TLT News
January 2009, Volume 1
WELCOME
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to the Teaching, Learning, and Technology's first e-newsletter! This site is very easy to navigate. The e-newsletter is organized by pages, Volume 1 - page 1, Volume 1 - page 2, etc. You can navigate through the newsletter using the pages in the green navigation bar above, or you can just begin reading the stories and clicking on the links at the end of the passage to take you to the rest of the story!
INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTION
Do You Want Your Voice To Be Heard?
With all of the new technology tools emerging, how can you decide which tools to incorporate into your classes? Just ask fellow colleagues. Merissa Ferrara, a communication professor, is tapping into technology to transform an existing assignment given to students. Previously, students enrolled in Comm 220, Interpersonal Communication, were asked to create a scrapbook describing who they are as a person. Students would spread out their markers, pencils, glue, and old pictures on a table and devote the next 2 hours to creating "their" scrapbook page. Continued on Page 2
MICROBLOGGING
If you've been to an educational conference or a technology conference
in the past year then you've probably heard the term micro-blogging or
maybe twittering. But what you may not know is what these terms mean
or if the concept can be used effectively in your classes. So what is
micro-blogging? Well, according to Wikipedia "micro-blogging is a form
of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates
(say, 140 characters or fewer) or micromedia such as photos or audio
clips and publish them either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted
group which can be chosen by the user." The cool thing is that these
text updates, or "tweets" as they are known, can be sent and received
not only on the computer but also from a cell phone via a text
message. This means that you can stay abreast of tweets from anywhere.
As with any Web 2.0 technology there are several applications that can
be used to micro-blog. The most widely known is Twitter and if any of
you have looked at Twitter in the past you may associate it with people
posting what they were eating for lunch or that they are getting ready
to brush their teeth. This hasn't changed. People still post all of
these things. However what has changed is that people are also posting
things of academic value. These are folks who are writing about news,
current events, conferences, politics, etc. and are documenting things
as they happen. Both Barack Obama and John McCain micro-blogged from
the campaign trail as did John Edwards. Several journalists in the
field are twittering their experiences as they happen. News media,
such as The New York Times and Fox News, are also micro-blogging
headlines and breaking news. As this medium catches on more and more
people are using it as a means to learn about relevant topics or
issues. Using the Twitter search engine you can scan all the tweets by
specific words or categories (a.k.a hash tags) which allows you to
monitor things as they happen. In addition, on the search page you will
find Trending Topics which list the top 10 subjects that are being
talked about at that moment.
Continued on page 2.
UPCOMING EVENTS
2.12.09
Voicethread workshop rescheduled. Date TBA
5.18.09 - 5.29.09
Summer FTI:
Applications will be available after the new year at http://www.cofc.edu/~fti.
CONTACT US
Teaching, Learning & Technology
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J.C. Long 3rd Floor
http://blogs.cofc.edu/tlt
IT at CofC
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