UMASS Writing Program Technology Fellows Notes
This page is for notes relating to the UMASS Writing Program Technology Fellows program, a year-long project in which teachers study, design, implement, and archive computer and writing pedagogical practices. The Technology Fellows program is directed by Donna LeCourt. I (Brian Houle) serve as Assistant Director.
The Late, Lamented Personal Web Page
Campus Computer Resources
While this is list is probably not new to most people at UMASS Amherst interested in computers and pedagogy, I include it here as a resource for those less familiar with OIT offerings. OIT has gone a long way in the past few years to provide useful electronic tools for teachers at UMASS Amherst.
- SPARK (aka WebCT Vista)
- In order to avoid confusion with Microsoft’s latest offering , OIT has boldly renamed the campus implementation of the latest WebCT (also known as Vista) to SPARK. SPARK is not an acronym. It just is. WebCT has really improved in leaps and bounds since its Campus Edition. SPARK is new to the UMASS campus this semester, and it provides many useful options and tools for teachers of writing, including journals, blogs, and discussion board threads, all of which can be placed on any page in the site. You can even set up web folders in SPARK, allowing you to drag and drop files and folders to and from your desktop. OIT has a handy PDF detailing how this is done (see pages 9 & 10 in particular). In my opinion, SPARK is excellent for keeping writing and other work limited to the classroom audience; this may be more or less useful to you, depending on your pedagogical project. For instance, if you want students’ writing to persist and be under their editorial control beyond the life of your writing class (an e-portfolio, for example), then SPARK may not be the best option.
- UDrive
- I must admit, using the UDrive in the writing classroom for more than uploading and downloading files requires a bit more technical acumen than many of us are comfortable with (file permissions? Intellilinks?), but it has many advantages for file-sharing. In fact, you can quickly and easily set up a web folder on your desktop to your UDrive, so you can drag-and-drop files and folders to and from your desktop. What’s interesting about UDrive is the fact that students can control access to their files and folders, and even created web sites, outside of the more class- and semester-specific security constraints of SPARK.
- UMASS Blogs
- UMASS has instituted its own blogging service. It’s certainly worth investigating.