Check out this great story on OWC, a Mac after-market company in Woodstock, Illinois. You get a little peek at some vintage Apple gear along with an interesting tour of the LEED Platinum facility. It made me want to buy some of their stuff!
I found a very interesting definition today:
Technology is a human innovation in action that involves the generation of knowledge and processes to develop systems that solve problems and extend human capabilities.
This is wonderful because it means our IT Services folks can be more than just “computer guys”. I’m tired of thinking of technology as “gadget studies” and would rather focus on finding the right tools, electronic or otherwise, that enhance our ability to teach, learn, think, communicate, exist, and so on!
Here are some fun and useful gift ideas to consider for the Holiday season!
Wireless Presenter
Need a simple remote to control your PowerPoint presentation. A wireless presenter is just the device. The Targus Wireless Presenter allows you to move from slide to slide, page up and down, darken and resume the screen and includes a laser pointer. Available from Tiger Direct for $26.99.
Gorillapod
This light and versatile tripod is a great digital camera companion. The Gorillapod has over two dozen flexible leg joints that bend and rotate to secure your camera to almost any surface, rocks, tree branch, pole, on a table, etc. The Gorillapod is available from Joby for $24.95 with free shipping.
Backup HardDrive
Need peace of mind knowing that your music, photos, and documents are backed up? An external backup drive may be just the device you need. The Maxtor One Touch line works very well for both Windows and Macintosh computers. Drive sizes start at 80Gb and go up to 1TB.The 120GB model sells for $89 at Amazon.com.
Slingbox
The Slingbox is a device that lets you watch and control your DVR, Digital Cable receiver, Satellite receiver, or DVD player on your personal computer or PDA any time, any where. There are three models, the Slingbox AV, The Slingbox SOLO and the Slingbox PRO. The differences between the boxes are the AV and SOLO devices have a single input from a single source, the SOLO is HD capable. The PRO allows four inputs and is HD capable. The Slingbox is available from many sources. WalMart sells the AV for $109.48, the SOLO for $148.88, and the PRO for 198.88.
Cube World Digital Stick People
Two inch cubes house electronic stick people that live together for your entertainment. When multiple cubes are stacked together the digital people interact with each other. Their antics are quite amusing. You can also interact with the cube people. Shake a cube and see what happens. Cube World people can be found at Thinkgeek.com. A set of two costs $25.
WiFi Detector
Do you travel around with a laptop and wonder if a wireless signal is in range and don’t want to lug your laptop out of the case to see if a wireless signal is available? A WiFi detector might be just what you need. A simple detector that shows if a signal is present and clips to your key ring can be found at Tiger Direct for $10. A more sophisticated detector that shows the SSID (wireless network name), encryption status, channel, and signal strength can be found at Thinkgeek.com for $49.99. For those who are both stylish and geeky, Thinkgeek has a WiFi Detector Shirt that shows actual wireless signal strength on the front with glowing bars for $29.99. Your glowing shirt will look spectacular while sitting in the Memorial Center, Hansen Center, and many Academic areas on campus!
Take TV
Do you have video on your computer that you would like to watch on your TV? Take TV allows you to move videos from your computer to a simple USB device. Plug the device into a TV, sit back with the Take TV remote and watch your video. The 4GB models sells for $99.99 at Amazon.com, the 8GB models sells for 142.49.
R2-D2 Interactive Astromech Droid
A very cool Star Wars toy that listens and responds to your commands. R2 goes on patrol, will take someone a drink, along with many other activities. Check out the video at Thinkgeek.com. R2D2 costs $129.99 at Thinkgeek.com
Happy Holidays!!!!!!
Information Technology needs your help. We are working to make improvements to the e-mail system. As work is done to make these improvements, we are asking people to take a look at the messages they have saved to see if unwanted or large messages could be deleted from the e-mail server.
How to help
Log in to my.iwu.edu and access your e-mail
Thank you for your assistance.
If you have questions about forwarding or archiving your mail please call 556-3900.
Choosing to use a technology tool in a class can lead one down a difficult road. One important key is to figure out what tool to use for the job at hand. So do you use discussion groups, a digital movie project, a wiki, or a blog? To analogize, I wouldn’t want to use a belt sander to grout my bathroom tile, so it would be nice to better understand the nature of these different tools.
So how does one decide what tool or is the best for a specific application or need?
I’ve found a couple of helpful guides to better understand blogs and wikis in the context of teaching and active learning:
As we at Illinois Wesleyan struggle to adapt courses to include online or technology components it often seems that a square peg is being pounded into a round hole. Some parts of some courses are well suited to technology tools and some are not. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
So it seems that some things can be done outside of classtime so we can get them “out of the way” to spend classtime on higher-level academic discourse. Why not teach basic terminology or vocabulary as online homework so you can tackle tougher stuff in person?
Similarly, if students are engaging in intellectual enterprises outside of class (such as writing critical responses to class reading) doesn’t that mean they benefit from the practice of constructing arguments, or even from the practice of writing in general?
Certainly there are benefits. But how does a teacher manage student activity in the online medium? Let me start with three common refrains from faculty:
I attended a conference this month and heard an interesting response to these concerns. John Fritz, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County uses a construct he calls “Participation Portfolios.” Here is his abstract:
If you want students to use online discussions, how do you avoid initiating every thread or simply counting all their replies? By defining and rewarding substantive Q&A (and requiring an online “participation portfolio”). Students will take responsibility for discussions and reduce your burden in assessing them.
John makes an important distinction between quantity of discussion and quality of discussion. This is something that he clearly sets out at the beginning of a course with a rubric. By setting clear guidelines of what makes a post or response “good”, “average”, or “poor” he eliminates “me-too” responses and also reduces grade-groveling later in the term. He requires posts and responses to be spread throughout the course, to stem the tendency to “dogpile” at the end of a term. And it cannot be ignored that John participates in the online discussion. This models the behavior he desires from his students, and sets the academic tone of the discussion.
The students are then asked to pull the best examples of “good” posts, week by week, from the online class discussion forum. They cut-and-paste them into a Word template, propose their own grade based on the rubric, and hand them in. John reserves the right to adjust the grades, but finds that most students are harder on themselves that he would have been.
This system of Participation Portfolios addresses a number of problems. It provides a for-credit incentive with clear quality guidelines for students . It reduces the workload on a faculty member by distilling a term’s worth of discussion into a single assignment. It also requires a student to evaluate their writing and assess themselves.
If you want to hear about how well the assignment works, watch this video interview with UMBC Professor Chris Swan about this portfolio assignment (opens in iTunes).
UMBC didn’t come up with this overnight. They have a program on their campus to promote Alternative Delivery of class content. Faculty design a online/hybrid learning module and test it twice – once for students and once for faculty. They then make a 10 minute presentation about their experience to earn a stipend.
I hope that by reviewing the best practices at some other institutions, such as the Portfolio that John Fritz proposes, we might ease the integration of technology into some of our own courses.
I’d like to share with you a few things that we are checking out in the Office of IT. These aren’t things we are committed to at this stage but if you have an opinion I’d like to hear it!
A number of us just completed a 2-day workshop on technology for a select group of faculty here at Illinois Wesleyan. Naturally 2 days is not enough time to even establish the foundations of enhancing teaching and learning with updated communication and research techniques. We had to blast through a lot of topics and examples of a few of the more ubiquitous tools in quite a hurry. I’m afraid that in the rush we might not have expressed why certain types of technology might be attractive to an already busy faculty member. Here are a few thoughts about what might “seduce” a teacher into authoring a blog: