Thursday, January 28, 2010

Session #17 Summary

Our guest for session #17 was Mike Modesitt, Director of Technology for the Teachers College.

Before Mike arrived we briefly discussed the findings of The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. Specifically, we talked about the ways we could use handheld devices, laptops, and cell phones in our courses.

When Mike joined us he began by telling us that the new collaboration tools he would be demonstrating would be at a common address on the TC server.

Next, Mike showed us how to set up a GroupShare. "A share is a folder located on a remote computer which the owner (and others designated by him/her) may access and upload or download files and folders to/from. The benefit to such a share is that this enables the owner and his/her designees to "share" data easily. For instance, if you are the chair of a committee and each committee member requires a copy of the minutes from each meeting, you could create a share, upload the minutes to this share, and give the other committee members access to retrieve them." (From the GroupShare site) GroupShare is only available on campus unless you log onto VPN.

Finally, Mike and Penny demonstrated how the iChat program works to communicate synchronously and asynchronously, as well as to take turns controlling the computer screen. All Mac users have iChat on their computers. The directions for setting it up are located at http://ichat.tc.bsu.edu/ You can use iChat off campus now.

Thanks to Mike, Penny, and all who participated in the session.

Our next session will be on February 25th at 1:00. If you plan to attend and have not RSVP'd yet, please let me know that you will be there. Lunch will be served compliments of Pearson Publishing.