June 2005 News

June 29, 2005 The winners of the MyCourses Exemplary Application Contest were awarded June 21 during the Summer Faculty Institute. Nominated MyCourses (using WebCT) were evaluated based on criteria set by a panel of judges from various University units.

Winners were rewarded with a $500 contribution to their professional development account. Faculty members who received an honorable mention were rewarded with a $100 contribution to their professional development account.

Each winner gave an overview and demonstration of his or her winning MyCourses class and discussed the features of MyCourses that were most useful and effective for his or her class and students.

Winners
James Dean, English
Course: “British Literature I”

Richard Gearheart, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Course: “Chemistry and the Human Environment”

Richard Hanley, Philosophy
Course: “Contemporary Moral Problems”

Chandra Reedy, Art History
Course: “Art of Tibet”

Honorable Mention
Charlene Hamilton, Nutrition and Dietetics
Course: “Nutrition Concepts”

Larry Purnell, Nursing
Course: “Cross-cultural Health Care”

Penny Rodrick-Williams, Entomology and Applied Ecology
Course: “Wildlife Conservation and Ecology”

June 28-30, 2005 The PRESENT site in 010 Smith Hall will be closed from Tuesday, June 28, through Thursday, June 30, to host the Digital Storytelling Workshop (registration is full). Support inquiries can still be addressed to present-site@udel.edu.

June 27, 2005 The keynote speaker of the Summer Faculty Institute, Dr. Ben Shneiderman, addressed a full house at the opening event Monday, June 20. Approximately 90 participants heard Dr. Shneiderman talk about how humans interact with computers and technology. He outlined how technology can be designed to promote usable, universal and useful technologies for diverse audiences.

“The old computing is about what computers can do. The ‘new computing’ is about what people can do,” Shneiderman said. One of his research focuses has been to evaluate and incorporate the social nature of people to make computer tools functional for the greatest number of users.

Dr. Shneiderman also discussed reframing the traditional idea of education in which students relate only in class. His framework supports students talking and interacting not only in class but outside class as well. This framework allows for students to work in teams to produce ambitious projects that are meaningful to someone outside the classroom.

He highlighted UD’s emphasis of using problem-based learning (PBL) and service learning as direct steps to achieving the “new computing” in education. Ultimately, his vision of new computing is to create technology useful in education both in the classroom and outside it.

Dr. Shneiderman is founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, member of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and a member of the Institute for Systems Research, all at the University of Maryland at College Park.

This year's Summer Faculty Institute brings together the big picture of teaching with technology at UD. Sessions are open to all members of the University community and will be held in Memorial Hall, room 127. Pre-registration is required.

June 22, 10:00 a.m.–noon Experience IT Yourself: Educational Technologies to Go. Demonstrations of portable technology for educators.  » More info       » Registration 

June 23, 10:00 a.m.–noonClosing Plenary Presentation—Staying Motivated Teaching with Technology by Dr. Anastasia Morrone.  » More info       » Registration 

June 20-23, 2005 The PRESENT site in 010 Smith Hall will be closed from Monday, June 20, through Thursday, June 23, due to the Summer Faculty Institute. Inquiries can still be addressed to present-site@udel.edu.

This year's Summer Faculty Institute brings together the big picture of teaching with technology at UD. Sessions are open to all members of the University community and will be held in Memorial Hall, room 127. Pre-registration is required.

June 20, 10:00 a.m.–noonKeynote presentation— Building Creativity into Education: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies by Dr. Ben Shneiderman.  » More info       » Registration 

June 21, 10:00 a.m.–noonMyCourses Exemplary Application Contest: Awards and Presentations. Come explore the accomplishments of UD faculty members who use MyCourses, powered by WebCT.  » More info       » Registration 

June 22, 10:00 a.m.–noon Experience IT Yourself: Educational Technologies to Go. Demonstrations of portable technology for educators.  » More info       » Registration 

June 23, 10:00 a.m.–noonClosing Plenary Presentation—Staying Motivated Teaching with Technology by Dr. Anastasia Morrone.  » More info       » Registration 

Coming June 20-23 This year's Summer Faculty Institute brings together the big picture of teaching with technology at UD. Sessions are open to all members of the University community and will be held in Memorial Hall, room 127. Pre-registration is required.

June 20, 10:00 a.m.–noonKeynote presentation— Building Creativity into Education: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies by Dr. Ben Shneiderman. Increase your effectiveness as an instructor, researcher, or collaborator with Dr. Ben Shneiderman’s 4-step process: collect, relate, create, and donate. Dr. Shneiderman’s work builds upon problem-based learning principles and "The Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." UD faculty who pre-register by June 9, 2005 and attend the keynote address will receive a free copy of Dr. Shneiderman's book, Leonardo’s Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. Breakfast available at 9:30 a.m.
 » More info       » Registration 

June 21, 10:00 a.m.–noonMyCourses Exemplary Application Contest: Awards and Presentations. Come explore the accomplishments of UD faculty members who use MyCourses, powered by WebCT. Faculty presenters of the MyCourses Exemplary Application Contest Award are:

• James Dean, English
• Dick Gearhart, Chemistry & Biochemistry
• Richard Hanley, Philosophy
• Chandra Reedy, Museum Studies

 » More info       » Registration 

June 22, 10:00 a.m.–noon Experience IT Yourself: Educational Technologies to Go. Demonstrations of portable technology for educators such as tablet PCs, Apple iPods, hand-held video devices and personal digital assistants (PDAs). We'll explore the promise and possible pitfalls of these technologies in education, including informal presentations of learning solutions for class communication, course management, simulation and animation, multimedia creation and digital storytelling.
 » More info       » Registration 

June 23, 10:00 a.m.–noonClosing Plenary Presentation—Staying Motivated Teaching with Technology by Dr. Anastasia Morrone. In the closing plenary session, Dr. Morrone will explore how to support faculty in their use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. The Jump Start program is an innovative theme-based program designed to support faculty members at IUPUI as they design and develop online courses over the summer. In this session, we will explore what motivates faculty to work in a collaborative team-based approach like Jump Start. Case studies of faculty members who have participated in the Jump Start program will be discussed, with special emphasis on what works and what doesn’t work using a collaborative teambased approach. Breakfast available at 9:30 a.m.
 » More info       » Registration 

June 6, 2005 New Athlon 64 computers have been installed in PRESENT. These computers will be able to run 64-bit software for a performance boost in tasks like video compression and image editing. Currrently, they are running 32-bit Windows XP until 64-bit drivers are available for our scanners and cameras. Looking forward, these systems are positioned well to run Windows Longhorn (anticipated next year) and to take advantage of the new dual-core Athlon 64 processors.

June 2, 2005 Q: I am preparing a presentation and would like to copy an image of a web page into a PowerPoint slide. What do you suggest?

A: The easiest way to do this is to take a screen capture of the web browser window. Windows users can do this using the Alt and PrintScreen buttons.

• Bring up the web site and resize the browser window as you want it.
• Be sure that the browser window is "active" by clicking the title bar.
• Hold down the "Alt" key and tap the "Print Screen" key. This copies the content of your active window to the computer's memory.
• Within PowerPoint, it's best to continue with a blank slide.
• From the Edit menu, select Paste to paste the picture of the window onto a slide. You can then resize or alter this image as you would any picture in PowerPoint.

More info about capturing screen images is available for Windows users and for Macintosh users. More information about PowerPoint is available in our Technology Tools section.

June 1, 2005 For a mix of information, opinion and chat on all these topics, and approximately 80 others, you can turn to a new resource—student-produced blogs that were created as part of a business administration class. The spring semester class, “Information Technology Applications in Marketing,” required students to create their own blogs, or personal web logs, on a topic of their choice.

» Read the full story in UDaily.