Moodle: From the trenches

Julie Yonker, Psychology

Professor Julie Yonker was one of our brave professors who moved her courses from KnightVision to Moodle this fall. Since Moodle organizes and delivers content differently than KnightVision, Julie invested a lot of time "making Moodle work for her." Julie will be showcasing her well-organized Moodle courses and answering any questions you may have about her experience moving from KV to Moodle. She may even have a tip or two to share with you!

 

Moodle: Reaping the benefits of Moodle's integrated activities

Leanne Doornbos Nagel, SAS/English 101

Moodle provides a large variety of activities to engage your students in the learning process--from forums, choice polls and wikis to glossaries, lessons and quizzes. Professor Leanne Doornbos Nagel has been using many of these activities in her multilingual English 101 course this fall. Take a look at how she is integrating these activities into her course, how easy the process can be, and how the benefits of using Moodle outweigh the inital challenges of setting up a Moodle course.

 

Teaching Latin online using Moodle & the Tablet PC

David Noe, Classical Languages

This fall the Classical Languages department offered their very first online language course. Professor David Noe partnered with the T&L Digital Studio to design and implement this inaugural Latin 101 online course. David is using Moodle to collaborate with his students throughout the language learning process. He is also utilizing a Tablet PC to help with assessment and to provide timely and valuable feedback to his students. Visit with David who will talk about his experience working with the Digital Studio, and see how he is using the Tablet PC as an integral part of his course.  

 

Moodle: I did it this way in KnightVision...How will I do it in Moodle?

Krista Spahr, CIT, Teaching & Learning

Are you wondering how you are going to accomplish the objectives you did in KnightVision using Moodle? You are not alone. One of the questions we hear most is "I did it this way in KnightVision...How will I do it in Moodle?" Bring your questions with you to the Showcase and Krista Spahr will be happy to talk to you about potential options for achieving your same teaching & learning objectives in Moodle.

 

Moodle: Still need to convert your courses to Moodle?

Julia VanderMolen, CIT, Teaching & Learning Intern

The countdown for moving from KnightVision to Moodle is on...Will you be ready? Talk with Julia VanderMolen, our T&L Intern, about options for transferring your content to Moodle. See what a converted course looks like and sign up to have us help you with your transfer!

 

Moodle 2.0: What's on the horizon?

Rob Bobeldyk, CIT, Teaching & Learning

There are many exciting features in store when Moodle 2.0 is released this fall. We are especially looking forward to an updated interface for adding content to courses, an improved HTML editor and more user-friendly navigational features. Moodle 2.0 also provides conditional activities (students need to finish A before B will be available to them), progress/completion tracking, and additional commenting features. Rob Bobeldyk will be talking about Moodle 2.0.

 

Why Don't You Wimba? Multiple Applications of Wimba

Kara Sevensma, Education

Professor Kara Sevensma uses Wimba Classroom in her courses to support both asynchronous and synchronous learning. The asynchronous uses of Wimba, like capturing lectures and student projects, are ideal for engaging distance learners through technology. The synchronous uses of Wimba are numerous, including engaging online class sessions, inviting guest speakers into the classroom, screen sharing, and dialoguing & collaborating around documents, pictures, and software programs on the computer.

 

Promoting connection & collaboration using Wimba Classroom

Daniel Christian, CIT, Teaching & Learning
T&L Digital Studio staff

With Wimba Classroom, educators can combine powerful, engaging, interactive technologies with instructional best practices. Wimba supports audio, video, application sharing, content display and more. You can also record/archive your presentations, then make them available as downloadable audio and video files for mobile-based learning. Daniel Christian will be on hand to show you how to use Wimba to host guest lecturers, offer online office hours, provide lecture captures to ESL and other students who would benefit from revisiting a lecture, and host book groups, committee meetings, and online review sessions. 

Using clickers to promote student comprehension

Steve Steenwyk, Physics and Astronomy

The Classroom Performance System (CPS) by eInstruction, better known as the “clickers”, is a wireless polling system that offers rich feedback for any class. With this powerful system you can ask multiple choice and numeric questions, measure comprehension, gather opinions, administer tests and quizzes, and even take attendance. Professor Steenwyk will demonstrate how to use the clickers and talk about how he has integrated them in his Physics 235 course.

 

Zotero: Managing your research sources

Lugene Schemper, CIT, Theological Librarian

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension which will help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Zotero allows researchers to download citation data automatically from web sites, YouTube, research databases and other sources, and then create bibliographies in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice. Zotero also helps organize data from across the web and syncs to multiple computers. Lugene Schemper will be demonstrating the features and benefits of Zotero.

 

Master your Media: Taking control of media in FAC Smart Classrooms

Adam Tozer, Audio/Visual

As many of you know, the equipment in the Smart Classrooms can sometimes be--well--challenging. To address this situation, CIT and the A/V Department are piloting the use of media controllers by Crestron in the new FAC Smart Classrooms. The media controller is an easy to use touch screen device that eliminates the need for multiple remotes, clearly displays and manages the technology in the room, and allows for remote support if needed. Visit with Adam Tozer who will be showcasing this media control technology.

 

Communicating with students using the NEW course mailing lists

Nancy Zylstra, CIT, Communication Manager

Looking for a convenient way to communicate with your students? Look no further! All academic courses now have a mailing list that instructors can use to communicate with their students. Lies Rosema will be demonstrating how these mailing lists work, and answering any questions you might have regarding this communication tool.

 

Google Apps: Create, Collaborate & Share

Michael Mandeville, CIT, HelpDesk

In addition to GroupWise e-mail and Microsoft Office for office productivity software, Calvin faculty and staff now have access to Google Apps, including Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites. Google Docs provides a suite of tools that allows you to create, store, share and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can use Google Calendar to organize multiple schedules, as well as share calendars and events with others. While Google Sites provides a place to quickly create and publish collaborative websites. Michael Mandeville will be on hand to demonstrate the various uses for Google Docs, as well as chat with you about your potential ideas for using Google Apps.

 

Introducing the new Datatel Portal

Kevin VanSchepen, CIT, Technology Integration Services

Since KnightVision will no longer be available effective July 1, 2011, CIT has been looking for a new home for the resources available on the My Resources tab in KV (pay advices, grades, etc.), organizations and other intranet content. CIT plans to implement Datatel's Portal 3.0 to house these resources, as well as many other self-service tools. Since Calvin is already using Datatel's Colleague enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, its portal product should be a perfect fit with our current computing environment. The Datatel portal also offers future possibilities as it is built on Microsoft SharePoint technology. Kevin VanSchepen, project manager for the Datatel implementation, will be on hand to discuss this technology which CIT plans to have available to faculty, staff and students by spring semester 2011.

 

dotCMS: Improving Calvin's web presence

Matt Jeltema, CIT, Information Services

Currently departmental web managers use Dreamweaver to create and maintain department web pages. With Dreamweaver, however, Calvin's web manager has little control over the "look and feel" or content of Calvin's web pages. Additionally, many departmental web managers have found Dreamweaver difficult to use. To keep Calvin's web pages consistent and to make creating and updating departmental web pages easier, CIT, along with Communications and Marketing, is implementing dotCMS, a free and open source web content management system. Calvin's News & Stories and the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship are the first sites to move to dotCMS. Other departments will be able to move later this year. Matt Jeltema will be talking about this technology and how we are using it to improve Calvin's public web presence.

 

Out with the old: Creating presentations using Prezi

Ellen Alderink, Instructional Graphics
Victoria Seaburg, Instructional Graphics  

Looking for a unique way to capture your students' attention or present information to an audience? Prezi (pronounced prez-ee) may just be what you are looking for! Prezi, a web-based software, is perfect for jazzing up any presentation. Ellen & Victoria will be using Prezi to showcase services offered by Instructional Graphics.

 

Provide your students software support using Atomic Learning

Don't spend valuable class time teaching or re-teaching your students how to use various software...Plug into Atomic Learning! Atomic Learning (AL) is an online technology training library that provides thousands of short, video tutorials on more than 100 different software applications. Calvin College has a campus subscription to Atomic Learning which means ALL Calvin faculty, staff and students have access to this valuable resource. Atomic Learning can be accessed from both the T&L tab in KnightVision and the Atomic Learning link located at the bottom of all pages in Moodle.

 

The Teaching & Learning Digital Studio

The Teaching & Learning Digital Studio provides you with assistance for all things digital! We assist faculty, staff, and students with items relating to digital audio, digital video, scanning (documents, photos, slides), web design, Moodle and Blackboard-related endeavors, graphic design, Microsoft Office (including PowerPoint), test scanning, and more. The T&L Digital Studio is located in Hekman Library Room 121 and is open M-F from 8:00am-5:00pm. Come by the Digital Studio table to speak with Digital Studio Student Staff Consultants. They can tell you more about our high-end computer lab--stocked with excellent, industry-leading, powerful software and hardware.