More than five years ago DTLT started working with UMW’s archivist Carolyn Parsons to try and digitize James Farmer’s video lecture series recorded here at UMW in 1983. The lecture series is an awesome historical resource featuring James Farmer---one of the greatest orators of the 20th century---re-telling his compelling experiences as a civil rights activist in the South during the 1960s. And while the project laid dormant for many years, thankfully Jeff McClurken’s and four of his students in Adventures in Digital History class resurrected it and brought it to life online. Laura Donahue, Michelle Martz and Caitlin Murphy and Kelsey Matthews archived, transcribed, and contextualized 13 of Farmer’s lectures from 1983. What’s more, they’ve created what is arguably the single best resource site yet to see light on UMW Blogs: http://jamesfarmerlectures.umwblogs.org/ The vertical hold on the VHS tapes with the first 4 lectures were in such bad shape that they’ve been shipped out for … [Read more...]
Masters of Our Domain Names: UMW to Pilot Domain of One’s Own
What’s gotten lost in all the attention around the ds106 Kickstarter is the fact that on Friday DTLT sat down with UMW’s Chief Information Office, the inimitable Justin Webb, to work out the details for an initial pilot launch of a Domain of One’s Own at UMW for 200 to 400 students starting this Summer and continuing throughout the 2012/2013 academic year. What does this mean? It means we’ll be providing personal domain names and web hosting for anywhere from 200-4000 students that will be used in a series of courses over the the coming year. This is born out of the idea that we want to help students consider taking responsibility for their online identity, as well as explorE the implications of what it might mean for them to take control of their work and manage their own portfolios (howe ver we understand that term). The idea that we can do this in partnership with the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) just reinforces how important giving students control over their … [Read more...]
You know what, DTLT is pretty sick right now
Image credit: Kate Geraets "We Rock" (click image for link) The semester has been flying by, here we are in week 10, two-thirds through and I have to say we here at UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies are moving at a pretty amazing clip. It’s as if everything has clicked, and we all “can still jack in and know what do to.” It’s like a team that just starts to hit their stride, and when they do it all just feels so natural. A beautiful sense of peaking where everything around you slows down and you can just see what’s coming next, and nail it. Working at UMW’s DTLT right now is a rare professional privilege, and I find myself racing to work everyday to ride that high. But all of this might just sound like sugar coated cheerleading, so let me layout what exactly has got me so excited about working at DTLT right now. UMW’s Online Learning Initiative Steve Greenlaw is leading up an initiative at UMW that I think is … [Read more...]
Cellular Storytelling
UMW Biology professor Steve Gallik has dreamed up a very cool approach for students in his Histology lab to share and comment on what’s under the microscope. Rather than purchasing expensive camera-ready digital microscopes, he worked with the UMW Teaching Center to purchase a few cheap digital cameras that can upload images quickly to the web so students can post them to a course site. The resulting course site designed by the inimitable Tim Owens is a highly attractive, intensely visual course space on UMW Blogs that streamlines posting for students thanks to the Gravity Forms plugin (which is premium—what is happening to us!). What I love about this experiment is how beautiful the images of these mammal cells are, and how the students’ brief description coupled with the gorgeous images tell a story about the life and death of cells. Not only that, but it reinforces the idea that new approaches to storytelling with media cuts across all disciplines—it’s not an exclusive a concern … [Read more...]
DTLT controls the Vertical and the Horizontal
Two weeks ago the DTLT group presented at the Educause Midatlantic Regional Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The panel discussion covered ds106—what else is there? 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. #4life! … [Read more...]