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Skill Building :: Technologies for Teaching

Respondus

Time: 1.5 hours

Respondus is a powerful tool available for free on our campus for creating and managing exams that can be printed to paper or published directly to Illinois Compass. Exams are created offline in a familiar Windows environment and the software provides many time-saving tools, such as the ability to import existing exams from word processor files. In this workshop, you will learn how to:

  • Build eight types of questions
  • Add images and sound to questions
  • Use the Exam Wizard
  • Preview and print an exam
  • Upload an exam into Illinois Compass
  • Access exam reports

StudyMate Author An Easy Way to Create Interactive Learning Activities

Time: 1.5 hours

StudyMate Author is a Windows-based tool available for free on our campus that allows easy creation of Flash-based practice exercises and quizzes, such as Fact Cards, Matching, Challenge (Jeopardy format), Flash Cards, Fill-In-The-Blank, Crossword, Pick-A-Letter, Glossary, and Quiz. In this workshop, participants will create a five question activity making use of many of StudyMate's powerful features, including:

  • Importing questions from a Respondus database
  • Building No Answer, One Answer, or Multiple Choice questions
  • Re-purposing questions for multiple activities
  • Integrating images and using external multimedia

Participants will also discover the three options for adding their StudyMate activities to their Illinois Compass course sites.

Getting Started with Podcasts (MAC Users)

This hands-on workshop will give participants the opportunity to begin working with the podcasting features of the Apple iLife 06 suite to create and deliver podcasts to students. Participants will learn how to create and deliver podcasts to supplement their in-class presence with additional audio or "enhanced audio" (audio with synchronized images) content by actually going through the process from start to finish. Possible pedagogical uses of podcasts will be discussed as will possibilities for integrating podcasts into Illinois Compass courses. 

Getting Started with Podcasts (PC Users)

This hands-on workshop will give participants the opportunity to begin working with Audacity, free software for the Windows PC platform, to create podcasts. We will also explore ways to deliver this content to your students. Participants will learn how to create and deliver podcasts to supplement their in-class presence with additional audio or "enhanced audio" (audio with synchronized images) content by actually going through the process from start to finish. Possible pedagogical uses of podcasts will be discussed as will possibilities for integrating podcasts into Illinois Compass courses. We will also demonstrate M-Audio's Podcast Factory if time permits.

Getting Started with Blogs

Join us as we review popular and influential blogs, explore various types of blogs, and provide hands-on blogging practice with Blogger’s free service. In the hands-on portion of the workshop we will build a new blog, apply a style template, create our first blog post with hyperlinks, images, and other rich media. To conclude we'll show examples of blogs used for teaching and learning, blogs incorporated into Illinois Compass, and will consider potential teaching and academic uses of these powerful yet easy web-publishing tools.

Getting Started with Wikis

In this hands-on workshop each participant will create a wiki which can be used afterward for personal, career, or teaching applications. We will be using a popular, free wiki: PB Wiki, or Peanut Butter Wiki. Participants will learn how to create and revise original wiki pages, how to collaborate on pages, and how to apply built-in PB Wiki templates, such as “classroom” and “research.”We will learn about and practice using the native formatting method used in wikis that relies on entering simple text characters alongside your text. We will show how to incorporate and even embed a wiki into an Illinois Compass course or other web page, concluding by reflecting on ways teachers might use wikis:

  • announcements
  • course glossaries
  • student projects
  • and group work.

Getting Started with RSS

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an advance in how we can get information from the web. RSS makes it much easier and faster to keep up with news and other changing information on many of your favorite web sites by automatically telling you what's new. In this workshop, you will learn how to subscribe to RSS feeds by at least two methods including a web browser, and a web-based portal. We will also explore possible pedagogical applications of this technology.