The December 2006 issue of Campus Technology http://www.campustechnology.com/article.asp?id=19671 features a yearly review of 101 Best Practices - including 32 “smart ideas” for “how colleges and universities are bringing new kinds of learning into the classroom.”
The overview article presents brief introductions to each best practice and then links to the full article that appeared previously in Campus Technology during 2006. These best practices include digital library iniatives, using cell phones to deliver information and content to students, creating portals to digital media available to students, and configuring "smart classrooms."
Some highlights:
7 Different Mediating Technologies
Chris Dede, Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, teaches a class every fall using asynchronous threaded discussion, Internet-based videoconferencing, synchronous interactions in a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), and a groupware application which enables “application sharing and collaborative work on documents, images, or other types of design.”
Describing these as “fairly readily available” technologies, Dede claims that many of his students “find their voice” using these technologies. He also points out that “…it’s ironic that faculty jobs are among the few types of positions left where fluency in IT isn’t stressed.” And Dede thinks that “the next really big thing is going to be learning anyplace, anytime, through smart cell phones.”
iPedagogy: The growing use of podcasting
Although podcasting seems to have come into its own in the last two years in higher education, Georgia College & State University (GC&SU) launched pilot programs in 2002. Others soon followed including Stanford University, Drexel University, University of Michigan, Virginia Tech and Duke University.
As one of the earliest adopters of podcasting, Georgia College and State University has been supporting “a growing but contained number of iPod iniatives.” The most prevalent use is to record lectures and make them available for playback, review, and study after class. One GC&SU instructor used the podcasts to record lectures to encourage study abroad students to use travel time learning.
GC&SU has recently piloted iVillage as a way to build community among freshman even before they come to campus. The tools in iVillage include podcasting, iChat and iSight cameras for video chatting.
Augmenting language study programs is also popular with the GC&SU faculty and students. Podcasting provides anytime, anyplace practice in language skills outside the ubiquitous language lab as students download modules of conversation to practice their listening skills and to hear correct pronunciation.
One GC&SU instructor assigned students to read and analyze segments from Shakespeare’s plays, download and listen to each others analysis and then publish their critiques in the course management system (Blackboard; WebCT).
See also :Georgia college pushes for iPod ingenuity
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/03/20/georgia_college_pushes_for_ipod_ingenuity/?page=1
More best practices will be described in the next Friday's Pickl
