LTDC Online News

Is it a good idea to accept Facebook friend invitations from your students? Where can you go to get the best information about wikis, Twitter, Second Life and other Web 2.0 tools? Navigating the interactive Web 2.0 world can be exhilarating, yet perplexing, especially when determining how to effectively integrate these tools into an already crowded curriculum.

Here is a list of what we consider to be top Web resources for keeping current on instructional applications of Web 2.0 tools. If you only check a few sites each month, these are the ones that we would recommend.

Jane Hart’s E-Learning Pick of the Day
http://janeknight.typepad.com/
Jane’s site is full of succinct descriptions of the latest Web 2.0 tools. This is a terrific Web 2.0 tool awareness site. Be sure to check her “Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009” link: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/ (Twitter is currently listed as #1).

Lifehacker: Tips and Downloads for Getting Things Done
http://lifehacker.com/
Gina Trapani is a master at writing and gathering timesaving technology tips to help you quickly get up to speed with the latest tools. A sampling of recent topics includes: “Get Real-Time Search Results From Google” and “PB Tweet Enhances Your Twitter Experience”.

Faculty Focus E-Newsletter
http://www.magnapubs.com/
 This is a three-times-a-week one-page e-newsletter showcasing innovative strategies, best practices and fresh perspectives on what works and what doesn’t in teaching and learning. Go to the Magna Publications Web site to sign up for a free subscription. The topic of this week’s issue is: “Students and Social Networking: Should You ‘Friend’ Your Students?”

Chronicle of Higher Education
 “Facebooking for the Tenure Track”
http://chronicle.com/article/Facebooking-for-the-Tenure/48218/?sid=ja&utm_source=ja&utm_medium=en
The September 4, 2009 issue features ideas for using Facebook and other social-media sites to advance your career. A thought-provoking article in the July 3 issue was “Facebooking Your Way Out of Tenure”.

Patricia Fellows and Karen Franker, UW-Colleges

Here is what is happening at the UW Colleges:

Six UW Colleges academic departments are participating in the ePortfolio Pilot.  Faculty who are on the tenure track will be building their dossier in D2L using Desire2Learn’s ePortfolio.  To get this project started, we are providing a demo site in D2L where I am building my promotion portfolio as an example.  Next we will be creating a Captivate or Camtasia video with narration, for the faculty to watch before beginning their work. Each department has an ePortfolio site in D2L where the faculty will build their ePortfolio.  They have until November (for folks in their 3rd year) or January, 2010, (all others) depending on where they are on the track. We have decided to not allow them to create tags, we are going to be building a tag library, so it is consistent. The department chairs are providing the terminology to use for the tags.  In the fall we will be training the review committee members, from both the campuses and departments, campus Deans, and the Provost, and his PA,  on how to access, export (if necessary), and review the ePortfolios.  The faculty themselves will be responsible for making sure the campus and departmental committee members have the necessary access to their ePortfolio by the due date.  Finally, there will be online evaluations for the faculty, the review committees and the Provost and Deans to complete once the pilot is near its end. Support for this project will be provide through our Service Center. Note that all training will be provided on a website, instead of using WisLine Web to save money and to make the training for this project as convenient as possible.  We are hoping it is successful and that we can add merit, promotion, and post-tenure review to the ePortfolio system in the future AND have all departments and campuses involved.

During this past year we piloted clickers on 5 campuses, and based on the success of the pilot and interest from other campuses, we were able to use year-end money to purchase a clicker kit for the other 13 campuses to begin to build interest among their faculty. Training will be provided using Camtasia, Captivate or iMovie videos.

Of course we have several other projects going on, but these two are new and exciting!

Submitted by Pat Fellows
UW-Colleges