ACS has a portable scanner that’s available for Vassar faculty members to borrow. It’s ideal for bringing to an archive to scan documents (if allowed) for later study. While it’s true that you can save an image of a document page with your phone/camera, a scan will give you a much more consistent and high-quality result.
Most scanners are too bulky and heavy to consider traveling with, but not this one. The Canon Canoscan LiDE 700F is essentially the size of a laptop computer. It’s less than 2 inches high, with a footprint of 11.5 x 16 inches. It weighs only 4.6 pounds. It can scan a letter-size document (8.5″ x 11″) with a resolution of up to 4800×4800 dpi. It fits snugly in a 12″ x 17″ 2.5″ padded carrying case.
Contact your ACS liaison if you’re interested in borrowing it.
Do you ever need to draw or write free-hand on your computer, but doing it with a mouse is too awkward and you don’t want to buy an iPad or any other tablet computer? You may be happy with a graphic input tablet, like the Bamboo® Connect Pen, which Vassar faculty members can borrow from ACS.
A graphic input tablet is a device on which you can draw with a stylus— it doesn’t have its own display, but you see the results of your drawing on your computer screen. It’s essentially like using a mouse, but one that you can control as well as you can control a pen.
While using any software that allows you to draw free-hand— Photoshop, Powerpoint, and many others— you can draw diagrams or write equations. The Bamboo Connect tablet is made by Wacom, which is known for its large tablets that are favored by graphic designers. The Bamboo Connect is just 11″ x 7″, with a 5.8″ x 3.6″ drawing area.
Here’s a demonstration and review:
If you’d like to try it out, contact your ACS liaison.
Since shortly after the web was developed, colleges and universities have used it for conducting distance education programs. Leaders in the practice included public institutions, whose mission included serving a wide geographical area of non-traditional students; large universities, who were challenged to provide alternatives to courses taught in huge lecture halls; and professional schools and trade schools, whose focus was on procedural skills. The emergence of MOOCs in 2012 brought more attention to the practice. It has not been obvious, however, how distance learning technologies could benefit small, private, residential, liberal arts colleges like Vassar. Many have doubted— reasonably so— that an online course could offer a better learning experience than a face-to-face course with a small student/faculty ratio. At Vassar this summer, we identified a use for distance learning technologies that borders on the ironic: a residential college connecting with its students when they’re not in residence; an institution known for small class sizes interacting with a student cohort of 700. We used Moodle to enhance our summer common reading program for incoming students.
Vassar College has administered a common reading program for first-year students every summer since 2006. The Dean of Freshmen’s office mails a copy of the chosen book (this year’s was Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoire, Fun Home), along with other orientation materials, to each admitted student’s home address. The students are instructed to read the book, but there have been no other requirements. For the summer of 2014, Dean Susan Zlotnick wanted to enhance the common reading experience with some online interaction, using Moodle. Over the course of several weeks, ACS produced three short videos, each with a different faculty member speaking about an aspect of the book, and inviting students to respond to one of several discussion prompts. Student participation was high, for an activity that had no penalty for non-participation. 427 of the 670 students (64%) posted responses, most of them substantial in length.
The goals of the common reading program are to give incoming students a preview of what classes at Vassar might be like, and to give them an opportunity to have a common intellectual experience with each other before courses begin. By all accounts, that was successful. This experience raises an interesting question: what other aspects of Vassar life might be enhanced by having an online space for shared information and social interaction?
Vassar’s Moodle system has a new tool, with the possibly too cutesy name of “PoodLL.” PoodLL provides a bridge between Moodle and the camera and/or microphone on a person’s computer. There are two main ways it can be used:
1. An instructor can record a video or audio message directly onto the main page of a Moodle course, or into the instructions of a discussion forum, or even into the description field associated with a file. Previously you would have to use some other software to make the recording, then upload it into Moodle; now no other software is necessary.
Are there things that come across better when seen or heard than when read? A poem or a foreign language passage? A view of a physical object or action? Here’s how to use PoodLL to make the recording:
2. You can create an assignment (or a quiz) in which students reply by recording themselves. Many instructors use Moodle’s Assignment activity to collect files (like research papers or homework exercises) from students. Now the Assignment activity can also be used to collect video or audio recordings from students.
One of the most obvious uses of this is to ask foreign language students to record themselves speaking in the target language, but be creative! A lab instructor could ask students to make a brief video showing the results of their procedure. Drama students could record a dramatic reading. Here’s how to create an assignment that lets students record their responses:
If you’re not yet feeling muddled by Moodle’s PoodLL, you might try noodling with an audio or fiddling with a video. There’s also a whiteboard function, so you could doodle in Moodle’s PoodLL. More on that in a separate post.
Interview with Erin McCloskey Prof. Erin McCloskey, of the Education department, explains how she uses digital storytelling technology as a vehicle for Vassar students and area adolescents to learn from each other. (4:38)
Interview with Marc L. Smith and Jodi Schwarz
Profs. Jodi Schwarz of the Biology department and Marc Smith of the Computer Science department, discuss their use of Google Apps for Education in their course on Bioinformatics. They’ve created a course website using Google Sites, with links to course documents, articles, and presentations in Google Drive. Students share materials that they create in their collaborative groups. (4:20)
Interview with April Beisaw
Prof. April Beisaw, from the Anthropology department, talks about he she gets her Introduction to Archaeology students to “do archaeology,” using handheld GPS units in the field. Students photograph artifacts in the field and embed location data into the photos, and have a record of exactly where they surveyed. (3:60)
Interview with Bert Lott
Prof. Bert Lott, from the Greek & Roman Studies department, talks about an online commentary system that he uses in his Latin courses. His students are directed to add marginalia to an online edition of a classical text, and to comment on each others’ entries. (3:07)
Interview with Cindy Schwarz
Prof. Cindy Schwarz, of the Physics & Astronomy Department, describes how she used the iBooks Author software to create an interactive, electronic edition of a children’s book she had published earlier, and discusses how the technology could be used at the college level. (2:53)
The newest version of Moodle— installed at Vassar earlier this month— has a new editing interface for instructors. Now when you turn editing on, most of the functions that were represented by a row of icons next to each resource or activity are now available via a drop-down menu. For a quick tour, see this video:
The newest version of Moodle— installed at Vassar earlier this month— has a new editing interface for instructors. Now when you turn editing on, most of the functions that were represented by a row of icons next to each resource or activity are now available via a drop-down menu. For a quick tour, see this video: