Library & Information Services » Collaboration

Faculty Innovators Tell Us What They Need

Alex Chapin — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Our first priority with the Segue from Segue project is to make sure there are technology solutions available to meet the needs of as many faculty, students and staff as possible. That said, we would like to also be able to support innovative uses of technology, particularly those innovations that may eventually be useful to the broader community.

To this end, the Curricular Technology team invited a number of faculty who are innovators to show us how they have been using technology and tell us what they need. Faculty who participated included Jeff Byers (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Hector Vila (CTLR), Enrique Garcia (Spanish), Hope Tucker (Film and Media Culture) and Roberto Veguez (Spanish). A number of academic liaisons also participated in this session. To learn more about what these faculty have been doing, see:

Segue from Segue » Presentations by Faculty Innovators

Research: WordPress Plugin for Displaying Google Docs

Alex Chapin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:55:14 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great if Google Docs could be displayed in a blog or other content management system. That way, a bunch of people could collaborate on a text which could be displayed on a blog for others to comment upon. The comments on the blog could help inform the editing of the text.

Is there a WordPress plugin for displaying Google Docs? If so how well does it work? Is it well supported.

Yammering at MIIS

Bob Cole — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:28:31 +0000

Submitted by Bob Cole, MIIS

I have been personally experimenting with Twitter, the micro-blogging tool. After nearly a year, I’ve discovered there is immense value in personal and professional learning networks. I ‘follow’ edtech professionals, NPR news, teachers, and the humor of ICHCheezburger. With Twitter I am able to post 140 character ‘tweets’ of insight, listen to others, and crowdsource an idea or question. Now that I’ve nearly summited the Twitter adoption curve (see left), I’m evangelizing with students and colleagues here at MIIS. Trouble is it’s an uphill battle.

This, however, changed recently when a TLC colleague, Sarah Springer mentioned a new tool in a brief conversation. She said something about a crowdsourcing tool named Yammer. I didn’t write it down or Tweet about it, but it did stick in my mind. I went and checked it out online. Essentially, Yammer is an enterprise Twitter for in-house collaboration, and maybe a gateway tool for future Twitterers. We’ve slowly invited like-minded staffers, students, and faculty to join in on the sharing.

An added feature that Yammer offers is the ability to tag posts with hashmarks. So, it I share an event I could include the #event tag and my yammer msg would be added to that tag archive, very much like blogging categories or tags work as well. I can even follow a given tag in Yammer and receive a digest e-mail of activity.

I’ll continue to tap into my Twitter network as beohbe, but am excited by the possibilities that Yammering in-house learning and sharing will bring as we continue to experiment with communication and collaboration tools here in Monterey.