Teaching with Technology Brown-Bag Series

Teaching with Technology Brown Bag Series will offer faculty and staff a brief (one hour) monthly demo [see schedule below] of an innovative use of technology that can potentially enhance the quality of teaching and learning. These are informal, noon meetings – please feel free to bring your lunch. Each demo will focus on a free or low-cost, immediately available, and easy-to-implement technology solution that can quickly be incorporated into any course curriculum. All faculty and staff interested in keeping up-to-date with technologies that directly enhance instruction are invited and encouraged to attend. Each meeting will include time for a Q&A session.

For each demo, academic technology group will have a blog post with additional information about the technology, and a printable information sheet, and will offer support and assistance to all faculty and academic staff interested in using any of the showcased technologies to support our School of Nursing courses.

2013 Spring Semester Schedule

• Monday, February 18, at noon – rm. K6-165: Better Communication with Students – Part 1: Twitter as a Convenient Texting Tool

Idea In Brief: Numerous studies (for example, large-scale PEW and ECAR surveys) point our that the main communication channel for undergraduate students is texting (with an average of almost 100 sent and received messages per day), and social media (primarily Facebook) and not email. And while using these communication channels may be the best way to reach students with course-related notifications, announcements, and reminders, they present specific challenges for instructors. In this demo session we’ll take a closer look at a little-known ability of Twitter to broadcast text messages [to students’ phones], at free Twitter scheduling software [Hootsuite], and we’ll explore how combining these free tools offers a potentially effective, and easy to use option for improving course communication with students, and sending text messages to your class from any computer or mobile device (iPhone and iPad or any Android phone or tablet).

• Monday, April 8, at noon – rm. K6-165: Better Communication with Students – Part 2: Private Social Networks

Idea In Brief: Facebook is (next to texting) the most popular communication channel for undergraduate students, and while it offers flexible communication options (text, photos, links to online resources, comments/replies), it presents instructors with many challenges. This month’s Teaching with Technology demo will focus on explaining the concerns and potential problems with using Facebook in the classroom, and will provide an overview of several free apps (referred to as Private Social Networks) that offer a practical solution: functionality similar to Facebook’s and availability on commonly used computer and mobile platforms, but without the drawbacks of Facebook.

• Monday, May 6, at noon – rm. K6-165: Flip Your Classroom – Ideas & Tools

Idea In Brief: The concept of flipping the classroom is not an entirely new concept, but it’s often confusing because it is used with several related but slightly different meanings. During this practical demo we will explore some of the different understandings of the term, and will specifically focus on the software, hardware, and process that can help any faculty member “flip” some of their classroom content. We will look at the popular software titles and equipment that is needed (and available to SoN faculty and staff), and we’ll explore the support options available to faculty from the SoN academic technology group.

For more Information, or if you have any questions, please contact anyone in the academic technology group.

Images on this page by Breezi PlaceIt, used under CC license.