Resource of the Week - Eternal Egypt

Eternal Egypt is a resource for learning about Egyptian history, art, people, places, mythology, and religions. An interactive map and timeline guides visitors through Egypt's cultural heritage and a 'context navigator' allows users to understand complex relationships between objects, places and personalities. Information is presented with text, images, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, and three-dimensional models.

Eternal Egypt would serve as a great companion to middle, high school, and college courses or units about Egypt.

Be sure to check out the eLIS Digital Resources Collection for more resources like this.

Faculty Spotlight: Amy Rutstein-Riley

Collaborative Blogging
Sociology of the Family, Spring 2009

Introduction

In response to students who did not have time to meet in person, Amy decided to move her undergraduate group project online to provide more flexibility. She developed the class blog, The Changing Nature of the American Family, as a way for students to participate in collaborative research, develop leadership skills and engage in a dialogue with their peers.

Throughout the semester, students worked in teams to compose blog entries around various topics, utilizing text, images, and video from the web. By creating a week long discussion maintained by the students themselves, students were required to take more authority over the group work and facilitate an ongoing dialogue with classmates with minimal encouragement from Amy.

Timeline

At the beginning of the Spring 2009 semester, Amy sat with an Instructional Designer for a one-hour consultation on setting up a blog and structuring the assignment.

Equipment

• Blogger (free)

Process

Students were divided into assigned teams and chose a theme related to the topic of the Changing American Family. Students then worked together to collect resources and write a concise blog entry around their theme. Each team was responsible for maintaining the blog for a specific week, by writing blog entries, posing questions to guide discussion, and posting a summary. Classmates were asked to post comments and questions in response to the blog posts.

Outcome

By the end of the semester, students had built a collection of posts on various topics of interest, including gender & family, aging & healthcare, adoption, war, media influences, and other current topics in family sociology. Students posted links to articles, short video clips, images, graphs and charts to enhance their well-researched blog entries. Students reported that they found it to be an interesting and engaging exercise. You can view the blog at http://sociologyofthefamily.blogspot.com.

Amy's Next Steps...

In the coming semester Amy will continue to use this blog as a tool for student research and collaboration. She will develop the blog as a part of the classroom that is primarily student led. While she will monitor it and facilitate questions, the blog is created with their voices, their work and their thoughts. Since some students required more technology instruction, she will spend more time at the beginning of the semester showing them how it works.

You Can Blog Too!

• A self-paced Blogging Tutorial is available in the eLearning & Faculty Resources Community in myLesley. Contact eLIS@lesley.edu if you are not yet a member!
• Contact eLIS@lesley.edu for a special one-on-one training session.

Resource of the Week - All About Explorers

All About Explorers was designed by teachers as a way to teach students how to navigate the Internet and conduct research. The site provides detailed lesson plans designed to teach students how to find useful information and recognize inconsistencies.

The introductory lesson takes students on an Internet Treasure Hunt, where they look at two sites to find out about an explorer and answer questions. One set of information is factual while the other contains a mixture of facts and misinformation. Students learn that just because information is available, it is not always factual. Additional lessons teach students how to find factual information, use search engines, and determine the quality of a site.

For more sites like this, please be sure to check out the eLIS Digital Resources Collection.

Faculty Spotlight: Susan McFarland

Delivering Content Through Narrated PowerPoint Presentations
The Art and Science of Leadership, Spring 2009

Introduction
In the design of her first fully online course, Susan McFarland decided to incorporate narrated PowerPoint presentations in order to engage her students more wholeheartedly and appeal to the visual and auditory learners in her course.

Timeline
In the Fall of 2008, Susan enrolled in the Online Course Development Seminar as a starting point for developing her online course for the Undergraduate Management Program. During that time she sat down with a technologically savvy friend who walked her through the process of recording narration in PowerPoint. She described the process as a "simple technological venture."

Equipment

• PowerPoint (standard on most computers)
• Headset ($20-$30)

Process
Susan recorded her own narrations, illuminating the written material on the slides without being too verbose or losing her audience. She prepared notes and then recorded without a script as she wanted to sound as if she were in the classroom. Susan used her laptop with a built in microphone and PowerPoint 2007 to record eight 15-20 minute presentations. She then uploaded the presentations directly into myLesley with assistance from an Instructional Designer.

Outcome
The addition of narration allowed Susan to use PowerPoint in a manner similar to how she would use it in a face-to-face class - to explain concepts, provide examples and make connections. “I think the PowerPoint slides more fully captured my purpose to convey concepts for each week, highlighting the most important ideas from the readings and assignments. Otherwise the slides just seem like lists of ideas, not that useful in enhancing understanding. Students commented that they really enjoyed the narrated slides.”

Susan's Next Steps...
Susan plans on continuing to develop her presentations by adding more graphics and photos for visual enhancement. She will also continue to narrate the slides to add more interest to the presentation. She considers the project a work in progress, which she will continue to build upon based on student feedback and her own experience.

You Can Narrate PowerPoint Too!

• Keep an eye out for our PowerPoint Workshops: http://www.lesley.edu/elis/programs.html
• Review the documentation provided by Microsoft: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/CH063500681033.aspx
• Contact elis@lesley.edu for a special one-on-one training session