Friending Your Textbook: Using Social Networks to get Students to Read and Analyze Text and Video
Presented by John Barr, Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
October 10, 2012

This workshop introduced Classroom Salon, a web site that is part electronic textbook (think Kindle) and part social network (think Facebook). The goal is to leverage student’s familiarity with social networks to get them to engage in conversations around documents such as textbooks. In Classroom Salon instructors form students into social groups, called salons, and introduce documents, text, and videos into the salons. Students then cooperate in highlighting, annotating, and discussing (but not editing) the text/video and cooperatively answer questions about the it. Classroom Salon also contains analytical tools that help instructors determine how much students are participating. Though there are some similarities to blogs and wikis and web sites such as Pizzaza, Classroom Salon provides a much richer and more focused experience, as demonstrated in this workshop.

Faculty Show and Share is a series put on by the Center for Educational Technology in collaboration with the Center for Faculty Excellence. Each session features a guest faculty member who shows how they use a technology to address a teaching goal. Come hear what worked - or didn't work in a format that is informal, experimental, and fun. Discussion is encouraged and anyone is welcome regardless of their experience with technology.

We are always looking for faculty to show and share. Please contact Marilyn Dispensa (mdispensa@ithaca.edu or 274-3647) if you are interested.

STOP STRESSING, START LIVING
Presented by Mary Tomaselli, Director, Employee and Organizational Development
and
Deborah Harper, Director, Counseling and Wellness
December 3, 2012

We all experience stress at one time or another. The trick is to acknowledge it and know how to revitalize your energy. In this interactive workshop, we learned about what causes stress, what it can do to us if it is left unchecked, and how we can manage it more effectively in our life. Through a facilitated discussion, we examined our own life experiences and values in order to develop a personal plan that reduces stress and leaves you energized instead of depleted or exhausted.
 

Before video projectors and Google image search, the only practical way to show art to students was through slide projections. Now that the technology is rarely used at Ithaca College, the Visual Resources Collection has been undertaking a six-year clean-out of all their slides. Out of the original collection of 160,000, only 60,000 will be kept for research purposes.

Instead of disposing of the rest, the VRC and the Handwerker Gallery organized a show titled “Turn up the Transparency.” The Visual Resources Collection gave faculty, students, and staff bags of fifty 35mm slides and asked them to create artwork utilizing those slides.  The art work was on display in the Center for Faculty Excellence for approximately four weeks.  An opening reception was held during the first week.