Author Archives: Carrie Macfarlane, Heather Stafford, Joseph Antonioli and Brenda Ellis

About Carrie Macfarlane, Heather Stafford, Joseph Antonioli and Brenda Ellis

Senior Curricular Innovation Specialist

Friday Links – October 17, 2014

Time for a Thesis – From the Senior Admissions Fellows Blog, a self-reflective essay by a History major on the impact of our annual message to seniors about thesis carrel signup and research support. His conclusion is quite nice: “When I think ahead to the books and research, I am not so much nervous as I am excited,” he says.

Practicing Collaborative Digital Pedagogy to Foster Digital Literacies in Humanities Classrooms – This article presents two case studies of classes who employed different techniques to “foster digital literacies in humanities students using distinct approaches for each course.” My key takeaway hinged on one student’s observation: “Through creating an infographic in Easel.ly, I learned that it is very important to develop skills in being able to pick out important information from the vast amounts that you can easily find online.”

How Stress Affects the Brain During Learning – A fight or flight reaction may be useful in some situations, but it is highly detrimental in the classroom. Whether anxiety stems from test taking or from an unstable home environment, the brains of students experiencing high levels of stress look different than those who are not — and those brains behave differently, too. In this article, we’ll take a look at the neural and hormonal responses that underpin a student’s stress response, and make a few suggestions for continuing to teach through the challenges it presents.

Upcoming Battery Will Charge Phones And Electric Cars in Minutes – It takes about an hour to fully charge a cell phone, and the battery lasts about two to three years over 500 charge cycles. However, a new design could reduce charge time to only a few minutes and the battery is expected to last for 10,000 charge cycles over a 20 year lifespan.

FireChat in Hong Kong: How an app tapped its way into the protests
(CNN) — The revolution will not be televised but it will be tweeted, instant messaged or, in the case of Hong Kong, broadcast on mesh networks like FireChat.

 

Friday Links – October 10, 2014

How tech is changing the way we think and what we think about – There are a myriad of arguments for and against the increased use of technology in everyday life. Futurists and technophiles encourage its use, sure that technology will welcome a new utopia, while luddites rail against the “destructive” nature of technology use.

The Next Wave of Tech Change | Self-Publishing & Libraries (from Library Journal)

Trust, Privacy, Big Data, and E-book readers “… the Amazon Kindle platform is as much a data ingest tool for providing end-user behavior data to Amazon as it is a sales platform for digital media content,…” … “It seems that counter to this trend, libraries and scholarly publishers are the exception to the rule. Whether our community will remain outliers and whether this status is a good thing or not over the long run, remains to be seen.”

Digital Media Bootcamp 2015

In order to allow for flexibility in our hiring, we will be offering the Digital Media Tutor training during the month of January, and are opening up the sessions to all interested faculty, staff and students. This is the same training that we have been using for the Summer Digital Media Tutor program.

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. Each session will run for 90 minutes and will take place in the Wilson Media Lab in the Davis Family Library.

You can also browse the series by category.

Current Sign-up Sheets

TITLE DATE
Safe Computing Practices at Middlebury @ 2:45pm January 5, 2015
Equipment Demo: Scanners, Plotters and more @ 2:45pm January 6, 2015
Media Collections @ 1pm January 6, 2015
Introduction to Information Literacy @ 1pm January 7, 2015
Mediawiki @ 3:30pm January 7, 2015
Equipment Demo: Cameras @ 1pm January 8, 2015
iMovie @ 2:45pm January 8, 2015
Quicktime, SnapZ Pro, MPEG Streamclip @ 1pm January 12, 2015
Intro to Visual Literacy @ 1pm January 13, 2015
Illustrator @ 2:45pm January 13, 2015
Copyright, IP and Creative Commons @ 1pm January 14, 2015
Photoshop @ 2:45pm January 15, 2015
InDesign @ 1pm January 15, 2015
Online Identity @ 1pm January 19, 2015
Portfolios Using WordPress @ 2:45pm January 19, 2015
Curricular Web @ 1pm January 20, 2015
Moodle and WordPress @ 2:45pm January 20, 2015
SecondLife @ 1pm January 21, 2015
Crafting Digital Narratives with Scalar @ 2:45pm January 21, 2015
Intro to Audio Literacy @ 1pm January 26, 2015
Audio Software @ 2:45pm January 26, 2015
Online Recording Lab: SANSSpace @ 1pm January 27, 2015
Building Digital Exhibits with Omeka @ 2:45pm January 27, 2015
Equipment Demo: Space and Place @ 1pm January 28, 2015

Friday Links, September 26, 2014

Why do people who love libraries love libraries? – Why do people who love libraries love libraries? This has been on my mind a lot lately. Whenever I find a patron who is passionate about their library I try to decode those tangible and intangible qualities that made the experience so powerful for them.

Friday Links, September 19th

Will the Next Classroom Disruption Be in 3-D? Facebook’s Virtual-Reality Company Thinks So – Brendan Iribe dropped out of the University of Maryland here, but before he did he amassed 227 parking tickets. And he managed to meet two business partners who would help him build the virtual-reality company Oculus VR, which Facebook bought this year for about $2-billion.

Killer Moodle Gamification Tips You Must Know – There are many ways through which you can use Moodle gamification to improve eLearning. Reliable studies show the gamifying the learning process can add a lot of value a part from enhancing the participation of the learners and teachers alike.

Samsung and Oculus partner to create Gear VR, a virtual reality headset that uses the Note 4 (hands-on) – Facebook’s Oculus VR is creating the Rift. Sony’s PlayStation is creating Project Morpheus. Google is… well, Cardboard exists. And now Samsung’s getting in on the virtual reality action, announcing Gear VR at IFA 2014 today in Berlin, Germany.

Moodle Update on Friday, September 19th

From Remote-Learner:

Dear Valued Client,

In order to increase the resilience and reliability of our cloud platform we will be conducting database maintenance on September, 19th between 12:01 a.m. and 2:00 a.m. EST. During most of this period your site will be operational, but there may be short periods of connection loss to the internet.

Thank you for your patience as we continue to improve your experience.

Sincerely,

Remote-Learner Technical Support

Friday Links, September 5th, 2014

A cheat-sheet for the various types of messages using Twitter – https://www.flickr.com/photos/meg/5757742705/sizes/l/in/photostream/

When you’re working with people using a variety of office tools, you can hit some frustrating roadblocks. Here are a few standard (and not-so-standard) suggestions to make your collaboration efforts more efficient. – 10 tips for easier collaboration between office suites