Teaching With Technology Certificate Hub

Faculty and graduate students are invited to sign up for free technology training offered during the break in the academic schedule, May 11-15. Summer-Fest 2009 is a weeklong training event developed to target technology as it relates to pedagogy. Scheduled topics include ANGEL, Blogs at Penn State, Adobe Connect, ePortfolios, Penn State Wikispaces, Podcasting, Web 2.0 and more.

Some sessions will be offered live through Adobe Connect meeting and training software in order to give those who are unable to travel to the University Park session the opportunity to attend via the Web.

Just a reminder that course import/export will be turned off for finals week to preserve server capacity for online exams and file uploads.

If you need to start a summer course, please plan accordingly. See the announcement below.

From the ANGEL TEAM
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Would you like to post electronic articles for students but not take up server space or break copyright?

A good solution might be to place items with the University Libraries Electronics Reserve system. Items can include PDF articles, links to articles in library databases, music files, and articles archived in multiple databases (includes professional journals and "popular" outlets like the New York Times). Electronic Reserves can even replace course packets and save students money.

FYI - The Teaching with Technology Portfolio is officially due to your cootdinator Mon, April 6, 2009 which is the Monday after next.

The timing of this deadline allows your department to evaluate the portfolio in time for students leaving Penn State to receive a certificate.

If you need to delay your portfolio, please contact your TWT coordinator. Coordinators who have alternate deadlines may contact me directly to update me.

Good luck.

A standard practice for instruction in smaller classes has been to collect index cards from students with information about themselves. Why not move some of this to an ANGEL discussion board so students can see each other's answers?

Using discussion boards in general is a good way for students to both discuss course content and for them to learn more about their classmates (and perhaps build a stronger learning community). An introduction message board is a good way to get started using message boards.

If you're thinking about using the Blogs at Penn State Movable Type platform to publish a portfolio such as this example

* http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/portfolio_t/

You can review the blog documentation at

* http://blogger.psu.edu/help/portfolio (site may move in near future)

Although the blog documentation may move in the near future, I did want to point out this resource before Spring Break, just in case....

ANGEL includes tools which allow you to create crossword puzzles (great for vocabulary) and a mock quiz show with cash prizes. Games can be a more engaging way to encourage students to test items which need to be memorized. If played in a classroom, you can encourage teamwork and friendly competition.

Create a Crossword
http://angelkb.ais.psu.edu/article.asp?article=1390&p=2

Create a Quiz Show
http://angelkb.ais.psu.edu/article.asp?article=1391&p=2

Note: Games are scored with total percentage correct and can be added as graded assignments in the gradebook.

If you teach a course with weekly homework, you can quickly add due dates to the ANGEL course calendar all at once by creating a "Recurring Event".

The Recurring Event Feature lets you add events which recur on a regular basis such as homeworks, weekly quizzes or even class and lab meetings. When you add an event, you set beginning dates (e.g. in the 1st week of class) end dates (in the last week of class) and interval information (daily, weekly, monthly and so forth).

Add a Recurring Event
http://angelkb.ais.psu.edu/article.asp?article=1061&p=2

The 2009 TLT Symposium will be offering a poster session in the afternoon of April 18 on the theme of "Student Engagement and the Culture of Teaching and Learning."

Deadline is Feb 27, 2009. See http://symposium.tlt.psu.edu/posterproposal09 for details.

There are number of resources available for creating more effective quizzes from writing better questions to importing questions from a Word file to understanding the different settings for creating multiple versions of a quiz.

Some links include
* Write Effective Quiz Questions
http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/effective_questions