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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Smart Classroom

11/21/2006

Edited By Rhea Kelly

What makes a classroom “smart”? Presentation technologies such as projectors, document cameras, and LCD panels clearly fit the bill, but when you consider other technologies for teaching, learning, and developing content, the possibilities become limited only by the boundaries of an institution’s innovation. In this opening section of our special 101 Best Practices guide, you’ll find out how colleges and universities are bringing new kinds of learning into the classroom, from the nuts and bolts of hardware configurations, to technologies that are engaging students in novel ways. Use the links provided to find more in-depth information in original articles and newsletters, and on vendor websites. These 32 “smart” ideas just might be the inspiration you need to get your own smart classroom initiatives off the ground. Read on!

1 :: ‘SMART’ LIBRARY

Utah State University’s new Merrill-Cazier Library, opened in the 2005-2006 academic year, is using technology to not only retrieve information from the library catalog, but also retrieve the books themselves. The $42 million project features a state-of-the-art system of robotic stacks, 85 feet high, 60 feet wide, and 120 feet long, which locates requested materials among the 1.5 million volumes and speeds them to patrons—at a rate of 328 feet per minute. The space-saving system allows for many years of collection development. Says Linda Wolcott, vice provost for libraries, “The Merrill-Cazier Library has become the hub of learning on campus, providing the resources, access to technology, and flexible study environments that support the way students learn today.” More info here.

2 :: MEDIATING INTERACTION

As the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University’s (MA) Graduate School of Education, Chris Dede is at the forefront of change in technology for teaching and learning. “I teach a class every fall with seven different kinds of technology for mediated interaction,” says Dede. “As examples, we use asynchronous threaded discussion, internet-based videoconferencing, and synchronous interactions in a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)—a virtual place where people interact with digital avatars, agents, and artifacts.” His students also use a form of groupware, for application sharing and collaborative work on documents, images, or other types of design. The technologies are helping students succeed: “Many students who are silent in classroom discussions find their voice and participate actively in different flavors of mediated interaction,” he says. The key is sticking to readily available technologies. “I could offer a course that uses a lot of exotic technologies,” Dede explains. “But there would be no point: What would the students do when they left and couldn’t use any of the technologies that we had experienced together in class?” More info here.

3 :: SHARING AUDIO/VIDEO CONTENT

The DigitalWell Project at the University of Washington tasked itself with creating a digital repository of big, bulky audio and video files, with the ability to collaborate with other academic institutions. The initiative began when technologists set out to build a system to catalog audio broadcasts from the school-sponsored KEXP radio station, as well as video broadcasts from the UWTV television station and from campus research programs. “D-Well” was unveiled publicly in fall 2005, and thanks to a proprietary underpinning system called the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and a middleware system built by the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California-San Diego, the system is interoperable with other digital libraries across academia. “We’re really hoping that we can communicate with just about any digital library in the world,” says Jim DeR'est, director of streaming media technologies with the Video, TV, and Technologies group. With the help of this technology, UW already has been able to trade video content with the University of Queensland in Australia, and the Forestry department has inquired about collaborating with the University of São Paulo in Brazil, to digitize video content about old-growth forests and how forest fires start. More info here.

4 :: SECURING LOANER LAPTOPS

At Colorado Technical University, a solution from Absolute Software is protecting the school’s investment in a loaner tablet PC initiative. ComputraceComplete allows IT staff to monitor who is using the computers, 4 what software and hardware changes are performed, and where the equipment is located, helping the school ensure that all computers are returned on time at the end of a lease.

ComputraceComplete came in handy recently when one Colorado Tech student dropped out of the school but kept a loaner laptop in his possession. University staff filed a police report and contacted Absolute Software’s recovery team. The team established “contact” with the laptop over the internet, verified that the stolen machine was indeed in the student’s home, and instructed the computer to call in every 15 minutes. Local police were then able to recover the machine; the entire process, from the laptop being reported stolen to recovery by police, took just three days.

5 :: ACCESSIBLE LEARNING MATERIALS

Using videotaped lectures to practice American Sign Language (ASL) used to be a pretty tiresome process for hearingimpaired and other students at the University of Rochester (NY). In order to access the videos, students had to trek to the campus library, reserve an audio/visual station in the media center, take out the appropriate tape, and watch it right then and there. In the spring and summer months, the process was manageable but inconvenient. In winter, however, with lake-effect snow blowing off Lake Ontario, the journey to and from the campus library became possible only for the intrepid.

But last year, digital video revolutionized the ritual for Rochester’s ASL students. With the help of the Clabs digital video solution from Cdigix, the school has digitized the entire library of videotapes and offered it online through a portal of digital media that includes movies, MP3s, and more. Lisa Brown, manager of the school’s Educational Technology Center, says that today, students can practice hand signals from the privacy of their own dorm rooms, all with a few clicks of a mouse. “Now, if a student wants flexibility in accessing this information, he can get it whenever he wants it.” More info here.

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