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Professors mesh with new gadgets

Nov. 3, 2009

Technology is being integrated into various BU classes

By Jenna Thompson
Reporter

The world of Twitter, podcasts, blogs and online role-playing games has now taken a role in the classroom. Professors across campus are integrating new technologies into their teaching to promote a more interactive approach of learning.

Gardner Campbell, director of the Academy for Teaching and Learning, is one of the many faculty members encouraging development in classroom technologies and implementing them in his own classes.

"One of the particular things I do is to help facilitate how to incorporate technologies into their practices," Campbell said. "The particular work I'm doing with information technology spans from new media to various kinds of online communication."

One source is a social bookmarking Web site called delicious, where users can tag articles, Web sites, pictures and more on the site and share them with the general public or a targeted audience. Posts are also linked to related "tweets" from users.

Associate professor of Management Blaine McCormick, uses delicious to post articles for his class from the Wall Street Journal. His said a poll his students took revealed that two out of three of his students only read news sources online and via mobile devices.

McCormick does not use a printed textbook, but has his students participate in an online business simulation that lasts throughout the semester. Students compete for prizes, and the program is the main focus of the class.

Students also use Classroom Performance System (CPS) pads for attendance and polls, and can view class lectures through Lecture Capture, a program that works in conjunction with Blackboard.

"The newest technology that I've added this term is Lecture Capture," McCormick said. "It automatically captures the class and posts it on Blackboard. I am positioning my class to be high-tech, high-touch."

Using this medium, students can watch a video recording of the lecture in a window with the notes displayed below it.

Associate professor of English, Kara Alexander, teaches courses on how to integrate technology and writing.

"One of the courses I do is a multimodal composition course: composition in more than one mode," Alexander said.

Alexander's students do this by producing audio public service announcements, creating Web sites and keeping a blog. Through these techniques, students are taught how to write in interactive forms. Alexander has also started to use Twitter in conjunction with her classes this semester. "Writing is more than just learning how to write on paper these days," Alexander said. "I try to teach students it's all about the appropriate means."

McCormick said this technological process is not spread evenly throughout the academic world, and many people cite drawbacks to certain methods. For example, new systems require students to adapt to the new organization and learn how to use them effectively, but not all users will have the same Web browser or brand of computer, so technical problems can arise. Networks can go down and systems sometimes fail. "My own feeling is that there are growing pains," Campbell said. "I feel we learn from failure more so, if not as much, as success."McCormick's goal is not to replace the classroom experience with technology, but to supplement it. He wants to increase interactivity through these new technologies.

These new technological tools also encourage students to be more involved in their studies.

"These communication tools have a way of drawing people out and creating a sense of community," Campbell said. "They tear down the walls of the classroom."

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