First Ten Minutes and First Days

What matters most on the first day? Adrian Rippy-Sheehy and other faculty talked about this during Adrian's "Effective Teaching" segment on Friday night at CMC West Garfield. That students know you are interested in them was Adrian's main message. Additionally she provided and invited techniques that allow students to get to know you and others in this early critical time of the term. One faculty share-back was the use of a scavenger hunt that asks people to find another person in the class with a certain characteristic, such as a dimple. Allowing class members to interview each other briefly, then introduce their classmate to the others can reduce self-consciousness.

To add to those ideas, here are several others:
First Day Tips

What do you do to welcome students and get them excited about your class? We'd love to hear it and learn from it!

Can you train a fruit fly?

The answer is yes -- through operant conditioning. See http://www.jove.com/index/Details.stp?ID=731.

PubMed Central, the National Library of Medicine's online database, is now indexing videos from The Journal of Visualized Experiments. This video from the Department of Neurobiology, Free University of Berlin, is an example of the many videos available through this blog. These videos show experiments and protocols in the biological and life sciences and offers its video-articles to science bloggers to illustrate their work. The blog can be accessed at http://jove-blog.blogspot.com/2008/08/jove-now-indexed-in-pubmed-medline.html.

Faculty Professional Development Fund--September 15th Due Date

Greetings All,

The Professional Faculty Development Fund provides wonderful opportunity for full-time faculty and for adjunct faculty who have taught at least two (2) terms during the last two (2) years.

This slide show explains the program and is followed by a list of campus representatives.



Interested in Applying?
To begin the process, contact your campus representative for assistance with the application process.

•Alpine – David DeLong
•Aspen – Lorraine Miller
•Summit – Laura Pless
•Timberline – Susanna Spaulding
•VEV – Jan Attoma
•West Garfield – Kimberly Jensen
•Roaring Fork – Tal Hardman
•Adjunct - Susan Herman

Forms:
Application
Rubric

For any additional questions, please feel free to contact Nancy Hays or Alice Bedard-Voorhees at the District Office. We wish you the best as you explore opportunities for your ongoing professional development.

Digital Fluency: 21st Century Tools

Mark Prensky coined the terms "Digital Native" and "Digital Immigrant" as reference points for groups growing up in a wired world and groups coming to it later. This presentation nicely explains the newest tools and how they can be used for "digital fluency," along with how people participate in various ways.

Using Social Media2

view presentation (tags: social media learning performance)

NYC Highschool Students Created This Video about Educational Access

This video was created by high school students who participated in a project on in the Teen side of Second Life--the film was created from scenarios presented in a virtual world, captured inside that world, then made into a movie (called machinima) and uploaded into YouTube. Not only are they are representing a big question -- educational access, they are engaged in that exploration through technology. And they will be entering higher ed.

Beyond Essays: Web 2.1 and the World of the Multimedia Collage"

Stephen Downes provides a summary of a presentation given at the Fusion 2008 conference this week.

http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2008/07/beyond-essays-web-21-and-world-of.html

The presentation makes the point of how students are using digital tools whether we bring them into the classroom or not. He moves onto the incorporation of literacies he terms, "Digital, Art, Oral, Written."

He says that the instructor role is still "guide on the side" and "not techno-magician."
He says he goes into the classroom and asks, "Who is using X or Y?" and incorporates that learner knowledge into possible assignments.

I agree. I think the question is to find out who is using what, along w/ the questions, "Will and how will that help your learning in this class?"

Not to be overlooked is the example of multimedia collage created with a beta application called
Glogster. I had hoped to embed it here directly, but the code just won't work:
http://seanfitzgerald.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/glogster-faces-of-edupunk/

The Pulse Digital Pen--Take Notes, Record on Special Paper

Yesterday at Target I came across the Pulse pen by LiveScribe. Had heard something like this was coming and now it is here. The user takes notes on special paper and the pen records the audio as the user writes (I'm not sure if the audio has to be turned on in some way...). The user can listen to the audio at a later time by tapping on the specific text related to the audio segment.

The pen also syncs with a desktop. I've attached the video here.

http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html

The particular item brings to mind the articles these past few years about complaints that students were using computers to surf rather than pay attention in class?