The Domain is Right

This past week UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learnign Technologies rolled out what’s most certainly our most ambitious project yet: Domain of One’s Own. I’ve written a lot about this project over the last year or so, and it’s surreal to think it’s up and running. Domain of One’s Own provides any interested Freshman at UMW with his or her own domain and web hosting to start taking control of their identity on the web. The first week didn’t come without it’s highs and lows, and Martha Burtis’s awesomely comprehensive post recaps what’s transpired thus far. While we dreamed 1000 Freshman would sign-up day one, at the same time we knew it was gonna take a lot of work to make this fly. We’ve been through this all before with projects like UMW Blogs and ds06, great things need to grow organically as part of a community. And that’s what we have to focus on this year, and I have no doubt it will be a resounding success because Domain of One’s Own is pure and good and RIGHT. Which … [Read more...]

DTLT Presents at ELI Fall Focus Session

A Culture of Innovation from umwnewmedia on Vimeo. Martha Burtis, Jim Groom, Tim Owens and Andy Rush of UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT) presented on Tuesday, October 2 at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s Online Fall Focus Session on the theme of innovation in higher education. The basic question guiding the presentation, which was centered around the seven minute video above, was the following: how does a university like UMW consistently foster innovative projects like UMW Blogs, ds106, and, more recently, A Domain of One’s Own? There’s no one adequate stock answer to such a question, so when preparing the presentation DTLT decided to interview students, faculty, and staff around campus to get a broader sense of the culture of innovation happening at UMW. What DTLT got in return for its labors was quite compelling. The video was shot and edited by Andy Rush, and it’s just a teaser for a much larger documentary that DTLT is planning on making this semester … [Read more...]

UMW Talks Educational Technology at the ACCS 2012 Conference

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.” … [Read more...]

DTLT Controls the Vertical and the Horizontal

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. … [Read more...]