How to Take a Test (1956), and Fum Follies: Town and Gown (1986). Media Center in 2006 Take a quick look around the new ATS Media Center now by taking a Virtual Tour online! Please stop in the new Media Center to talk with ATS staff about using traditional media in your courses and to explore some of the on-demand media services available to you and your students. More... Faculty Showcase Lisa Gasbarrone Performance-related activities, such as acting out dialogues and producing scenes, have long been a way for Lisa Gasbarrone, Professor of French and Italian at Franklin & Marshall, to encourage her students to use modern language actively. Now with the help of technology, she has taken this to another level. More... Teen Content Creators and Consumers More than half of online teens have created content for the internet According to a recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, american teenagers today are utilizing the interactive capabilities of the internet as they create and share their own media creations. Fully half of all teens and 57% of teens who use the internet could be considered Content Creators. They have created a blogs or webpage, posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Teens are often much more enthusiastic authors and readers of blogs than their adult counterparts. Teen bloggers, led by older girls, are a major part of this tech-savvy cohort. Teen bloggers are more fervent internet users than non-bloggers and have more experience with almost every online activity in the survey. Teens continue to actively download music and video from the internet and have used multiple sources to get their files. Those who get music files online believe it is unrealistic to expect people to self-regulate and avoid free downloading and file-sharing altogether. More... The Digital Backpack Small, specialized digital devices that help students connect, create, and collaborate So just what are students carrying around in their backpacks these days? The student backpack of today contains an array of portable devices with potential for learning—devices to help students connect, create, and collaborate. As these small, specialized devices evolve and converge, they will become part of the educational mainstream. Each student will choose the tools best suited to their learning style and course selection. Just as digital content is making us rethink the textbook, the latest high-tech gadgets will reset our idea of classroom computing. With a little creative thinking, innovative students and teachers can make educational use of the computing power they carry with them. More... Around the Web A snapshot of what's going on around the World Wide Web "Podcast" selected as Oxford American Dictionary's 2005 Word of the Year "Podcast" was selected as 2005's Word of the Year by the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary, who gave it this broad definition: "A digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player." The new term will be added to the next online update of the New Oxford American Dictionary, due in early 2006. Oxford University Press: USA Encyclopedia of the Sanctuaries The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP) has launched a new free online resource that highlights the diverse marine life of America's oceans and the Great Lakes. The "Encyclopedia of the Sanctuaries" offers photos, streaming video, and important facts for more than one hundred key animal and plant species from each of the national marine sanctuaries. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Stanford’s ButterflyNet Bridges the Digital Divide Even in the digital age, field scientists have been notoriously reluctant to embrace technology to track their research. ButterflyNet promises to help them over the adoption curve. The program incorporates the user-friendly aspects of traditional pen-and-paper with the rapid archiving and data-processing capabilities of a laptop computer. Stanford University Library of Congress Gets Google Grant to Build Digital Collection of Rarities The Library of Congress has accepted a $3 million grant from Google to begin building an international digital collection of rare books, manuscripts, maps, posters, stamps and other materials from its holdings and those of other national libraries that will be freely accessible for viewing by anyone, anywhere with Internet access. Library of Congress $100 laptop bridges digital divide Researchers have unveiled a US$100, hand-cranked laptop computer and say they hope to place them in the hands of millions of schoolchildren around the globe. About the size of a textbook, the machines can set up their own wireless networks and operate in areas without a reliable electricity supply, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers said at a UN technology summit. The goal is to provide the machines free of charge to children in poor countries who cannot afford computers of their own. MIT Media Lab

The New Media Center Faculty Showcase Teen Content Creators and Consumers The Digital Backpack Around the Web How many videos are in the College's non-print collection? As of January, 2006, the collection contained 4770 video titles, including 3850 VHS tapes and 920 DVDs. The collection grows by about 325 titles per year, which are now mainly in DVD format. ATS began purchasing DVDs for the collection in 2001. In a typical semester, 30 faculty place approximately 215 video titles for use in 40 courses on reserve in the ATS Media Center. Multi-region DVD Viewing Basic guidelines for viewing a multi-region DVD in the Media Center. Multi-region DVDs are those purchased outside of North America. ATS QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by ATS. Personal Response Systems Personal Response Systems, also called "clickers," allow groups of people to vote on a topic or answer a question. Each person has a remote control with which selections can be made. Each remote communicates with a computer via receivers located around the room. After a set time, the system shuts off and tabulates the results. Typically, the results are instantly made available to the participants via a bar graph displayed on projector. For more information on clickers in higher education, see the EDUCAUSE Series: 7 Things You Should Know About Clickers. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that is being written collaboratively by people from around the world in several languages. Before you email that file, it's a good idea to make it as small as possible to make the file transfer as quick as possible. To create a compressed file using Mac OSX, Control-click on the file and choose Create Archive (which is Apple-speak for “make a compressed ZIP file”). This quickly creates a new file, with the file extension ".zip." You can also "zip" an entire folder of files into one "zipped' file. Technology Demonstration for College Faculty "Clickers" - Personal Response Systems February 24, 2006 9 AM to 4 PM More information about upcoming ATS Events is available online. Professor Matthew Schousen, Government, explains concepts of political research to his students in one of the College's Technology Enhanced Classrooms. Professor Schousen and his colleagues in Government helped design this unique teaching and learning space. Click to view the rest of this lesson... ATS eNews February, 2006 Volume 1, Issue 4 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/