TABLET PCs AND TEGRITY ARE COUPLED FOR A SUCCESSFUL
COURSE - Stanley Lindsey has discovered a successful way to teach a
collaborative regional engineering program. He uses tablet PCs with the Tegrity
WebLearner (www.tegrity.com) for on-demand and live e-learning. It provides
everything that's needed to achieve the course goals. The technology combination
offers a unique approach that creates effective Web lectures that go far beyond
typical slide-show presentations with "talking head" video or audio. The key
difference is in the technology's ability to interact with the course content - allowing
for writing and drawing in multiple colors, pointing, and highlighting on diagrams -
all while he explains the concepts at his natural speed. The resulting video
modules, he says, are actually more powerful than what he could have taught with
a blackboard in a traditional classroom. For the complete article go to:
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4559.cfm (T.H.E. Journal, Nov 03)

TECH SKILLS EVERY FACULTY MEMBER SHOULD KNOW - April E.
Johnson of the University of Mississippi shared her list of seven tech skills every
faculty member should know on a recent LERN online course:

1. Learn how to compose in an html editor that allows you to use font styles, sizes,
and colors to spice up text and to insert images and make tables.
2. Learn where and how you can store images on your institution's web server
and learn to use an ftp program to get the images there or use their network.
3. Learn the above for audio and video as well as what types and sizes of files
your institution can support.
4. Learn how to create hyperlinks to all sources and how to give credit to the
sources.
5. Learn how to make a .ppt (PowerPoint) document into an .html document for
the web.
6. Can you use a browser to search the Internet and use the browser to bookmark
a page and grab an image - if legal?
7. Once you find or create an image, can you use an image editor to change the
size and save it as a web friendly .jpg or .gif? (E-LERN Faculty, 13 Nov 03)

BERKLEE COLLEGE OFFERS FREE ONLINE LESSON SHARING -
Berklee College of Music in Boston is promoting peer-to-peer networks as a
method for musicians to share audio and video clips. The Berklee Shares program
offers 80 different online lessons on writing music, producing, engineering, remixing,
and performing. The lessons, available in QuickTime, MP3, and PDF formats,
complement online and on-campus courses and are available free to anyone who
agrees to the terms set by the school. As with materials from MIT's OpenCourse
Ware and Rice University's Connexions projects, all lessons available through
Berklee Shares are protected by a Creative Commons license. David Kusek,
Berklee's associate vice president, said, "We can enter the file-sharing debate
in a very proactive and positive way. We're demonstrating a legitimate use of the
digital networks to distribute authorized content." The full article is at:
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,61173,00.html (Wired News, 12
Nov 03)