Earlier this fall, New Brunswick Computing Services opened up "The Alcove" in Records Hall on College Avenue.
The Alcove is a computing lab designed for group work. Computers are arranged around seminar tables with multiple monitors, projectors, an digital whiteboard, and software that allows collaboration. Video conferencing equipment is also available.
Faculty who wish to reserve the room for course meetings can use the online reservation form.
Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Harvard, recently gave the keynote address at the Educause conference. His talk on copyright law and its potentially stifling effect when applied in education, science and culture in the digital age is available online. We highly recommend watching:
Lawrence Lessig, Educause - "It's About Time - Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right"
You may need the Microsoft Silverlight software to view the presentation.
In addition to the content of Professor Lessig's talk, his use of powerpoint slides is an interesting example of how to use a slide presentation to accentuate your talk instead of distracting from it.
During his talk, Professor Lessig mentions the Creative Commons and some efforts to extend this alternative to copyright to the areas of scientific research and educational materials. Here are some of the relevant web sites:
Creative Commons
ccLearn
OpenEd
DiscoverEd Search
Science Commons
The newest, hippest thing to hit the internet is Google Wave. It may become the next big thing to use in the web-enabled classroom. It's hard to say for sure - you need to be "invited" to get a wave account, and then you have to figure out what it does.
At first glance, Wave looks like just another form of email. But when you start to use it, it starts to feel more like a web discussion forum, and a little like instant messaging, and kind of like a wiki too. It really takes elements of all of those tools and combines them into something that is different from them all.
What problems does Google Wave Solve
may help in deciphering what wave is all about. It points out the flaws in existing technologies, and how Wave attempts to merge different solutions to address those problems. While that addresses business use, it's easy to see how this can transfer into the classroom.
We are just starting to toy around with Wave here at CTAAR. Let us know if you have an account and want to share or just see what we are doing.
