This Faculty Learning Community will, as the title suggests, explore instructional technologies that we can use to advance student learning in our courses. We will take advantage of a handful of important readings as discussion starters, and benefit from learning from our peers who have discovered new technology tools that have been used successfully to help students learn.
LogisticsWe will meet in IRC 131 on Wednesdays from 3-5 PM for twelve sessions starting on October 1, 2008.
Meegan Lillis will facilitate this Faculty Learning Community. For faculty who fully participate in all twelve sessions, a PDI of $450 will be awarded.
To participate, please contact Laurie Daniels at ext. 2440 or danielsl@ferris.edu.
During the first session, participants were introduced to the Ning social network for communication during the semester. Instead of using a FerrisConnect course, a Ning network was created to give participants exposure to a different kind of technology, social networking, which is gaining popularity as a tool for instruction.
The group talked about the different instructional technologies that each person was interested in, and decided on social bookmarking as the topic for the second session.
Resources:
Goals:
Pre-Readings:
We discussed the concept of folksonomy and how it applies to tagging in social bookmarking as well as on other websites such as flickr and YouTube. The concept of tag clouds was also discussed.
In order to introduce the group to social bookmarking, delicious was chosen since it is one of the largest and most well known social bookmarking sites. All participants created their own delicious accounts and bookmarked and tagged at least five websites. Then the group explore each others bookmarks.
Other Resources:
Piram Prakasam was a guest speaker for the community. He shared how he is currently using narrated PowerPoint videos and wikis in his chemistry courses.
Goals:
Pre-Readings:
The group was introduced to five different terms, their definitions, and how they relate to each other:
Together, the group brainstormed on ways web conferencing could be used in the classroom or for other university activities. Then the group was introduced to various web conferencing tools on the market today and given a short introduction to Ferris' new web conferencing standard, WebEX.
Frank Armstrong and Ryan Skiera were guest speakers and shared how they use FerrisConnect on a joint venture between their two separate business courses.
Goals:
Summary of Session:
The group was introduced to wikis; where the term "wiki" came from, what it means, and how wikis can be used. The group talked about uses for wikis for personal use, workplace use as well as educational uses. Several wiki services were identified, and the group was introduced to PBwiki.
Michelle Teschendorf was our guest speaker and she shared how she uses FerrisConnect for enhanced and fully online nursing courses.
Goals:
Pre-Reading:
Session Outline:
- The one-stop shop for podcasts. You can find podcasts, subscribe to podcasts, download podcasts, organize and save podcasts and sync podcasts to your iPod (or other digital audio device).
- Activity: Introduction to the podcasts area of iTunes, searching the podcast directory, subscribing to podcasts and listening to podcasts.
Other Resources:
Sonya Knoll was our guest speaker and she shared her work with Adobe Presenter to create narrated PowerPoint Presentations with quiz questions for her online courses. She also shared her experience with FerrisConnect for online and face-to-face courses.
The community spent the last session discussing the various technologies that we learned and how they would implement various pieces into their teaching.
For more information about any of the above, please contact the facilitator(s) or Laurie Daniels (danielsl@ferris.edu) or ext. 2440.
