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In This Issue Summer
Faculty Workshops Scheduled Join colleagues for a
Technology Learn software and techniques
you can use to create multimedia materials for your courses. The workshops are sponsored by Computing Services and offered
in conjunction with staff from the
To register, please contact plaholt (x2678) or jrichard (x2755) as soon as possible. New Communications with This year the incoming Class of 2007 will have its own UC Online (Blackboard) site. It is anticipated that this means of communication will engender a sense of community prior to the first year students’ arrival on campus. Beginning in June, administrative departments will disseminate information and communicate online with these students, in addition to the regular paper process. Faculty advisors may do the same. Students will be assigned their regular UC username and password. They will be able to email each other, converse electronically with staff and faculty, access important documents and engage in discussion boards on several topics. Since Blackboard is the same software that is used for courses, these students will arrive on campus already experienced in navigating this tool. This is just another way in which we can offer a friendly and inviting face to the new arrivals and ensure their successful entry to campus life, both socially and academically. If you would like access to the FYS2003 site to post information or communicate with incoming students, contact Paula Laholt or Jan Richard. We will be upgrading Blackboard to version 6.0 for the Fall 2003 semester. The Community Portal Page will have a new look with greater access to on- and off-campus resources. The Course Management system will offer many valuable new features. These include the ability to link to a single instance of a document from multiple locations, a new Assignment Tool to replace the Digital Dropbox, an expanded Assessment Manager and more customization of the Gradebook. We will be providing instruction in these new and enhanced features when you return to campus. About 65 faculty members will turn in their old laptops for a new model this spring. Faculty members receive new laptops every two years. The new model is the Dell Latitude C540. With a 1.7 GHz Celeron processor, 256 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive, the C540 has about twice the speed and capacity of the model it replaces. Another new feature is the combination CD-RW and DVD drive. This drive allows you to create CD backups of the contents of your hard drive, or to view movies on DVD. Another new feature of the C540 is an internal wireless network card. Faculty members who have wireless networks at home can use this to connect to their desktop computer or high-speed Internet connection. As we begin installing wireless access points on campus during the coming years, this new feature will enable more flexible access to the campus network. While the new laptops offer more power and new features, they don’t require faculty to learn a whole new way of working. The new operating system, Windows XP, has been configured to look much like the old laptop’s Windows 2000. And the Microsoft Office XP applications – Word, Excel, FrontPage, PowerPoint and Outlook – offer many new features while retaining the familiar look of their predecessors. Faculty members who are due to receive a new laptop will be contacted by email with instructions. Old laptops can be turned in or purchased for personal use for $419.
This summer, the digital video editing equipment in the Faculty Development Room on the third floor of Myrin will be upgraded with a more powerful system. With the new system, faculty will be able to capture video clips from both analog (VHS) and digital videotapes or camcorders and add titles, transitions, soundtracks and special effects. Advanced video editing software, Adobe Premiere and AfterEffects, will be available for those who need sophisticated capabilities, while an entry-level program, Pinnacle Studio 8, will provide beginners with an easy-to-use way to digitize videos they’ve created. If you plan to travel this summer, be sure to take along a camcorder. You never know when you’ll come across the perfect moment to include in a PowerPoint presentation or lecture next semester. For consultation on purchasing digital camcorders or still cameras, or assistance using equipment in the Faculty Development Room, please contact an Instructional Technologist.
As we near the semester’s end, there are a few computer-related items you should consider. Before you take your laptop along on your summer travels or to the beach, it is a good idea to back up the files on your hard drive. There are two basic methods: v Burn a CD, either with your laptop drive or with the CD burners located in Myrin. v Copy files to the server. If you will be traveling, be sure you have a means of backing up your files locally. Floppy diskettes are an inexpensive and easy-to-use option for temporary storage of files. Be sure to make copies on multiple diskettes and store them in a protective case. In June, at the end of each academic year, all Blackboard courses are archived offline to remove them from the active server. They are available to be reloaded upon request. Please look for an end-of-year email on managing your Blackboard course sites and follow the instructions provided. |
The Gradebook Just a reminder that you will need to back up your Blackboard Course Gradebooks. You must do this even though the full course contents will be archived. To do this: enter your course and select Control Panel –> Online Gradebook –> Export Gradebook. Follow the instructions presented.
Accessing Your Email
On the Road Whether you’re going across the
country or around the world this summer, you can access your Ursinus email from
any computer that has an Internet connection. Simply go to the If you’re taking your own laptop with you on your travels, you can dial in to the Ursinus network as you may be used to doing from home. However, you’ll run up a rather hefty phone bill if you’re traveling far away. Instead, you can connect directly into the Internet from many locations. For example, some hotels now provide Ethernet network jacks in every room, and many homes have high-speed Internet access. In order to connect your laptop at one of these locations, you’ll need the Ethernet cable you use to connect your laptop in your office, not the black phone cable you use when you dial in with your modem. Ethernet cables and modem cables look very much alike, except that the connector on the Ethernet cable is slightly larger. Although the smaller phone cable will usually fit into an Ethernet network port or jack, it will not work. Be sure to bring both cables with you on your travels, so you’ll be prepared for any situation. If you plan to be away from your email for a period of time during the summer, be sure to use the “Out of Office Assistant” (in the Tools menu) to create an automated reply letting people know you will be away. Note, however, that the autoreply created with the “Out of Office Assistant” will only go to users with Ursinus email addresses; it will not be sent to off-campus addresses. If you want an automatic reply to go to off-campus recipients as well as those on campus, you need to use the Rules Wizard in Outlook. The Rules Wizard, found in the Tools menu, is a useful tool for organizing your mail messages and many other tasks. It’s worth learning how to use it so you’re prepared when a special situation arises. To create an automatic reply that will go to anyone who sends you email: 1. From the Tools
menu in Outlook, select Rules Wizard… 2. Click on New… 3. Click on the bubble next to “Start from a blank rule” and highlight “”Check messages when they arrive”. Click on .
4. If you want your message to go to everyone who sends you email, don’t check anything under “What condition(s) do you want to check?” Click . 5. Confirm that you want your rule to apply to all messages by clicking on Yes. 6. When asked what you
want to do with the message, check the box next to “have server reply using a
specific message”. 7. Below, click on the link for specific message. The form for an email message will come up. This will be the autoreply that your correspondents will receive when they send you email. Don’t write anything in the To: line: this will be filled in by the server when it sends your autoreply. In the Subject: line, type something like “Away from my email”. In the message area, write the message you want people to receive, e.g., indicating the date you will return or an alternate method of contacting you. 8. Click and then in the main window. 9. If you want to make any exceptions, e.g., you don’t want your autoreply to go to mailing lists to which you are subscribed, check the appropriate box on the next screen. Then click on the people or distribution list link below to enter the senders you want to exclude. If you don’t have any exceptions, click . 10. On the next screen, type a name for the rule, e.g. “vacation message”. Click and .
If you don’t plan to access your Ursinus account during the summer but will be reading email in a personal account, you can still receive your Ursinus email. Using the Rules Wizard, you can set up a rule to forward copies of all incoming messages to another account. A copy of each message will remain in your Ursinus account, if you choose, so you can access it later. Contact one of the Instructional Technologists if you need help using the Rules Wizard.
MERLOT, the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching, is a repository of course-related materials for higher education. All materials (mostly in the form of links to external websites and simulations) are donated by members and are freely accessible. Materials are categorized into seven high-level categories – Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics, Science and Technology, and Social Sciences – and numerous subcategories. Each item is peer-reviewed by at least two members of the review board who are both scholars in the field and experienced users of technology in teaching. A composite review is posted on the site, based on three criteria: quality of content, potential effectiveness as a teaching tool, and ease of use. A five-star rating system is also used for each dimension. Members can post comments as well based on their experience using the material. There are thousands of items in each of the seven
categories and several hundred in each discipline (e.g., 336 entries in
Psychology, 514 in Biology, 886 in World Languages). Many items are simulations or case
studies that allow students to explore a situation and analyze it in much the
same way a scholar might. For
example, The Martha Ballard Case Study:
A Midwife’s Tale concerns a controversial rape case that occurred in
18th century MERLOT is an excellent starting place for faculty looking for materials to use in the classroom or ideas for designing their own instructional technology projects. Don’t forget to register your own project on the MERLOT site. |
