SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, July 18, 2007

• 07/18/07

Case Study

U Cincinnati Links Blackboard to Text Messaging

By Linda L. Briggs

While many colleges and universities scramble to get an emergency messaging system in place in the wake of the Virginia Tech mass murder, the University of Cincinnati is already there.

Thanks to administrative decisions made last year, the university piloted a text messaging system this semester that works in conjunction with Blackboard to send routine class announcements to the mobile phones of those students who sign up for the service. Although the system is designed--and intended to be used--for daily academic messages, it can also be used in an emergency. It was used twice last winter to send weather alerts....

News & Product Updates

CA Community Colleges Deploy Web Conferencing System

The California Community College System (CCCS) is deploying an enterprise-wide Web conferencing solution from Elluminate called Elluminate Live! CCCS is the largest higher education system in the world....

Consensus: Podcasting Has No 'Inherent' Pedagogic Value

A bevy of recent studies on students' experience listening to recorded lectures via podcasts confirms what many lecturers already know: that the pedagogical value of podcasts depends almost entirely on student motivation and the learning "context" of the application....

Portsmouth Taps the Internet To Map the Universe

You're sitting on a pile of about a million telescopic photos of the universe, and each one needs to be classified. Bit of a job. So what do you do? Astronomers at the University of Portsmouth, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins University came up with a solution last week that not only alleviated the burden but also generated an enthusiastic response from the public: They opened up the project to volunteers via the Internet....

SciTalks.com Offers Lecture Video Search Site

In the same vein as YouTube, SciTalks.com (Boston, MA) has launched a searchable online collection of science lecture video files from across the world. Currently 1,000 lectures are online, with new videos being added daily....

Northwestern Releases Open-Source File Bridge

Northwestern University has developed an extension for Blackboard systems that allows the CMS to communicate with Xythos applications. The tool, File Bridge, is being made available to colleges and universities as open-source software....

Tech Notes

iPod Course Design

By Judith V. Boettcher

You can almost hear the sigh of relief today, as more and more students review course requirements and see that they will be learning, creating, and presenting with their iPods, as well as reading text and listening to course content with them. The Apple iPod and its related set of technologies are bringing a freshness, spontaneity, and engagement to learning experiences that we haven’t seen in a while; possibly, ever. Why are these small devices having such an impact?...(Campus Technology)

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Washington, DC, July 30-August 2, 2007