SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, May 9, 2007

• 05/09/07

Viewpoint

Instructional Strategies for Blogging

By Ruth Reynard

While the notion of "finding individual voice" is not new to the learning process, technology such as blogging has presented a unique opportunity for teachers and students to work intentionally at this process. The notion of individual voice, however, is difficult to manage and evaluate. How individual is a comment? How personalized is the voice of the student? Are students aware of a developing voice? Does this voice raise the confidence of the student in the learning process? Do students perceive the blogging process as helpful or just another task/assignment?...

News & Product Updates

Full Sail Ships Macs to Creative Students

Creative arts college Full Sail Real World Education in Orlando, FL will be handing out Apple MacBook Pro systems to students across six disciplines. The notebooks will be pre-loaded with Apple's pro-level creative software, including the Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro....

Angel LMS Integrates with Tegrity

Angel Learning this week rolled out enhancements to its Angel LMS (learning management system), bringing integration with Tegrity Campus 2.0, a widely used student achievement system....

HP Awards Classroom Technologies to 172 Institutions

HP this week announced the recipients of its 2007 HP Technology for Teaching grant program. Forty-two colleges and universities and 130 K-12 schools will be receiving more than $7 million in cash, gear, and professional development....

Penn State Flunks Napster, Signs Video-Minded Ruckus

Penn State announced it would not renew its contract with the Napster music service and instead would offer students access to Ruckus, a multimedia service it said offered students greater media flexibility. Under the new contract, Ruckus will provide students downloadable access to 2.75 million songs, full-length feature films, short-form video, sports clips, and music videos, as well as access to a social network site focused on the network....

Reminder: Submit Your 2007 Innovators Nominations! Deadline May 15!

You're doing great things with technology on campus—we want to know about them. We seek exemplary colleges and universities, their visionary technology project leadership, and their innovative vendor partners who have deployed extraordinary campus technology solutions to campus challenges.

Could you be one of this year's recognized technology leaders? CT's 2007 Innovators will be featured in the August issue and recognized at the Campus Technology 2007 conference in Washington, DC, July 30-Aug. 2, 2007....

Tech Notes

All Roads Lead to Portal

By Susan D. Heid

Heard the latest? Portals are taking off on campuses nationwide. According to Campus Computing 2006, the Campus Computing Project’s survey of 540 two- and four-year public and private colleges and universities across the US, portal deployment for four-year public residential universities jumped from 28 percent to 74 percent of responding institutions between the 2002 and 2006 academic years; from 20 percent to 38 percent for private four-year universities; and from 23 percent to 43 percent for community colleges. Yet, as more and more campuses buy into the promise of single sign-on and integration of information and services, needs and realities of implementation can diverge. To get a better sense of the “state of the portal” in higher ed, it’s important to look at the differing stages of maturity and the wide range of technology choices in the portal journey...(Campus Technology)