Integrating Moodle and WordPress

Louisa Stein is an assistant professor of Film and Media Culture who used both Moodle and WordPress in the spring of 2011 for a course on the “Aesthetics of the Moving Image.”  Prof. Stein used WordPress for the public face of this course and Moodle for the weekly outline of readings, online discussion and assignment submissions.  Watch the screencast below for more details. Continue reading “Integrating Moodle and WordPress”

Wireless Projection – Chris Watters

ChrisWatters003-croppedTechnology used: Wireless Video Presentation System II by BlackBox
Course: BIOL0222A Human Nutrition from an Evolutionary Perspective (Winter 2010)
Reason for using the technology: This was a seminar course, and Chris wanted students to be able to present from their own laptops.
Received assistance from: LIS HelpDesk and Media Services

The BlackBox Wireless Video Presentation System allowed the nine students in Professor Chris Watters’ Human Nutrition class to share their work as peers rather than as presenters at a podium.  Discussion continued seamlessly through PowerPoint presentations that students ran from their own laptops.

Chris can envision other uses for this technology, including collaboration and peer review, and more simply, large projector presentations.  He first saw the BlackBox server in action at an international visualization conference in 2005.  A group would demonstrate a project, take feedback, make revisions, and present again.  When Chris learned that the server was available in the US, he mentioned it to Dean Cadoret.  Dean found the server and helped configure it with other LIS staff.

Full configuration remained difficult despite adjustments to the server, the network, and even the students’ laptops.  Some of Chris’ objectives couldn’t be met (he had hoped students would be able to pull up nutrition web pages and evaluate them as a group), but overall Chris found this experiment with new technology worthwhile.

Capturing Video from Google Earth Pro for Visualization of Landscape Development – Chris Fastie, Visiting Research Scholar

Technology Used: Google Earth Pro, GPS, digital video camera, Adobe Premiere Pro
Course: Environmental Studies 1011 – Reading Nature’s Winter Landscape
Number of students: 15

Photo by Carrie Macfarlane
Text by  Chris Fastie and Carrie Macfarlane

For ten years, Chris Fastie, Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Biology, had been laboring to map the geomorphology of a four-mile stretch of Upper Plains Road in Salisbury, Vermont. As time allowed, he would venture out to survey the landscape, and sketch his findings on aerial photos. Last summer, he used a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver to map some newly discovered kame terraces, installed Google Earth Pro on his computer and learned that there was finally an effective way to share his findings with others. When he received a request to lecture for a Winter Term course at Middlebury, technology and opportunity had merged to give new impetus to the mapping project. Continue reading “Capturing Video from Google Earth Pro for Visualization of Landscape Development – Chris Fastie, Visiting Research Scholar”