Online forum for Teaching & Learning Technology at UIC

 The ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) is pleased to invite all UIC faculty and teaching staff to stay connected (even during Summer) to discuss, post questions/answers and exchange information on using teaching and learning technology on campus :: what works, what's new, sound pedagogical use of learning technology, help for all computer users (novice to advanced), technology idiosyncrasies, work-arounds, and so forth.

Stay connected, communicate and collaborate with fellow UIC teachers and technologists by joining the ITL Virtual Conference social networking site -- login to Blackboard (at http://blackboard.uic.edu with your UIC netid and password), click the Courses tab, search for ITL Virtual Conference and click the Enroll button next to it.

Once enrolled, the ITL Virtual Conference site will appear on your myUIC tab everytime you login to Blackboard.  Click on it to access the site, to post questions, answers, read what others have been discussing, and gain access to useful teaching and learning support content, on-demand archives to last week's live Webcasts, miscellaneous links, etc. all stored and kept in one central site for you.

Click the Subscribe icon on any of the discussion boards to get email messages with the text of what is posted and a convenient link to optionally reply back.  That's one way to stay connected; otherwise, login every week (even during Summer) to stay connected, engaged and getting ready for Fall.

As always, if you have any questions, please contact the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) at itl@uic.edu or 312-996-9824, ..and follow the ITL on Twitter at www.twitter.com/itl

Collaboration Technology for Teachers & Researchers 
 

Key points to consider

• Asynchronous collaboration tools
• Real-time collaboration tools
• Campus tools vs. off-campus hosted (free) tools

Asynchronous collaboration tools

1.  Listserv lists? – (UIC) ancient but proven email distribution lists
   
   
2.  WebDisks – (UIC) Think of WebDisks as having flash/thumb drives on the Web with granular control for read-only and read-write sharing and saving files and folders with selected people at UIC, with non-UIC folks, with everyone at UIC and/or with the whole Internet at large.  Everyone at UIC has a personal WebDisk.  Additionally, faculty members and departments can get larger WebDisks (starting at 500MB) for teaching, research and other official university activities.
   
   
3. personal and group blogs and wikis (UIC and off-campus hosted)
   Check and subscribe to the RSS feed of the ITL Blog at www.accc.uic.edu/itl/blog
   
   
4. Twitter (off-campus hosted)
   
   
5. Podcasts (MP3 audio recordings), Flash Video streaming (UIC)
   
   
6. Off-campus tools: blogs, wikis, GoogleDocs, Google Sites, Adobe Buzzword
   
   
7. Social networking environments :: Blackboard work sites (UIC), Ning (off-campus hosted)

Real-time collaboration tools

1. MeetMe telephone conferencing (UIC)
   
   
2. Web conferencing tools: ACCC e-Rooms (aka Centra)(UIC)
   others hosted off-campus: WebEx, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Elluminate
   always consider the convenience of on-demand session archives
   
   
3. Pronto Instant Messenger
   Automatic single sign-on (and seamless integration) with Blackboard course sites and Blackboard work sites, and used outside of Blackboard
   
   
4. Other Instant Messenger tools: Skype, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL, jabber and GoogleTalk
   
   
5. Video conferencing
   like Polycom video conferencing systems, supported at UIC 
   H.323 standards-compliant standard definition and high-definition

What is Twitter? 

Twitter is a simple social networking tool that lets you post and/or read other people's posts. Twitter posts are called tweets and can be at most 140 characters long.  Your tweets aggregate (publicly) on your Twitter profile and are sent to other people who have chosen to follow you. 

When you login to Twitter, Twitter shows you a list of all the tweets of the people that you follow.  I, for example, follow a number of colleagues (around the world), news blurbs like UICnews, CNN and the Wall Street Journal, and various Twitter streams from vendors, special interest groups, other publications, and so forth.

A great Twitter feature is that you can selectively tell Twitter to send you the tweets from certain people or Twitter streams that you follow to your cell phone, as text messages (via SMS).  You can also post your tweets, reply to tweets or send private (direct) tweets from your cell, via SMS. Typically, I tweet from my cell, I let just a few tweets from others hit my cell (I usually read those instantly). Then, several times a day, I check the whole aggregation of tweets from everyone I follow on the Web or via various cool Twitter apps available for personal computers and smartphones.

Besides the obvious modern communication (distraction) panacea, Twitter can and is used every day for an endless assortment of applications, from instant Q&A and alarm clocks to beaming yourself into meetings and Webcasts, or getting instant foreign language translation help from abroad.

Try it out today at www.twitter.com ...or look at www.twitter.com/itl :: www.twitter.com/uicnews :: www.twitter.com/cnn :: www.twitter.com/oprah

If you have any questions or need help, contact the ITL at itl@uic.edu, 312-996-9824 or... (dare I say) tweet us at @itl ;-)

Enjoy,

Email Security :: Managing Spam

Below, please find some simple things you can do to tame your Inbox, protect your personal computer and reduce your spam: 

• use Symantec Antivirus
  • a free download for everyone at UIC at http://webstore.illinois.edu  
  • ok to install it at home and on all the personal Windows and Mac computers you own
  • make sure you use its default setting, which scans your computer and desktop email client(s)
  • make sure you use its default setting to refresh the Symantec recipes for detecting spam
    
     
• run a firewall at all times
  • Windows XP and Windows Vista include a very good built-in firewall
    
    
• do not execute email file attachments unless you are sure they are save
  • ACCC uses MIMEdefang to append .txt to certain file attachments
  • IFF (if and only if) the attachment can be trusted, simply remove the .txt and use the file attachment
    
    
• never give out your login IDs and passwords via an email message
  •  nor enter your login credentials on suspicious or unfamiliar Websites
    
    
• avoid typing personal information except on known Websites
  • do not enter things like your login passwords, UINs, social security number, etc. except on trusted Websites, like legit UIC and UofI Websites, on your financial institutions Websites and on trustworthy commercial Websites (like Amazon.com, cdwg.com, target.com)
  • make sure these trusted Websites use URLs that start with https://  instead of just http:// (i.e. notice the s in https)
• ACCC offers generic Anti-spamming filters
• Consider further-customizing them; see ACCC Email Tools at http://www.accc.uic.edu/index.html/EMAIL.html
  
• Also, consider using three (3) email addresses: your work (UIC) email address, another personal email address that you use for your banking and close friends and family messaging, and a 3rd more generic email address that you would use for signing into the Chicago Tribune, your favorite organizations and other Websites that may harvest your email addresses
• Use filters in Eudora or email rules in Outlook to manage your email

free online training tutorials from Lynda.com available during April 2009 to everyone at UIC

Dear UIC faculty, students and staff,

The Academic Computing and Communications Center (ACCC) is looking to expand and enhance its computer training workshops program.  To that end, we are running a free campus-wide trial of the entire library of the Lynda.com online training tutorials during April.

Lynda.com has over 900 well-done easy-to-jump-around just-in-time self-service tutorials, available  anytime, anywhere, with basic to advanced titles on Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Adobe Creative Suites, Flash, multimedia authoring, Apple Macintosh software, Google Docs, OpenOffice, Podcasting, Blogging, Web Accessibility, Databases, and much more.

Please tell your fellow students, faculty and staff!

Accessing Lynda.com tutorials

• On-campus :: simply visit www.lynda.com, search for a title you wish to explore or take and click away to begin the tutorial(s).
  
  
• Off-campus :: login with your UIC netid and password using the special UIC URL: http://proxy.cc.uic.edu/login?url=http://www.lynda.com and proceed as if you were on campus (see above)

Getting help
For more information, see www.accc.uic.edu/training.html, contact the ACCC Instructional Technology Lab (ITL) at itl@uic.edu or 312-996-9824, or email ACCC Computer Training Workshops directly at workshops@uic.edu.

Please tell us what you think
Tell us what you think about these Lynda.com online tutorials.  Direct your comments (good or bad) to workshops@uic.edu. A survey will be posted at www.accc.uic.edu/training.html by April 15.

Sincerely, 

Ed Garay
Assistant Director for Academic Computing (ACCC)

Student Response Systems (clickers) Wednesday 4/8 demo/presentations East campus, Richard J. Daley Library Room LIB 1-210 ITL Clickers Support Website

• 10:30am-12pm  Using the eInstruction/PRS clickers at UIC
  Susan Junior, eInstruction Corporation
  Ed Garay, ACCC Instructional Technology Lab
  
  
• 1:30-3pm Using the iClicker at UIC
  Liz Tassell, iClicker Corporation
  Ed Garay, ACCC Instructional Technology Lab
   

Imagine surveying your class of 200+ students and instantly seeing how well they are understanding your lectures.  Imagine modifying the rest of a lecture based on the immediate feedback from the class.  Watch your class come to life whenever you spend a couple of minutes doing a handful of pedagogically sound clicker activities.