UC TLtC News by Email

As needed, submit appropriate news/articles to UC TLtC News By Email. Below, find an example of this newsletter. The wiki article is especially relevant to our needs.

Example Newsletter

From: UC TLtC Administrator <tltc@ucop.edu
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 16:46:40 -0700 (PDT)

April 2006
UC TLtC NEWS BY EMAIL
News & updates from the University of California
Teaching, Learning & technology Center http://www.uctltc.org

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TLtC News
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SYSTEMWIDE IT GUIDANCE COMMITTEE GETS UNDERWAY
Over the next 18 months, the newly established UC
Information Technology Guidance Committee (ITGC) will enter
into a broad discussion about the future role of IT in UC's
mission, academic programs, and strategic goals. The
committee has been charged by Acting UC Provost Rory Hume to
identify areas where systemwide or cross-campus planning,
investment, and activity holds promise for economies,
efficiencies, and innovation in instruction, research, and
information services. http://www.uctltc.org/news/2006/04/itgc.html

A COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGIST'S APPROACH TO EDUCATIONAL
TECHNOLOGY
While UC faculty commonly use educational technology in
their teaching, they rarely make it a subject of their
research. UC Santa Barbara's Rich Mayer, a cognitive
psychologist, is one of the exceptions to this rule. In
fact, he typically eschews using technology in his own
courses but he spends much of his research efforts on
studying how technology impacts the learning process. http://www.uctltc.org/news/2006/04/mayer.html

THE TOPSY-TURVY WORLD OF WIKIS
For people (of a certain age?) who are accustomed to the old
publishing paradigm in which information is written,
published, and maintained in a controlled process, the
usefulness of wikis may be difficult to understand. As
consumers, we wonder why anyone would trust information that
is editable by the masses and has no single person in charge
of vetting it for accuracy, style, and other editorial
standards on which we've come to rely (the Wikipedia
controversy proves our point). As writers, we are
uncomfortable with joint authorship, hesitating to give up
control of what we've written. But, let's face it, we're
not the targeted audience for wikis or most "social
computing" technologies. Students are another story, and,
fortunately for them, some of our faculty peers have the
vision to turn the perceived weakness of wikis into
pedagogical strengths. http://www.uctltc.org/news/2006/04/wiki.html

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Other News
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ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS BOOST FRIENDSHIPS, AND PERHAPS RISKS
(BERKELEYAN)
The explosion of membership at social networking websites
such as Facebook and MySpace is helping young people make
friends online, but it also poses challenges for
universities concerned about the dangers to students of
posting intimate details of their lives on the World Wide
Web. Students' profiles and photos, for instance, can be
accessed by everyone from prospective employers to stalkers.
The consequences of online social networking were recently
explored at a UC Berkeley symposium attended by some 100
student advisers and counselors from UC Berkeley and another
50 from other Northern California colleges and
universities.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/03/28_network.shtml

BLAMING THE IPOD (LA TIMES)
An LA Times article, "The iPod Took My Seat," suggested
that absenteeism is rising because instructors are
increasingly posting audio and video versions of their
lectures online. The article highlighted UC Berkeley's
Americ Azevedo, who makes extensive use of podcasts and
webcasts in his Introduction to Computers course, and who
has seen a "demoralizing" increase in students skipping
class. To encourage attendance, some instructors are putting
only limited lecture content on their course web sites.
Azevedo, as an interim measure, started giving students
extra credit for attending class, but, he says, his long
term goal is to "enliven his lectures with material and
interaction that students can't get on the audio or video
'coursecasts'."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-noshow17jan17,1,4599046.story?
coll=la-headlines-california

UCTV AVAILABLE ON GOOGLE VIDEO (UCOP)
UCTV has made more than 1,000 hours of programming available
to be downloaded and viewed for free on the Google Video
service (http://video.google.com). UCTV brings to Google
Video its largest collection of educational video content,
with UCTV programs from the 10-campus University of
California system in subjects such as public affairs,
science, health and medicine, humanities, and the arts. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2006/feb22.html

NOTE: Recently email systems on some campuses have not been
delivering the HTML version of the TLtC News by Email.
Therefore, we will be publishing the message in plain-text until
further notice.

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MORE NEWS & EVENTS can be found at:
http://www.uctltc.org/news/index.html

TELL THE TLtC about educational technology news on your campus or
suggest topics for future stories. Email: tltc@ucop.edu.

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