IT Update: TLT showcases technology tools

By: Jan Jones

April 5th, 2007

Exciting areas of new technology and updates on current technology were presented to the campus on March 30 in the Getchell Library Projection Room at the “Showcase of Technology Tools,” a once-a-semester presentation organized by the instructional design group in Teaching & Learning Technologies.

• WebCampus — In spring 2007, 703 academic courses were taught in WebCampus. Of those, 471 or 67% were created in the new Campus Edition 6 (CE6) and 232 or 33% in CE4. 

  By fall 2007, all classes will be taught in CE6. Jill Wallace, manager of WebCampus, noted that CE6 has many popular new features, but also had some bugs, which should be fixed by this summer, in time for rollout in the Fall. They plan lots of CE6 training workshops this summer, and will do special training for departments, upon request.

• Clickers — The use of clickers has skyrocketed on campus, reported Greg Gardella of TLT’s Classroom Services, since standardizing on one product. Clickers are personal response systems used to test student comprehension of teaching in the classroom. Some 3,000 are now in use at the University.
• Windows Media Encoder — An exciting technology to use screen capture and audio to easily create high-quality movies was demonstrated by TLT instructional designer, Alina Solovyova-Vincent. She noted that you can create “on-the-fly” presentations or short, simple training videos.

  Once created, the files can then be posted on the streaming media server, where people can view them. For this step, contact Mark Gandolfo in TLT Media Production and/or Tina Lundstrom of Campus Computing.

• Windows Vista and Office 2007 — Because of compatibility issues and large memory requirements, Aron Smetana, director of campus computing, said IT is asking the campus to “hold off” on Vista until the fall semester.

  WebCT and IE7 don’t play well with Vista right now and it requires 1-2 Gb of RAM.  However, Office 2007 is available at the bookstore this month and IT is giving it limited support until a planned fall semester rollout. IT already has excellent 3-6-minute training modules available online for the 2007 versions of Excel, Outlook, and Word. To view the modules, click here.

• Online Reading Software — All online readers can benefit from the new Kurzweil 3000 learning tools, said Ryan Collier of the Disability Resource Center, who demonstrated how any text can be scanned in and “read” by one’s choice of voices. 

  The software also highlights text as it is read, increasing comprehension. It’s particularly helpful for students with dyslexia, ADD, and those with visual impairment, but international students and anyone else can also benefit from it. The DRC is now in the process of acquiring more licenses to make it more available on campus.

TLT and Excellence in Teaching are sponsoring a presentation on the new Kurzweil 3000 reading software from 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. April 19 in the Jot Travis Student Union Alumni Room; lunch will be provided.

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