OET has received many positive comments from the participants of last week's workshops on Emerging Technology and Intro to Social Software.

That being said, I want to share with you two ways to stay informed about upcoming NITLE workshops.

You can keep an eye on what's coming up at this web page; http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/opportunities/programs/upcoming_events. For those of you who know about RSS readers you can subscribe to the RSS feed of new opportunities at: http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/rss/feed/calendar.xml

NITLE picks up the full tab for participants at their workshops - travel, hotel, food, workshop fee, etc. (At least that's how it is through June 2008. ) So I'd encourage you to take advantage of any workshops that interest you this year. You can sign up for a workshop by contacting our NITLE liaison, Rick Holmgren.

Note that some workshops suggest a team attend from a given institution - sometimes a faculty - IT team, sometimes faculty - librarian, sometimes faculty -faculty. Since NITLE pays for all of us, don't be shy about asking your instructional technologist to join you at a workshop!

Posted by James Fadden at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

NITLE has left the building,
originally uploaded by jfadden.

Resources for the workshops are available through NITLE's wiki pages.

Posted by James Fadden at 04:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The second day of NITLE workshops is underway. Today, Bryan will lead the group through exercises and thinking related to social software as applicable to collaborative writing.

Workshop resources are available through the NITLE blog.

Posted by James Fadden at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Faculty, Librarians and Instructional Technologists from Allegheny and other liberal arts colleges came to Murray Hall for NITLE's emerging technology workshop. Bryan Alexander is facilitating the workshop which will focus on gaming, virtual environments, podcasting, blogs, wiki and other things Web2.0.

Participant bloggers will be encouraged to tag their posts with nitleemac2007 so that we can start tracking content across the blogoshpere.

Workshop resources are available online through Liberal Education Today.

Posted by James Fadden at 09:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Faculty are invited to register for this summer's instructional technology workshops which focus on on incorporating personal response devices, using web based video, and emerging instructional uses of blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

The workshops range in format from a demonstration and discussion over lunch to hands on workshops. The topics were chosen based on requests from faculty over the past year and emerging trends of instructional technology for liberal arts colleges.

Register online. Register for any or all of these workshops online at http://oet.allegheny.edu/rsvp.html.

Register today! There are limited seats for each workshop and registration is on a first-come first-serve basis.

Have questions? Please contact James Fadden either by calling ext. 2984 or emailing jfadden@allegheny.edu with any questions about this year’s workshops.

Posted by James Fadden at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Friday, OET sponsored a faculty lunch discussion on personal response devices, more commonly referred to as clickers. Susan Fenton organized this event which featured a discussion based on the experience with faculty clickers.

The discussion covered a lot of ground including a quick demonstration of clickers, advantages of use, student satisfaction, and potential for growth at Allegheny. It is clear that the participants believe in the pedagogical advantages of this technology as it opens the avenues for peer learning and discussions of common misconceptions.

The conversation was captured and is the most recent episode of the Allegheny Workshop Podcast. Or you can listen online if you are interested in learning more about clickers as they are being used on campus.

Posted by James Fadden at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At this month's Secretary Lunch, campus secretaries were presented an overview of the growth of blogging in general and specifically at the college.

A large portion of the presentation focused on the reasons for growth, specifically ease of use, and practical applications of blogging, such as subscribing to site feeds using Firefox's live bookmark feature. Participants received a handout that broke-down the typical features of a blog and links to getting started. The presentation came of the heals of two mornings of web design and Dreamweaver training by Jodi Millin, which set the stage nicely for this topic. (Good planning Jodi!)

The college uses Movable Type Publishing platform to run blogs for the college community. Community members can request a blog through an online request form on the Computing Help Desk Tutorial Site.

For more information about blogging or the Secretaries Lunch please contact your instructional technologist or computing support person.

Posted by James Fadden at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today a group of faculty and technologists met to discuss technology as it relates to teaching and learning spaces across campus. The discussion was developed as an opportunity to better understand how the spaces are being used the limitations faculty are facing and start to consider future need.

Please feel free to continue the conversation in the comment section of this post. What follows is my interpretation of what transpired.

Jodi opened the discussion by trying establish the history of developing technology classrooms at Allegheny and the current challenges we face regarding technology and teaching spaces.

Continue reading "From the meeting to discuss technology and learning spaces" »

Posted by James Fadden at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Office of Educational Technology is pleased to announce two workshops offered in conjunction with NITLE. On May 16 & 17, 2007, Bryan Alexander of NITLE will present Emerging Technologies and the Liberal Arts Campus and Social Software in Education: Introduction to Collaborative Writing Tools.

These workshops present a unique opportunity for Allegheny faculty as the workshop will include participants from other liberal arts college in the NITLE consortium. Participations from Allegheny is limited to half of the total seats of the workshop.

Those interested in participating need to register using the online registration form.

Posted by James Fadden at 04:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Alla Meleshevich facilitated the workshop guiding the participants through the decision making process used to adopt LUNA and provided a general overview of the opportunities that the LUNA system affords.

LUNA has collections are built into the system and also allows you to create individual collections. At the point the college is considering how best to create and manage individual collections but individuals are able to use the the built in collections at this point. More information can be gained online at the Digital Assest Management website that is maintained by the DAM group or by contacting your instructional technologist. The included collections are not just works of art but also include maps and historical images.

Posted by James Fadden at 12:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

NITLE, the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education, is offering a workshop on web mapping May 22-23, 2007 at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. The workshop will help participants understand and use "intuitive web-mapping and virtual globe applications to develop geographically-based curriculum."

The workshop will incorporate aspects of social software, how to obtain and use Census data maps, and use of tools such as Google Earth, and NASA's World WInd as learning tools.
Contact your instructional technologist or the manager of training for more details
A complete description for Web Mapping / Summer 2007 / Opportunities / NITLE - NITLE is available online.

Posted by James Fadden at 08:44 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I think the general sentiment is that the lunch was productive and there was a good variety of faculty from across the disciplines. The faculty discussed many things including:

• using discussion boards and quizzes to check student understanding of reading


• strategies for using discussion boards to start discussions outside of class and continue them after class


• using various tools to free classtime to interact and engage with their students


• frustrations relating to counterintuitiveness of the tool


• reliance on WebCT to deliver their course

• Create a new column of student names in your grade book that you can move next to the column of assignment that you need to enter grades in.


• Lock discussion topics to end a discussion topic. This allows students to see the conversation but does not allow them to post.


• Use the discussion board to gather inclass discussion questions as opposed to emails.


• Instructors can forward WebCT email to their allegheny.edu accounts as a way to be alerted that they need to log in and respond to a student.

Posted by James Fadden at 09:03 AM | Permalink

I will be heading out to the WebCT lunch shortly. I plan on using facts from this Educause document to spur some of the conversation.

In particular the key point that students are least happy with the discussion boards but that faculty are most interested in that tool? Larger Educause report is also worth a read if you have the time.

Posted by James Fadden at 11:41 AM | Permalink

Faculty can now register for the discussion groups on instructional technology.

Posted by James Fadden at 12:37 PM | Permalink

This year we in OET are developing discussion groups for faculty that focus on instructional technologies available at the college. The decision to provide faculty development in this manner is based on a desire to make conversations of pedagogy and technology more central to the instructional technology training program.

While each discussion group will be built around a core group of users, meetings will be open to all members of the faculty interested in the topic. Faculty are encouraged to visit and bookmark the
scheduled workshops page to stay informed of the new learning opportunities.

Posted by James Fadden at 01:59 PM | Permalink

On August 25th, a small group of faculty gathered to discuss effective use of PowerPoint. During that discussion many interesting points were raised including: of key importance is how the instructor and class interact with the PowerPoint.
Also, this page was referenced as a way to take advantage of some of PowerPoint's built in, but little known,features that facilitate smooth and interactive use of PowerPoint.

Posted by James Fadden at 09:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Office of Educational Technology (OET) continues to offer instructional technology workshops for faculty at the conclusion of the spring semester and prior to the start of the fall semester.

This summer faculty may choose from workshops on incorporating personal response devices, creating multimedia narratives, using WebCT for quizzing and communication, and emerging instructional uses of blogs, wikis, and podcasts. The workshops will range in format from a demonstration and discussion over lunch to multi-day hands on workshops.

Registration information is available online at http://oet.allegheny.edu/rsvp.html

Posted by James Fadden at 04:05 PM | Permalink

Faculty using RSS news aggregators can now receive notification of faculty workshops as OET adds them to the workshop schedule.

The news aggregators like Bloglines will detect the feed automatically on all OET pages discussing workshops using Bloglines' subscribe bookmarklet.

Or the feed can be added manually by adding http://oet.allegheny.edu/news/rss/rss_workshops.php to your news aggregator of choice.

Continue reading "Faculty Workshop Notification Feed" »

Posted by James Fadden at 04:38 PM | Permalink

On February 7, 2006 from noon until 1:00pm the Office of Educational Technology will be holding its semesterly lunch meeting of WebCT users.

View registration information...

Posted by James Fadden at 04:12 PM | Permalink

On August 16 and 17 the Office of Educational Technology will be presenting four half-day workshops on developing web based tools to supplement face to face courses.

WebCT will be the focus on the 16th with Online Quizzing being presented in the morning and Using WebCT as a Communication Tool in the afternoon.

On Wednesday the 17th the focus will change to designing and creating web sites during the morning's Don't Make me Think Web Design workshop and the afternoon's Creating a Simple Course Site.

Faculty who are interested in any of these workshops can learn more about the workshops at: http://training.allegheny.edu/workshops/faculty/Faculty1.php

This page also has registration information on it.

Posted by James Fadden at 01:23 PM | Permalink

This week faculty, technologists, librarians, and students from Allegheny, Juniata, and CET, Middlebury, VT attended workshops on computer mediated communication, social software in education, and effective powerpoint strategies.

During the workshops the participants explored different technologies to assist in peer to peer communication, collaborative writing, and presentation of content.

Summaries of the workshops are available online.

Posted by James Fadden at 12:58 PM | Permalink