Here at iC with Prof. John Glynn and Asslam Umar Ali regarding getting the best out of blogging.
Our newest blogger
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Category Archives: Beginners to Intermediate
Looking for Some blogs to read? Try these….
BiologyHub – Open access blog network of courses focused on the population biology of bacteria and viruses
Sydney Uni Parralax – Parallax records the experiences of final year students of the B.A.(Media & Communications) degree who have won competitive overseas internships to work in Asian media organisations.
VC Macquarie – Blog of Professor Steven Schwartz, Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University (Sydney).
Cornell wine & research – Cornell University, news and events from the Viticulture and Enology Major
Blogging Forum presentations
Here is a link to Sue’s presentation, saved as PDF:
Sue Water’s presentation 20th March 2012
Get along to the blogging forum on 20th march…
11 advantages of using a blog for teaching
iPads for in-lecture polling
Uni of Adelaide iPads for in-lecture polling. Whist “clickers” faltered due to the need for students to all have one, this simple but clever solutions means the students just put their hand up, and only the lecturer needs the iPad.
See page 13 for the article
Oui oui! Le Skype is working!
After months of planning and testing, the Skype pilot kicked off today. With slick new high definition web cams, and the help of the “how to” login sheet, the french language students connected with other students in Noumea. And the French conversations began to flow.
While many staff members have had Skype installed and working fine in their offices on their individual managed desktop machines (ie supported centrally by ITS), up until know it has been impossible to intall and use them “en masse” for use by students in an ITS managed teaching computer lab. But, thanks to the hard work of everybody involved (especially Krstan Risteski, ITS Labs Manager and Liz Burns, ITS System team) a special ‘software package’ was developed, tested, tweaked, and re-tested. Now Skype can be remotely installed in labs by ITS Support staff, with the correct network and software settings so that it actually works within the confines of a teaching lab. The only last minute hitch was that each new web-cam purchased by Arts (they are for use in the new Bld 19 Language labs) needed to have the software drivers manually installed, but thanks to Krstan, this was achieved in time also.
Wk 6 Progress: VM Ware /open source tools pilot
Generally, we seem to have ironed out most of the hiccups (mainly linked to people having problems copying the system to Mac formatted disks or by locking the VM system by not shutting it down properly (have to throw out the lock file to restart in those circumstances). Other issues are mainly about the overall technical complexity of having to load up another operating system and then engage with complex set of programming APIs – a real challenge for many of the students.
Testing VMWare player in labs with FCA staff
Been working with Brogan Bunt and Peter Goodall to get an open-source applications pilot up and running. Brogan wants to run his classes in the ITS labs, but with open-source software. The solution has been to install VMWare player in the labs, which allows other operating systems to be used. THen the students bring in a USB specially formatted with Ubuntu (Linux) operating system and a suite of open-source or freeware applications on it. They create a range of sound/media products with them. Then they take it home and use exactly the same software to do their homework and projects. No need for them to purchase expensive proprietory software at home, nor to treck in to uni just to use software. Let’s hope the pilot works well. Cos so far, it sounds fantastic!
digital voice recorder
obviously not a ‘new’ technology, but if I had to name the one techi thing that changed life in my corner it was the nifty usb recorder I started using five years ago…. what it means in practice is that the linguistically vulnerable student seeking advice about their writing (those using English as an additional language, for example) can instantly get a copy of the consultation (no cables, just pull it apart, stick it in their laptop) which they can listen to repeatedly at their own pace, and thereby learn so much more than from a single exposure which they may or may not well recall when back at their desk trying to put into practice the pearls of linguistic wisdom showered upon them… their feedback assures me this was the best investment for teaching I ever made…