WebliminalBlog

At the first session of Faculty Academy, UMW.

Joe Dreiss is talking about using Google Earth in the teaching of art history. The point is that travel is important to the study of  art history, and Google Earth is helpful to visit important sites, helping to give a sense of scale and location.  The presentation makes me think about using Google Earth as part of the stories I want to tell my students in my courses in computer sciences. He says there are some problems going through in class all the inofrmation that is available.  He hints that Google Earth might be a better tool for students to work with outside of class.

Alan Griffth and Patrick Murray-John talking about a biologist (Griffith) and a self-proclaimed computer geek (Murray-John) workign together oon a project that came out of a NSF funded project on Diagnostic Question Clusters (DQC).  These can be used for teachign activities to go along with DQC. The project goals include 

• hidden curriculum
• dissemination of new DQCs
• faculty development – classroom assessment, formative evaluation

Patrick then gives an intro to Drupal.  Mentions 

• important features  – content management, hackability, maleable

Both had to issues to deal with: technology for the biologist, usage issues for the tech specialist. Issues of complexity are essential to navigation, so the navigation can be relative, pertinent, and timely.

Caig Vasey gives the last presentation. Introduction to Logic as an online book and coruse.  This too is  a Drupal site, and is also a collaboration with Patrick Murray-John.  The presentation is about teaching with this online work last summer. Vasey found the chatroom to be useful because chat items are limited in length and this is focused communication. To keep  students involved Vasey required a 4-5 page paper trhough which students were required to describe what they had learned/covered that week and students also had to write a substantial reaction to another student’s paper. He also demonstrated using blogs and embeded video.  Vasey never saw the students. He did not know where they were and what they looked like. Some dissapointment in the ability of students to do proofs.   

Question from Gary Stanton: What experience to people have workign through tutorial type information, working on a white board?  Jerry Slezak recommended using dimdim, and using a tablet PC  to draw diagrams and record audio. Another possibility is elluminate