Jolanda-Pieta van Arnhem (Joey)

Email | Michael Haskins | Executive Vice President, External Relations | Division of Marketing and Communications
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  On Thursday, March 20, the College of Charleston will conduct a test of the CougarAlert Emergency Notification System. The test messages will be sent (voice, text and e-mail) to all students and their designated emergency contacts, and all employees.

_______

Michael Haskins
Executive Vice President, External Relations
Division of Marketing and Communications
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
p: 843.953.6461
f: 843.953.5663
e: haskinsm@cofc.edu

Campus Email from Sara Calhoun Davis, Ph. D. | Associate Dean, Education, Health, and Human Performance |
Director, Center for Faculty Development <www.cofc.edu/~cfd>
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Welcome
Beth Goodier uses Google Docs and Spreadsheets to enhance her teaching and encouraged me to send out something about the value of this interactive medium. Last week, I attended Mendi Benigni’s (TLT) workshop for us education folks about the same topic, and was amazed at the feedback and collaboration opportunities available with Google Docs. What a boon for teachers! Here are some highlights. Please explore Google Docs on your own.

This YouTube video explains the conceptual framework of Google Docs (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRqUE6IHTEA)

http://docs.google.com/

Here’s the website to get you started once you know where you’re going with Google Docs and want to practice.

A document created in Google Docs

www.google.com/google-d-s/tour1.html

This is a very helpful interactive tour on Google docs

Wikipedia says, “Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations can be created within the application itself, imported through the web interface, or sent via email. They can also be saved to the user’s computer in a variety of formats. By default, they are saved to Google’s servers. Open documents are automatically saved to prevent data loss. Documents can be tagged and archived for organizational purposes.Collaboration between users is also a feature of Google Docs. Documents can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users at the same time.” Important for your classroom is that you can track student work (who did it, who did the most work, when they did it) on group projects and papers; changes are labeled by time and person changing the text. You’ll have fun with this one! Good teaching,

Sara

Email | Helpdesk
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The following applications will have an interruption to normal services on Sunday, March 9,  2008  starting at 8:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. for planned system maintenance.

College Web Server  (From 8:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m.)

Student Web Server  (From 8:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m.)

FRED Imaging System (From 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m.)

Cougar Card System  (From 9:00 a.m. until 10:00 a.m.)

RAISER’S EDGE/FINANCIAL EDGE Web Server

Addlestone Library Lab Server

Oceanica Web Server

SharePoint Server

Thank you very much for your cooperation during this planned system outage.

Please e-mail the HelpDesk at Helpdesk@cofc.edu <mailto:Helpdesk@cofc.edu>  if you have any questions.

Email | Helpdesk
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Thursday, March 6th, 2008 from 6:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M, Internet and Network will be unavailable to and from the offices of the BellSouth Bldg., 170 & 172 Calhoun, Warren Place, Saint Philip St. Garage, McAlister & Kelly (staff only). Network and Internet services to other campus and off-campus locations will not be affected by this outage.

Thank you very much for your cooperation during this planned Internet and Network outages.

Please e-mail the HelpDesk at Helpdesk@cofc.edu if you have any questions

Email | CofC
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Notice to Faculty, Staff and Students

From Executive Vice Presidents
Michael Haskins
Elise Jorgens
Steve Osborne
Victor Wilson

Due to the possibility of severe weather this afternoon, the College of Charleston will close at 3:30 p.m. and non-essential employees may leave. Please take all necessary precautions to secure your computer equipment and offices.

_______

Michael Haskins
Executive Vice President, External Relations
Division of Marketing and Communications
College of Charleston
Charleston, SC 29424
p: 843.953.6461
f: 843.953.5663
e: haskinsm@cofc.edu

Email from Burton Callicott
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We are in the 5th week of the 10 weeks of Recyclemania, a nationwide recycling competition amongst colleges and universities.

++++Recycling on campus is a work in progress — there are problems – but there are people working on solutions. Visit the Sustainability Web Site http://www.cofc.edu/sustainable/ (and the Waste Stream Task Force in particular) to see who is involved.+++

Go to the Recycling Web Site to get involved http://www.cofc.edu/~recycling/

How can you participate?

1. Lead By Example

Do:

Recycle #1 & #2 plastic, aluminum cans, glass, soup cans, office paper, and newspaper

Place flattened cardboard next to recycling bins

Separate paper from other recyclables — recycling bins should be labeled

Rinse recyclables — dirty cans and bottles will be thrown away and can contaminate all of the recyclables in a bin.

Remove bottle caps — this plastic can not be recycled and lowers the value of a bale of crushed plastic.

Bring your own grocery bags when shopping.

Bring your own coffee mug or cup when getting beverages — many business, including all on-campus facilities, will provide a discount.

Call physical plant if you see bins that need to be picked up 953-5550.

Inform community members about recycling.

Go to the recycling web site FAQ page for more information http://www.cofc.edu/~recycling/faq.html

Don’t:

Place pizza boxes or cardboard that is greasy or dirty in with the recycling — this material must be trashed.

Put plastic bags in recycling bins — take to grocery stores that recycle them or re-use, they make great trash bags.

Put non-recyclables into the recycling bins — all of the contents of the bin may be trashed as a result.

Put paper coffee cups in the recycling bins — they can not be recycled.

Buy, accept, or recycle Styrofoam — it can not be recycled.

2. Get your students and co-workers involved

Make an announcement about Recyclemania to your classes and staff meetings www.recyclemaniacs.org

Remind your students and co-workers to put recyclables in the recycling bins — not in the class trash bins or lounge trash bins.      

Take your class on a walk down the halls of the classroom building and pick all the recyclables out of the trash (and take trash out of the recycling bins).

Give extra credit to students that help out with recycling.

Make your students inventory everything they throw away for an entire day or week. Talk about it.

Adopt-a-Building, many clubs and orgs on campus have agreed to monitor recycling in buildings on campus (contact me if you are interested).

Have your class watch The Story of Stuff http://www.storyofstuff.com/  

Share some recycling facts with your students http://www.cofc.edu/~recycling/facts.html

Create a class project that looks at recycling/trash through the perspective of your subject.

o       Example: art classes can use recyclables as a medium, Economics classes can discuss the impact on the market, history can look at the history of trash and re-use, etc. I will have various lesson plans available next week. Contact me if you are interested.

Go Cougars! “We can do it.”

Burton.

Burton Callicott
Librarian

Creating a Collaborative Syllabus Using Moodle

Creating a Collaborative Syllabus Using Moodle

2/27/2008

By Emmett Dulaney
A “collaborative syllabus” is one in which the students have the ability to help determine the specifics of a course. Those specifics can be any element that a professor is willing to be flexible with (such items as the objectives, grading, attendance policies, types of assignments, and so on). The logic behind this tool is that by actively participating in the creation of the syllabus, students are able to signal what they want to learn and how they want to learn it and then (potentially) set the standard by which they will be accountable.

An instrument that has been successfully used before, the collaborative syllabus suffered in one crucial area: It required too much class time to create it. Being unfamiliar with the concept, students first had to have it explained to them in one class period. Following that, there would be several sessions where they would discuss their thoughts, vote on what to incorporate/exclude, and edit the existing document. Given the constraints of the typical 15-week semester, every session is dear, and it is difficult to lose one to such a process, let alone three or four.

In pursuit of a better approach that saved class time, we at Anderson University turned to Moodle for an experiment. The more input students could have in the process outside of class, the more class time could be saved for covering the material. Given that, the creation of the collaborative syllabus was then approached in a three-step process. This article details the steps taken, and the results of walking through this process.

For the complete article visit http://campustechnology.com/articles/58847/

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source. Learn more.The Center for History and New Media (CHNM) is partnering with the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) to develop Omeka as a next-generation online display platform for museums, historical societies, scholars, collectors, educators, and more.

Since 1994, the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has used digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past.

CHnM sponsors more than two dozen digital history projects and offers free tools and resources for historians.

Tools

Zotero

The next-generation research tool that makes it easy to gather, organize, annotate, search, and cite materials you find online and off.

Omeka

“Omeka” is a Swahili word meaning “to display” or “to lay out for discussion.” Omeka is a free, easy to use, open source, and standards-based platform for online display of museum and other historical materials in a Web 2.0 environment.

ScholarPress

ScholarPress is a developing hub for educational WordPress plugins - bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy.

Syllabus Finder

Find and compare syllabi from thousands of universities and colleges on any topic.

Web Scrapbook

Store all kinds of media items—URLs, images, text, and movies—and collaborate with others with the CHNM online scrapbook.

Survey Builder

A tool that builds online surveys, especially applicable to oral histories.

Poll Builder

Build customizable polls and include them on your web site for free.

Scribe

A notetaking application designed with historians in mind.

Tools Center

Browse a collaborative Wiki resource spanning any and all tools that might be applicable to the practice of online history.

CHNM Labs

See what’s brewing in the CHNM Labs. View upcoming tools and programs to help you collect, and interpret history in new an imaginative ways. Current projects include H-Bot, Site Builder, Timeline Builder, and WordPress Courseware.

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 25, @06:58PM
from the that’ll-learn-’em dept.

edremy writes “Blackboard, the dominant learning management system (LMS) maker, has won its initial suit against Desire2Learn. Blackboard gets $3.1 million and can demand that Desire2Learn stop US sales. (We discussed Blackboard when the patent was issued in 2006) This blog provides background on the suit. Blackboard has been granted a patent that covers a single person having multiple roles in an LMS: for example, a TA might be a student in one class and an instructor in another. You wouldn’t think something this obvious could even be patented, but so far it’s been a very effective weapon for Blackboard, badly hurting Desire2Learn and generating a huge amount of worry for the few remaining commercial LMSs that Blackboard has not already bought, and open source solutions such as Moodle (Blackboard’s pledge not to attack such providers notwithstanding).”