April Brown Bag Discussion

Breaking with tradition: Brown Bag discussion on Tuesday, April 3, from 12:30 to 1:30 in Rhodes Hall room 163 (ESEC Lab) with Economics Professors Patrick Dolenc and David Ornstil, and Political Science Professor Wes Martin.

Classroom discussion can be a lively debate of ideas and concepts, but sometimes it is more like that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; “Anyone? Anyone? Voodoo economics…”. It is clear if students aren’t engaged; but sometimes less clear if they truly understand the information presented. Professors Patrick Dolenc, David Ornstil, and Wes Martin tried a technology approach this past semester and required students to use a “clicker” during some classes as part of a student response system (SRS).

Educause describes student response systems and clickers this way: “Clickers use infrared or radio frequency technology to transmit and record student responses to questions. A small, portable receiving station is placed in the front of the class to collect and record student responses.” Student responses can be immediately displayed on a screen at the front of the classroom in any number of formats; percentages or pie charts for example.

Dolenc said he hoped to engage more students by allowing them to answer prepared questions anonymously, and get feedback on student comprehension at the same time through the results recorded by the SRS.

It’s a modified approach to teaching as well as learning, and Dolenc, Ornstil, and Martin learned that there are some bumps along the road to success. Join them on Tuesday, April 3, from 12:30 to 1:30 in the ESEC Lab in Rhodes Hall to find out more about the student response system they tested. Bring your lunch and your curiosity.

1/07 Technology Tool Pick of the Month

Mush!
Break down the classroom walls and join educators and explorers Will Steger, John Stetson, Elizabeth Andre, Abby Fenton and four Inuit hunters on a “1200-mile, four-month-long dogsled expedition across the Canadian Arctic’s Baffin Island. The expedition will be traveling with four Inuit dog teams over traditional hunting paths, up frozen rivers, through steep-sided fjords, over glaciers and ice caps, and across the sea ice to reach some of the most remote Inuit villages of the world.

Each day, the team will use innovative technologies to post video, images, sounds and text to the www.globalwarming101.com website, and communicate with online participants around the world. Students and teachers will integrate the educational curriculum components developed by the team into their coursework, and will participate in the expedition through research and forum discussion. During the week-long visits to each Inuit village, the team will listen to and document the Inuit’s experience with climate change. These collected images, sounds and stories will illustrate the dramatic climate-related changes happening in the Arctic: starving polar bears, retreating pack ice, melting glaciers, disrupted hunting and traveling, and the unraveling of a traditional way of life.”

Visit the global warming 101 web site and discover new ways to inspire your students, get real-world teaching resources, interact with Will Steger and learn first-hand about global warming, and match curriculum with state and national standards.

11/06 Technology Tool Pick of the Month

Imagine that you are teaching a course on evolution and genetics concept mapping. Your students are having difficulty grasping gene variation and mutations; the key concept behind your lecture. You’re in dire need of some fresh material to better help your students grasp this obscure concept. Enter MERLOT.

MERLOT is a free database of educational material designed primarily for faculty in higher education. The power of this site stems from resources, peer reviews, comments, and assignments submitted by the MERLOT community.

You visit the MERLOT website (merlot.org) and search for “DNA” and hope that it will yield some results. “DNA from the Beginning” is the first resource listed (of 139) and has the “MERLOT Editor’s Choice” stamp. You notice that this resource is a simulation and includes peer reviews (5 stars on a 1-5 scale), comments (8 comments), assignments (4 peer-submitted assignments), personal collections (131 people ‘bookmarked’ this resource), and an author snapshot (the rationale for developing this learning resource and the strategies for using it).

You decide to integrate the simulation and one of the peer-submitted assignments into your course. You now have new, peer-reviewed material to supplement your lecture!

Visit MERLOT to see the breadth of subjects covered. Resources from Music, Art History, Statistics, Marketing, English, Chemistry, etc. have material submitted to the database.

Testimonial from the MERLOT web site:
“One of the best things I appreciate about MERLOT is that is a collaboration of “like minds.” The organization continues to grow and develop at a global level, but this growth and development is driven and designed from within. When those invested in the effort, everyday members and editorial board members, have this ownership then the organization will have a long, happy, adventurous life.”
Cris Guenter
Professor of Education
California State University, Chico

10/06 Technology Tool Pick of the Month

RSS: News YOU Choose
Monadnock region, Marketplace, national news, Red Sox scores, Jon Udell, weekend weather, CNET, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. These are areas on the web that interest me and that I frequently visit hoping to get new and up-to-date information. The ‘old’ way of looking for Red Sox scores or the latest Jon Udell post was to visit their web sites and hope that everything was current. This is not difficult but there had to be a better and more efficient way of getting new news. And there is! This is where RSS technology steps in. RSS feeds are free content pushed from web sites that contain headlines, article summaries and links back to the full-text content on the web. To begin using RSS technology you need a news reader also known as a news aggregator. There are hundreds of news aggregators to choose from and many are free. You can find a list on the RSS Compendium:
http://allrss.com/rssreaderswebbased.html

I’ve found that the free browser-based version of NewsGator is easy to use, includes the ability to automatically subscribe and organize news feeds and works well with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. Don’t take my word for it; try it yourself!

NewsGator Online – Web-based RSS Aggregator: http://www.newsgator.com

Reading Persepolis

The Summer Reading Program Committee selected the autobiographical novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi for the 2006-7 academic year. Persepolis is a memoir in a graphic novel format that chronicles Satrapi’s childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.
Every year, a different book is recommended to the campus community with the goal of engaging the freshman class in a cross disciplinary theme. Here are a few technology tools, in addition to regular meetings and workshops, being used by the faculty to explore the strategies for reading and teaching with graphic novels.

• Blackboard <http://keene.blackboard.com/> has an inter-active course website for instructors called the “Summer Reading Program”. Brinda Charry organized the forum and gathered a variety of articles and links for faculty to use.
  Please email Brinda Charry, bcharry@keene.edu, to be added to this forum.
• Discussion blog, <http://persepolischat.blogspot.com/> that is maintained by Kathy Halverson, Assistant Director, Mason Library. She is hoping to generate both faculty and student discussion on the page. The discussion blog is open to any who wish to comment.
• “Persepolis” event: Talk on cartoons/Graphic Novels – (Thank you Brinda Charry for the heads-up)
  “Steve Bisette, Professor at the Center for Cartoon Studies, White River, VT will be giving a presentation on strategies for reading cartoons and graphic novels on Thursday, October 12th between 12:00-1:00 pm in the Madison Street Lounge. The 30-minute presentation will be followed by a brief discussion session where Professor Bisette, along with Robin Dizard (English Dept) and Marsha Hewitt (Art/ Graphic Design) will respond to your questions.
  Please attend this presentation and encourage your students to attend. ”

If you know of other tools or events then the ones listed, please let us know!