TechFest 2010 was a tremendous success. 73 faculty and staff filled 195 seats over 6 workshops/lectures. Please submit an evaluation.

Tuesday, January 12

Digital Narrative
This full day pre-event session is an opportunity to digitally document your own short story, from start to finish. Join Jo Skiff, Grant Currie, Jim Forney, and Lucas Wright on Tuesday to expand your understanding for the entire process. Participants will have plenty of hands-on opportunities with various tools to create a personal project while also learning about project planning, storyboarding, and assessing student work.

AM: Project Planning, Storyboarding, Collective Materials, The Tools (Software & Hardware)
LUNCH: Lunch will be provided at noon for all workshop participants
PM: Creating your Project, Publishing, Assessing

 

Tuesday, January 13

Using Tech to Go Paperless

Danielle Egan, Director of the Center of Teaching and Learning and Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality
You may be surprised to learn how easy it is to use technology to go paperless, but you'll also appreciate the benefits for grading and pedagogy, both inside and outside the classroom. Additionally, we will discuss the benefits for faculty who are keeping materials for their tenure and promotion files.

 

Web 2.0 Tools for (Language) Learning
Gisele El Khoury, Interim Director of Language Resource Center and Adjunct Instructor of Arabic
The Teaching Languages course is designed to help students develop competency in language instruction.  We explore what it means to be part of a communicative classroom from the perspective of students and an instructors.  Students learn to apply Web 2.0 and other technology tools (e.g. Voki, VoiceThread, Lingt, GoogleEarth, PhotoStory, iMovie) to create activities for the language lab that fit a model of communicative teaching and for use in their own language labs. Many of these tools are broadly applicable and likely to be of interest to faculty in other disciplines.

Nimble Rides on Digital Dinosaurs: Pascal, C and R_A_D
Tom Greene, Redlich Chair and Professor of Psychology
Somewhere between the catalogs of commercial educational software and the sophisticated world of computer science lies a need for software applications tailored to individual upper level classes. Mature (old) languages like Pascal, have new life as the foundations for Rapid Application Development components which allow relatively brisk development of course software by the instructor.  Illustrations will include applications for students in Environmental and  Industrial/Organizational Psychology.

 

Drupal Camp Kick Off
The official Drupal Camp kick-off will open with compelling remarks from Terry Cowdrey, Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid on "Why the Web Matters". It will close with an unveiling of our new template for academic websites under development this spring.

Writing for the Web
Guest faculty presenter Juraj Kittler, Assistant Professor of English and PCA, will provide a timely journalistic approach to "Writing for the Web" on Tuesday afternoon. Attend to learn how to improve content to reach your online audience.

 

Thursday, January 14

Creative Commons as a Resource
Paul Doty, Public Services Librarian - Michelle Gillie, Acquisitions/Cataloging Librarian - Amy Hauber, Assistant Professor of Art
Struggling with copyright and fair use in the classroom?  The Creative Commons is making life a lot easier.  Hear what Lawrence Lessig and others are saying about free culture and the open content movement, learn how to find prose, photos, video, and other media licensed under the Creative Commons, and find out how CC licensing provides a framework to make your and your students' work more reasonably accessible.

Getting the Most of your 1,000 Words: Using Images on the Web
Grant Currie, Coordinator, Ed Tech Training
Participants in this workshop will explore best practices for using images to communicate on the web: How to help your images look the best, and say what you want them to say, while optimizing their download times and the range of image file formats and when to use them. The workshop also covers techniques for integrating text into an image; compositing multiple images into a single image (such as a banner); and creating thumbnails and icons.

Held annually in January, TechFest is an ideal opportunity for achieving more depth in technology training. A special feature of this event is the TechFair, presentations by faculty that often result in Best Practices in Teaching with Technology project proposals. Past TechFest programs are archived online.