Author Archives: Joseph Antonioli
Canvas Adoption Proposal
Below is the official proposal for the adoption of Canvas, crafted and submitted by the Curricular Technology Team. Many faculty, students and staff contributed to the pilot that informed the proposal, we sincerely appreciate everyone’s efforts. There are a couple of notes about the proposal: The proposal assumes that the Canvas budget request will still…
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Digital Media Bootcamp Update
We’ve added another session to the Digital Media Bootcamp.
Quicktime, SnapZ Pro, MPEG Streamclip, Scanners, Plotters and more @ 2:15pm
Date: January 18, 2016
Mack Roark – This workshop will teach you the basic functionality of Apple’s Quicktime, how to use SnapZ Pro to do a screen capture of video, and how to use features of MPEG StreamClip to view and convert video clips. Also included is an overview and demonstration of the scanners, plotter, and capture station located in the Wilson Multimedia Development Lab. You will learn the basics of how to operate these devices and the software associated with them. This is a 2 hour workshop.
Current List of Workshops
Title | Date | |
---|---|---|
Quicktime, SnapZ Pro, MPEG Streamclip, Scanners, Plotters and more @ 2:15pm | January 18, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Working with Data @1pm until 4pm | January 19, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Visualizing Data @1pm until 4pm | January 20, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Mapping Data @1pm until 4pm | January 21, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Analyzing Textual Data @1pm until 4pm | January 22, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Introduction to Information Literacy @ 2:45pm | January 25, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Safe Computing Practices at Middlebury @ 1pm | January 25, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Online Identity: Your Story to the World @ 2:45pm | January 26, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Online Recording Lab: SANSSpace @ 1pm | January 27, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Intro to Audio Literacy @ 3:30pm | January 27, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Intro to Visual Literacy and Presentations @ 3:30pm | February 3, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Friday Links — December 18, 2016
Virtual reality in 2016: The 10 biggest trends to watch – one point of view on what to expect, and what not to expect, in virtual reality in the coming year.
The 10 most important lessons IT learned in 2015 – Before moving on to the new year it is a good idea to reflect back on lessons learned during the previous 12 months. It is also a good idea to compare our experience to that of others.
Digital Media Bootcamp Update
Title | Date | |
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Zotero for Everyone: Organize Your Research @ 4:30pm in LIB 201 | January 14, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Zotero for Everyone: Organize Your Research @ 4:30pm in LIB 201
Date: January 14, 2016
Are you drowning in journal articles and books, but not sure how to keep track of it all? Are you working on a senior project or need help managing your resources? Let us help you on the next stage of your journey as a power researcher. After this workshop, you’ll be an expert in Zotero, the citation management tool that can help you save, organize, and cite your sources, and you’ll be able to create bibliographies with the click of a button. This workshop will be taught by Middlebury research librarian Stacy Reardon. PLEASE NOTE THE ALTERNATE ROOM.
Current list of Workshops
Digital Media Bootcamp Update
We have added four more workshop to the Digital Media Bootcamp series in January, including three sessions for the Digital Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp.
Title | Date | |
---|---|---|
Presentation Kick-starter @ 1pm | January 7, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
You are in a group of people that have been given the task of giving a presentation on a topic, now what do you do? This workshop will walk you through some rapid prototyping and iterative feedback steps to create a draft of your presentation.
Digital Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp
Title | Date | |
---|---|---|
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Visualizing Data @1pm until 4pm | January 20, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Mapping Data @1pm until 4pm | January 21, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp – Analyzing Textual Data @1pm until 4pm | January 22, 2016 | View & sign-up » |
- Title: Visualizing Data
- Instructors: Ryan Clement & Alicia Peaker
- Prerequisite: Working with Data
Description: In this session, we’ll cover some of the basic theory of visual communication, including how to choose the best visual representation for your data, and best practices for preparing visualizations for print, the web, or presenting. We’ll discuss traditional representations, including bar, line, and scatterplots, as well as touching on more advanced representations. After a discussion of how visualizations are used (and advanced) in humanistic research, we’ll use freely available web-based tools to create our own visualizations.
- Title: Mapping Data
- Instructors: Ryan Clement & Alicia Peaker
- Prerequisite: Working with Data
Description: In this session, we’ll work through how to prepare, use, and present spatial data. We’ll start with an overview of spatial literacy topics, including how to select a projection (and why it’s important), working with map layers, and basic cartographic theory. We’ll then explore some library resources for creating maps and obtaining spatial data, and then create our own maps using free, web-based tools.
- Title: Analyzing Textual Data
- Instructor: Alicia Peaker
- Prerequisite: Working with Data
Description: In this session, we’ll work through how to prepare, use, and analyze textual data (e.g. novels, newspapers, journals, plays, survey responses, etc.) to address humanistic research questions. While quantitative approaches may be appropriate for some research questions, this session will primarily focus on text mining as an exploratory practice that leads to or helps refine analysis.
We also have a number of seats still available in the following workshops that cover a range of topics, including browser-based video recording services, how the world perceives us on the internet, and opportunities to use equipment like the Leap Motion and Oculus Rift. Visit the DMBootcamp web site for more information.
Digital Media Bootcamp 2016
The Digital Media Bootcamp offers the same workshops that we use in our Digital Media Tutor training during the month of January, and are open, à la carte, to all interested faculty, staff and students. This is the same training that we have been using for the Summer Digital Media Tutor program, plus a few additions based on feedback from last year’s Bootcamp.
The following sessions will introduce the attendees to a wide variety of technologies and uses, including computing practices at Middlebury, concepts and software for developing media, and devices for creating and consuming media. Most sessions will run for 90 minutes and will take place in the Wilson Media Lab in the Davis Family Library.
New This Year
Digital Liberal Arts Data Bootcamp
- Instructors: Ryan Clement, Alicia Peaker, TBA
- Description: Are you new to working with data for digital scholarship? In this DLA sponsored workshop series, we will teach you some of the basics of working with data as well as some free (and mainly web-based) tools you can use to visualize data, map data, and analyze textual data. The series will include one required course on the first day, as well as three à la carte course over the following three days. Attend one, or attend all three! All courses will be 3 hours long and will include discussions of background concepts as well as hands-on work.
Because these courses will be tailored to the participants’ interests and disciplines, the deadline for signing up is January 1st. Please contact Alicia Peaker or Ryan Clement with any questions.
Current Sign-up Sheets
The Canvas Pilot
Our current Learning Management System (LMS), Moodle, was adopted back in 2011. Four years later we are reflecting on whether Moodle is still the best LMS to serve the growing needs of Middlebury. This fall we are doing a pilot to evaluate Canvas and determine whether we want to continue with Moodle or move to Canvas. You can learn more about Canvas and Middlebury’s evaluation by following this site – http://sites.middlebury.edu/canvas/
Since it has launched over 1,200 colleges, universities and school districts have adopted Canvas, including many of our peer and neighboring institutions, including Amherst, Williams, Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth. It uses modern technology and service management, has a user-centric design, and the features that are common to an LMS are easier to find and use.
Some of the appealing features that are worth exploring are:
- the options for the course homepage
- the calendar works across courses
- the built-in webcasting tool
- notifications
- the way it treats sections within a course
- the speedgrader workflow
- the course setup checklist
What about Moodle?
Middlebury adopted Moodle as its LMS in 2011 after a year-long evaluation (http://sites.middlebury.edu/segue/2011/06/14/moodle-middlebury/). At that time it was decided that we would use Moodle for a minimum of 5 years. At the end of the 5 years we would ask ourselves: Is Moodle still the right LMS for Middlebury? The 5 years will end in August of 2016.
The Canvas evaluation should not be considered as a sign that Middlebury intends to stop using, supporting, or expanding the platform. This is simply an opportunity to consider other options and review our use of Moodle.
Moodle Maintenance on Friday, June 5th
From Remote-Learner, our Moodle Host:
http://moodle.middlebury.edu has been scheduled for Production Upgrade at 01:00 EDT on 5-JUN-2015.
Your site may be unavailable for up to 120 minutes while this action occurs.
Thank you,
Remote–Learner
Moodle Maintenance on Friday, March 27th, 2015
In order to increase the resilience and reliability of our cloud platform we will be conducting network maintenance on 3/27/2015 between 12 a.m. and 5 a.m., EST. During this time sites will be unavailable for extended periods of time.