A New Face in ATS
Introducing Amanda Sollenberger
Amanda Sollenberger has joined the ATS staff as Coordinator of Audio
Visual Resources. In this position, Amanda
 supports the management, distribution, and utilization of audio and
video instructional resources at the College. In addition to collaborating
and consulting with faculty and students, Amanda is responsible for
the daily operational support of the Media
Center in ATS.
Amanda has
a MFA in Film and Electronic Media from American
University and
a BS from Millersville University.
You can contact
Amanda at 3907 and amanda.sollenberger@fandm.edu or
in her office in Stager 021.
The newest TEC
Stager 316 gets a face-lift
During
the summer, Stager
316 received a face-lift.
In addition to freshly painted walls and
new accents, the classroom  on the top floor of Stager Hall was
converted from a Video TEC
to a full-featured technology-enhanced classroom.
A classroom
in the Shadek-Fackenthal Library has also been converted to a
Video TEC.
From faculty lectures to student presentations, displaying
multimedia information is a cornerstone of classroom
instruction. Technology Enhanced Classrooms (TECs) provide the
necessary built-in
hardware
to make such
multimedia presentations possible, Available in Appel, Geothean,
Hackman, Keiper, Kaufman, and
Stager, ATS-managed
TEC-rooms are
available in a variety of configurations including Computer-TECs,
Video-TECs, and Hybrid-TECs. More...
Portrait of a Blogger: Under
30 and Sociable
Survey Finds Need to Connect With Family
and Friends and to Meet New People
They
consider themselves digital natives.
They're young. They're addicted to instant messaging and social networks.
And they're more apt to dish about the drama at last night's party
than the president's latest faux pas.
 Bloggers have become influential fixtures in cyberspace, but the
term covers about 12 million people who write Web
logs, known as blogs.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has
released a survey
of bloggers aimed at getting a better grasp on who they are and
why they do what they do.
More than half of bloggers are younger than 30, and a majority use
their blogs as a mode of creative expression, the survey found. Money-making
possibilities motivate only 15 percent of bloggers, and most blog
on a variety of topics, with 11 percent focusing on politics. More...
Faculty Technology Tips
F&M faculty offer ideas for using
technology to enhance teaching and research
Susan Dicklitch, Government
Using Student Blogs to Generate Class Discussions
 Blogging:
Everyone is doing it -- how about having your students do it for
credit?
I've set up blogs for each class -- where students are required
to blog about a newspaper article, a current event, an issue related
to the topics that we are discussing for that week.
The idea behind using the blogs is to get students to participate
in blogging and to link what they read (newspapers etc.) to the
issues that we are dealing with in the classroom. It gets students
reading about the news and commenting about it. It allows students
who are shy to speak to express themselves on the blogs and students
must participate -- either submitting a blog and/or commenting
on blogs.
Blogs also provide a wider forum for feedback. After all, blogosphere
is open to all and we do have comments from others in the world. By
blogging on the internet -- others get to read student blogs, and
comment. By setting up a site
meter (very easy to do -- if I can do it!) you can trace where
in the world people are reading your student blogs. During class,
you can pull up the blog site, discuss student posts and comments
and external comments as well as show them a map of the world and
where people are reading their blogs.
GOV326 - African politics class:
http://humanrights4all-africa.blogspot.com
GOV430 - Human rights, human wrongs
GOV326 - Evil vs. Good: The Struggle for human rights http://humanrights4all.blogspot.com
GOV223 - Comparative politics of developing areas:
http://development101.blogspot.com
Around the Web
A snapshot of what's going on around
the World Wide Web
Digital Resources
for the Humanities
The humanities and social sciences need to give more attention and resources
to building digital infrastructures within their disciplines, says a long-awaited
report from the American Council of Learned Societies.
American Council of Learned Societies
Social Software in Academia
Still new on campus, social
software tools can support students and
staff beyond the classroom, reaching around the world for learning
and communication.
EDUCAUSE Quarterly
Reach Out and Touch Your Computer Data
Personal computing might soon become a far more hands-on experience.
Researchers are building sophisticated touch-screen interfaces that
make a mouse and keyboard unnecessary. Instead users move or stretch
their fingertips to manipulate information. Jeff Han, a research
scientist at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical
Sciences gave
the presentation at a recent Technology
Entertainment Design conference, in Monterey, CA.
U. of California system's 100 libraries join Google's controversial
book-scanning project
The University of
California system has joined Google's
book-digitization project, and the partnership is expected to convert millions of books
from the system's 100 libraries -- even volumes that are protected
by copyright -- into fully searchable electronic texts. Google officials
say they plan to add even more academic libraries to the program in
the near future.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Ads
in textbooks keep the prices free
Textbook prices are soaring into the hundreds of dollars, but in some courses
this fall, students won't pay a dime. The catch: Their textbooks will have
ads for companies including FedEx Kinko's and Pura Vida coffee. Now, a small
Minnesota startup is trying to shake up the status quo in the $6 billion college
textbook industry. Freeload Press will offer more than 100 titles this fall
completely free.
The Detroit Free Press
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When did you get your first cell phone?
The average age at which a person
gets their first phone is 12 in the United States – in
Britain it's 8 years old.
The
world's insatiable desire to stay in touch while on the
move will result in more than a billion mobile phones
being sold annually by 2009. According to a recent
study, the average 10-year-old will
spend almost $30,000 on mobile services in a lifetime and
the youth market is shaping mobile technology markets.
Source: The National Literacy Trust
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Enrollment
Options in Blackboard
Faculty using Blackboard courses at the College
currently have three
options for "populating," or enrolling students within
a course – self enrollment, manual enrollment, or batch enrollment.
ATS
QuickStarts are designed to provide short, concise instructions
for using hardware, software, and facilities managed by ATS.
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TinyURL
Making long URLs usable!
Are you sick of posting URLs in emails only to have it break
when sent causing the recipient to have to cut and paste it
back together? Then you need to visit TinyURL on the web! By
entering
a URL in a text field, you can create a tiny URL that
will not break in email postings and never expires.
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Professor Carl Pike, Biology, discusses quantitative scientific
data with some of his students during class. Professor Pike has
been an early adopter of the use of technology-enhanced classrooms
at the College.
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Click to
view larger image and description...
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 ATS
eNews
September, 2006
Volume 2, Issue 1
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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