Access to DePaul's Blackboard ends June 30th
DePaul migrated Learning Management Systems at the end of 2010 to Desire2Learn. DePaul’s old LMS (Blackboard) has been available since then, but access will end on June 30th of this year. However, you can move files and courses off Blackboard and into D2L. FITS has a series of instructions that cover the process:
- If you need any of the course files (syllabi, discussion prompts, handouts, etc.), request that the Blackboard course be migrated to D2L using the course migration form
- If you need a record of student grades, download your gradebook and save it locally
- If you need copies of student work, download each assignment and save it locally
While Information Services will make an archive copy of courses currently on the system, these archives will NOT contain any student information so follow steps 2 and 3 above prior to the June 30th date if you would like to have an archive of student data available to you.
If you have questions about any of these steps, please contact fits@depaul.edu
Summer and Fall Classes Available in D2L
Attention faculty, the Summer and Fall classes at DePaul have been loaded into Desire2Learn. You are now able to prepare these classes.
If you need additional training and support, FITS has several options that you can follow:
The NMC Horizon Report 2011 K-12 Edition
The NMC Horizon Report (2011 K-12 Edition) was posted this month. Whilst focusing (obviously) on the K-12 market, this is a great (and quick) resource to read. I highly suggest you take a look. In their own words “the New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) collaborate on identifying technology experts and other aspects of the research.”
LIberal Arts & Sciences Spliting Into Two Colleges
The Rwanda Gambit - your chance to support the documentary
Scott Erlinder (Assistant Professor / Cinematography in DePaul’s School of Cinema and Interactive Media) is hitting a funding wall producing the documentary “The Rwanda Gambit.”
You can help out the filmmakers by either spreading the word of by supporting them financially. Scott has just created a site where you can make a contribution at:
http://www.indiegogo.com/Rwanda-Gambit
Opportunites at Google for Students
The Google Online Challenge is running again this year, and Google has taken this opportunity to remind students of employment options within the company.
Undergraduate and graduate full-time job opportunities can be found here.
Internship information can be found here.
In addition, Google has a YouTube Students Channel, and a Students Blog.
Practical Lecture Capture In & Out of the Classroom
Practical Lecture Capture . . . . In & Out of the Classroom
5 Leading Experts from Across the United States Talk About More than A Dozen Effective Strategies For Lecture Capture
“Hear from and talk to users of lecture capture to learn how their institutions, faculty and students are using Lecture Capture software to enable teaching and learning in any venue. Experts from across the United States participate in this Customer Experience Forum. More than 5 experts and many use cases are provided during this Forum. Institutions: Cal State; University of The Sciences; University of Colorado; Concordia; Suffolk.”
- Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011
- Time: 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM (Chicago Time)
You can register here.
Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning: Program Available
The conference program for the 2011 Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning is now available. You can now review and share this year's program with over 170 sessions and events planned.
The conference program PDF can be downloaded from:
http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/DL11progWeb.pdf
Raspberry Pi
The current specs are:
- 700MHz ARM11
- 128MB of SDRAM
- OpenGL ES 2.0
- 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
- Composite and HDMI video output
- USB 2.0
- SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
- General-purpose I/O
- Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
Development is largely due to David Braben, the games developer responsible for Elite, Frontier and Zarch (and other great games). Very much looking forward to seeing this.
Google Apps for Education & Federated Access Management
Google Apps for Education
Google Apps for Education is a hosted solution for university email, calendar, and chat. The suite includes:
- Gmail: Email storage and search tools that help your students find information fast and instant messaging from right inside their accounts.
- Google Calendar: Students can organize their schedules and share events and calendars with others.
- Google Talk: Students can call or send instant messages to their contacts for free anytime, anywhere in the world.
- Google Docs: Share documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Collaborate in real-time with your team or with your whole school. You can publish final documents to the entire world, too.
- Google Sites: Work together to keep related documents, web content and other information in one place, on one site.
- Google Video for education: A video hosting and sharing solution that enables schools and other organizations to use video as an effective medium for internal communication and collaboration.
I must admit to still being a little wary of using Google for email, but I have less reservations about the other applications.
Federated Access Management
Federated Access Management is a way of providing single sign-on across multiple domains.