Moodle Gets A Makeover

Moodle, the Institute’s eLearning site, recently received its first official makeover. Visual and functional improvements were made in order to enhance the Moodle experience. In addition, since some content currently contained within FirstClass may eventually be moved to Moodle, we hope that these improvements will encourage faculty, staff, and students to use Moodle on a regular basis.

The new features include the following:

  • Color scheme
  • Dropdown navigation menus
    As you roll over the main navigation menu, you will notice that additional links appear in the form of a dropdown menu. These links will help Moodle visitors locate other important resources.
  • Social media icons

    Moodle now serves as a portal to the MIIS website, iTunes U, Flickr, YouTube, and FirstClass. By including these links we hope to strengthen the connection between the Institute’s numerous web presences.
  • Improvements to the Course Request Form
    The revised Course Request Form now guides users through the process of requesting a new Moodle space by providing specific examples. These changes will streamline the course request process and cut down on the time it takes to create new Moodle courses.

If you have any suggestions for future Moodle renovations, please comment and let us know!

The “Un” Book Club

Come join the new MIIS “Un” book club!

In an effort to continue the dialog started in the engaging in change workshop, a new “un” book club has organically formed through the chatter of yammer.  The group has picked Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell as the first book to discuss.

So why is it an “un” book club?

While books are a great way to learn, they are in no way shape or form the only way to grasp a concept.  This book club goes beyond the book and encourages everyone to use their own preferred medium to understand the ideas.  Anything goes – video, podcasts, books, websites – just come ready to have a discussion about the main concepts presented in the book.  Heck, you could even read a different book!

I’m in – how do I join!

We’re trying to schedule our first lunchtime meeting next week.  Fill out your available times on our poll and Lynn McDonald will follow up with a personal email with the time and location.  At this meeting we’ll discuss how we want to continue – figure out a good group name, meeting or not meeting schedule, food norms, and our main objective.  If you can’t make our first meeting, updates will be posted on yammer.

See you next week!

“Engaging with Change” Workshops Resume

A reminder for staff participating in the “Engaging with Change” workshop series with Dr. Paul Porter:  the third session will take place on Tuesday, December 2, and the final workshop will take place on Monday, December 15. Location: Board Room.

Last Friday TLC offered a digital storytelling workshop in which participants created a “superhero” based on the strengths they identified in the first two workshops.  Check this out.

Why Wii?

The unveiling of the Wii in the Digital Media Commons last Friday added a dimension of hilarity, energy, and friendly competition to a successful Institutional Advancement and TLC sponsored event that was designed to blend learning with play and build community among MIIS staff.

It also raised questions for some: why are we buying toys when we need (you fill in the blank)…?

Here are some things to think about:

(1) Generally,  “play” unleashes creativity and enhances learning. To explore this idea, check out Tim Brown’s TED Talk.

(2) Specifically, the Wii controller makes possible a particular kind of activity that invokes our kinesthetic learning ability.  There is a great deal of interest in using this new tool to enhance learning in virtual spaces.  For example:

Lane Kuhlman, a graduate student at Ohio State, is studying gesture based interaction and its role in educational multimedia.  This kind of research could have major implications for the design of simulations for intercultural communication, negotiation, or conflict resolution.

MIT Research Fellow David Stone was featured in a recent Wired article for his work building Wiimote-controlled simulations in Second Life. To the already information-rich experiences available in this virtual world, one can now add the ability to take your hands off the keyboard and speak, gesture, and move naturally through virtual environments ranging from your favorite international city to an exhibition of the latest green building technologies.

The Educause Learning Initiative is encouraging its members to investigate the potential of the Wii. See their white paper, “7 Things You Should Know about Wii.”

Finally, in another TED talk, Johnny Lee demonstrates how he turned $40 Wii controllers into a multitouch display, and into a close approximation of a $2000 interactive whiteboard, increasing access to these technologies for schools and organizations with limited resources.

(3) We would like for MIIS be at the forefront of thinking about how people learn and experimenting with ways to enhance the quality of our education.  Our limited resources have, in the past, caused us to bypass many of the technologies that our peer institutions were adopting at great cost.  Now we are in a position of competitive advantage, in that we can leapfrog some of the less versatile earlier tools for learning, and focus on tools and strategies that match our pedagogical commitment through Monterey Way 2.0 to immersive learning, high performance thinking, and open architecture.

Agree? Disagree?  Join the conversation with your comments!

What’s all the yammering about?

Yammer?  What’s that?  Sounds like nonsense…

Yammer is a new tool that is currently being used by some staff, faculty and students to stay more connected.  It’s a website, just for folks with a miis.edu email account, that asks you to answer the question “What are you working on?”.  This is a simple and quick way to share what you’re doing, send out interesting articles/resources or ask questions of the MIIS community.  It can be compared to twitter or the status update from facebook, but just for the MIIS community.  Yammer started as an experiment initiated by the TLC and has now grown to include 56 members and 297 messages. 

Interesting…how do I sign up?

Simply go to www.yammer.com and put in your miis.edu email address.  You will be sent a confirmation email and redirected to our miis.edu yammer site. 

Then what?

Once on the site, please post messages to the community!  You can tag your messages, follow certain people or tags, and make work groups on specific topics.  You can also download yammer for your desktop so you don’t have to use it only on the web or install a yammer application for your iphone or blackberry.  It is simple to use and they provide a clear guide to help you learn the ropes.

See you on yammer! 

Website Changes

Our website is the main source of information on our programs for prospective students. Recruitment for these new students starts earlier and earlier each year.  Considering that our new students in Fall 2009 will be attending MIIS under a new administrative structure, it is important that our website best represent both our current programs and the future changes.  Beginning immediately, we will replace references to specific schools and their acronyms with program references and institute references where applicable.  In most situations, this is an improvement to our site, since prospective students rarely understand our alphabet soup.

The website will retain its structure and the content will remain the same, we’re just changing some titles.  This is quick fix to a website that is in need of facelift.  A more extensive re-design is currently planned to take place during the spring and summer of 2009.

We need your help! If you are adding content to the website, please refrain from specific school references.  When updating documents or PDF’s on the website, please scan the pages for graduate school names and make changes where appropriate.

If you have any questions, please contact Lynn McDonald or Jill Stoffers.

New Media Development Specialist Joins MIIS Staff

Please join us in welcoming Kristen Byers to the MIIS staff. Kristen will be working with TLC/DMC as a new media development specialist.  Her job is to help MIIS faculty, staff and students tell their stories using digital media. In keeping with the philosophy of TLC/DMC, her role is to work with members of the community to define a project and acquire the necessary skills and tools to achieve the desired outcomes.  She’ll be working closely with the admissions staff to help us make better use of community generated digital media in our marketing efforts.

Kristen graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in professional writing, minors in French and journalism, and specializations in editing and publishing, digital design & technical writing.  She has used her exceptional digital media and design skills in a variety of jobs involving web development, communications, marketing, and online learning.

Stop in at Kade, introduce yourself to Kristen, and bring her your project ideas!  After this week, she’ll be in her own office—Morse A105.

Permission to Be Great

This video was produced in collaboration between the Advancement office and the Digital Media Commons and presented Friday, October 24th during a tribute dinner for President Yu’s leadership in helping to foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and appreciation.

[youtube 2yeGo_Zeids]

Engaging with Change: a Workshop Series for Staff

As a community, the Monterey Institute is experiencing change on many levels, from integration with Middlebury to the reorganization of schools and services within the Institute. At the same time, as a society, we are facing  economic dislocations and uncertainty about the future of everything from the planet to our retirement accounts.

Change can be frightening, but times of change can also unleash powerful creative energies and offer opportunities for growth. To develop skills for constructive participation in a changing organization, the Human Resources department invites staff to take part in an exciting workshop series, Engaging with Change.

Dr. Paul Porter will facilitate the series of four half-day workshops designed to help staff members learn skills to assist with organizational change. Dr. Porter is a highly respected trainer, consultant, workshop leader, and speaker.  His background includes serving as a teacher, counselor, school principal, director of special education, university professor, and school district superintendent for 17 years.  He is well known for his practical and engaging style and work in the areas of change, leadership, team building, positive intent, organizational development and communications and has spoken to and worked with many public and private organizations in these areas.

The workshops will take place on November 4 and 11, and December 2 and 15. (There will be sessions from 9-12 and 1:30-4:30, and you can register for either the morning series or the afternoon series.)

We think you will find the workshops a positive and enjoyable learning experience. Not only will you acquire new skills to enhance your own career, but you will have a  chance to interact with other staff across departments.

The workshops will cover topics such as the following:

  • * Discovering and Utilizing Your Strengths
  • * Ideas and Techniques for Dealing Productively with Change
  • * Working Together Productively as a Team with Positive Intent
  • * Productive Utilization and Styles of Dealing with Stress
  • * Appreciative Inquiry
  • * Communication Skills:  the Key to Change

Staff members should check with their supervisors before signing up to make sure essential services are covered, but these workshops are considered part of the paid work day for those who participate. Each workshop builds on the learning from the previous session, so please check to make sure you can attend the entire series before you register.

Register HERE. (Enter your name and click “morning” or “afternoon.”)

Illustration: Plate from Metamorphosis of a Butterfly, Maria Sybilla Merian (1747-117)

Huddle Up! TLC & DMC logo release party

DMC and TLC logoThe Teaching & Learning Collaborative and the Digital Media Commons are excited to release our joint logo at an interactive, learning-centered, multimedia, cupcake infused, pinata busting Open House event.

DATE: Thursday, October 16, 2008
TIME: 12-2pm
LOCATION: Kade Building, Upstairs

The Open House Program will feature collaborative ‘huddles’ highlighting faculty, staff, and student conversations, projects, and services helping to shape Institute culture.  Come learn more about the work of the TLC and DMC!

12:00 – 1:00pm Huddles
1. Anna Bellerson, TLC Instructional Design Assistant: Project Development – It’s a Conversation…
2. Rebecca Walters and Rob Horgan, Campus Recruiting: Facebook and Foreign Language Social Networking
3. Lab & Media Services Technicians: Getting to know your Digital Video Camera
4. Ryan Gonzalez and DeVan Hankerson, DMC Media Developers: Mini Podcasting Tech Demo
5. Kelly Calvert and Matthew Robinson: FlipVideo and YouTube Student Project

1:00 -2:00 pm Huddles
1. DMC Consultant Presentation: Mini Podcasting Tech Demo
2. Lorraine Githioria, current IPS student: Zoho Notebook & Video Project
3. Sai Hernandez, Lab & Media Services and DMC Media Developer: Wireless Support
4. Seda Sevas, Student Council President: The new Foghorn
5. Jeremy Robinson, DMC Manager: YouTube and online video

Mapping a Changing World

New tools for spatial thinking, and for analyzing and visualizing spatial data, are indispensible for 21st century professionals.  On November 10, TLC will host a presentation by Diana Stuart Sinton, Director of Spatial Curriculum and Research at the University of Redlands, on “New Ways to Map a Changing World.”  Diana headed a national initiative to integrate GIS and spatial thinking across the curriculum for 100 liberal arts colleges, and is an outstanding teacher/presenter on both Geographic Information Systems and lower threshold web-mapping tools such as Google Earth. Diana will do a strategy session for faculty interested in incorporating mapping and data visualization into their teaching, a public presentation on the latest trends in mapping, and a hands-on workshop using Google Earth.

TLC Friday Sandbox Review: The BLOGosphere and YOU

http://mariamusic.blogspirit.com/images/medium_blog-cartoon.jpgOn the afternoon of Friday, September 12, a group of 15 staff, faculty, and students joined the TLC for its weekly Sandboxing session.  During these informal ‘play and learn’ dates, we talk, question, tinker, and snack.

In the sandbox that week was the timely topic of campus communications and the developing role of the web-blog, or ‘blog.’

You’ve heard of blogs, maybe you read one or two, and just maybe you have your own.  During this session, we heard from Ann Flower, renegade reference librarian and blogger at MIIS, Amy McGill, Associate Vice President for Planning and Special Projects who is coordinating the MIIS@Work blog and others on campus who have begun to explore blogging as a platform for communication, collaboration, archiving and expression at work.

Our discussion was streamed live using Ustream.tv.  Click: Ustream Archive of our Blogging Discussion

Helpful Materials We Looked At

Common Craft YouTube Video: Blogging in Plain English
Common Craft YouTube Video: RSS in Plain English

Establishing a Middlebury WordPress Blog
1. Activate your faculty or staff Exchange account at http://go.middlebury.edu/activate If you have an activated e-mail exchange account you should okay here.
2. Login with your Exchange username and password to activate your WordPress account.
3. E-mail [dmc at miis dot edu] to come and talk to us about customizing your blog.

run DMC

Digital Media Commons logo The Digital Media Commons, or “DMC” in campus-speak, was one of fifteen pizza groups established last Fall during the first innovations campaign last year.  The DMC is now a part of the Teaching & Learning Collaborative with an emphasis on innovation and project development supporting academic excellence on campus.

Our Mission

The mission of the DMC is to connect the Monterey Institute with the world through digital media by creating opportunities for students, faculty and staff to develop, produce and distribute digital media projects in order to document achievements, strengthen professional skills, and raise the Institute’s visibility.

Since April, development of the Digital Media Commons has continued to move forward, and activities here have been greatly bolstered with funding and support from the Academic Excellence initiative.

What the DMC does

DEVELOPMENT: We support your terrific ideas by first having a conversation with you about what you would like to create and about the media project cycle.

PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE: We offer scheduled group and individual just-in-time training and we point you to resources to help you through the project cycle.

DISTRIBUTION: We help you think about how to get your message out where you want it to go: streaming live, recorded for podcast, or burned to disc.

Our Location

As a result of collaborative discussions with ITS and Lab & Media Services, the DMC now has a physical presence in the upstairs foyer of the Kade Building (formerly a student work area).

Contact Us

Have an idea you want to develop that includes digital video, audio, or images?  E-MAIL to make an appointment: [dmc at miis.edu].

New Equipment

new iMacsSix 20” iMac computers have been purchased with Kade Foundation grant funds for digital media production.  These computers were installed in the new DMC space in August and will be a base for project development and production.  They each have 500 GBs of storage, 2GB of RAM and support digital video, photo, and audio editing.  They purposely do not run Microsoft Office, First Class e-mail or Outlook.  Additional Academic Excellence funding has also been allocated for equipment and software resources.  We are currently researching the purchase of a couple of digital audio recorders, a digital camera, a large plasma monitor for projection during trainings, a wireless microphone set-up, and a few others.

Awesome New Staff!
Academic Excellence funds have also enabled us to hire a fantastic team of graduate assistants working as  “Digital Media Developers,” and “Instructional Design Assistants.”  Together this team will greatly extend the reach of the DMC and the TLC this year!

Jeremy Robinson, DMC Manager, TFL Spanish ‘09

Digital Media Developers
Pilar Chaves, IEP ‘10
Sai Fernandez, IPS ‘09
Luis Gain, IPS ‘10
Ryan Gonzalez, IPS ‘10
DeVan Hankerson, ITP ‘10

Instructional Design Assistants
Anna Bellerson, TFL German ’10
Edie Furniss, TFL Russian ’10

Stay tuned for more news from the DMC!

New Courses Pilot Monterey Way 2.0

This fall, students have the opportunity to take five new courses, designed to bring students from several programs together, and to exemplify the principles of immersive learning, high performance thinking, and open architecture that define Monterey Way 2.0.

Twelve students, representing four programs within GSIPS, are taking Michel Gueldry’s French for International Professions and Organizations.  This course emphasizes co-creation of knowledge. The first three weeks will focus on developing inter-cultural competence, but the remainder of the class will be negotiated with the students based on their background, specializations, and interests.

Forty-eight students (19 from GSIPS, 14 from FGSIB, and 5 from GSTI) are taking The China Factor, team-taught by Yuwei Shi, Wei-Liang and J.D. Yuan.  This course approaches the phenomenon of China today from the perspectives of government, economy and business, and engages students in developing their own scenarios for China in 2030.

David Colclasure’s course, Ethics in the Era of Globalization, enrolled sixteen students from 3 different programs within GSIPS. Students investigate the social mores and moral value systems in a variety of cultures and apply skills involved in ethical discourse and decision-making in a professional context.

Fundamental Concepts and Terminology for Economics, taught by Tanya Pound, has an enrollment of 62, mostly from GSTI. Students learn about various aspects of the economy, including macroeconomics, securities, finance, and accounting, by developing presentations on selected topics for presentation to the class. During the second half of the semester, some of the presentations will be given in languages other than English, and interpreted by second year students. In keeping with the Monterey Way 2.0, students not only learn the concepts and terminology of economics and finance, and the cultural dimensions of these concepts in different societies, but they acquire a higher order skill set that they can use to develop their knowledge of other unfamiliar disciplines. The course is student-driven, in that all presentations except for the first will be made by students.

International Business Project Management, taught by William Brooks, has 32 students: 2 from GSIPS, 6 from FGSIB, and 23 from GSTI. This course satisfies program requirements for both TLM and MBA curricula.  It emphasizes the practical management of multidisciplinary project teams throughout the project life cycle.

Several of these faculty members are participating in an ongoing Faculty Learning Community, facilitated by Bob Cole and Jean Turner, to support each other in exploring applications of Monterey Way 2.0 pedagogy, and considering new approaches to assessing learning outcomes within this pedagogical framework.