Thanks to those who joined us yesterday at the Reading Day Recap Lunch! The purpose of the lunch was to get faculty together to informally discuss their uses of technology in the classroom, in research, or in daily life. In reading through your comments, it sounds like we achieved this goal. Some of the topics mentioned or discussed include:
- Using the appointment feature in Google Calendar to schedule student meetings. Two faculty used this and found it saved them a lot of time from emailing back and forth with students.
- Paperless grading. Look for future blog posts about this, but some tools to annotate student work digitally included Adobe, SKIM, iAnnotatePDF, GoodReader, Word’s track changes, and others.
- Having students take pictures using digital cameras or their own phones to demonstrate a concept. Students then use Photoshop to edit the photos – requiring them to also learn a skill that is highly valued in the workplace.
- Related to highly valued skills, several faculty require students to use Excel to collect, analyze, and display data.
- Several faculty in attendance participate in the DELI program, and spoke about the use of iPods and iPads in their courses. The devices are used for data collection (interviews, photos, notes), to access a variety of media for the course, among other uses.
- Finally, many use Moodle and have found tools within Moodle to enhance their courses and improve their own workflow. Some functions mentioned included forums, the gradebook, and we discussed the possibility of a peer review functionality. Stay tuned for more information about this new feature.
Thank you for sharing your ideas! From the comments, you colleagues appreciated hearing about your successes and challenges. If you have any questions, or wish to speak to someone in Instructional Technology about any of these topics, contact your Instructional Technology liaison.
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