IT staff member Randy Thornton was invited to be the opening speaker at Lewis and Clark College’s annual Faculty Technology Institute on May 19th.

The topic was “Start Teaching with Web 2.0 Tools” and was an introduction for faculty who are interested in starting to add Web 2.0 tools such as tagging, blogging, wikis and social network to their teaching repertoire. Several UPS faculty sites were used as examples, including some on the Showcase.

The slides of the presentation are available here on Google Docs.

Feature: The Oberon Wiki is used for the planning of play production by faculty and students of the Theatre Arts Department and also members of community theater groups. Geoff discusses how the wiki’s strength as a collaborative tool facilitates the group production process.

Extras: Prof. Proehl discusses how technology aids the process of “re-seeing” and how that is central to the very notion of education.

The Video

You can also view the videos in the following formats:

• Feature (Quicktime 389MB)
• Feature (Windows Media 35MB)
• Extra 1 (Quicktime 151MB)
• Extra 1 (Windows Media 22MB)

More Information

Geoff Proehl is Professor of Theatre Arts in the Theatre Arts Department. He was recently named as a James Dolliver National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professor.

• Oberon, the Theatre Arts Department Wiki
• The Theatre Arts Department Website
• Dramaturgy Northwest

Here are some excellent projects other schools presented in sessions this morning at the NITLE Summit in San Francisco, as provided by NITLE friends via Twitter.

• Lewis and Clark College Ceramic Art Project using Flickr
• Sarah Lawrence College Library uses del.icio.us tagging as a reference service to faculty and students
• The Viper Project “A Cyber-Enabled Community of Practice for Improving Inorganic Chemical Education” sponsored by DePauw, Reed and other colleges

Yesterday afternoon the Faculty Senate voted unanimously to approve the LMIS Committee recommendation that UPS adopt Moodle as our new Learning Management System.

New UPS Chief Technology Officer Molly Tamarkin has proposed we adopt the name “Move To Moodle” for the project of rolling out Moodle over the next year to two years. The move will be gradual. Over the summer, OIS will form a technical team to plan and manage the conversion process.

For more information please visit the Moodle page.

Instructional Technology has worked over the last two years to respond to faculty input from the LMIS Committee to evaluate our Learning Management System needs. Many thanks to all Moodle testers, faculty and students (over 350 of you), for your hard work and willingness to take the lead, to experiment, and to put up with the inevitable difficulties that come with pioneering.

Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, in series of short video clips that illustrate his points by doing them.

Technology involved: writing, chalk, a blackboard, and of course, video.