A group of us at Earlham College will be teaching a seminar (1 credit, both semesters) for an interdisciplinary group of first year science students involved in a science themed Living Learning Community.  Our general goal for the first semester is to help them develop the interpersonal, collaborative and technology skills necessary for success in science.  We've joked that the course should be titled "Playing Well in the Sandbox with New Toys."  For example, we might introduce them to googledocs, google+, and the infamous doodle poll.  We might encourage teamwork and teach GIS, GPS, and Go

Dear IONiC friends,

I decided to put this in the "Faculty Only" section because it's a bit of a rant.

I hope that it inspires similar contributions about the joys of technology and teaching. I could imagine similar rants about lecture and laboratory preparation. And just so you know, the following list is exactly what I had to do today to prepare a general chemistry exam.

WRITING A TEST

The old days, before technology:

1.     Hand out blue books.

2.     Write test questions on board.

There's a professor in Biology here at Smith who has been using Lecture Capture technology.  You can see his video speaking about his experience on YouTube (search Michael Baresi and Smith). I tried posting just the link here, but it didn't seem to work right.  Hopefully the video isn't just something you can see from Smith. 

 I am a bit skeptical about using it.  I was wondering if anyone out there is using it and, if so, what their experiences have been with it.

I'm thinking about using "clickers" to get students to respond to questions during class this fall in my general chemistry section.  I'd be interested in hearing from people who have used them and in what ways they were used most successfully.  

So, I am thinking of video-recording at least one of my lectures this term. I am teaching Organic II this spring (and possibly an Inorganic...). In my Organic class I have 1 student who needs both my class and another for her degree (2nd semester senior) at the same time, not enough students to have two sections in either course and I know mine probably couldn't have a time change nor would the senior faculty teaching the other course change his time...thus, I am looking to possibly record the lectures and share with all the students enrolled.

I have begun to use Moodle in my courses both as a content delivery tool and to foster more interaction amongst students and between faculty and students.  I notice that I use different features depending on if I am teaching our large intro course or my smaller inorganic courses.  I would love to hear how different folks are using tools like Moodle in interesting ways in their courses.  Last spring, I tried a few assignments where I had students create a wiki.  And this fall, in our large intro course, we set up a Database to collect lab results from all the different lab sections.  I'