Fall

2007

The Instructional Technology Department is continually offering workshops throughout the year. The workshop topics include Blackboard, MS Office 2007 System, Elluminate, Audacity, Camtasia and the Online Course Quality Rubric. A list of the remaining sessions for the Fall semester are listed below. Workshops will be announced for the Spring 2008 session later this year. Any instructor, who wishes to learn more about Blackboard, Elluminate, Audacity, and Camtasia now, can call the Instructional Technology Department to schedule training sessions. All full and part-time faculty and staff of DeSales University are welcome to register.

Workshop Date TimeOnline Course Quality Rubric November 8, 2007 5-7:00 PMMS Office 2007 November 28, 2007 12-1:00 PMMS Office 2007 November 29, 2007 12-1:00 PMMS Office 2007 November 30, 2007 12-1:00 PM

Online Course Quality Rubric December 1, 2007 9-11:00 AM

Specific instructions and/or room locations for participating in workshops will be sent to the email address provided upon registration.

To register and to learn more about each session, go to: www.desales.edu/instructionaltech and select workshops.

If you can not attend the scheduled workshops, please contact Dean Shaffer or Colleen Kramm to arrange an alternate training session.

Dean Shaffer Colleen Kramm Dean.Shaffer@DeSales.edu Colleen.Kramm@DeSales.edu 610.282.1100 x1677 610.282.1100 x1689

WorkshopsPublished by the Instructional Technology Department

Word of Mouse

Faculty members are admitted into the “Faculty Partnership” upon successful completion of the Distance Education Faculty Orientation. Located in Blackboard, instructors have full access to all of the content they encountered during the two-week Distance Education Faculty Orientation. The Instructional Technology Department regularly updates all content; therefore past participants do not need to re-enroll in the two-week orientation as new technology or concepts are implemented.

The Faculty Partnership is just that; a place where peers can gain access to the same materials and resources and interact in a discussion forum. All members of the Faculty Partnership are encour-aged to visit the discussion board and post success stories, tips and tricks for conducting online courses as well as issues or concerns with teaching online. Log on now to see new content and post your comments to colleagues on the discussion board.

The Faculty Partnership now includes 73 full and part- time faculty. Benefits of the Faculty Partnership include a forum for discussing and sharing success stories about how instructors have taught with technology, up-to-date information about the changes in online education and best practices for teaching in the online environment.

Faculty Partnership •

Created by the Instructional Technology Department, this online orientation gives students a basic overview of Blackboard and introduces them to how it may be used in their courses. We are recommending that all students who will use Blackboard in a traditional, hybrid or online course go through the orientation prior to the first day of class. The orientation has been evaluated by several instructors on campus and is currently accessible for the upcoming semester. Requiring students to take the orientation prior to the first day of class will solve issues such as students not having their login information for the first day of class and help alleviate help desk support at semester start. The Blackboard student orientation can be accessed by visiting http://www.desales.edu/blackboard under Information for Students.

What’s New & Demo

See What’s New in 5.0- Click here!

Smart Focus Demo - Click here!

Camtasia5.0

Released

Simply stated, Camtasia is a computer screen and audio recorder. If it’s happening on your computer, you can record it along with your voice. With the latest release of Camtasia 5.0, making training videos, enhanced lectures, demonstrations and PowerPoint presentations is much easier.

With Camtasia, you can record whatever you want and distrib-ute it in a number of ways. For example, you can create content in Flash (SWF/FLV), Windows Media (WMV), QuickTime (MOV), AVI, iPod/iTunes, MP3 audio, RealMedia (RM), or Animated GIF (GIF) formats. You decide how you will distrib-ute your content and Camtasia selects the best file format for you. For example, if you want to create a file that students can down-load and play in iTunes or on their iPod, you simply select that set-ting and your produced file will be either an MP3 or MP4 file.

In addition to easy file format selection and creation, Camtasia enables one to do easy editing and enhancing to clarify and amplify your message. There is also no need to worry about what area of your screen to record. You can simply record your whole screen and then it produces a video that zooms in on the parts you need to show, keeping viewers attention directed to the important or critical information... even on iPod-size screens. See the demo to the left to experience this “smart focus” capability.

For PowerPoint users, you can now easily convert PowerPoint presentations to video. The Camtasia Power-Point plugin makes recording presentations easy; whether it’s live or from your own computer. And you get much more than just a slideshow, as you can capture everything from exact slide timing, animations, sound effects, narration, webcam video, to any Web pages or applications displayed onscreen during the presentation.

For more information on Camtasia or how you can use it to enhance your teaching materials, please contact Colleen Kramm at colleen.kramm@desales.edu or call 610.282.1100 x1689.

Instructional

Technology Department

Dean Shaffer

Director of

Instructional Technology

610.282.1100 x 1677

Dean.Shaffer@DeSales.edu

Colleen Kramm

Instructional

Technology Specialist

610.282.1100 x 1689

Colleen.Kramm@DeSales.edu

NewElectronicResourcesinTrexlerLibrary

Trexler Library has received additional funding for 2007-2008, and we are expanding our electronic resources in a variety of formats to provide a wider range of materials across the curriculum. Here’s a list of some of the new items.

We have been hoping to purchase online criminal justice journal titles from Sage for a number of years, and this year the publisher worked with our consortia partners to offer not only the CJ titles, but all of the 240 Sage journals online for a very reasonable price. The collection includes peer-reviewed journals in Communication Studies, Criminology, Education, Health Sciences, Management & Organization Studies, Materials Science, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Urban Studies & Planning published by SAGE Publications and participating societies.

Naxos provides online access to more than 15,000 CDs, and 230,000 tracks of classical music. New releases are added every month and can be accessed separately. On average, 500 new CDs are added to the library every month. The collection includes: artist and composer biographies, opera synopses and libretti, comprehensive liner notes, composer portraits and educational text.

ARTstor is a non-profit initiative, founded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with a mission to use digital technology to enhance scholarship, teaching and learning in the arts and associated fields. The ARTstor Digital Library Collection is a repository of hundreds of thousands of digital art images and related data. Faculty members can create their own image groups for their classes. Call the library (x1266) for password information for image groups.

EBSCO Academic Search PREMIER

We have upgraded our subscription from Academic Search Elite to Academic Search Premier. The new version provides about 4500 full text journals across a wide range of academic disciplines. This is more than double the number of full text journals available previously.

DynaMed is a clinical reference tool created by physicians for physicians and other health care professionals for use primarily at the ‘point-of-care’. With clinically-organized summaries for nearly 2,000 topics, DynaMed can answer many clinical questions during practice.

Westlaw’s Campus Research database provides comprehensive primary and analytical law-related sources including American Law Reports, American Jurisprudence, United States Code, Annotated, European Union Law, over 800 law reviews and journals, and more.