TeachOIT: a Blog for People Who Teach with Technology

Why build a virtual world? Philip Rosedale, founder of the popular virtual world Second Life talks about the desire to build and create, and about how virtual worlds make that possible in ways that were not previously available/plausible.

Though I certainly don’t agree with all of Rosedale’s arguments about the merits of virtual worlds, he raises some interesting points. If he’s half-right, we’ll see more and more of these types of tools in the next few years.

13 minute presentation, followed by 15 minutes Q & A:

This video is from the TED talks, check out their website for many fascinating presentations on a wide range of topics related to technology, entertainment, and design.

This March, Academic Computing is offering several workshops on a range of instructional technology topics. Most sessions are only 50 – 75 minutes long, and they hopefully can fit into your schedule.

Workshop topics include:

• Copyright issues for faculty, and finding copyright-free images, audio, and video
• Working with digital images for Macintosh and Windows
• Designing and building effective presentation in PowerPoint
• Preview of the digital video editing tools iMovie and MovieMaker
• Customizing SPARK courses

To view the full schedule and register online, please visit: 
http://www.umass.edu/accoprod/workshop/register.php

Interested in training, but none of the scheduled times work for you? Contact our Instructional Media Lab at 545-2823 to set up a one-on-one consultation.

Requests for SPARK courses continue to roll in, here are the numbers so far for the semester:

Number of SPARK courses: 1,173
Number of instructors in SPARK:  849
Departments and programs represented: 91
Number of students in SPARK:  20,205
Number of student “seats”:  60,969  (the average student has SPARK for several courses)
Largest course in SPARK: 485 students

Aline Gubrium and Tom Schiff were two of the first people we know to use Digital Storytelling at UMass. A rather long time ago we had a chance to sit down and chat with Tom Schiff about his experience using Digital Storytelling in his teaching, here is the recording of our conversation. Our apologies to Tom for the ridiculous delay in getting this edited and posted.

19 minute mp3, (18 Megabytes):

Tom Schiff discusses Digital Storytelling

Click the player above to listen, or download the mp3

Resources Tom refers to:

Course Blog for Public Health 690f – Spring 2008

Joe Lambert – Center for Digital Storytelling

Other TeachOIT posts about Digital Storytelling:

Tony on What is Digital Storytelling

JC on a Journey in Digital Storytelling

As a regular service, OIT’s Academic Computing staff is available to come to your department and talk to the faculty or graduate students about the teaching technologies available on campus. In particular, we think new faculty or graduate student instructors would find these sessions particularly helpful.

I had the opportunity to attend the Center for Teaching Event “Working Well with TAs” last week. It was the first in a series of workshops on teaching large classes. Linguistics professor John McCarthy and his teaching assistants Wendell Kimper and Kathryn Pruitt discussed the strategies they use in Linguistics 101, a large lecture, general education course. They shared a great deal of advice they have compiled into a handbook for future teaching assistants that addresses a spectrum of topics ranging from how to stay organized and how to lead discussion sections to what to wear (!). The Center for Teaching has the PDF of the complete handbook posted online. 

On the technology side, Professor McCarthy discussed his use of several SPARK features that he finds useful for keeping a 300-person class with regular assignments running smoothly. Students regularly submit writing assignments via SPARK. The teaching assistants then grade and provide feedback using the Grading Form tool in SPARK. The idea is that using grading forms will provide consistency of grading between teaching assistants. Said McCarthy: “grading forms gave uniformity of grading and saved time for TAs. They can even repeat comments when appropriate by copy/pasting.” Grades from these assignments, as well as in class exams are recorded in the SPARK Grade Book.

This was an interesting and useful event. Make sure to check out the Center for Teaching’s schedule for the other upcoming workshops this Spring.

The addition of photo rosters to SPIRE last semester has been a personal boon to me in terms of learning my students’ names as quickly as possible. The catch is that the photos of students aren’t always the best depiction of how they currently look (they’re usually taken during their freshman orientation). I’ve taken to using a pen on the photos; adding features like hats, glasses, piercings, longer hair, and a spectrum of facial hair styles in order to “update” them as a reminder to myself of what the students sort of look like today. Quick tip: Boston Red Sox hats are not useful as a unique identifying feature. 

Don’t have access to photo rosters for your own courses yet? Take the FERPA quiz and earn your security certificate to activate this feature in SPIRE:
http://www.oit.umass.edu/spire/for_instructors/class_information/photo_roster.html

Confused about how to get your teaching assistant, co-instructor, instructional staff, or a guest speaker into SPARK? Check out our freshly revised website about SPARK access so you will know the necessary steps for getting these people into your SPARK course as well as what level of access they will have. 

http://www.oit.umass.edu/spark/access/index.html

Questions about the process? Contact the Instructional Media Lab (545-2823) or the Academic Scheduling Representative in your department.

Our friends at the Center for Teaching are offering a great series of workshops this semester that seek to provide a venue to talk with colleagues about new challenges, exchange ideas, and share teaching resources. There are two series being offered: “Teaching Large Classes” and “Teaching Online and Hybrid Courses.”

Specific topics include engaging students, assessment, designing hybrid courses, and student writing.

To learn more or to register visit: http://www.umass.edu/cft/events.htm