Office of Academic Technology :: Spring Arbor University » Training

Managing & Searching for Educational Media

Nate Evans — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:55:54 +0000

It seems like life gets busier and busier, making it difficult to spend time enhancing courses for our students. In their “Multimedia Principle” Clark and Mayer (2011) talk about the importance of including words and graphics in your course in to encourage active learning. One easy way to facilitate this is by adding media to your course. In this tutorial, we discuss three free alternatives for educational media including YouTube Eduction, iTunes U, and Khan Academy, and give you step by step instructions on finding this media and adding it to your course.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google Scholar & The White Library

Nate Evans — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:53:34 +0000

Google Scholar is an excellent tool that can be used to search research databases and find articles on a variety of topics. Whether you are a student or faculty member, check out this 10 minute demonstration on how to use Google Scholar for your coursework:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Poll: What kind of Blackboard training would be most helpful to you?

Nate Evans — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:30:44 +0000

In OAT, our mission is to support excellence in the teaching and learning by enabling faculty to effectively integrate technology into the teaching and learning processes. One way we do this is by providing training workshops throughout the semester. With a new year upon us and new semester coming up, we want to hear from you. What tools and resources would be most helpful to you? Please help us by responding to the poll below:

Illuminating minds through Elluminate

Nate Evans — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 19:44:35 +0000

On Friday evening, Randy and Nate gave a workshop on SafeAssign to nearly fifteen faculty members from across the state. The training was given virtually through Elluminate which is a free web conferencing tool faculty can use to connect with students within Blackboard. In case you missed the workshop, click the play button to watch the recording below. We’ve added a session to our schedule after the first of the year, which will be on Friday, January 6 from 10-11:30am. Faculty workshops are offered the first friday of each month; for the complete list of upcoming faculty workshops, check out the OAT Calendar here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On-The-Fly Podcasting Using Google Voice?

David Goodrich — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:20:56 +0000

How to use google voice for extremely easy on-the-fly podcasting:

Make sure you have a google voice account if you don’t already have one and sign into your inbox area.
Call your google voice number and leave yourself a message.
When the message populates in your inbox, select the “more” option and then select “Embed”:

4. Add a caption for your podcast (this is optional).

5. Copy the embed code into your computer’s clipboard (control + “c” on the P.C. & Command + “c” on the Mac)

6. Go to your course in Blackboard and select to create a new announcement.

7. Give the announcement a title and then select the “Toggle HTML Source Code” button in the rich text editor toolbar and paste in the embed code that is in your clipboard (control + “v” on the P.C. & Command + “v” on the Mac)

8. Hit the “Toggle HTML Source Code” button in the rich text editor toolbar.

9. Hit the “Toggle HTML Source Code” button in the rich text editor toolbar one more time.

10. Make sure that the “width: 100px” is changed to “width: 500px” in the embed code and then hit submit!

*This same process can be followed for a recorded phone call from google voice which can be done by using these instructions.

The end result will have a flash player embedded media player from Google Voice that the learner will see in the announcements page so that they can listen to your nifty podcast:

OAT Labs

Nate Evans — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:44:17 +0000

Looking to leverage rich media or other technology in your courses? Check out OAT Labs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How to upload media to YouTube

Nate Evans — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:55:05 +0000

Uploading video to YouTube is a simple and easy task. Watch the tutorial below for step-by-step instructions. For more information on what kind of audiovisuals you can upload, see our YouTube FAQ page. The image above has been shared with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license. This work is attributed to woodlywonderworks.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The effect of the social environment on the online learner (Part 1)

David Goodrich — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:38:43 +0000

In the Office of Academic Technology at Spring Arbor University, we are not so much in the business of teaching tools. We are very much in the business of helping faculty best use technological tools to teach. The subjects of learning, pedagogy and design are constantly a part of our daily conversations as we work along side subject matter experts to develop quality courses and educational media with both the learner and instructor in mind.

We research and discuss how to improve our processes and developments to increase student learning and benefit the overal learner experience as they work towards academic achievement. As we do so, we continue to find how vitally important it is for the online learner to be learning on the context of a social environment with an emphasis on community which only affirms our already existing SAUonline Pedagogical Model. In fact, we know that learning theorists have described for years how learning takes place in a social context where there is a mutual exchange of thinking between collaborative participants in such learning environments.

While relying on web-based services and a vast array of technologies, distance education learning environments have been identified as prime places for learning endeavors that leverage a constructivist epistemology emphasizing social engagement (Garrison, 1997). According to Prawat & Floden (1994) these approaches observe learning to essentially be a constructive process which combines the personal aspects of individual mental processes with the communal dialog and learning model construction activity. Online learning environments are thus considered to be social-relational systems which are guided by these mutual exchanges between active participants (Steeples, Jones, & Goodyear, 2002) in forms such as discussion threads, blog correspondance, wiki development and collaborative learning model construction.

As we consider how the social environment plays into the learning and overal experience of the online learner in the weeks ahead, we will discuss possible implications this has for the online instructor and practical ways to leverage this to you and your learner’s advantage. We hope to generate good thought and feedback from you. In light of this, how have you experienced learning in a social context?

Resources

Garrison, D. R., & Anderson, T. (2003). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Prawat, R.S., & Floden, R.W. (1994). Philosophical perspectives on constructivist views of learning. Educational Psychology, 29, 37-48.
Steeples, C., Jones, C., & Goodyear, P. (2002). Beyond e-learning: A future for networked learning. In C. Steeples & C. Jones (Eds.), Networked learning: Perspectives and issues (pp. 323-342). London: Springer.

Top Five: July 2010

Nate Evans — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:26:20 +0000

With the holiday weekend coming to a close we thought it would be nice to share the top five things we’re reading, watching and listening to in OAT right now. Enjoy:

1. Tapping into Active Learning and Multiple Intelligences with interactive Multimedia: A Low-Threshold Classroom Approach. This is a great research article we discussed for an upcoming OAT podcast, which talks about the connections between technology and active learning.

http://bit.ly/dh4lI9

2. Training and Preparing Your Faculty for Teaching Online. Another great article featuring an interview with Charles D. Dziuban, director of the Research Initiative for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Central Florida.

http://bit.ly/dbfPUg

3. How cognitive surplus will change the world: There have been a number of popular articles which have appeared on the NY Times, Wired, WSJ and blogs across the web – all on the topic of cognitive theory. Clay Shirky makes a great case for the benefits of cognitive surplus in this TED talk.

http://bit.ly/9lb3RC

4. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: A great book by Carmine Gallo, which explains the process that Apple giant Steve Jobs uses when creating a presentation. There’s more planning involved than you might think! It’s interesting to see the simplicity he uses when making his Keynote presentations.

http://amzn.to/AmfT8

5. Blackboard On-Demand Learning Center: This one is for you early adaptors. With the Blackboard upgrade right around the corner, Blackboard has released a site dedicated to faculty interested in learning more about their next version. We’ve all but completed updated training materials for the upgrade, but it couldn’t hurt to take a peek, right?

http://bit.ly/b9EvsB

How to upload media into iTunes U

Nate Evans — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:42:13 +0000

We’ve had a number of requests on how to upload audio or video files into iTunes U. In this tutorial I will walk you through each step of uploading your media to iTunes U as well as organizing your content in Blackboard 9. With this said, iTunes U can be particular about the file you are uploading.

The University of Arizona has an excellent guide on media formats for iTunes U and writes that the video format requirements for iTunes are “MPEG-4 with H.264 compression, data rate: 256kbits/sec, image size: 320 X 240 or 640 X 480 (currently we recommend 640 X 480), frame rate: 30, key frame: every 24 frames, file extensions: .mp4, .m4v, .mov.”

Click here to view the embedded video.