Author Archive
Digital Nation on Frontline
In case you missed it, Frontline on PBS this week was “Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier” . The program covered a variety of topics of interest to those of us involved in technology and education, including
students’ perceptions of their ability to multitask compared to the realities of research on the subject
the perceived demand for [...]
Wolfram Alpha – not a “homework killer”, but something to watch
If you read technology news, or even the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have heard of Wolfram Alpha, a free online tool that is somewhere between a search engine, a database, and a computer algebra system. The launch of Wolfram Alpha in mid-May of this year was met with much fanfare in certain circles, [...]
New tutorials and training for “clickers”
Just in time for preparations for Fall courses, TurningTechnologies has released new video tutorials and live online training sessions for their audience response systems, commonly called “clickers”. We have standardized on TurningTechnologies’ ResponseCardRF system, which uses the TurningPoint and TurningPointAnywhere software for PC and Mac.
If you’re not familiar with the difference between the two [...]
Product Tutorials Can Provide Project Ideas
Some companies go beyond the norm when they produce tutorials for their products. More than just basic how-to information, some tutorials provide suggestions for applications and instructions for how to accomplish specific tasks using their products. Apple Computer is particularly good at this, and their “Productivity Lab” section of the science website offers short videos [...]
Reporting from the NMC Symposium on New Media & Learning
Well, this isn’t really a live “report from the symposium”, but it just ended last night, so it’s fresh in my mind! The Symposium offered a variety of interesting sessions, an it was a great way to learn about other schools’ projects and ‘meet’ others in SecondLife without having to spend money on travel. More [...]
Instructional Technology Services & SAS Grant Opportunity
SAS Computing and other groups at Penn offer a variety of services to help faculty use technology in their teaching. These services can help instructors to more actively engage their students in their learning, to bring their research interests into the undergraduate classroom, or even just handle routine activities more efficiently.
We encourage you to visit http://www.sas.upenn.edu/computing/instructional for [...]
NMC Symposium on New Media & Learning – Online
The New Media Consortium (NMC) is hosting an online symposium March 24-26, 2009 that looks like it will be very good:
The 2009 NMC Symposium on New Media and Learning, the thirteenth in the NMC’s Series of Virtual Symposia, will explore the impact of new media on teaching, learning, research, and creative expression, especially in higher [...]
Pre-Recording Computer Demonstrations
Talking anyone through using new software can be difficult. Even explaining the nuances of using an unfamiliar tool or feature in a familiar software package can be difficult unless you’re sitting right next to the person, and one demonstration may not be enough to make a complicated series of clicks and settings “stick” in the [...]
Getting students engaged using “clickers”
Audience Response Systems, or “clickers”, are an increasingly popular way to get students in large lecture courses engaged both with the material and with their fellow students. More than a dozen courses across the University are using clickers this semester, with 10 courses and more than 1500 students using them in SAS alone.
These clickers allow [...]
