A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Tim Owens holds a product of a 3D printer
The Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies’ work with 3D printing and building a Makerspace are covered in the Educause Learning Initiative’s “7 Things You Should Know About 3D Printing.” The article references the fall 2012 first-year seminar “Mashups and Makerbots,” taught by George Meadows, associate professor in the College of Education, and Tim Owens, instructional technology specialist in DTLT.
"Our Deepest Sympathy Mr. President," 1941, courtesy of http://jmpolitoons.umwhistory.org/items/show/100
A group of UMW students in a spring 2012 digital history course created an online gallery of political cartoons for the James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library. Students Andrew Becken, Rachel Icard, Rachel Luehrs and Heather Thompson archived the museum’s collection of 114 political cartoons dating from the 1890s to 1960s.
The students worked with James Monroe Museum staff, the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies and faculty members in the Department of History and American Studies, including Claudine Ferrell, Porter Blakemore and Jeff McClurken. James Monroe Museum Director Scott Harris originally brought the project idea to Professor McClurken and the students worked extensively with James Monroe Museum Curator Jarod Kearney throughout the project.
The archive is available online at http://jmpolitoons.umwhistory.org/.
The digital history course also included projects on James Farmer lectures, UMW buildings and Southeast Virginia historical markers.
Mara Scanlon gives a presentation during Faculty Academy (Photo courtesy of Cathy Derecki, @saracup)
More than 100 faculty and staff came together for the 17th annual Faculty Academy at UMW’s Fredericksburg campus on Wednesday, May 16 and Thursday, May 17. For the participants, Faculty Academy was an opportunity to share efforts and accomplishments in the classroom, especially in the area of teaching and learning technologies.
The program, “Under Disruption,” featured presentations and panel discussions by dozens of UMW faculty and staff members, as well as keynote speeches by David Darts, Giulia Forsythe and Grant Potter. Topics ranged from 3-D printing to digital history to technology in the classroom.
UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies hosted the event, with sponsorship from the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning and the Department of Information Technology.
Faculty Academy included demos of MakerBot 3-D printers (Photo courtesy of Andrea Smith, @andikappa)
For more information about Faculty Academy, visit http://blog12.facultyacademy.org/.
Alan Levine, new instructional technology specialist in Teaching and Learning Technology, presented an online keynote for the Flat Classroom Project, an international collaborative project where middle and high school students explore issues of technology, culture, and society .
In We, Our Digital Selves, and Us, speaking as three different personas, Levine explores questions on how online versus offline identities are blurred and what it may mean for individuals to be proactive in managing their online presence.
The video was filmed and edited by Andy Rush and features student commentary from Martha Burtis’s Identity and Citizenship in a Digital Age class.
Jim Groom, director of teaching and learning technologies, is featured in the Thursday, March 29 blog post on The Chronicle of Higher Education website.
The post, “Professor Hopes to Support Free Course With Kickstarter, the ‘Crowd Funding’ Site,” discusses Groom’s efforts to raise $4,200 for a new server for ds106, the digital storytelling course.
Newest DTLT team member Alan Levine joined Jim Groom as invited speakers at the March 6-8, 2012 SXSWedu conference in Austin, Texas. Sharing their experiences in teaching the ds106 Digital Storytelling Conference, Levine and Groom joined Philipp Schmidt (P2PU) and Karen Fasinpaur (K12 Open Ed) in a lively panel discussion on Developing a Culture of Openness.
Levine also led a hands on session, Create Something from the StoryBox where participants explored a storytelling digital time capsule project he conducted during a year of travel in 2011.
Congratulations to Tim Owens, instructional technology specialist in the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies, who has been selected as an Excellent Eagle Employee by the Staff Advisory Council. To thank him for such a wonderful job, Tim will have a reserved parking spot of his choosing from Monday, April 2 through Monday, April 30.
Here is what one of Tim’s co-workers said about him:
“Tim sets a high standard for customer service at the university. He provides prompt, professional service and takes the extra step to find the solution to technical problems. Not only will he find solutions but he will explain your options, make recommendations and work to put the solution into place. He is incredibly accommodating and always happy to work with people.”
To nominate someone who you believe is an Excellent Eagle Employee, send an email to Priscilla Sullivan (psulliva@umw.edu) with Excellent Eagle Employee in the Subject Line. In your email, be sure to list the person’s name, department, work location (with the most convenient parking lot), and of course, the reason why you believe they should be recognized. Please spread the word to other employees about this wonderful opportunity to recognize a co-worker(s).
UMW was well represented at the Association of Collegiate Computing Services of Virginia Conference held in Charlottesville, March 14-16.
DTLT’s Lisa Ames, LMS Admin, gave a presentation on UMW’s adoption of a new learning management system titled “Designing from a Blank Canvas” while Tim Owens, ITS, partnered with Andy Rush, New Media Specialist, to lead a session called “Ad-free Streaming with the Change in Your Pocket.”
Webmasters Cathy Derecki and Curtiss Grymala led a birds-of-the-feather discussion on Web Redesign and Edward Gray, Systems Integration and Support Specialist, gave a presentation titled “Making a World of Difference: Inventory, Licensing and Software Management.”
In January the DTLT group presented at the Educause Midatlantic Regional Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The panel discussion covered the Digital Storytelling class being taught here at UMW, affectionately know as ds106. Martha Burtis provided an overview of the course, Tim Owens the technical framework, I featured the radio, and Andy Rush closed with our experiments with live, streaming video. It’s not only a great overview of ds106, but it is also a great overview of the chemistry that drives the creative, innovative machine that is DTLT.
Jim Groom, Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies, published a co-authored piece with Matt Gold in the recently publishing anthology Debates in the Digital Humanities titled “Looking for Whitman: A Grand Aggregated Experiment.” According to the University of Minnesota Press this volume
….brings together leading figures in the field to explore its theories, methods, and practices and to clarify its multiple possibilities and tensions. Together, the essays—which will be published later as an ongoing, open-access website—suggest that the digital humanities is uniquely positioned to contribute to the revival of the humanities and academic life.