ITS Coffee Break – 11/20/2006 – Blackboard vs. Moodle, Soapbox in the Classroom, Second Life

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Learning management systems take center stage as Courtney Bentley, Ken Newquist and special guest Carrie Havranek (Visiting Part-time Instructor in English) talk about augmenting classes with online material in Blackboard, Moodle and Soapbox. They also discuss recent developments in the popular online world Second Life and review the new web site search documentation recently added to the ITS web site.

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Show Notes

ITS News

  • Learning Management System Survey & Results
    • Courtney talks about results of the recent Learning Management System she conducted, including what faculty think of the current Blackboard system and what our options are for the future.
  • Blackboard vs. Moodle
  • Soapbox in the Classroom
    • English adjunct professor Carrie Havranek talks about using Soapbox instead of Blackboard for her classes.
    • What's the difference between blogging on Soapbox and posting on Blackboard? (strengths, weakenesses

Tech News

  • Second Life Updates
    • CNN: Growing number of educators explore 'Second Life' online:
    • WSJ: Avatars at the Office
      • The Wall Street Journal talks about companies meeting virtually in Second Life.

Help News

  • New Search Documentation on ITS Web Site
    • Information about how Lafayette's "Google Mini" search engine works, how to optimize your web pages to work better with search engines, how to exclude your pages from a search, and how to add a Google search box to your web site.

ITS Coffee Break – 10/30/06 – Blogging Alternatives, Network Redesign, New Browsers, Shakespeare Online?

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Sophomore Justin Sayde, RA of the Dry Surfers Organization, guest hosts the 10/30 edition of the ITS Coffee Break with Ken Newquist. The podcast begins with a discussion of possible blogging alternatives to Soapbox and an update on the network redesign. Tech News features a conversation about the just released Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7 web browsers, news about a massively multiplayer game set in the Shakespearean timeframe, and thoughts on the upcoming release of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii game systems.

Getting the Podcast

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Show Notes

ITS News

  • Guest Host: Sophomore Justin Sayde, RA of the Dry Surfers Organization
  • Blogging Alternatives?
    • While we aren't even close to making a change, we are looking at some alternative blogging software to Soapbox. In particular, WordPress Multiuser was just released on Oct. 23, and it looks like it could do a lot of what's been requested by the Lafayette community, including supporting custom themes for individual blogs and group-based collaborative blogs. Give it a spin and let us know what you think by creating a blog at EduBlogs.org
    • EduBlogs: http://www.EduBlogs.org
    • WordPress Mu: http://mu.wordpress.org
  • Progress on the Lafayette Network Redesign

Tech News

ITS Coffee Break for 10/18: EDUCAUSE, Google News, Second Life Reuters Bureau

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Courtney Bentley reports on her recent trip to Educause, the education technology conference, including news about Duke's Digital Initiative, work on collaborative learning spaces, podcasting, and a Flash-based economics course. In tech news, Google's acquisition of YouTube and its release of its “web office” product Google Docs and Spreadsheets take center stage. In Help News there's a slew of workshop announcements, including details about the upcoming administrative computer training workshops.

Getting the Podcast

There are several ways to get the podcast:

Show Notes

ITS News

  • Things Courtney heard about at Educause:
    • Duke Digital initiative
      • Let the technology drive the project and innovation
      • Add mic adapter to iPods to do student projects, interviews, record service learning, foreign language exercises
      • About moving special projects to phased support
    • Strategic moves
      • Collaborative learning spaces
        • Digital video
        • Podcasting
      • Video conferencing
      • Mobile computing – tablets
      • Clickers
    • Univ of North Carolina at Greensboro – econ 201 an online game for college credit
      • 8 week, Flash-based game that is for Principles of Microeconomics credit
      • Development guided by Dr Jeff Sarbaum, prof of econ
      • The game has eight levels, each focusing on a fundamental economic concept–  there are three main “quests” in each level. Students will be required to ‘pass” a series of skill assessments before being allowed to move to the next level.
      • http://econ201.uncg.edu/dcl/econ201/

Tech news

Help News