Education Building

Instructors and students use an array of technologies throughout their daily lives. How can we make use of these tools for educational purposes? Which technologies are you and your students using to support teaching and learning?

The Educational Technology Series delivers two sessions a semester that are structured to discuss those questions, raise new questions and make plans to move forward. Past session topics have included:

• Wikis for SFU Educators
• Wikipedia and the Post-Secondary Classroom
• Educational Uses of Second Life
• Blogs in the Classroom
• The Backchannel: Twitter, Google Moderator and classroom communications

What kinds of sessions are you interested in seeing? Would you like repeats of some of the sessions we’ve done, or new topics such as:

• Google suite (google docs, spreadsheet and drawing tools)
• Mobile learning
• Online mind mapping
• alternatives to PowerPoint (such as Prezi)
• other ideas?

Please leave a comment on this posting with what you would like to see us focus on. Or, if you know of any educational uses of any new or innovative technologies please leave that in the comments. We’re always looking for new implementations to celebrate!

Welcome to the Faculty Media Room, hosted by the LIDC. This is a new self-help service where faculty, instructors and teaching assistants can access software to develop their own learning environments, tools and objects. This service is suitable for people who have some experience and confidence with computer technology and who are willing to explore and experiment. This is a self-help service, but we provide links to self-help resources online; these are bookmarked in the Firefox internet browser on the Faculty Media Room computer.

The computer has the following software installed:

• Flash: Create animations and interactive content
• Photoshop: Edit and manipulate digital images
• Illustrator: Create and edit vector graphics
• Dreamweaver:  Create websites and edit HTML
• Soundbooth: Create and edit digital audio
• Camtasia: Create and edit screencasts
• Snagit: Create and edit screenshots

Please contact the LIDC front office to reserve some time in the Faculty Media Room at 778-782-3910 or lidc@sfu.ca.

The LIDC has recently finished the six-session Teaching Portfolio series, which covered the different steps in developing a Teaching Portfolio or Dossier. The sessions are hands on, scaffolded, and rely on the active participation of everyone who comes. If you were not able come, or will attend in the fall, here is a link to a good resource in the mean time.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers has written a comprehensive Teaching Dossier Guide. It was first prepared in 1986, and the most recent update from 2006.

The Guide (download the pdf here) contains a general explanation of what Teaching Dossiers (or portfolios) are, and how it can be used in academia, how to create a dossier (and what to include), and also contains an example dossier.

The focus is on the use of a teaching dossier as part of an evaluation process, and so it stresses evidence, clarity and conciseness. This is a good resource if the purpose of your dossier is for employment or tenure for example.

Learning and Instructional Development Centre (LIDC)
Upcoming Events: October 2008

Dear SFU colleagues:

Please take a moment to review the LIDC offerings for October and beyond.
All registration is done online using the link provided for each event.
Information for these and other upcoming events may be found on our Fall Calendar of Events at https://webserver.lidc.sfu.ca/tep/fall-08/calendar.php

> October 1 – Teaching Portfolio Development
> October 7 or 8 – Conversation About Teaching
> October 9 – Creating Effective Multiple-Choice Questions
> October 11-13 – Instructional Skills Workshop (Thanksgiving Day Weekend)
> October 15 – Spring TA/TM Day Call for Proposals: Application Deadline
> October 15 – Text: Chat, Instant messages, and updates for one and all
> October 23 – Dynamic Lecturing: Thriving in a Large Lecture Hall
> October 30 – Relax, Stretch, Project
> November 6 to 27 – Camera Savvy: Using Video to Enhance your Teaching
> July 14-17, 2009 – International Conference on Improving University Teaching

(more…)

SFU celebrates the achievements of its graduates by hosting Convocation at the Burnaby campus in the Fall and Spring. This momentous occasion is covered by the Learning and Instructional Development Centre’s videographers and photographers, and broadcast live via webcast on the LIDC website. Watch as the spectacular graduate procession, led by SFU’s award-winning bagpipers, crosses the pond and marches down the grand staircase to confer their degrees.

This year’s Fall convocation is scheduled for October 9 & 10, 9:45 and 14:30.

To view the live webcast: http://webserver.lidc.sfu.ca/broadcast/

DVD ordering: http://www.lidc.sfu.ca/convocation/

For more information on the ceremonies including the full schedule, parking for guests and special attendees, see http://www.sfu.ca/convocation/

About 80 new faculty members recently joined SFU and many attended an orientation to the university in late August. Key documents about LIDC services and teaching resources were provided in the binders that were prepared for each new faculty member. As well, LIDC presented each person with a memory stick containing numerous helpful items such as teaching resources, SFU templates, audiovisual services info, and useful SFU images for the web or PowerPoint presentations. See the LIDC’s Teaching and Learning area for a listing of some of these services

Program Director Stephanie Chu highlighted LIDC services and queried the group about their current needs related to teaching and media.
She can be contacted for further information at:
stephanie@sfu.ca
778.782.7244

Already, several faculty from this session have contacted us for help and we look forward to working with more new faculty as the semester continues.

You can also see the academic relations website for more Faculty events and information.

Although this week marks the the official launch of the site, for now it remains a “soft launch” until some hosting issues can be worked out, and the staff have an opportunity to review and provide internal feedback. As well, there will be regular news stories posted here much more frequently, so stay tuned.

Some of the new highlights of the site include

* A complete staff listing with downloadable PDF file.
* A new RSS feed providing a single source of information regarding LIDC News and Events
* Updated pages for Teaching and Learning services the LIDC strives to bring to the SFU community.

There will be improvements to the look and feel of the site coming soon and many more services both real and virtual to be added in the coming months.