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How Do I...
Molly Gillette and Chelsea Costaney work together at the EdTech Center's SmartBarCan’t make it to the EdTech Center's demonstrations and seminars? Here in the EdTech Center's "How Do I..." section of the website, you can learn about enhancing your teaching with Second Life, Google Tools, MashUps, Blogs, Wikis, podcasts or other new technology tools by utilizing the tutorials, resources and webcasts of our demos and workshops.
You can also visit the EdTech Center’s SmartBar in person in 215 SL, where our trained co-op students will help you work through tutorials or find online media materials related to your discipline. Feel free to call x3157, send an email to edtech@neu.edu or drop by 215 Snell Library between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m, Monday - Friday.
Digital Story Telling - First Person Narratives
Everyone has a story to tell. Maybe you are a professor glimpsing how your research and teaching can alter the course of a student's life. Or perhaps you would like to have your students explore an aspect of their field of study through digital storytelling. This demonstration will cover the steps necessary to create a compelling digital story. Starting with a basic overview of script writing,...
Building Mashups From Multiple Data Sources
A Mashup is the combination of multiple data sources mashed together into a new application. It can be as simple as a few rss feeds combined and filtered into one location, or as complex as a google earth application plotting data from multiple data sources. In any case, the result is a new and creative way to process information. In this demo, you will learn how to create your own mashups or to...
Podcasting 1: Recording Your Lecture
Audio-podcasts allow your students to time-shift (listen to the podcast when they wish) and multi-task (listen to the podcast while doing something else such as working out at the gym or commuting). An easy way to get started with podcasting is simply to record your lectures and post them for students to review. This demonstration will show you how to seamlessly integrate the audio recording into...
Podcasting 2: Enhancing Your Lecture
"Answer-casts" offer a way to quickly respond to your students e-mailed questions in your own voice. "Wrap-ups" can be used to extend your class by offering additional insights or examples. Both of these webcasts, which you produce outside of class time, can be used to further increase the sense of community and interaction with students in courses. This session will describe...
Rich Media Sharing and Integration (Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare)
College and high-school students regularly share audio and video via the Web. Sites like flikr and YouTube allow users, in a few clicks, to easily post and share media files. This demonstration will show you how to get started, and offer some examples of course-based uses.
Creating a Digital Story
Step 1: Develop a Script A digital story allows an author to capture the essence of an experience with visual images and sounds. However, the script remains the backbone of the story. The narrative behind and between the images and sounds is critical to how the audience will interpret and feel about your story. So, spend time writing, revising, and editing your script. To produce a digital story...
Getting Started with Blackboard
Many faculty work their way into Blackboard slowly, beginning with posting announcements and their syllabus, and then adding more functionality each semester, such as discussion forums and digital homework submission, as they become more comfortable with the interactive tools available. If you're not yet familiar with what Blackboard is, you may find our Blackboard overview page helpful....
Disruption Planning
These pages offer resources to help instructors continue teaching in the event that classroom instruction must be interrupted. Many of the recommendations in this section, such as backing up files, are good practices to follow even when classes proceed as planned.
Online Participation Guidelines
From: Chapter 7 of Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt, Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999). "Attendance" and presence are required for this class. Students are expected to log on at a minimum of twice per week and are expected to post a substantive contribution to the discussion at that time. Simply...
Managing Online Discussions
Asynchronous online discussion is a valuable way to extend students' engagement with class material and encourage active collaborative learning. This workshop will help you develop and moderate online discussions effectively, emphasizing pedagogical strategy and design rather than the technical aspects of specific online discussion software. This workshop covers: The benefits and challenges of...
Developing a Podcast
What is podcasting? Technically speaking podcasting is making files (usually audio, but not exclusively) available online with RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow a "subscriber" to get an automatic update at regular intervals when new content is available, instead of having to return to a website on a regular basis to download new content. Generally speaking, although it's not accurate,...
Google Earth
Google Earth (and Google Maps) are free web mapping technologies that let you view maps all around the world, zooming in to street level or out to country or global scale. You can use Google Earth to "tour" the Grand Canyon in a geology class, or follow the path of the Avian Flu in a biology class, for example. This demo will show you some examples of these applications and how to use...
Connecting Your Classroom with Facebook
Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) is an online directory that connects people through social networks at schools and colleges. It receives 250 million hits per day and is ranked ninth in overall traffic on the Internet. Students love Facebook, but few professors and administrators are aware of it and most have yet to evaluate its impact. Prof. Dan Scheirer will provide an overview of Facebook...
Can Blogs and the Popular Media Help Educators? Working with Numb3rs
Every Friday night at 10 p.m. on CBS, the cast of NUMB3RS takes on another crime that requires advanced mathematics skills to solve. Based on actual events, NUMB3RS explores the connection between criminal investigations and mathematics. Following each episode in which FBI Agent Don Eppes and his mathematical genius brother Charlie solve a complex crime, Professor Bridger of the NU Math...
Turning Point Demo - Clicker Technology
Turning Technologies provides a variety of software and hardware options. Pharmacy is currently piloting the most robust software offered called TurningPoint, which includes many advanced features. This software is native with Microsoft PowerPoint in PC and Mac. However, Mac PowerPoint 2007 is not yet supported. On Wednesday, June 10, 2009 the Clicker Task Force Committee hosted an on-campus...
Integrating Clickers in the Classroom at Northeastern
Step 1 Faculty Equipment Checkout and ResponseWare Account Requests Faculty can checkout clicker receivers and request account access for ResponseWare at no cost. Call the Helpdesk at ext. 4357 to submit your request. Equipment options include: NEW! "PresenterCards" allow faculty to 'step away' from the computer and still have the ability to start/stop polls, navigate through...
TaskStream Demonstration
Northeastern has been piloting ePortfolio projects since 2007 using the ePortfolio software "TaskStream". This webcast is a presentation of the software by a company sales representative. TaskStream is an externally hosted system, through which students are provided accounts on a subscription basis. TaskStream allows students to create an unlimited number of eportfolios which can can be...
Digital Photography - Tips for Taking Great Pictures
Photographs are often a major part of a multimedia project. Whether it be a website, a digital story, or an eportfolio, the imagery presented often gives the viewer a sense of the quality of information they will be reviewing. This tutorial provides an overview of the various aspects of digital photography that can be controlled through the settings on the camera. This ensures that you begin your...
Teaching with PowerPoint
This tutorial is designed to help faculty assess their goals for using PowerPoint and develop presentations to meet those goals. Through hands-on exercises, you will learn to create a PowerPoint file (including text, graphics, transitions, animation, and hyperlinks), deliver a PowerPoint slide show, and save a file for distrituion on a website or a Blackboard site. Objectives By the end of this...
Description of Turning Technologies Products
Turning Technologies clickers allow students to participate in lectures by submitting responses to interactive questions using a ResponseCard keypad, web-enabled phones, or computer devices. Turning Technologies was selected as the university-wide vendor for faculty for five primary reasons: Flexibility to meet a range of faculty needs: Turning Technologies has four main products that work with...
TurningPoint PowerPoint - Clicker Training
The EdTech Center hosts virtual training sessions of Turning Technologies' TurningPoint PowerPoint. The training gave participants an opportunity to experience Turning Technologies’ robust clicker software with features including Blackboard integration, polling, PowerPoint polling templates, and reporting. 8 Steps for Using TP Powerpoint Guide for New TP Powerpoint Users (ver. 4.2) Guide...
TurningPoint Anywhere - Clicker Training
The EdTech Center hosts virtual training sessions of Turning Technologies' TurningPoint AnyWhere. The training gave participants an opportunity to experience Turning Technologies’ ‘light‘ software with features including Blackboard integration, polling, and reporting. 8 Steps for using TP Anywhere (PC) 8 Steps for using TP Anywhere (Mac) Guide for TP Anywhere (PC) Guide for TP...
Build your personal learning network with Twitter, Ning and Delicious
A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is the collection of people with whom you engage and exchange information. As web applications have become more robust, your PLN can easily grow using tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Ning. These tools make it easy to find and connect with peers experts in your field and anyone with similar interests. This demonstration will discuss the benefits of expanding...
What are Clickers and How Can I Use Them in Large Classes?
Classroom response systems, or "clickers", is a tool that can help increase student engagement and measure student comprehension real-time. Explore clicker capabilities, learn more about Turning Technologies, Northeastern's university-wide supported clicker, and discuss best practices for integrating clickers into the classroom.
How can I design an effective Digital media assignment?
Would you like to integrate a digital media assignment into your curriculum but do not know where to start? Learn the curricular design and technical planning process for effectively integrating digital media into faculty assignments and student projects. Download the presentation slides >>
Google Forms
Google Forms is a simple Google Docs tool that you can use to create an online form or survey. Form input is instantly added to a Google spreadsheet that you can view at any time. After you create a form you can email it to others or embed the form directly in a webpage. You can share the spreadsheet that contains the form data with other Google Docs users. This webcast will show you how to...
Slideshare
Slideshare is a free, online service that makes it easy to share presentations and documents. Users can upload PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF and Open Office files to Slideshare and then allow other users to post comments and download the presentation. Slideshare presentations can also be shared through LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter. Posting a presentation to Slideshare is a great way to share your...
Jing
Jing is a free, easy to use tool that is used to instantly create short screencasts (movies of what you do on the computer screen) or take screenshots (pictures of your computer screen). Jing limits your recording time to 5 minutes so it is a great tool for demonstrating simple tasks. This webcast will show you how to capture a Jing screenshot or screencast.
Prezi
Prezi is an online tool that gives you the power to create and share non-linear presentations. All elements of your presentation are placed on a single, large canvas and paths are created between the elements. You can zoom in on particular elements and embed and play youtube videos inside your presentation. Prezi's can be saved and viewed on Prezi.com or they can be downloaded and viewed offline...
Youtube
Learn how to upload your videos to YouTube and embed them in your Blackboard course or website.
BB9 Journals, Blogs and Wikis
Blogs, Wikis and Journals are collaboration tools available in BB9. Journals are usually used as a private reflection tool where students post journal entries that the instructor can read and comment. Journals can be shared with the entire class but only the instructor is able to add comments and there is only one author. Blogs generally have a single author, however, you can create a group or...
Google Docs
Google docs allows users to upload or create new text documents, spreadsheets, presentations (similar to PowerPoint) and forms. Users can invite others to view or edit the document and multiple users can view and edit a document at the same time. Google also tracks revisions and makes it possible to revert back to an earlier version of a document. With revision tracking users can even view who...
Quick Response (QR) Code
What is it? A Quick Response Code, a QR Code, is a two-dimensional bar code created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. It is called "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed. What does it do? Scan with any QR code scanner app on your phone or any web-enabled mobile device with a camera. When accessed, the QR code takes...
How To Use TaskStream Eportfolios
The following url’s link to resources to help students use TaskStream eportfolios. Click the links to preview the resources. To share any of these resources with your students, copy and paste the links into your Blackboard course. Creating a Folio This screencast (a narrated "video") shows how to create a new folio, select a template and style, add and rename pages, add and format...
Google Chat
Google Chat (Gchat) is a free instant messaging application that allows you to chat online with other Gmail users. This webcast will help you to better understand the functions of Gchat.
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Featured Project
Clicker Fall 2009 Pilot at Northeastern University
When a working group discussed clickers years ago, IS concluded that the technology was too much in flux to choose one system to standardize on. Faculty members continued to use clickers but vendor choices were made by random selection with no... Read more...Copyright © 2009 The Educational Technology Center | 215 Snell Library, Northeastern University, Boston MA 02115 | 617-373-3157
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