While the pandemic changed the fabric of higher education and life in general, people had to find a way to keep going. Students kept learning. Teachers kept teaching. Parents kept parenting. It was not always pretty. Often it was (and is) downright exhausting. Many of us experienced lengthy periods of burnout. Many still struggle finding motivation. Human resilience shone through.
Tech Tip – TTT
A quick technology tip to help you engage your students whether in the classroom or remotely.
Tech – Do You or Your Students Suffer from Tired, Burning Eyes Due Too Much Screen Time? Use Lexend Fonts!!
Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup, an educational therapist, began the Lexend Project in 2000 and teamed up with the typeface designer Thomas Jockin and Google to produce the free Lexend fonts. These fonts were designed initially to support struggling readers and those with dyslexia. However, along the way research has found that these fonts reduce visual stress for everyone and therefore, improve reading performance.
Tech – Offer Your Students a Personal Research Assistant
Do your students need support collecting, organizing, and correctly citing their research? If so, take a look at Zotero. Zotero is a free, open-source tool that is easy to use. For more information and a video walkthrough, take a look at this EdTech Blog post, “Zotero to the Rescue.”
Tech – Let’s get social with social annotation
Social annotation brings the individual experience of marking up a text with highlights, notes and questions to a shared online space where individuals can now share their mark ups and commentary as well as respond to each other’s comments and questions.To learn more about social annotation and how it can kick start a class discussion and allow you to see how students are making sense of a digital text (including images, video and audio files) before class, check out this EdTech Blog post, “Let’s Get Social”.
Tech – Freeing Yourself From Cables in the Classroom
Tired of being chained to the instructor podium while presenting from your laptop or tablet? Want to give students an opportunity to easily share their work with the class? Give the Kramer VIA a try. The VIA device will allow you to securely connect wirelessly from anywhere in the room. Check out this post “Connecting to a Classroom VIA Display Device” on our EdTech Blog for more details.
Tech – Introducing Learning Management System (LMS)
In case you have not heard the news, a new Learning Management System (LMS) will be coming to Denison beginning Fall 2022. The ITC, the Office of the Provost, and ITS have been working together to ensure Denison faculty are involved in the process of selecting a LMS that works best for the university. Demos of three systems, Canvas, D2L Brightspace, and OpenLMS (Moodle-based), will be held the second and fourth weeks of January.
Tech – Workshop: “Seeing Through Your Text with Voyant: Low Barrier Text Analysis in the Classroom”
On Saturday, December 4, the Ohio Five CODEX team, in collaboration with Denison ETS and the Library, hosted a workshop on computational text analysis and using a tool call Voyant. Most of the faculty participating in the workshop left with ideas on how they can use this digital tool to have students conduct distance reading on their texts.
Tech – Using tablet capture to save time
Ever want to communicate a quick idea or demonstration to your students outside of class, but an email format was cumbersome? Have access to a tablet, such as an iPad? Consider making a quick tablet capture voice-over video. Unlike a talking-head video made in something like Loom, with an iPad connected to a desktop you can create a quick voice-over video to:
- share a quick example that may involve drawings or computations
- point out key parts of a reading or diagram
- provide verbal feedback on students’ work
This excellent website from the University of Pittsburgh instructs how to create video capture on a variety of tablets and systems.
Tech – Press Pause
If you, like so many of us, have said or thought the phrase “I’m just trying to make it until the end of the semester,” it might be a good time to pause your digital devices and/or your notifications to take a moment to yourself “unplugged.” Read this ETS blog post “Press Pause” to learn more about how to use various do not disturb modes on devices, pause your email, and turn off different notifications.
Tech – Scheduling Advising Appointments
Leaves are falling, the air is crisp, and, once again, it is time for Denison students to register for spring classes. Along with course registration comes opportunities for students to make advising appointments with faculty members. Gone are the days when you had to email students back and forth 20 times to find a perfect time for an advising session.