Category Archives: Resources

Fall Technology Bootcamp Recap

Posted on by

Last Thursday, eLIS welcomed over 20 Lesley instructors to our Fall Bootcamp: Teaching and Learning with Technology. We covered a wide array of topics, helping participants think about approaches to integrating technology into their teaching as well as practice using some of the available technology tools.

Designing a Blended Experience
This session provided a guiding framework for creating a blended course by defining and delineating the two interwoven themes of learning design and technology integration.
Designing Blended Learning Experiences

Using myLesley (Blackboard)
A myLesley (Blackboard) course site is available for all Lesley courses, whether held fully online, face-to-face, or somewhere in between. You may use myLesley to post your syllabus, post resources and readings, communicate with your students, collect and grade assignments and much more. Based on participant interest, we had a couple of breakout sessions, covering a variety of topics from basic myLesley navigation and tools to grading.
Using the myLesley Text/Content Editor
Communicating Within Your myLesley Course
Adding Content to Your myLesley Course
Creating and Managing Assignments in myLesley
Grading myLesley Assignments
myLesley Grade Center and Grading

VoiceThread
VoiceThread is an asynchronous tool which allows you to place collections of media like images, videos, and presentations at the center of a conversation. People may then be invited to view, comment, and interact with the VoiceThread using any mix of text, audio, and video. In this session we walked through creating and commenting on VoiceThreads.
What is a VoiceThread Anyway?
Creating a VoiceThread
Additional VoiceThread Resources

Adding Video to Your Course with Kaltura Media
Kaltura Media is the university’s media sharing platform, allowing users to share video securely within the myLesley course environment. In this session we walked through recording a webcam video using Kaltura Media.
Recording a Video in myLesley
Webcam Recording Tips
Additional Kaltura Resources

For those that were unable to attend last week’s training, we will be hosting another training on Thursday, September 8th, focusing on using the features of myLesley (Blackboard) most essential for supporting teaching and learning in the classroom. Stay tuned for the official announcement, including a link to register for the event.

Getting Started with Open Education Resources

Posted on by

What is OER?
The Hewelett Foundation defines Open Educational Resources as: “teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits free use and repurposing by others.”

OER may include textbooks, videos, tests and assessments, software, course content and even full courses. These materials are shared under Creative Commons licensing which allows the content to be freely used, copied, and remixable. The goal is have content that is free of barriers to access and sharing for educational use.

Why do I care about OER?
Textbooks are expensive. Using OER instead of publisher content that students must purchase makes education more affordable. OER gives you freedom to decide what to teach when in your course. Simply plan your course and then look for the resources to support your content and assignments rather than following the textbook structure. OER are just as good, and sometimes better, than publisher content.

Why isn’t everyone using OER?
In a 2014 survey, most faculty were unaware of OER. Those who were aware were deterred by the lack of search tools. Locating appropriate resources took too much time and energy. Fortunately, the lack of search tools is changing. Over the last decade several OER repositories and search tools have appeared to curate all this incredibly useful content.

Where can I find OER?
These searchable sites are great places to start looking for content you can use in your classes.
MIT OpenCourseWare
Open Stax College
College Open Textbooks
MERLOT
Jorum
OER Commons

12 Days of Learning: PLN

Posted on by

Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Our Day 7 post will look at creating a Personal Learning Network.

A Personal Learning Network, or PLN, is a group of people and resources that you use to continue learning, growing, and developing your knowledge and skills. You can ask questions, get advice, share knowledge and build community. You probably already have a group of friends and colleagues for this, but many people have expanded their PLN online. A PLN may include people you follow on Twitter, blogs you read, learning communities and social bookmarking sites such as Diigo.

Never heard of a PLN before? Not sure you have one or how to start building one? Watch the short video below for an introduction to PLN’s. Then review the handy Building Your PLN guide at Edublogs Teacher Challenges.


 

12 Days of Learning: One Drive

Posted on by

Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. Over the next 12 days we will have links to a series of tutorials aimed at increasing your elearning skills.

Let’s kick off our 12 Days of Learning with a quick look at OneDrive. OneDrive allows you to create and share Word, Excel and Powerpoint files online. You can also upload other types of documents such as images or media files to store or share with your colleagues. You can access OneDrive by logging into the web version of your Lesley email at http://lesley.edu/email.

To learn more about using OneDrive, check out these Atomic Learning tutorials. Enter your myLesley username and password when prompted.

OneDrive

 

 

ARTstor Digital Library: A place of visual primary sources

Posted on by

ARTstor is a digital library full of images for you to use for classroom instruction, especially if you want to integrate visual literacy. Its title can be a bit deceiving but ARTstor’s true focus is less about discipline and more about giving educators online access to over 1.8 million authoritative visual primary sources. You and your students will discover content from a wide range of museums, archives, libraries, and other types of cultural heritage institutions that span various time periods, movements, and cultures.

Check out what collections are available, http://www.artstor.org/collections. Some of the collections used with students doing research include:

Not only does this educational technology have visual resource collections, it allows easy integration into your online classroom environments. Some great tech features include curating groups of images sharable in Blackboard, links to share on blogs, and generate of PowerPoint presentations. Any images collected using ARTstor’s image group feature automatically live in the system so you never have to worry about losing them or your image presentation. Please be advised that ARTstor registration is required to use the tool!

If you want to learn how to use ARTstor there are a number of resources that come in various formats ranging from videos, written instructions, and in-person help. Visit the websites below or find help in at the Moriarty Library 

ARTstor Help Resources
Moriarty Library’s ARTstor Help Guide
ARTstor’s YouTube
ARTstor’s Knowledge Base

Contact a Librarian for help!
Kate Thornhill, MLIS
Research and Instruction Librarian for Digital Scholarship
Moriarty Library
617-349-8070
kthornhi@lesley.edu