Archive Category: Announcements

Announcements:
Please subscribe to our new RSS feed

If you are seeing this message, it means that you are receiving our old RSS feed.

Please re-direct your reader to the new feed at feed://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/rss/recent_posts.xml.

Thank you!

Announcements:
Fall Premiere Launches New Services

August 8, 2007. Emerging technologies, particularly in the areas of user-created content and social networking, are influencing pedagogy and learning around the world and on the Columbia University campus. Join your fellow faculty and instructors at the Fall Premiere to learn how these developments can enhance your curriculum and actively engage your students in learning, writing, and research this fall. This hour-long event will demonstrate the use of wikis, podcasts, iTunesU, CourseWorks, and other Web 2.0 services.

Date: Tuesday, September 4th, 2007
Time: 11:00 am-12:00 pm
Location: 203 Butler Library

Announcements:
Video from Open Content Conference Available

August 6, 2007. Video and audio recordings of the Video, Education, and Open Content meeting held at Columbia University this spring are now available on the site. Podcast versions are also available.

: Video, Education, & Open Content: Best Practices

Announcements:
Fall Workshops and Events

July 28, 2007. Attend our newly designed workshops for faculty during the weeks of August 27th and September 4th: Discovering Collaboration Tools, Using Digital Resources for Teaching, CourseWorks I & II, and much more. There are more than 20 dates and times to choose from and all sessions are 45 minutes long. See workshop descriptions and register online for the workshops below.
CourseWorks I: An Introduction
Monday, August 27, 2007: 11am - 11:45am
Tuesday, August 28, 2007: 11am - 11:45am
Thursday, August 30, 2007: 11am - 11:45am
Tuesday, September 4, 2007: 2pm - 2:45pm
Thursday, September 6, 2007: 11am - 11:45am
Friday, September 7, 2007: 1pm - 1:45pm

CourseWorks II: More Features
Tuesday, August 28, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm
Thursday, August 30, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm
Wednesday, September 5, 2007: 11am - 11:45am
Wednesday, September 5, 2007: 2pm - 2:45pm
Friday, September 7, 2007: 2pm - 2:45pm

Using Digital Resources for Teaching: An Overview
Monday, August 27, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm
Tuesday, September 4, 2007: 3pm - 3:45pm

Discovering Collaboration Tools
Wednesday, August 29, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm
Wednesday, September 5, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm
Monday, September 10, 2007: 11am - 11:45am

Teaching with Audio and Video
Wednesday, August 29, 2007: 2pm - 2:45pm
Monday, September 10, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm

Teaching with Digital Text and Image
Thursday, August 30, 2007: 2pm - 2:45pm
Thursday, September 6, 2007: 12:15pm - 1pm

See workshop descriptions and register online or contact us at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu to register for a session or for more information

In The News:
Global Health Research Center in Central Asia Opens

July 31, 2007. The Columbia homepage featured an article on the new Global Health Research Center in Central Asia, a partnership of the Columbia University School of Social Work's Social Intervention Group, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. Based in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this is the first research center on global health established by a university in Central Asia, serving Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. It will develop effective solutions to pressing health problems and help reduce health disparities in Central Asia, which is experiencing one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the world.

View full article.

Announcements:
Press Release: NIMH Grant for Multimedia Connect

July 30, 2007. The Columbia University School of Social Work’s Social Intervention Group (SIG) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and
Learning (CCNMTL) announced the receipt of a $3.5 million,
five-year research grant award from the National Institute of
Mental Health (NIMH). The goal of the collaborative project is to
evaluate the outcomes of using multimedia and Web-based technology
to disseminate an HIV prevention program.

View full press release (PDF)

Announcements:
Summer CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

June 27, 2007. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. These one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features. All sessions meet in the PC Classroom on the second floor of the Hammer Health Sciences Library.

Introduction to CourseWorks

Learn the basics of course Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Monday, July 9, 2007: 12pm - 1pm
Monday, July 16, 2007: 4pm - 5pm

CourseWorks+

Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks.

This workshop covers the discussion board and test/quiz features of Courseworks.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007: 12pm - 1pm
Wednesday, July 18, 2007: 4pm - 5pm

Announcements:
Summer Session II CourseWorks Workshops

June 18, 2007. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. The one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features, including the Discussion Board and the best ways to incorporate multimedia resources for the classroom.

The following workshops will be held in 204 Butler Library.

Summer Session II Workshops:
---------------------------------
Introduction to CourseWorks
Thursday, June 28, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Monday, July 2, 2007: 10:30am - 11:30am
Monday, July 2, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Discussion Board
Monday, July 2, 2007: 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Media in the Classroom
Thursday, June 28, 2007: 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Register online or contact us at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu to register for a session or for more information.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Videos Vital in Texas

June 15,2007. More than 2,000 elementary mathematics educators in Texas will be trained using videos produced by the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) as part of a project to improve the mathematics preparation of teachers nationwide. In May 2007, Math Teks - a partnership among Wireless Generation, Texas A&M University, and Columbia University- held workshops for 100 staff developers representing all 20 Texas Regional Service Centers and more than 20 Texas school districts. This group of 100 is expected to train an additional 20 educators each using the same approach.

The CCNMTL project, Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL), is an interactive learning environment for courses in early childhood mathematics education developed in collaboration with Herbert P. Ginsburg, Jacob H. Schiff Foundations Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College. With the support of a $2.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, VITAL will serve as a platform to disseminate curriculum for teachers, video demonstrations of children engaged in mathematical activities, and activities that make use of tools for analyzing and writing about video.

“We are delighted that VITAL is already making a national impact on teacher professional development. The interest of the Texas State Education Authority is an early indication of the significance of this project,” added CCNMTL executive director Frank A. Moretti.

CCNMTL staff taped more than 100 hours of video at pre-kindergarten and elementary classrooms across New York City and in New Jersey. The videos show children at play, children talking about mathematics with researchers, and teachers leading classroom lessons. The videos are organized according to content areas derived from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, which track the developmental progression of children. The modules created by Wireless Generation and its university partners will train educators in identifying the mathematical development of children and appropriate pedagogical strategies, guiding student understanding, and developing assessment strategies to inform instruction.

Read more about VITAL

Read more about the Texas A&M University professional development modules.

Announcements:
Press Release: CCNMTL Hosts Open Content Meeting

June 7, 2007. CCNMTL hosted a two-day invitational symposium on May 22-23, gathering an international audience of leaders in the education, industry, and archival communities to build upon the work that CCNMTL and Intelligent Television have been conducting in the area of educational video, open productions, and commercial/non-commercial collaborations. Participants discussed new approaches -– economic, legal, and editorial -– to the creation and distribution of important new resources for open education and explored how video and open education can work together for the public good amidst rising concerns of copyright and fair use violations.

View full press release (PDF)

View Video, Education, and Open Content web site

Announcements:
University Seminar: Harlem Digital Archive

April 26, 2007. The Harlem Digital Archive will highlight the potential of Harlem resources at Columbia to support various scholarly projects both inside and outside the classroom. The project will strengthen funding efforts to support the development and production of audiovisual curricula with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and others. The project also will facilitate the development and production of nationally and internationally distributed media projects—including public broadcasting documentaries on the subject of Harlem.

Join CCNMTL for a discussion on how this online archive plans to draw on digital resources here at Columbia and elsewhere that illuminate Harlem's rich artistic, social, and political history, activating new forms of engagements with these materials in learning environments.

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Date: Thursday, April 26, 4pm
Location: 203 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058

Announcements:
CourseWorks Adds Wimba Voice Boards

March 27, 2007. This semester, faculty and students in dozens of foreign language courses are using Horizon Wimba, a new voice tool that works seamlessly within the CourseWorks course management system.

Wimba’s “voice boards” allow students and instructors to hold audio- and text-based conversations within CourseWorks. Wimba extends classroom instruction by providing more opportunities for students to listen and respond to spoken language and to practice their own pronunciation and speaking fluency in the target language.

For questions on implementing Wimba in a language course, contact voiceboards@columbia.edu or Bill Koulopoulos at the Language Resource Center (vk169@columbia.edu).

Announcements:
Chief Judge Kaye Supports Collateral Consequences Site

March 20, 2007. Judith S. Kaye, Chief Judge of the State of New York, recognized the Collateral Consequences Calculator as a “fabulous online resource” and a "groundbreaking initiative" in her 2007 annual address, “The State of the Judiciary.” Produced in collaboration with Professor Conrad Johnson’s Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic at the Columbia Law School, the Collateral Consequences Calculator allows one to compare the collateral consequences of New York State criminal charges across of variety of doctrinal areas. It will serve multiple communities in a variety of ways: faculty can build case studies around it, lawyers can use it to help them better counsel their clients, judges can use it to help assure appropriate sentencing, and public policy researchers can use it as a lens to examine the matrix of the New York State legal system.

Announcements:
E-Portfolios in Dental Schools

March 19, 2007. CCNMTL presented the Personal Lifelong Learning Project (PL3P) at the 84th annual session of the American Dental Education Association in New Orleans. These e-portolios have been used by residents in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Residency Program at the Columbia School of Dental and Oral Surgery to document student work and program outcomes, promote collaboration and community, and manage administrative tasks.

PL3P was built on the open-source Plone platform, and customized to include forms for learning plans and Best Evidence Topics (BETs). CCNMTL published the PL3P software as a free download for other dental programs interested in adopting the e-portfolio methodology at the conference.

Personalized Lifelong Learning Projects

Announcements:
University Seminar: Toward a Democratic Digital Past

March 5, 2007. On March 15, please join CCNMTL and Roy Rosenzweig of George Mason University for a discussion on digital history projects in the next University Seminar for New Media Teaching and Learning. Rosenzweig is Mark and Barbara Fried Professor of History & New Media at George Mason University, where he also heads the Center for History and New Media (CHNM). Since 1994, CHNM has used digital media and computer technology to democratize history—to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past. The CHNM sponsors more than two dozen digital history projects and offers free tools and resources to historians. Rosenzweig is the author, most recently, with co-author Daniel Cohen, of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web.

Rosenzweig will reflect on some of the work of the Center for History and New Media as the basis for talking about the possibilities and problems of achieving a democratic digital past.

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Date: Thursday, March 15th, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058
Register online

Announcements:
Decision-Making Tools for CRED

February 8, 2007. CCNMTL has partnered with the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) to build online tools that will both enhance the group's research on human decision making and demonstrate these concepts to students in "Psychology: Thinking and Decision Making," taught by Professor Elke Weber.

Students in the course used a pilot of the CRED Decision-Making Tool to focus on glacial retreat on Mount Kilimanjaro. The tool provided two modules: an analytic presentation of information about glacial retreat on Mount Kilimanjaro as well as an experiential presentation of the same material. Students were randomly assigned to work through specific modules, and then asked to participate in a survey that measured how well they retained the material they studied, as well as any related behavioral intentions and attitudes they may have formed.

According to the course instructors, the online tool demonstrated experiential and analytical processing more effectively than conventional classroom methods. They reported that students not only learned about global warming, but also about the psychology of decision making.

View demo of CRED Decision-Making Tools

Announcements:
New Site: Podcasting at Columbia

January 24, 2007. The new Podcasting at Columbia site provides a list of audio and video podcasts that are available for courses and events at Columbia University. The site also serves as a resource, featuring a growing library of articles examining technical and pedagogical aspects of podcasting as well as how-to's and product reviews.

Podcasting at Columbia

Announcements:
University Seminar: The Triangle Initiative, Feb. 8

January 23, 2007. CCNMTL's Triangle Initiative represents a new way for the University's three major goals -- research, education and active community engagement -- to work in synchrony, so that research informs and extends into the classroom and beyond. Projects within the Triangle Initiative leverage applied research to create effective educational tools and accessible multimedia elements that serve the classroom as well as the health and service needs of the larger community.

This seminar will discuss the first two established Triangle projects in the CCNMTL portfolio, Multimedia Connect and Collateral Consequences of Criminal Prosecution.

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Date: Thursday, February 8th, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058
Register online

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

December 15, 2006. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. These one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features. All sessions meet in the PC Classroom on the second floor of the Hammer Health Sciences Library.

CourseWorks Basic Workshop

Learn the basics of course Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007: 12pm - 1pm

CourseWorks Advanced Workshop

Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks.

Learn advanced Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers more advanced topics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007: 12pm - 1pm

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside

December 12, 2006. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. The one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features, including the Discussion Board and the best ways to incorporate multimedia resources for the classroom.

The following workshops will be held in 204 Butler Library.

Spring Workshops:
---------------------------------
Introduction to CourseWorks
Thursday, January 11, 2007: 10:30am - 11:30am
Thursday, January 11, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Friday, January 12, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Tuesday, January 16, 2007: 10:30am - 11:30am
Tuesday, January 16, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Tuesday, January 16, 2007: 3:30pm - 4:30pm
Wednesday, January 17, 2007: 10:30am - 11:30am
Wednesday, January 17, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Thursday, January 18, 2007: 12:30pm - 1:30pm

Discussion Boards
Thursday, January 11, 2007: 3:30pm - 4:30pm
Wednesday, January 17, 2007: 3:30pm - 4:30pm

Media in the Classroom
Friday, January 12, 2007: 10:30 - 11:30am
Thursday, January 18, 2007: 10:30am - 11:30am

Register online or contact us at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu to register for a session or for more information.

CourseWorks for Language Instructors
In addition, the following workshops will be held at the Language Resource Center in the International Affairs Building:

Friday, January 19, 2007: 2:00pm-4:00pm
Friday January 26, 2007: 2:00pm-4:00pm

For more information on CourseWorks workshops for language departments, contact vk169@columbia.edu.

Announcements:
Havel at Columbia Podcasts Featured on iTunes

December 8, 2006. The iTunes Store Podcast Directory featured the Havel at Columbia podcasts as one of its "New and Notable" educational podcasts. The podcasts document the many lectures, panels, and presentations that took place during the fall semester during Václav Havel's residency at Columbia University. The audio and video podcasts are available to anyone who visits the iTunes site.

Announcements:
University Seminar: Siva Vaidhyanathan

December 6, 2006. Siva Vaidhyanathan, associate professor of Culture and Communication at New York University, will lead the University Seminar on New Media Teaching and Learning on December 14, 2006. Dr. Vaidhyanathan's research on intellectual property and the ways it shapes contemporary culture has resulted in two widely noted books: Copyrights and Copywrongs (2001), and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004).

In this and other writing, Dr. Vaidhyanathan has promoted a "hacker ethic" that "rests on openness, peer review, individual autonomy, and communal responsibility." In the seminar, he will discuss the implications of Google's Book Search service on reading, writing and research.

Date: Thursday, December 14, 2006, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058
Register online

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Siva Vaidhyanathan's blog

Announcements:
Five Years of CourseWorks at Columbia

December 5, 2006. This winter marks the fifth anniversary of CourseWorks at Columbia. When the course management system was first introduced in Spring 2002, it was used in about 640 courses. During the Fall 2006 semester, it has been used by more than 2,700 courses throughout Columbia University by more than 25,000 faculty, staff, and students. Over the years, CourseWorks has evolved to meet the growing needs of the University including a photo roster feature for instructors; an improved discussion board interface; a quiz and poll option; and guest access for Columbia-affiliated users with a valid UNI. These evolutionary changes will continue while we research a more comprehensive replacement that will incorporate many of the recent innovations in educational and colaborative tools while maintaining a solid course management infrastructure.

CourseWorks is offered by CUIT and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning in close coordination with the Libraries and Columbia University Biomedical and Health Information Services. For more information on how to take advantage of the many features offered by CourseWorks, please browse the documentation or attend one of the workshops that will be offered in the upcoming spring semester.

View CUIT news

Announcements:
Press Release: Havel at Columbia Site Released

October 26, 2006. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, in partnership with the Columbia University Arts Initiative, has released the Havel at Columbia site, a resource to support former Czech President Václav Havel's seven-week residency on campus. While he is on campus, the University community will pay tribute to his life and ideas with a number of lectures, symposia, screenings, and panel discussions.

The Havel at Columbia site contains a wide range of teaching and learning materials for classroom study of Havel's life and art, and will continue to grow throughout the semester as events and materials are added. The multimedia resource features video interviews with scholars, artists, and political figures contributing their insights on Václav Havel's legacy as an artist and political leader, including Dean Lisa Anderson from the School of International and Public Affairs, former President George H. W. Bush, Edward Albee, Milos Forman, Lou Reed, and George Soros. A timeline of events, an image glossary with photographs and primary documents, and archival footage from television and films provide historical context for the Velvet Revolution and Havel's presidency, making the site a rich educational resource both during and beyond his campus residency. The site will eventually feature video recordings of the many lectures, performances, and presentations that will take place through December. These will be available to view online and downloadable as podcasts.

View full press release (PDF)

Havel at Columbia

Announcements:
University Seminar: The Evolution of Video in Education

October 23, 2006. Join CCNMTL for a demonstration of Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL) and a panel discussion on how the use of video has involved in educational practice. CCNMTL educational technologists will provide an overview of how the application is being used in a wide range of courses and discpline across Columbia University, from the School of Social Work to the School of the Arts.

Date: Thursday, November 2, 2006, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Phone: (212) 854-9058
Register online

University Seminar in New Media Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
University Seminar: Yochai Benkler

October 5, 2006. Yochai Benkler, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, will lead a discussion of commons-based peer production, intellectual property in a networked environment, and the effect of open collaboration on educational discourse. Benkler's recently published book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" (Yale University Press, 2006), argues that new models of collaboration, enabled by technological innovation, are dramatically reshaping culture and economic relations, and in turn, human freedom and development. Exemplifying Benkler's interest in communal production, this work is available in its entirety online, and is the basis of a wiki that invites collaborative development of its themes.

Long a champion of unfettered exchange in networked environments, Benkler will describe new opportunities for educators as technology enables large-scale sharing of previously compartmentalized resources.

Date: Thursday, October 5, 2006, 4pm
Location: 523 Butler Library
Register online

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
New VITAL Released to Columbia and Hunter College

September 20, 2006. This fall, more than 300 students at Columbia University and Hunter College will use VITAL 3.0, the newest release of Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning, an interactive video learning environment created by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

In 2004, the National Science Foundation awarded CCNMTL a $2.5 million grant to support the development of "Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL): A Learning Environment for Courses in Early Childhood Mathematics Education" over five years. Led by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Professor Herbert Ginsburg at Teachers College, the project will develop and distribute model courses and a Web-based resource to enhance undergraduate- and graduate-level mathematics education programs across the country. CCNMTL has also partnered with the Hunter College School of Education, where a great number of teachers in the New York public school system are trained in early childhood education.

Now more than two years into the grant period, CCNMTL has conducted extensive design research, gathering evaluations from faculty and student users to redesign and re-engineer the application for improved usability and to provide a more robust environment in which students watch videos and compose multimedia essays.

NSF funding has also enabled the project partners to videotape hundreds of new clips of young children engaged in mathematical activities, which are essential to the VITAL mathematics education curriculum. Faculty can adapt the model course according to their needs, whether they are teaching the full curriculum or a discrete modules to graduate or undergraduate students. During the remainder of the five-year grant period, the project partners will test VITAL and the new courses at universities around the country and conduct an evaluation of student learning outcomes.

This semester's VITAL 3.0 release is a limited test run of the new application, which is slated to be rolled out in a wider release in spring 2007. An earlier version is currently used in courses across several disciplines at Columbia University, including clinical social work, foreign languages, and film studies.

VITAL: Early Childhood Mathematics

Announcements:
NSF Grant to Enhance Brownfield Action

September 18, 2006. The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant of $450,000 to support the development and expansion of the award-winning environmental simulation Brownfield Action. The NSF-funded proposal, "Brownfield Action: Expansion and Evaluation of a Proven Inquiry-Based Approach to Teaching and Learning Environmental Science," is led by principal investigators Peter Bower, senior lecturer in the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College and Frank Moretti, CCNMTL executive director. The grant will be used to update the simulation and to evaluate its effectiveness as it is deployed at partner institutions New York University, Connecticut College, Lafayette College, and Georgia State University.

In Brownfield Action, students play the role of environmental scientists charged with probing terrain suspected of being contaminated. The application simulates an actual field investigation, including interviews with local citizens and imposes budgetary constraints on the "scientists" as they collect and analyze data using tools to probe the ground, each with its own cost. Brownfield Action was named one of the Association of American Colleges and Universities' four Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities models in 2003.

Announcements:
Havel at Columbia site released

September 15, 2006. At the invitation of President Bollinger, Václav Havel will spend seven weeks during the fall 2006 semester at Columbia University, participating in lectures, interviews, conversations, classes, performances, and panels centered on his life and ideas. To accompany his residency, the CU Arts Initiative and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning present Havel at Columbia. This multimedia resource features video interviews with a range of scholars and friends of Václav Havel, including Lisa Anderson, George Soros, Brad Abrams, and Chris Harwood, who contribute their insights into his legacy as an artist and political leader. The site also contains a wide range of material about Havel's life and art, including a timeline of events, image glossary, and archival films that can be used in the classroom during and beyond his campus residency.

Havel at Columbia

Announcements:
Virtual Techniques in Dentistry (VirTechs) Released

September 12, 2006. Faculty from the College of Dental Medicine have collaborated with CCNMTL to update Virtual Techniques in Dentistry (VirTechs). The Web site serves as a multimedia laboratory procedure manual, providing students with immediate access to a collection of videos of dental procedures from Dental Anatomy and Occlusion, Pediatrics, and Endodontics. Students have the option of viewing each procedure with captions or without, and to navigate the videos by using bookmarks that indicate discrete steps within each procedure. The site emphasizes functionality and easy access to the videos, which can be viewed online or downloaded to a computer. Additionally, the procedures are available as enhanced video podcasts for use with video iPods. Each module includes PDFs of the transcript and full-color armamentarium descriptions.

VirTechs

Announcements:
Press Release: Spring Grants for CCNMTL and Partners

August 30, 2006. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) has secured or helped secure substantial grant funding this past spring. Most of the funding will support the deployment of innovative technologies for course work and the development of pedagogical strategies that encourage students to engage fully with course material in disciplines that span the humanities, sciences, and social sciences, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. A new facet to some of these grant-funded projects is a community service-oriented component, part of CCNMTL's new Triangle Initiative that seeks to extend the benefits of University research into the classroom and to the community beyond Columbia.

View press release (PDF)

Announcements:
CCNMTL Hosts Big Apple Plone Sprint

June 29, 2006. From July 5-7, 2006, CCNMTL will host the Big Apple Plone Sprint. Plone is an open source content management system that the Center has used to deliver a number of projects. At a software sprint, a number of developers from various companies or institutions gather to work on programming challenges in a concentrated effort. This sprint will focus on additions to Plone that can make an impact in educational technology, including RSS, podcasting, annotations, tagging, and blogging.

Big Apple Sprint 2006

Announcements:
College of Dental Medicine Faculty Discuss CCNMTL Tools

June 6, 2006. The annual College of Dental Medicine (CDM) retreat, held on Saturday, June 2nd, featured workshops designed by CCNMTL highlighting current and potential uses of technology to help the faculty teach more effectively. In a series of group sessions, CCNMTL staff moderated discussions on topics including:

Teaching Clinical Techniques - Video Technologies, VirTechs, VITAL
Case-Based Learning - Case Building Tool, Image Annotation Tool, Image Database
Large Lecture Classes - Podcasting, Presentation Software, CourseWorks Best Practices
Portfolios - Supporting Life-Long Learning, Assessment and Communities of Learning

The goal of the workshops was to expose CDM faculty to technologies, some already in use by the school, that can enhance teaching and learning as well as to gauge their particular needs as a group. The sessions led to interesting and motivating discussions within the faculty.

Other schools and departments interested in similar workshops should email their CCNMTL contact or send email to ccnmtl@columbia.edu.

Announcements:
CCNMTL's International Journeys

June 2, 2006. Frank Moretti and Maurice Matiz travelled to the University of Glasgow from May 10-16 as part of a Columbia University contingent fostering greater collaboration between the two institutions. They presented the Center's work and methodology to many of the university's schools and departments, including medical and dental, veterinary, business, and education faculty, as well as to the new media group and the university's senior administration.

Meanwhile, Educational Technologist Jonathan Hall was invited to consult on the use of IT at the new King's Academy, a progressive, co-educational boarding high school in Jordan. From May 6-15, he visited the new campus, modeled on Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, to meet with numerous leaders in the Jordanian education and IT sectors, including Minister of Education Dr. Khaled Toukan and His Majesty King Abdullah II. The school, which will open in September 2007, is intended to be a leading institution internationally in the innovative use of technologies in educational, social, and operational life.

Announcements:
Film Language Glossary Evaluation Now Available

June 1, 2006. The Film Language Glossary 2005 evaluation report is now available on CCNMTL's Project Evaluations page.

The evaluation describes the context in which the Film Language Glossary was produced and implemented in Professor Richard Peña's Fall 2005 graduate course "Introduction to Film Studies." The document covers the design and deployment of the Glossary in Peña's class; an overview of the findings derived from this evaluation; and, finally, recommendations for future implementations of the Glossary in the classroom.

Film Language Glossary Evaluation

Announcements:
CDC Grant for School of Social Work's HIV Intervention

May 11, 2006. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded the School of Social Work a two-year grant of $400,000 for the dissemination of an HIV intervention model developed by the Social Interventions Group. Led by Professor Susan Witte, Project Connect is the first relationship-based HIV/STI prevention intervention for couples to be developed and tested in efficacy trials. CCNMTL will receive $271,000 of the grant to help develop technology and media for Multimedia Connect.

Announcements:
Released: ePrep | Emergency Preparedness Training

April 28, 2006. The School of Nursing and the New York Presbyterian Healthcare System have released the ePrep project, a six-module series for hospital and community-based clinicians focusing on the command and management aspects of Emergency Preparedness. This project is part of a national effort to increase and improve emergency preparedness in hospitals throughout the United States.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has supported this effort in recognition of the critical need to provide health care professionals across disciplines with skills that strengthen their ability to respond to public health emergencies (whether natural or manmade) within the larger context of city, state, and national emergency response plans and protocols.

CCNMTL worked with an advisory board from the Bioterrorism Curriculum Development Project and the New York-Presbyterian Healthcare System Preparedness Council to develop the modules: The Basics (of emergency preparedness), Biological Incidents, Chemical Incidents, Explosive Incidents, Radiological Incidents, and Incidents Affecting Children. Each module begins with a realistic scenario and continually engages users with cases, Q&A, reflective moments, and thought provoking questions. Users can elect to take each of the the modules for Continuing Education credit.

ePrep | Emergency Preparedness Training

Announcements:
Rebalancing Copyright Conference Podcasts Released

April 12, 2006. Audio and video podcasts from the Correcting Course: Rebalancing Copyright conference are now available. Held in May 2005, the conference attempted to promote a renewed activism in support of fair use and the full complement of copyright exceptions and limitations which enable libraries to serve their communities. Click on the links below to download the podcasts.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Projects Included in World Leaders Forum

March 22, 2006. The World Leaders Forum site features several CCNMTL projects as University-produced resources to supplement the Seen From Abroad film series that is taking place on campus this week. The three-day event features four full-length foreign films and a panel discussion between major international film critics moderated by David Denby, film critic for the New Yorker. The site features four CCNMTL projects: the Film Language Glossary, Kaleidoscope, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children Multimedia Study Environment, and Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste Multimedia Study Environment were selected for their relevance to the international films.

Announcements:
African-American Poets Wiki Launched

March 21, 2006. This spring, the African-American Poets: Brooks and Hughes wiki has been deployed in Professor Farah Griffin's undergraduate course, "African American Literature," which explores the development of black writing in the United States since the Harlem Renaissance.

Within the collaborative Web site, students are asked to conduct both a textual and extra-textual analysis of poems by Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks by selecting key sections, phrases and words of the works to annotate as well as authoring and categorizing relevant discourse, such as the cultural context, social significance and relationship of the texts to other literary movements. At the conclusion of the semester, CCNMTL will evaluate how the design and deployment of the wiki supported Professor Griffin's curricular goals.

Announcements:
Open CourseWare Presented

March 3, 2006. On February 23, John Dehlin, Director of Outreach for the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL) based at Utah State University, joined CCNMTL for a presentation on the OpenCourseWare movement in which he described eduCommons, software that is available to assist Universities interested in hosting open courses.

Mr. Dehlin provided an overview of the OpenCourseWare project, which was inaugurated in 1999 when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began making their university course materials available for free on the Internet. Today, the materials for over 1200 courses can be found on http://ocw.mit.edu. Many other universities, including Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Tufts, Michigan, Utah State, Notre Dame, and several Japanese universities are now creating OpenCourseWare sites as well. These sites are providing tangible benefit to the participating universities, departments and faculty - not to mention learners all over the world.

Mr. Dehlin also discussed the OpenCourseWare Consortium, recently formed to provide support, awareness, and membership affiliation to all institutions who are interested in joining the OpenCourseWare movement.

The session was attended by staff from the Libraries, CUIT, Teachers College and CCNMTL, as well as students interested in the movement.

The Center for Open and Sustainable Learning

Announcements:
Carnegie Mellon Scientists Present at University Seminar

February 7, 2006. Scientists from Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Howard Wactlar, Michael Christel and Scott Stevens, demonstrated and discussed the educational application of two innovative video technologies, Informedia and CareMedia, at this month's University Seminar in New Media Teaching & Learning.

University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
School of Social Work Maps Social Support Networks

February 6, 2006. School of Social Work Professor Susan Witte introduced an interactive version of the Social Support Network Map in her "Advanced Clinical Practice: Contemporary Social Problems" course. The Flash-based tool, developed by CCNMTL, allowed student pairs to easily and interactively create support maps for clients after having learned about the use of these maps in clinical practice. In a post course survey, students unanimously felt that the mapping tool helped them gain a better understanding of the clinical technique.

Announcements:
SimCity Incorporated into Art History Course

February 6, 2006. Last fall, Professor Hilary Ballon used the popular game SimCity in her "The American City: Urban Forms and Social Patterns" course to create realistic scenarios faced by urban designers. Working in groups, students developed strategies to deal with population growth, transportation and traffic, cultural and religious education, zoning, and infrastructure. One student reported, "Many of the challenges facing urban designers, like the difficulties in creating a comprehensive city-wide water system, which had seemed trivial in class, became all important when it came to enticing residents to the city. We saw the effect that different street grids had on growth and evaluated the boon that public transportation gave to neighborhoods."

Announcements:
New Media in Education 2006 Conference

January 27, 2006. The New Media in Education 2006: A Progress Report conference was held today with over 200 attendees treated to inspiring faculty panels and informative workshops. Participants represented numerous University departments and included a contingent from nearby colleges and universities. Video of the sessions will be released at the conference Web site soon.

NME2006 Conference Web Site

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

January 5, 2006. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. These one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features. All sessions meet in the PC Classroom on the second floor of the Hammer Health Sciences Library.

CourseWorks Basic Workshop
Learn the basics of course Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006: 11am - 12pm
Wednesday, January 25, 2006: 1pm - 2pm

CourseWorks Advanced Workshop
Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks.
Learn advanced Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Friday, January 20, 2006: 10am - 11am
Friday, January 27, 2006: 11am - 12pm

Announcements:
2005 Client Survey Report Released

January 5, 2006. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching & Learning (CCNMTL) has released its Fall 2005 client survey report. CCNMTL conducted 20-minute in-person surveys with a random sample of faculty clients in an effort to learn more about how faculty at Columbia are incorporating technology into their teaching and how effectively CCNMTL's service and outreach activities have been in helping faculty reach their goals. The results of the survey are available as a PDF below.

CCNMTL Fall 2005 Client Service Survey Report

Announcements:
CourseWorks Workshops for Instructors

December 8, 2005. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. The one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features.

All workshops will be held in 204 Butler Library.

Introduction to CourseWorks
* Wednesday, January 11..........10:30-11:30am
* Wednesday, January 11..........12:30-1:30pm
* Wednesday, January 11..........2:00-3:00pm
* Thursday, January 12.............12:30pm-1:30pm
* Thursday, January 12.............2:00pm-3:00pm
* Friday, January 13.................10:30-11:30am
* Friday, January 13.................12:30-1:30pm
* Tuesday, January 17..............10:30-11:30am
* Tuesday, January 17..............12:30-1:30pm
* Tuesday, January 17..............2:00-3:00pm
* Wednesday, January 18..........10:30-11:30am
* Wednesday, January 18..........12:30-1:30pm
* Thursday, January 19.............10:30-11:30am
* Friday, January 20 ................10:30-11:30am

Discussion Boards
* Wednesday, January 11..........3:30-4:30pm
* Thursday, January 19.............12:30-1:30pm

Media in the Classroom
* Thursday, January 12.............10:30-11:30am
* Friday, January 20..................12:30-1:30pm

Announcements:
Personal Life-Long Learning Plans Launched

December 2, 2005. This summer, CCNMTL and the School for Dental and Oral Surgery introduced the Personal Life-Long Learning PLans (PL3P) to post-doctoral dental residents in the Advanced Education and General Dentistry and General Practice Residency courses. Funded by a three-year grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), PL3P serves as a portal for post-graduate dental education at Columbia, providing students with tools that promote active learning and reflection, including private home pages and blogs.

Students can upload files, including images, Word, and PowerPoint documents, into various folders that can be organized by topics, cases, or seminar presentations. Mentors can then review completed portfolios and provide feedback on student work. PL3P provides a space that promotes reflection and dialogue between residents and their mentors.

Announcements:
Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn Discusses the IAT

November 18, 2005. At the University Seminar in New Media Teaching and Learning on November 17, Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn described her experience with the Image Annotation Tool (IAT), a web-based application designed for students and faculty to upload, organize, categorize, present and annotate digital images. In this session, she provided an overview of the process of integrating the IAT into her histology course, where she uses the IAT to augment the presentation of histology slides.

Dr. Moss-Salentijn is the Dr. Edwin S. Robinson Professor of Dentistry in Anatomy and Cell Biology and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Dental and Oral Surgery.

University Seminar: Teaching and Learning with Digital Images: The Image Annotation Tool

Announcements:
CCNMTL Contributes MediaWiki Plug-ins

November 7, 2005. CCNMTL programmers have developed two plug-ins that make it easier for MediaWiki users to add category tags to organize entries within their collaborative Web sites.

MediaWiki software is the engine that powers the Wikipedia. At Columbia, CCNMTL has deployed the MediaWiki for several courses, including the Social Justice Movements Wiki for Robin Kelley's "Black Movements in the U.S" and the University Writing Program's (UWP) Instructors' Resource Site. While creating their wiki pages, the UWP instructors realized that they needed a more user-friendly way to organize pages within the site. The new Category Editor plug-in adds a menu of existing categories from which a user can select the appropriate category in which the wiki page that they are editing should be associated, and the Category Search plug-in makes it easy to find articles that are associated with certain categories. Contributing these plug-ins to the open source community helps improve the MediaWiki software, making it easier for multiple participants to collaboratively develop and edit a site.

See the Category Plug-in page at SourceForge.Net.

See a screenshot of the Category Editor plug-in.

Announcements:
Columbia and Stanford Share a Virtual Classroom

November 1, 2005. "African Civil Wars in Comparative Perspective," a graduate research seminar offered by the Political Science department here and at Stanford University, uses various technologies to create and share a virtual classroom space. The course, a collaboration between Professors Macartan Humphreys (Columbia) and Jeremy Weinstein (Stanford), engages students in the "rigorous, empirical analysis of multiple dimensions of contemporary civil conflict."

Using a networked-based video conferencing system and online tools to share data sets, presentations, and a whiteboard, the students grapple with data sets to debate issues surrounding civil war, including the organization of rebel groups and bargaining as a part of negotiating peace processes. Students in the Columbia course meet in the Experimental Digital Classroom in 308 Lewisohn Hall, which is outfitted with a Polycom video conferencing system complementing the SmartBoard system already in place.

Electronic Digital Classroom

Announcements:
Mark Phillipson Discusses Wikis in the Classroom

October 27, 2005. On Thursday, October 27, Dr. Mark Phillipson ('88C) shared his expertise with class wikis at the University Seminar for New Media Teaching and Learning. He discussed the effects of wikis on peer interaction, modes of analysis, notions of authority, and course organization based on his experience with wikis in his Romantic Audience course at Bowdoin College. Detailing his collaboration with educational technologists and librarians, Phillipson identified crucial areas of support for pedagogical wikis, and invited discussion of comparable projects at Columbia University.

University Seminar: Implementing a Class Wiki

Announcements:
Use of VITAL Continues to Grow

September 30, 2005. This fall, over 15 courses representing nearly 500 students are using CCNMTL's Video Interactions for Teaching & Learning (VITAL). The VITAL learning environment provides an online workspace where students can analyze video clips through guided lessons and develop multimedia essays that incorporate these video examples into their writing.

The courses that are deploying VITAL this semester span a broad range of schools and disciplines, including the School of Social Work, Teachers College, School of Dental and Oral Surgery and the School of Medicine. Other institutions using VITAL this semester include William Paterson University and the School at Columbia.

Announcements:
Du Bois MSE in Intro to African-American Studies

September 21, 2005. The Souls of Black Folk Multimedia Study Environment (MSE) will be integrated into Professor Manning Marable's Intro to African-American Studies undergraduate lecture course this fall. The MSE is based on W.E.B. Du Bois' 1903 collection of essays and contains references to both historical events and biographical experiences with archival film footage and music.

The Intro to African-American Studies course is a survey that covers African-American culture from its historical foundations and background to the modern black experience, from the struggle against slavery to the Harlem Renaissance. Students will be assigned to read specific sections of the Souls of Black Folk and to view historical film clips as well as video commentary from Professors Manning Marable, Casey Blake, Robert O'Meally, and Alan Brinkley throughout the semester.

The Souls of Black Folk MSE

Announcements:
New Online Music Reserves Launched

September 9, 2005. Students and faculty in the Music Humanities courses this fall will use the new, improved Online Music Reserves. This resource provides faculty and students with access to to an expanded collection of classical works selected specifically for the Music Humanities curriculum. Faculty can link to individual tracks or entire works from their CourseWorks sites, or they can direct students to explore the Reserves themselves. The new Reserves feature improved audio quality and are available to Columbia students both on and off campus with a UNI and high-speed connection.

Announcements:
Expanded Film Language Glossary Released

September 8, 2005. This fall, CCNMTL and the Butler Media Library have launched an upgraded Film Language Glossary for students involved in the production and study of motion pictures. Glossary definitions are enhanced by images, animations, and sample film clips, many of which feature expert commentary and annotations by Columbia film professors. Over 65 new entries were added by contributors Richard Peña, James Schamus, Larry Engel and David McKenna. Courses using the Glossary in the fall 2005 semester include "Intro to Film Studies," "Senior Seminar in Film" and "Screenwriting."

Film Language Glossary

"CCNMTL Uses Big Screen Classics to Teach Film Fundamentals" in the Columbia News (October 31, 2005)

Announcements:
Fall CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside Campus

August 23, 2005. CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. The one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features.

Workshops will be held in 204 Butler Library from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm, except where noted.

CourseWorks Mini-Workshop
Learn the basics of course Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Thursday, September 1 (10:30a and 12:30p)
Thursday, September 1 (2:30p in 306 Butler Lib)
Friday, September 2 (12:30p and 2:00p)
Tuesday, September 6
Wednesday, September 7
Thursday, September 8
Friday, September 9
Monday, September 12

CourseWorks Workshop: Discussion Boards
Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks
Strategies and techniques for using the course discussion board are explained and explored so that it can serve as an effective component of your course.
Learn how to manage and organize your CourseWorks discussion board.

Monday, September 19

CourseWorks Workshop: Tests & Quizzes
Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks
Learn how to create surveys in CourseWorks that solicit valuable feedback from your students. In this session we will cover how to create a survey using the Test & Quiz section in CourseWorks and different techniques for creating an effective survey.

Tuesday, September 20

Media in the Classroom: Audio, Images, and Video
Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks
Learn strategies for using audio, images, and video in your class. In this session we will cover some of the tools available to you, as well as demonstrate current uses of media in the classroom.

Wednesday, September 21

CourseWorks for Language Instructors
In addition, CCNMTL will offer "refresher" workshops for language instructors who may have specific questions about using CourseWorks for language instruction. These workshops will be held in the Language Resource Center from 12:00 - 1:30pm.

Thursday, October 6
Friday, October 7
Tuesday, October 11
Wednesday, October 12

Announcements:
Fall CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

August 22, 2005. Join CCNMTL for CourseWorks workshops before the semester heats up. All sessions meet in the PC Classroom on the second floor of the Hammer Building

CourseWorks Basic Workshop
Learn the basics of course Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Thursday, August 25: 1pm
Tuesday, August 30: 11am
Tuesday, September 6: 11am

CourseWorks Advanced Workshop
Note: Participants of this workshop must have a basic knowledge of CourseWorks
Learn advanced Web site development and how to apply technology to your teaching. The session covers the basics of CourseWorks, Columbia's course management system, and other tools.

Thursday, September 1: 1pm
Thursday, September 8: 1pm

For more information on workshops, please contact us at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu.

Announcements:
Recent Publications by CCNMTL

August 2, 2005. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning has been busy writing and contributing to academic journals and books, both at Columbia and internationally. Frank Moretti, John Frankfurt, and David Miele co-authored "Malcolm X: Digital Media in a New Age of Learning and Research" in SOULS. The article describes the history of the Multimedia Study Environment and discusses the development of the Malcolm X Multimedia Study Environment (MXMSE).

Frank Moretti also contributed chapters to two books: "Support in the Use of New Media" in Supporting E-Learning: A Guide for Library and Information Managers, and "What have we learned and how have we learned it? Examples of Best Practices of a New Media Services and Development Center in Higher Education," translated into German for Online-Pädagogik, Band 3, edited by Burkhard Lehmann and Egon Bloh.

With publications like these, CCNMTL continues to play an active role in shaping the academic conversation on digital technologies and student learning.

Announcements:
Deconstructing Commercials

July 25, 2005. During Summer Session I, the Deconstructor was used in Robert Gilbralter's class, "Strategy and Creativity in Today's Marketplace," a nine-week summer course that focuses on reading print advertisements and video commercials. Initially launched as a tool to facilitate the close analysis of movie clips in film studies courses, students used the Deconstructor to analyze television commercials. Gibralter asked students to examine when and how the product was shown or mentioned, where a viewer's attention was directed and how, and to observe other visual or audio clues in the background in order to perform a close textual analysis.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Shares Stickies Product With Plone Community

July 18, 2005. CCNMTL is actively developing PloneStickies, a content annotation solution that borrows the idea of "sticky notes" and applies it to Web pages. The product is currently being developed as a plugin for the Plone Content Management System, an open source CMS and development platform that is being successfully used in several educational web environments, including the Educational Multimedia Case Constructor (EMCC). Within the EMCC, students use stickies to attach notes to images, videos, and other multimedia assets. CCNMTL has made an initial release of this product available to the Open Source Community with the hope that others will benefit from this technology, and reciprocally continue to advance its development. Additional features are currently in the works that will allow users to attach more than one note to an asset, provide an enhanced user interface, as well as allow students to "tag" assets with keywords.

Educational Multimedia Case Constructor

Plone Stickies

Announcements:
Instructional Design for GIS Fellows

June 10, 2005. As a participating member of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Working Group, an organization dedicated to expanding GIS activity at Columbia, CCNMTL has been offering guidance on Instructional Design to graduate summer fellows. Educational Technologist Ryan Kelsey's contribution to the weekly workshops cover effective teaching practices, from setting educational goals to evaluating student work.

A recipient of an Academic Quality Fund (AQF) grant from the University, the GIS Working Group has organized a Summer Fellows Program for graduate students representing a broad range of social sciences departments from urban planning to public health. In addition to advancing their own research projects based on spatial information, fellows will design a one-week GIS course module to be integrated into a graduate course in their department, develop a spatial research bibliography listing exemplary papers relevant to their field of study, and compile an inventory of GIS-related research projects in their departments.

GIS Summer Fellows Program

Announcements:
Black Rock Forest Data in the Classroom

May 13, 2005. This spring, CCNMTL worked with the Black Rock Forest Consortium on an NSF-funded project to modernize wireless access to the Forest's remote sensing stations to allow access to real-time meteorological and stream data. Using a data viewing system designed by Vista Data Vision, students in Professor Kevin Griffin's Environmental Systems course studied Black Rock Forest's watershed-based environments to analyze rainfall and its correlation to stream flow. Students reported that they appreciated "the opportunity to examine real data" because the "intense data manipulation required us to understand the data and the situation to a much greater degree than other labs."

"The students came up with interesting questions to explore on their own and definitely got a true scientific experience using the lab," notes Professor Griffin. "I'm convinced this can be an excellent teaching tool."

Announcements:
Record Number of CourseWorks Sites

May 5, 2005. During the Spring 2005 semester, a record number of Columbia University courses actively used CourseWorks as class Web sites. More than 1,700 CourseWorks sites were activated, compared to 1,276 sites utilized in the previous Spring 2004 semester. At least 400 courses used the discussion boards section this semester, highlighting the growing popularity of using online communication tools to extend conversations beyond the classroom.

CCNMTL offers CourseWorks support for faculty with workshops and individual sessions. For more information, contact us at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu.

Introduction to CourseWorks at Columbia.

Announcements:
CCNMTL and CUL Discuss Collaboration at ACRL

April 29, 2005. On April 8, 2005, Frank Moretti, Executive Director of CCNMTL, Jim Neal, Vice President of Information Services, and Patricia Renfro, Deputy University Librarian, made a presentation at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 12th National Conference in Minneapolis, MN. The presentation, "Menage à Trois: The Essential Computing, Library and Instructional Technology Partnership to Advance New Media Learning," discussed the collaboration among the computing, library, and instructional technology organizations at Columbia University.

View the presentation.

Download the PowerPoint presentation. (3.62 MB)

Announcements:
Journalism School Presents Case Study

April 22, 2005. On April 15-16, Dean David Klatell and a group of six students from the School of Journalism presented "Building the Front Page of the Washington Post" to more than 100 alumni and prospective students. The case study, produced in collaboration with CCNMTL, is an interactive learning environment that reconstructs the editorial process of designing the front page of a daily issue.

The multimedia case study presents students with background information on the The Washington Post. Students review the same news items that the editors of the newspaper considered for the June 16, 2004 issue and listen to audio clips of meetings from June 15 that document the editors' discussions and their decision-making process. Students then work out their own solutions, keeping the paper's mission, values, and readership in mind, as they reconstruct the layout of the front page. They are then able to compare their work to the actual front pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times that were published on June 16, 2004.

"I was delighted to work closely with the CCNMTL team because they brought so much to the table - ideas that pushed me and my Journalism School colleagues to re-conceptualize our original plans for developing The Washington Post case," said Dean Klatell. "Our alumni loved it."

Announcements:
NIH Grant for School of Nursing and CCNMTL

April 7, 2005. The National Institute of Health has awarded Dr. Suzanne Bakken of Columbia University's School of Nursing a $675,000 grant to develop "Mobile Decision Support for Advanced Practice Nursing." Beginning in September 2005, over 300 doctoral and nurse practitioner candidates will use Palm and Pocket PC devices in three practice areas: depression screening, smoking cessation, and obsesity management. CCNMTL will collaborate with the School of Nursing to design and develop this program, which promotes evidence-based, error-free patient care for nurses in training.

Announcements:
Educational Multimedia Case Constructor Expanded

April 6, 2005. This spring, an expanded Educational Multimedia Case Constructor (EMCC) has been deployed in Professor Angela Calabrese Barton's course in Urban Science Education at Teachers College. First launched in fall 2004 as a multimedia library, EMCC enables students to analyze case studies that frame some of the unique challenges of teaching science in urban, high-poverty classrooms.

EMCC provides education students with opportunities to observe authentic classroom interactions and interviews with children and to review supporting documentation and researcher commentaries. These materials are indexed in a multimedia library that contains images, audio, video, and text files. Students can attach notes to these materials and write extended essays responding to the various issues raised by the case studies.

By fall 2005, EMCC will also include a Case Builder that will enable advanced students to create new cases and upload new materials for analysis by other students.

Announcements:
Social Justice Movements Wiki Launches

March 24, 2005. This semester, students in Professor Robin Kelley's undergraduate course "Black Movements in the U.S." will develop the content of a new wiki, or collaborative Web site, about key social justice movements in New York City.

Developed in collaboration with CCNMTL, the Social Justice Movements wiki provides students the opportunity to create a Web site that will become a resource for exploring the broader political visions of these movements and their impact on local communities. Throughout the spring semester, students will explore organizations representing labor, civil rights, black liberation, reparations, socialism/communism, feminism, welfare rights, youth/Hip Hop activism, education, peace, environmental justice, and anti-globalization. As Professor Kelley continues to teach this course in future semesters, new groups of students will add to the site, making it a valuable tool for social justice research.

Access to the Social Justice Movements wiki is currently restricted to students in the course. When the students have completed their work at the end of the semester, the Web site will be made available to the public. The Social Justice Movements wiki is one of several wiki projects that are being developed by CCNMTL this semester.

Announcements:
Tierno Bokar Resources Site Launches

March 22, 2005. The newly launched Tierno Bokar Educational Resources site is now available to the Columbia community as an extension of the public Web site for Peter Brook's production of Tierno Bokar this spring.

The Educational Resources site provides faculty and students with teaching material on the play's themes, including history, religion, cultural theory, and drama, featuring an original essay on Tierno Bokar, Hambâté Bâ, and Peter Brook. The site also presents a glossary of key terms, slideshows of visual material, and a timeline of West African history to help students frame the play within its historical and cultural context. Columbia faculty, including Peter Awn, Ousmane Kane, Andrei Serban, and Gregory Mann provide video commentaries about the historical and cultural significance of Tierno Bokar. Also included are video footage from Keita!, a documentary on Mali, and clips from The Empty Space, documenting Peter Brook's theater workshop at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1973.

Additional materials will continue to be added to the Web site during and after the Tierno Bokar production, making it a living resource for the Columbia community. The Educational Resources site is available to students and faculty with a Columbia UNI and password.

Tierno Bokar Web site

Tierno Bokar Educational Resources

Announcements:
Image Annotation Tool Released

March 16, 2005. CCNMTL has released The Image Annotation Tool (IAT), a Web-based application that facilitates the close study of digital images.

The IAT was developed for Dean Letty Moss-Salentijn's Orofacial Histology, Growth, and Development course in the School for Oral and Dental Surgery. In Professor Moss-Salentijn’s course, students review and study a set of clearly annotated histology slides of perfect structures. After studying the annotated slides, students are presented with a set of unmarked images that are representative of typical structures that they are likely to encounter in the real world. Students annotate the slides that are then reviewed by Professor Moss-Salentijn.

Although the IAT was developed for a histology course, it can be utilized in any discipline that requires the close study of images. The tool is especially useful for labeling maps, illustrating art images, or highlighting specific elements of a graphic.

Image Annotation Tool

Announcements:
March 23: CourseWorks Workshop for Instructors

March 15, 2005. CCNMTL offers the following workshop for instructors interested in using CourseWorks to create surveys.

CourseWorks Test & Quizzes Workshop
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Learn how to create surveys in CourseWorks that solicit valuable feedback from your students. In this session we will cover how to create a survey using the Test & Quiz section in CourseWorks and different techniques for creating an effective survey.

The workshop will be held in 204 Butler Library on the Morningside Campus. Register online or contact ccnmtl-workshops@columbia.edu for more information.

Announcements:
Tech note: QuickTime and Firewalls

March 8, 2005. QuickTime streaming can be affected by firewalls on personal computers. If you suspect that your firewall is preventing access to streaming clips, use the QuickTime Preferences to set the transport to HTTP using port 80. This should solve most firewall issues.

Details: QuickTime streams are typically transported via the RTP/RTSP protocol, but many firewalls (including the recent Windows XP Service Pack 2 firewall) block these protocols. Should you wish to open your firewall to the RTP/RTSP protocols, you need to do the following:

Open port 554 for RTSP/TCP data
Open ports 6970 through 6999 (inclusive) for RTP/UDP data.

Alternatively, you can grant the QuickTime player an exception, but media embedded in browsers will still encounter problems and the browsers must be granted a similar exception.

For more information on QuickTime for Windows, see:
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/video/QT_pc/

Quicktime for Macs:
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/video/QT_mac/

Announcements:
CCNMTL Celebrates 6th Anniversary

March 2, 2005. March 1 marked the 6th anniversary of the opening of CCNMTL as a service organization at Columbia University. During this time, we have worked to help, support, and inspire many instructors to reflect upon their roles as teachers, and to think about how new media and technology can reach students more effectively. We thank all of our partners for the inspirational and stimulating collaborations we maintain, and look forward to continuing along this path.

Announcements:
Malcolm X MSE Article in SOULS

February 27, 2005. Frank Moretti, John Frankfurt, and David Miele co-authored "Malcolm X: Digital Media in a New Age of Learning and Research," published in the journal SOULS. The article traces the history and evolution of the multimedia study environment from the first, based on Fredric Jameson's monograph "Postmodernism: or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," to the many innovations featured in the latest release, The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Announcements:
Kaleidoscope: Italian Cinema for Language Instruction

February 18, 2005. This semester, students in the Italian Department at Barnard College are using Kaleidoscope/Caleidoscopio, an innovative film-based curriculum for language instruction. Kaleidoscope immerses the student in an all-Italian site that features a series of activities based on the close analysis of Italian comedies from 1950 to 2000. As students watch selected film clips, they can choose whether to view the clip with or without synchronized closed-captioning of the dialogue (in Italian) and a glossary of relevant vocabulary terms. Students use the CourseWorks discussion board to analyze and reflect upon the films which are also discussed in class, integrating their Italian reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills.

Kaleidoscope

Announcements:
Multimedia Study Environment Forum

February 17, 2005. On February 17, CCNMTL hosted an educational forum on the Multimedia Study Environment (MSE), The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE.

With carefully selected annotations embedded within an online environment, the MSE is an innovative way to facilitate the close reading of a text. The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE, produced in collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH), presents the primary text with links to critical annotations that provide perspectives beyond the written word. In addition, the MSE features a rich multimedia archive of primary sources, including historical documents, images, and videos as well as original interviews with scholars and Malcolm X's contemporaries.

Frank Moretti, Executive Director of CCNMTL, provided an historical overview of the evolution of the MSE from the first, on Fredric Jameson's monograph "Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" to the 17th, The Autobiography of Malcolm X MSE, and describe some of the lessons learned and developments made along the way. John Frankfurt, CCNMTL Educational Technologist, conducted a demonstration of the MSE highlighting some of the innovations implemented with this project. Manning Marable, Director of the CCBH, shared his experiences with the MSE as an educational tool and discussed the value of the MSE for scholarship.

CCNMTL Educational forum

View Program

Announcements:
Digital Media and the History of Science

February 10, 2005. On Thursday, February 10, Professor Adrian Johns of the University of Chicago led the University Seminar in New Media Teaching and Learning in a discussion of one of his major projects: Microcosmos, an online interactive environment that reproduces and conveys the skills of past scientific exploration to students. This highly interactive project asks students to assume the role of a scientist from the past and to develop a theory based on the intellectual resources available at that point in history. Microcosmos suggests new ways we could use digital media to enhance traditional teaching techniques in the sciences, but also to create new ones.

University Seminar: Digital Media and the History of Science

Announcements:
Wikis: Experimenting in the classroom

January 31, 2005. A Wiki is a collaborative Web site that allows its users to contribute to a dynamic, interactive environment. "Wiki wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, referring to the ease with which users can modify existing material, create new content, and link between pages without having to employ complex Web authoring technologies. With simple tagging syntax that is even easier to master than HTML, Wikis have become popular as truly interactive and dynamic tools that capture the "ideal" of the Web as a virtual space that facilitates sharing information by enabling "open editing."

For a couple of years, CCNMTL has been using Wikis as part of its project planning. They have greatly facilitated project group interactions, documentation writing, and other collaborative endeavors. Recently, CCNMTL adopted the open-source MediaWiki engine used by the popular Wikipedia project.

After a successful experiment with the History of Electronic Music seminar in fall 2004, CCNMTL is expanding this R&D effort to other courses at Columbia. We have customized the Wiki interface to make it more intuitive and user-friendly for students and instructors. The goal is to learn more about potential uses in the classroom and to begin to compile some best practices that might inform future projects. Faculty in the University Writing Program, the Frontiers of Science core course, and an advanced Architecture Studio will be experimenting with Wikis this spring.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Hosts NSF Partners for VITAL Project Launch

January 10, 2005. On Friday, January 7, CCNMTL hosted a meeting to kick off an NSF-sponsored project, whose result will help colleges and universities across the country to prepare teachers of early childhood mathematics. CCNMTL and Teachers College will work with teacher education partners to develop model courses supported by a VITAL (Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning), a web-based study environment, which will be deployed at six other universities.

VITAL was first used in Prof. Herbert Ginsburg's course "The Development of Mathematical Thinking" at Teachers College during the spring 2003 semester. Based on this experience, CCNMTL continues to refine the VITAL environment and has received funding to collaborate with content experts and field testers to develop a large-scale, enterprise solution that will accommodate thousands of students nationwide.

VITAL project partners include William Paterson University, Rutgers University, Boston University, Boston College, Howard University, Hunter College, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Georgia State University, the University of Houston, Indiana University at Bloomington, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of San Diego, the University of Hawaii, and the Education Development Center.

Announcements:
New CourseWorks QuickStart Guide Available

January 5, 2005. An updated QuickStart guide to help instructors plan course Web sites using CourseWorks, Columbia's course management tool, is now available. This step-by-step guide shows you how to get started quickly and easily. Pick up a copy in the CCNMTL Faculty Support Lab in Room 204 Butler Library.

CourseWorks QuickStart Guide for Instructors (594KB)

Announcements:
CourseWorks Workshops for Instructors

January 3, 2005. Do you need to learn how to prepare a course Web site before classes start? CCNMTL offers workshops for instructors interested in learning the basics of the CourseWorks course management system. The one-hour sessions will provide an overview of CourseWorks and introduce participants to the system's rich features.

Morningside Campus sessions will meet from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm in 204 Butler Library.
* Monday, January 10
* Tuesday, January 11
* Wednesday, January 12
* Tuesday, January 18
* Wednesday, January 19
* Thursday, January 20

At the Health Sciences Campus, workshops will be held in the computer classroom on the second floor of the Hammer Building.

Basic Workshops for Faculty, Staff, and TAs:
* Monday, January 10, 10am
* Wednesday, January 19, 11am
* Thursday, January 27, 10am

Advanced Workshops for Faculty:
* Tuesday, January 18, 12:30pm
* Wednesday, January 26, 11am

Announcements:
CCNMTL Web Site Now Offers RSS Updates

December 11, 2004. The CCNMTL Web site now offers announcements, press releases, and events information via Really Simple Syndication (RSS). RSS is an XML-based format that syndicates content for use in news readers and Web logs, and is now being adopted by browsers like Firefox as a built-in feature. Other stand-alone RSS readers compile news from different sources to allow readers to access updates from a variety of sources easily. Future versions of Safari will also offer built-in RSS capabilities.

To subscribe to CCNMTL's RSS feed, point your RSS reader to http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/web/content_ssi_drop/news/index.xml. In Firefox 1.0, a subscription button is visible at the bottom right of the browser window.

Announcements:
University Seminar: "Design Research Interventions"

December 10, 2004. Design Research has grown in importance since it was first conceptualized in the early 90s, but it has not yet been adopted for research in instructional technology in higher education to any great extent. Many researchers continue to conduct studies that principally seek to determine the effectiveness of the delivery medium, rather than the instructional strategies and tasks.

At the University Seminar for New Media Teaching and Learning on Thursday, December 9, Dr. Tom Reeves of the University of Georgia explored the various incentives for conducting research on the impact of computing and other technologies in higher education, examined the social relevance of that research, and recommended design research as a particularly appropriate approach to socially responsible inquiry. He described the characteristics of design research, together with an argument for the more widespread adoption of this approach to enhance the quality and usefulness of research in computers and other technologies in education.

University Seminar: Design Research Interventions

Announcements:
Open House: Experimental Digital Classroom

December 10, 2004. CCNMTL hosted an open house in the Experimental Digital Classroom (308 Lewisohn) on Thursday, December 9 to provide faculty with an opportunity to explore its interactive tools and to strategize ways of incorporating them into their courses.

Representatives from CCNMTL met with faculty to brainstorm creative uses of the room's features, to discuss connections to curriculum, and to demonstrate the room's resources to newcomers to the EDC.

The EDC is more than a venue for showing video or browsing the web. It enables faculty in a seminar setting to:

* Annotate primary texts and images
* Toggle between DVD movies and computer applications
* Access presentations prepared in advance for the SmartBoard
* Save group work for distribution after class
* Download and upload files to CourseWorks
* Video conference with remote locations
* Record lectures and SmartBoard interactions

For more information about the Experimental Digital Classroom, please visit http://.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/classroom/.

Announcements:
Ambedkar's "Annihilation of Caste" MSE Released

November 12, 2004. CCNMTL released its latest multimedia study environment (MSE), Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's The Annihilation of Caste, this month. In conjunction with Dr. Frances Pritchett of the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department and the South Asian Institute, CCNMTL has produced an annotated version of Ambedkar's famous, but undelivered, speech advocating for the dissolution of the Hindu caste system. Students in Pritchett's "Introduction to Indian Civilization" will use the MSE in their work this semester.

Ambedkar earned his master's degree in 1915 and his Ph.D. in economics in 1928 from Columbia. In 1952, Columbia presented him with an honorary doctorate of law for his writing of the Constitution of India.

The Annihilation of Caste

Press Release

Announcements:
Epiville Project Invited to AERA Conference

November 11, 2004. Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health Epidemiology faculty (Professors Lydia Zablotska, Daniel Herman, and Ian Lapp) and Ray Cha of CCNMTL staff have been invited to present the Epiville project at the annual American Education Research Association (AERA) meeting in Montreal in April. Epiville, an online simulation, is currently being utilized by over 250 students in a core course for Columbia's Masters of Public Health.

In this simulation, students play the role of an intern at the Department of Health, gathering facts and deciding actions to curb an outbreak which has struck "Epiville." The case study uses digital video newscasts, interviews, and municipal Web sites to provide information about commerce and diseases in an attempt to mirror real-life situations. Interactive web-based exercises allow students to test hypotheses about these cases.

Disease Outbreak Simulation: Epiville

Announcements:
Journalism Students Produce Live Election Coverage

November 3, 2004. On Election Night, students from the School of Journalism produced four live broadcasts of election news, commentary, and field reports from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The broadcasts were accessible to the public from the School of Journalism's home page.

The students were aided by the Radio Broadcast Content Management System (CMS), a database-driven application created by CCNMTL to model the editorial process of radio journalism. Kristen Sosulski, CCNMTL educational technologist, worked late into the night with the students, providing technical assistance with the Radio Broadcast CMS. Students found that using the Radio Broadcast CMS to produce the Election Night coverage provided a great opportunity to put their journalistic skills to the test, highlighting teamwork, organization, and professionalism with the immediacy of live updates.

Columbia Radio News

Announcements:
CourseWorks Utilization Numbers

October 27, 2004. This semester, 1396 CourseWorks sites have been activated by faculty, instructors, or course directors. In universities nationwide, the use of course sites is becoming a standard that students have come to expect — and the numbers at Columbia appear to confirm that trend. During the week ending October 10, 2004, 13,947 unique students and 1,239 instructors logged onto the CourseWorks system.

Announcements:
University Seminar: "Activity Centered Design"

October 21, 2004. Dr. Geri Gay of Cornell University discussed "Activity Centered Design: An Ecological Approach to Designing Smart Tools and Usable Systems" as part of the University Seminars on New Media Teaching and Learning. During this presentation, Dr. Geri Gay spoke about lessons learned from two current research projects. The first described the use of wireless computing in formal and informal learning contexts (Intel, Microsoft, NSF) and the second featured collaborative learning among distributed project teams (NASA, AT&T Foundation). Together, we discussed the applicability to Columbia University courses.

University Seminar: Activity Centered Design

Announcements:
Evaluation Reports Released

October 15, 2004. A number of new assessment reports have been released, including evaluation summaries of VITAL and Library Compass. The newly released reports include internal and external evaluations from 2001 through 2004. The reports cover a range of disciplines and types of technological interventions. CCNMTL is commited to evaluating our past projects in an effort to develop a uniform set of best practices, which will guide us in future projects.

A full listing of published reports can be found at the Design Research site.

Announcements:
FIPSE Grant Awarded to CCNMTL

September 29, 2004. The U.S. Department of Education awarded Columbia University's School of Dental & Oral Surgery, CCNMTL, and partners approximately $500,000 over three years through the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). CCNMTL will receive approximately $162,000 of the grant.

The goals of the project are to produce and evaluate a Personalized Life-Long Learning Plan curriculum that will provide advanced didactic training in postgraduate dentistry to dental residents in clinical sites distant from universities.

Announcements:
University Seminar: "Digital Technologies for the Social Sciences"

September 23, 2004. Dr. Sunil Kumar, lecturer at the London School of Economics, addressed the University Seminar in New Media Teaching and Learning. His topic was "Utilizing Digital Technologies to Teach and Model the Social Sciences." Dr. Kumar discussed best practices for integrating on-line experiences with face-to-face classroom discussions in his Urbanization and Social Planning courses. To this end, he outlined his web-based resource for navigating the research process, which provides students with an understanding of how various components of the research process are interrelated. After the presentation, seminarians responded to Dr. Kumar and discussed the applicability of Dr. Kumar’s practice to Columbia University courses.

University Seminars on New Media Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
Film Language Glossary Released

September 17, 2004. A prototype of the Film Language Glossary, for use by students making and studying motion pictures, was released earlier this week. Specifically, the focus will be on defining film terms and film language, which are representative of all the major categories of Film Studies: practical terminology, technical terminology, the language of business, historical terms as well as the language of criticism and theory. Each glossary term is illustrated by film clips, images, and animations.

The Film Language Glossary prototype will be used this fall in Richard Peña's Introduction to Film Studies course, a graduate class with an enrollment of seventy students. The prototype consists of eighteen terms and thirty film clips. Eleven of the film clips include a commentary track narrated by Peña. Access is currently restricted to the Columbia network. Instructors interested in using, or contributing to, this reference tool should send email to ccnmtl@columbia.edu.

Film Language Glossary

Announcements:
Experimental Digital Classroom Open House Held

September 16, 2004. CCNMTL held an Open House at the Experimental Digital Classroom (308 Lewisohn). The purpose of this event was to bring together current and future users of the room, to meet members of the CCNMTL team, and to showcase some of the tools CCNMTL has developed. Faculty from the School of the Arts, SIPA, Barnard, and ALP were among the attendees who were treated to demonstrations of the classroom's capabilities. All faculty were also given an opportunity to use the SmartBoard technology. The open house was successful in bringing together this faculty community to share teaching practices.

Experimental Digital Classroom

Announcements:
Sakai Project at Columbia

July 26, 2004. A group of about 30 Columbians representing numerous schools and departments attended a brief overview of the Sakai Project and Columbia's participation in the Sakai Educational Partners Program (SEPP). The aim of the Sakai Project is to be an open source course management system supported by its member schools. The contributing departments from Columbia, AcIS, AIS and CCNMTL, gave brief statements on their interest and reasons for participation. These initial remarks were followed by a review of the state of the project with information from the first Sakai conference held in late June 2004.

Transcript of CCNMTL statement from meeting

Announcements:
Ginsburg, CCNMTL Paper Published

June 16, 2004. The National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics (NCSM) has published a paper by Professor Herb Ginsburg, Michael Preston, David VanEsselstyn, and others entitled "Learning to Think about Early Childhood Mathematics Education." The paper, part of the monograph "Challenging Young Children Mathematically," discusses Prof. Ginsburg's course on the development of mathematical thinking, including the need for the course, its structure and methods, and, of course, VITAL.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Awarded $2.3 Million from NSF to Develop New Teaching Resource

June 1, 2004. The National Science Foundation has awarded CCNMTL a $2.3 million grant to develop VITAL: A Learning Environment for Courses in Early Mathematics Education, a resource to prepare teachers of early childhood mathematics. The grant will extend VITAL (Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning) beyond the prototype presently being tested in Columbia classes and by the end of the grant period, May 2009, it will be distributed to other education programs nationwide.

VITAL was developed with Herbert Ginsburg, Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, to improve the ways that his video archive of clinical interviews, observations, and classroom lessons could be used to more effectively teach his subject matter.

See Press Release

Project Feature: Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
NSF Award to Expand Monitoring of Black Rock Forest

May 24, 2004. The National Science Foundation has awarded the Black Rock Forest Consortium (BRFC) a grant to modernize and expand the ecosystem monitoring network at the Black Rock Forest Field Station. Extending earlier work by BRFC and CCNMTL, this three year grant includes a subaward for CCNMTL to develop Web applications that access real-time ecosystem data for use by scientists, educators, and students. These applications will give educators and their students authentic content for studying regional biology, geology, and environmental science and will expand the research capabilities of Columbia scientists. William Schuster, Executive Director of the BRFC and Frank Moretti, Executive Director at CCNMTL are co-principal investigators for the grant.

Black Rock Forest

Announcements:
Commencement Broadcast Archives

May 20, 2004. Broadcast archives for the Commencement of the 250th Academic Year held on Wednesday, May 19, 2004 are now available.

Please check the Commencement broadcast page for full details.

Commencement of the 250th Academic Year

Short Film: Highlights 2002/2003

Announcements:
New Look to CCNMTL Web Site

May 5, 2004. Today, the CCNTML Web site was relaunched with a new interface. The reorganized site provides a sharper focus on the Center's overall mission, a broader description of its service offerings, and easier to navigate Project Portfolio and News/Events sections. New documentation and services information are forthcoming this summer.

Announcements:
NSF Awards Grant to Enhance Brownfield Action

March 19, 2004. The National Science Foundation has awarded a proof-of-concept grant of $75,000 to Peter Bower (Barnard College) and CCNMTL to support the modularization and distribution of the Brownfield Action curriculum and simulation. The award, effective February 15th, will be used to assist Dr. Bower and CCNMTL to prototype a new, more modular version of the Brownfield Action environmental assessment simulation that will also be tested in an upper-level undergraduate hydrology course at Connecticut College. If successful with these efforts, the project will be considered for additional funding to facilitate a major re-development of the simulation and to establish a distribution method to other educational institutions.

For more information see links below.

AACU Selects Brownfield Action as a Model Course

Brownfield Action Showcase

Announcements:
CCNMTL Attends Higher-Ed Meeting with Cisco CEO

March 18, 2004. John Chambers, President and CEO of Cisco Systems, hosted an executive higher education dinner and discussion with representatives from New York metro area colleges and universities. Maurice Matiz, Vice Executive Director of CCNMTL, attended the dinner held at Le Cirque restaurant in midtown New York.

The dinner and discussion provided an opportunity to chat informally with the CEO of one of America's most successful technology companies. Chambers, who has served on President George W. Bush's Education Committee and has been given many awards for his efforts to improve education and performance, believes in the positive role that education can play in the economic growth of the United States. He was eager to hear comments and opinions about the role of technology in education from the assembled group.

Announcements:
Ted Nelson Visits Columbia

February 27, 2004. Theodor Holm Nelson, hypertext theorist and fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, visited the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

The purpose of Nelson's visit to CCNMTL was to introduce his latest vision of a non-hierarchal interface entitled, "ZigZag" to the Columbia community. "Zig Zag," cross-viewable multidimensional lists, provides a new paradigm for computer structures including database, inheritance, file management, simplified graphical programming, and other useful computer concepts. These structures appear to streamline many aspects of data and programming.

Nelson occupies a unique place in the computer field, a designer best known as an agitator and visionary. "I didn't know what to call these ideas; "hypertext" came to me in 1962, and I published it in 1965. I first heard strangers use it around 1986."

He has been called "the Thomas Paine of the computer revolution." His book Computer Lib, proposing a new Utopian world of intellect around the computer screen, came out in 1974, just four months before the first personal computer was advertised. Computer Lib is said to have inspired much of today's software design, as well as personally influencing Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.

Nelson's vision for hypertext preceded the Web by three decades. Nelson was virtually alone in predicting a worldwide hypertext. His 1981 book, Literary Machines, while describing the work of his group on Project Xanadu, contains many passages that predict the World Wide Web.

For more information see links below.

Ted Nelson's Web site

Zig Zag

Announcements:
Library Compass Released

February 5, 2004. Library Compass, a new resource to develop and enhance academic research skills, was developed by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) in conjunction with the Columbia University Libraries and has been released today. It is an online environment that serves as an orientation tool to aid students in honing their research skills for academic scholarship. Through learning activities and detailed explanations, Library Compass supports the writing of academic papers by exposing students to specific library research skills and strategies. Students who work with the Library Compass environment can improve the quality of their research papers and also access online support and assistance during the research process. In addition, videotaped interviews with Columbia librarians offer guidance and advice to students new to academic research.

As students and researchers are challenged to find both method and meaning in the midst of an abundance of information, Library Compass points the way to new habits of mind in order to generate questions, locate sources for answers, evaluate the proffered solutions, and formulate responses. The Library Compass is another step taken by Columbia University Information Services to respond to a growing need to harness the University's vast knowledge resources.

Library Compass

Announcements:
VITAL Adapted for the School of Social Work

January 21, 2004. The VITAL environment has been adapted for use in five sections of "Clinical Practice with Couples," taught by Tazuko Shibusawa and Susan Oppenheim of the School of Social Work. VITAL was originally designed for Professor Herbert Ginsburg's "Development of Mathematical Thinking" course at Teachers College. VITAL has become a strategic technology for CCNMTL given the adaptability of the pedagogy and methodology for pre-professional and clinical training.

Students use VITAL to generate weekly essays based on video recordings of clinical sessions. In their personal workspace, students construct essays that can include video quotes to support their arguments. The linked video annotations within the essay allow faculty to follow student observations. Additionally, once completing an assignment, students have access to the essays submitted by their peers.

In "Clinical Practice with Couples," Professors Shibusawa and Oppenheim focus on relating concepts and theoretical frameworks studied in course readings to professionally produced recordings of couples' clinical sessions. Using VITAL, students identify and analyze different theoretical models and clinical techniques as well as consider their own intervention methods.

For more information regarding VITAL contact ccnmtl-vital@columbia.edu

VITAL

QT Video: Prof. Herbert Ginsburg Demonstrates VITAL Project

Announcements:
New Media in Education 2003 Conference Footage

January 8, 2004. Please see the link below for video clips from our 2003 New Media in Education Conference that took place at the Low Library on September 26th.

NME 2003 Conference Videos

Announcements:
New Video Assets Added to Midnight's Children MSE

January 2, 2004. Video footage from last spring's Humanities Festival has now been added to the assets menu of the Midnight's Children MSE (Multimedia Study Environment). Panelists include Edward Said, Manning Marable, Linda Williams, Gauri Viswanathan, Russell Banks and Lee Bollinger, among others. In addition we have added an audio recording of a conversation between Edward Said and Salman Rushdie from 1996 that took place at Miller Theatre in the resources section of the MSE.

For more information regarding using the Midnight's Children MSE in your course contact: John Frankfurt at 212-854-1865 or ccnmtl@columbia.edu

Midnight's Children MSE

Announcements:
C250 Event : "Digital Media in Education: A Time for Invention" POSTPONED

Nov. 21, 2003. This full-day event has been postponed until September 2004. However, the CCNMTL staff will be conducting a two hour presentation on Wednesday, December 10th in the Butler Library Rm. 523 from 10:00AM until noon. Refreshments will be provided.

Please RSVP by December 5th to Sherry Mayo, slm73@columbia.edu or 212-854-0205.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Presents at 2003 Educause Conference in Anaheim"

Nov. 17, 2003. Peter Sommer, Director of Education, represented the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) in Track 3 of the 2003 Educause Conference in Anaheim, California. Sommer presented a paper entitled, "Building to Learn: A New Paradigm for Design Research and Assessment." Educause is a national conference in education technology and one of the best attended in the field.

To view abstract and associated Web pages please see links below.

'Building to Learn...' Abstract

Educause 2003: Track

Design Research at CCNMTL

Announcements:
Client Survey Report

October 27, 2003. In the spring of 2003 CCNMTL conducted a client survey. The goals of the survey were to measure the quality of our service activities, to learn what modes of outreach have been effective, to improve current services, and to determine new directions. Three hundred randomly selected clients were sent an invitation to participate in a 20-minute in-person survey interview; 68 participated in the study. Please see link to pdf of the CCNMTL Service Survey Report below.

CCNMTL Service Survey Report

Announcements:
Director's Notebook Released

September 22, 2003. CCNMTL has released the first iteration of Director's Notebook, in partnership with Nicholas T. Proferes, a film professor at the School of the Arts. This environment aids students in conceptualization, planning, and visualization activities involved in the film directing process. The Director's Notebook project provides a digital workspace and activities to help students envision their films with clarity supported by a step-by-step film directing methodology outlined in Proferes' text, Film Directing Fundamentals: From Script to Screen.

Director's Notebook

Announcements:
Climate Prediction Project Released

September 8, 2003. Seasonal Climate Prediction for Regional Scales was developed in partnership with the International Research Institute (IRI) and Neil Ward. In this project, students learn to apply global climate forecast models to local environments through an online text, figures, and exercises that use a custom online mapping environment based on GrADS (Grid Analysis and Display System) software developed by the Institute for Global Environment and Society at the Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Studies.

Seasonal Climate Prediction for Regional Scales

Announcements:
CCNMTL Featured in Eduventures' CXO Monthly Newsletter

June 10, 2003. CCNMTL was featured in the June issue of CXO Monthly, an e-publication providing news and analysis to senior higher education executives. In the article entitled "In Practice: Columbia University Innovates with Applied Digital Media," Peter Stokes, CEO of Eduventures, describes CCNMTL as a successful example of fostering a culture of use in a skeptical market.

Full Article: In Practice..

Announcements:
Commencement Broadcast Archives Now Available

May 27, 2003. The archives for the 249th Commencement broadcast and Class Day broadcasts are now available for on-demand viewing. Additionally, we have provided a download option for those that want to have a personal copy of the broadcasts.

Commencement 2003 Broadcast

Media Archive: Prior Commencement Broadcasts

Announcements:
CCNMTL Presents at the Education, Technology and Curriculum Summit

May 19, 2003. CCNMTL participated in both the Higher Education and K-12 Summit at Columbia University. Eduventures launched the conference at CCNMTL with a virtual tour attended by a variety of educational technologists from universities around the country. Dr. Frank Moretti presented, "Reinventing Education with New Media," and moderated "Digital Media in Columbia's Educational Program: A Faculty Perspective." Peter Sommer Director of Education participated in a panel on professional development for K-12 teachers.

Education, Technology and Curriculum Summit

Announcements:
CCNMTL Presents at 21st Century Campus Conference

April 30, 2003. Dr. Frank Moretti and Maurice Matiz presented at the 21st Century Campus: How Internet Technologies are Transforming Higher Learning Industry Summit for Higher Education hosted by Cisco Systems at Stanford University. The conference was dedicated to how technology has transformed education and where it will be going next. CCNMTL presented "Digital Media and Education at Columbia: A Time for Invention." Conference attendees comprised CIO, university presidents and IT directors from Europe, Asia, Australia, and North America.

21st Century Campus: How Internet Technologies are Transforming Higher Learning

Announcements:
URISA Journal: Environmental Sustainability Through GIS

April 17, 2003. Published in a special education issue of the Urban Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) Journal, this paper describes the pedagogical strategies used in a CCNMTL e-seminar, "Environmental Sustainability: Perspectives on the World." The refereed paper was written by, Ryan Kelsey (CCNMTL) and Mark Becker (CIESIN), and it explores potential benefits of GIS tools for the teaching and learning of environmental science. (URISA Journal Vol.15 No.1)

URISA Journal

Announcements:
CCNMTL presents VITAL at TC Tech Demo Day

April 03, 2003. The planners of the annual Teachers College Tech Demo Day asked CCNMTL to participate by providing two kiosks: one for CCNTML general information and one for VITAL. David Miele, Gordon Campbell, Dan Beeby, and Sherry Mayo conducted guided tours of VITAL (Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning) for approximately ten faculty and a dozen graduate students.

Announcements:
Midnight's Children MSE Released Today

March 21, 2003. The Midnight's Children Multimedia Study Environment (MSE) has been released to the Columbia University community. The Midnight's Children MSE provides students the opportunity to gain a richer understanding of Salman Rushdie's acclaimed novel, the play derived from it, and the historical and cultural context in which the story is set. The MSE provides a wealth of related content including reflections from Rushdie, Columbia faculty, and members of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The release has been anticipated by eleven courses that are using the MSE this spring semester. This first release also coincides with the ongoing Midnight's Children Humanities Festival and the performances at the Apollo Theatre.

Faculty interested in using the MSE for their courses should contact Cynthia Lawson, the MSE project manager, at clawson@ccnmtl.columbia.edu.

Midnight's Children Multimedia Study Environment

Announcements:
VITAL, Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning Released by CCNMTL

March 14, 2003. CCNMTL and Herbert Ginsburg, professor of psychology and education, have created an interactive learning environment for education and psychology students. In spring 2003, this Web-based application, Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning (VITAL), was first deployed in Professor Ginsburg's "Development of Mathematical Thinking" course at Teachers College.

The VITAL environment allows students to use a digital video library carefully chosen to reflect the educational goals of the course, to construct a series of weekly essays that foster understanding of the course concepts and that can be shared with other students who have completed the assignment. The video library includes over fifty interviews, observations and classroom lessons that Ginsburg has archived over the past twenty years. All students maintain a workspace containing their essays and edited video clips that help illustrate their observations and buttress their arguments. The videos are embedded as hyperlinks within the essays.

"Allowing students not only to view, but also to actively manipulate and comment on selected video clips in preparation for our classes has transformed my teaching and, I believe, my students' understanding of the course content," notes Ginsburg. "Developing the VITAL tool with CCNMTL has helped me to reflect on the educational goals of the course, and has resulted in an educational technology that allows me to teach my subject matter more effectively."

For many years, Ginsburg had successfully incorporated video in his courses through an assortment of VHS tapes that showed children engaged in "everyday mathematics," students grappling with mathematical problems and reflecting on their methods of solution, and teachers presenting mathematics instruction. VITAL now allows Ginsburg easy access to the video segments of interest. It also provides his students the opportunity to review the videos at will and to embed segments within essays so as to provide evidence for hypotheses and arguments.

Using a Design Research approach to develop VITAL required the documenting of decisions and hypotheses that led to the final design. In weekly meetings the CCNMTL project manager, David VanEsselstyn, Ginsburg and two teaching assistants brainstormed and discussed issues related to the course. Present at every meeting was a CCNMTL Design Research Fellow who captured goals, hypotheses, and ideas from each meeting.

After amassing an understanding of the educational issues, a technical framework for a system addressing the educational objectives was developed. As the framework became further defined, the team began developing the course syllabus and student assignments with VITAL specifically in mind.

The technical framework for VITAL includes an authentication system and a set of database tables to keep track of every student's effort, including maintaining markers to track student progress through the weekly assignments. The video library is stored on a media server, but all information related to the video excerpts used by the student is maintained with the student's profile. A simple essay editing and preview tool is also integrated into the system.

Three times during the semester, students were asked to evaluate key aspects of the VITAL system by responding to open-ended questionnaires. The data were analyzed in an attempt to identify successes and failures in the system as well as in the design process. Because Design Research endeavors to develop hypotheses and goals throughout the design process, the evaluation exercise allows the project team to tie results to ideas articulated in the project design. The results of the evaluation can then inform the design of similar educational technology projects.

Video Interactions for Teaching and Learning

Announcements:
Symposium on Assessment and Evaluation Showcases Existing Tools

March 03, 2003.The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) held a symposium for Columbia faculty on February 18th to discuss resources and tools used in the evaluation of teaching practice. Educational Technologist Liliana Pinto demonstrated three different assessment tools: Individual Development Educational Assessment (I.D.E.A.) Students Rating of Instruction System; the test, quiz, and survey features of CourseWorks@Columbia; and Flashlight.

The I.D.E.A. system, developed at Kansas State University, compares course objectives and student comments to similar courses in the I.D.E.A. database to suggest specific teaching strategies to improve learning outcomes.

The test and survey section in CourseWorks can be used to create and implement different assessment strategies about both course activities and student understanding of particular topics. CourseWorks provides tabulated results of student scores and a distribution of class responses.

The Flashlight Program is a collection of tools and resources to develop plans for evaluating and improving the educational uses of technology. One of its main resources is the "Current Student Inventory," an indexed archive of 500 questions for drafting surveys, questionnaires, and protocols for interviews and focus groups. It includes an evaluation handbook that provides guidance for creating studies, readings, resources, case studies, bibliographies, and related Web sites. Columbia University has a license to use Flashlight resources.

For more information on the symposium or any of the tools presented, including access to the Flashlight Program, please contact Lilana Pinto (lnp19@columbia.edu) at 212.854.0207.

See more on I.D.E.A.: Track

See more on uses of CourseWorks

See more on Flashlight

See more on American Association for Higher Education, Assessment Forum

See more on ERIC Clearinghouse for assessment, evaluation, assessment, and research information: Track

See more on The Free Assessment Summary Tool (F.A.S.T.): Track

Announcements:
Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) joins the Information Services Division

January 31, 2003. Columbia's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) has joined the University's Information Services Division, which also includes the University Libraries, the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), the Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA), and Academic Information Systems (AcIS). The move of CCNMTL to the Information Services Division signals the University's commitment to the Center as an important educational and research unit at Columbia.

Frank Moretti, CCNMTL Executive Director, said, "By becoming part of Information Services we, CCNMTL, are now closer to those who have been our strategic partners from the beginning." He continued, "We are excited by the new possibilities that this close relationship allows, as we continue the process with our faculty collaborators of discovering and inventing purposeful uses of digital media in the university's educational programs. At the Center, we have already established a very strong working relationship with Jim Neal and his team and foresee many opportunities for extending and enhancing our common efforts."

Jim Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia, predicts "an outstanding partnership among our now expanded family of electronic pedagogy, electronic publishing, research and development, academic computing and network services, and digital libraries." He added, "The beneficiaries of bringing CCNMTL into the larger Information Services organization will be our students and faculty who will see new and expanded initiatives and innovation in educational technology and learning design."

Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) is a service of Columbia University whose goal is to enhance teaching and learning through the purposeful use of new media. We form partnerships with faculty, providing them with as much support as they need in everything from the construction of course Web sites to the development of more advanced projects. CCNMTL is committed to remaining a leader in its field, engaging with its faculty partners in the reinvention of education for the digital age. http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu.

The Information Services Division at Columbia University includes Academic Information Systems (AcIS), the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL), the Center for Research on Information Access (CRIA), Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC), and the University Libraries.

Announcements:
CCNMTL goes to the U.K. to interview the RSC and film rehearsals

January 21, 2003. CCNMTL staff traveled to London, England to witness the final preparation for Midnight's Children's adaptation to the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). The CCNMTL crew went behind the scenes, taping rehearsals and off-stage interviews with director Tim Supple, designer Melly Still, and key members of the creative team, gathering important artifacts for the development of the multi-media study environment (MSE). CCNMTL also captured the technical and full dress rehearsal in preparation for the preview opening of Midnight's Children, which took place last Saturday evening, January 18, at the Barbican Centre in London. In the production itself, the RSC used archival footage that was researched by CCNMTL.

In partnership with the Columbia University, School of the Arts, the CCNMTL is constructing a rich MSE based on Salman Rushdie's prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children. The MSE will enhance the understanding and appreciation of this significant work by adding context to selected text through direct links to glossaries of concepts and terms, significant web sites, profiles of relevant figures, scholarly commentary, archival historical footage, and artwork. The collaborative efforts of the School of the Arts, the RSC and the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan will bring this work to the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem in March. Beyond the stage, this MSE serves multiple cross-disciplinary courses throughout the University. Using the text of the novel and the play as frames, it presents Columbia faculty as commentators: the turning points of South Asian history, literary commentary, dramaturgic critique, and the process of adapting the novel to the stage, as well as the play itself.

Professor Neguin Yavari from Columbia's Religion Department, will be using the Midnight's Children MSE in her Religion, Gender & Literature: Muslim Women Write Islam course at Columbia this spring. As she states in speaking about her spring course syllabus:

"The Midnight's Children project focuses on a novel rooted in a specific locality at a certain juncture in history and yet invites questions and raises issues directly relevant to the interplay of religion and culture in different spheres and contexts And last but not least, it promises to exploit one of the web's most useful assets, its capability to respond to different users and provide for different needs. I therefore look forward to using the project with my students and am hoping to learn as much from their reactions as my own."

The MSE has broad interdisciplinary application and will also be used in Professor Anupama Rao's Political Modernity in South Asia, in the History Department at Barnard; Narrative and Identity: Rushdie's Midnight's Children, a Comparative Literature course, taught by Professor Deborah A. Martinsen and instructor John Frankfurt; and in Constructing Digital Educational Communities: Midnight's Children a Case Study in Self-Education at Teachers College. Distinguishing features of the MSE include Rushdie's video commentary, interviews with director Tim Supple and other creative artists on the stage production team, and interviews with Columbia University faculty whose expertise complements and enhances the understanding of Rushdie's work and the cultural history of South Asia. These Columbia faculty conversations include Peter Awn, Dean, School of General Studies; Dennis Dalton, Political Science; Nicholas Dirks, Chairman, Anthropology; and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, English.

An initial release of the MSE will be made in January 2003, and a more comprehensive version will be released one month later.

See video trailer of MSE project for Midnight's Children

Announcements:
Frontiers in Science: Stimulating Scientific Thinking

January 8, 2003. This past semester the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) assisted Professors David Helfand, Darcy Kelley and Horst Stormer on a series of lectures entitled Frontiers in Science at the Miller Theatre. The series, which continues this spring with three additional lectures, is a prelude to a possible new approach to science in the Core Curriculum. The professors hope to institute a one-semester course, required of all first-year students with lectures such as those in this series.

In addition to the development of the dynamic presentations the professors use during the lecture, CCNMTL has helped define the pedagogical perspective of the discussion sections and the planning of an online casebook supporting the course objectives and competencies. The web-based casebook will illustrate notions of estimation, uncertainty, graphs, models, and perspective that will stimulate scientific thinking and discovery.

The fall lectures concluded with Professor Horst Stormer's talk entitled Small Wonders: The World of Nano-Science. One goal of the talk was to provide an insight on the nano-scale and our ability to manipulate it. This was highlighted when Professor Stormer invited a student to the stage to move a single atom at a California research lab with a program that remotely controlled the equipment in California.

All the fall lectures were videotaped and edited for future use with other online materials for the course. The spring lineup include Wallace Broecker, Don Melnick and Nick Turro. The next lecture is scheduled for February 3rd, 2003.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Builds MSE for Midnight's Children

December 10, 2002. In partnership with the School of Arts, the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning is constructing a rich Multimedia Study Environment (MSE) based on Salman Rushdie's prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children. The MSE will enhance the understanding and appreciation of this significant work by adding context to excerpts through direct links to glossaries of concepts and terms, profiles of relevant figures, video commentary, film, historical photographs, and artwork. The collaborative efforts of the School of Arts, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan will bring this great work to the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Beyond the stage this MSE will serve multiple cross-disciplinary courses throughout the University. It will deliver an investigation of the turning points in the history of South Asia, literary commentary, dramaturgic critique and the process of its adaptation to the stage. Distinguishing features of the MSE include Rushdie's video commentary, interviews with director Tim Supple and other creative artists on the stage production team, and interviews with Columbia University faculty whose expertise complements and enhances the understanding of Rushdie's work and the cultural history of South Asia. These Columbia faculty conversations include Peter Awn, Dean General Studies; Dennis Dalton, Political Science; Nicholas Dirks, Chairman of Anthropology; and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, English.

An initial release of the MMSE will be made mid-January and a more comprehensive version will be released May 2003.

Click here for video trailer of MSE project for Midnight's Children

See more on Midnight's Children including video excerpts

Announcements:
Nursing Tracks Patient Interventions with Palm Organizers

December 07, 2002. New York, December 7, 2002. Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) has developed a Clinical Rotation Palm Database for Entry-to-Practice (ETP) students at Columbia School of Nursing (CSN). CSN is a leader in advanced nursing practice and infomatics. In keeping with their cutting-edge profile, the Columbia School of Nursing has been experimenting with using Palm Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) to collect observational data during patient interventions. Since mid-January of 2002 approximately 200 ETP students have employed this new application on their m500 handhelds. Students in the field now travel with a PDA that allows data entry at the point of care. The students then return and upload their data with HotSync technology to a database manager that generates reports for faculty for student assessment. This allows CSN students to draw relationships between cases and assess their work with their faculty advisors.

CSN is currently working with CCNMTL to develop the mobile software application further. In mid-January 2003, ten graduate students in Geriatrics will be given m515 Palm PDAs with a more expansive Clinical Rotation Palm Database. Mike Soupios, Educational Technologist, CCNMTL, is currently working on a revised application for CSN that will include many more fields of entry and database resources for these students. According to Soupios, "one of the keys of the new program is the ability to create nursing plans to manage their patients, more closely mimicking their clinical experience."

See more on CSN Palm Pilot Project

Announcements:
Number of CourseWorks sites reaches 1,000

November 15, 2002. CourseWorks@Columbia, the university's course management system, less than a year old, is now in use by over 1,000 courses this semester. The adoption of CourseWorks has been surprisingly strong, surpassing goals set by the CourseWorks team. In addition, students have also embraced the system with over 11,000 students accessing the system this semester.

New features and bug fixes continue to improve the environment. "It is with the help of our faculty users that we fine tune the system. The faculty has been great at providing us feedback for improvements," commented Dan Beeby, who spearheads CCNMTL support for CourseWorks.

Recent features added to the system include Third Space, a CCNMTL-created application that allows instructors and students to "quote" and comment on video and audio materials. Other new features include competency tracking tools used at the Health Sciences campus to reinforce student learning goals and a course migration option for easily moving course content from semester to semester.

CCNMTL CourseWorks workshops have been well-attended this semester. The workshops encourage faculty to move beyond the rote creation of HTML pages, enabling instructors to discuss features of CourseWorks to meet their educational goals.

Announcements:
Journalism Radio Broadcast Courses Assisted by New Management Tool

October 24, 2002. The Radio Broadcast Content Management System (Radio CMS) is a database driven solution that models the decision-making, review and editorial process of radio broadcasting, managing the steps journalism students follow to organize a live broadcast composed of numerous news stories. Each broadcast is then archived and distributed through a simple Web page front-end. This tool greatly reduces the technological burden on students helping them focus on learning high-quality radio reporting, writing and production while modeling the editorial process from idea to distribution.

Radio Webcasting has been the heart of the radio program at the Columbia School of Journalism since the program was redesigned in 1996 around NPR-style production techniques and journalistic principles. Radio training is intended to develop descriptive and narrative writing techniques for those who intend to go into radio or television. Students produce Webcasts as a part of the following courses: Reporting and Writing for Broadcast (RW1/Broadcast), Radio Workshop, Documentary, and Masters Project.

Radio CMS organizes the work flow of a production cycle for reporters, producers, and instructors starting with the initial story pitch to the generation of a Web page of the archived broadcast which contains a series of story leads and links to the audio files. Within this cycle, the executive producer reviews the list of available stories from the radio reporters -- assembling a set of stories that make up the live broadcast while the webcaster adds and edits elements such as story introductions and teasers.

The assembled set of stories make up the broadcast which is then published in three different forms. Once with teasers for the upcoming broadcast, once during the live broadcast and once after the broadcast is recorded and archived.

RadioCMS was produced in collaboration with John Dinges, Professor in the School of Journalism. Kristen Sosulski, educational technologist for CCNMTL, led the project development effort and was assisted by a team consisting of interface developer, Zarina Mustapha and Anders Pearson, who developed the database and programs for RadioCMS. Numerous other staff members were contributors to the project.

Radio Broadcast Content Management System

Reporting and Writing 1 published broadcast archive page

Announcements:
Physics Today highlights CCNMTL Astronomy Project

October 14, 2002. Physics Today highlights in their Web Watch section of their October 2002 issue, Seeing the Whole Symphony, a project developed for David Helfand, Professor of Astronomy. Seeing the Whole Symphony demonstrates the power of full-spectrum observing using an aural analogy.

Seeing the Whole Symphony

Announcements:
Social Work Practice Video Archive Released

October 9, 2002. CCNMTL and the School of Social Work produced a series of videos depicting social worker/client interviews on four topics in social work practice with older adults and their families. The topics include: Coping with Chronic Illness, Active Aging, Depression, and Sexuality in Aging. In total, ten client and social worker interactions were captured totalling over four hours of video. One of the videos (Depression) was conducted in Spanish and is being distributed in both Spanish and English. The videos and teaching materials are already being used in courses at the School of Social Work, and will also be distributed on CD-ROM to social work libraries across the country.

The effort was led by SSW Professors Denisse Burnette and Anne McCann-Oakley, who along with the rest of the School of Social Work team developed the supplementary teaching materials including interview transcripts, discussion guides for instructors, and links to studies that relate to the video content.

Education technologist, David VanEsselstyn managed the project for CCNMTL. The video editing and compression was completed by Stephanie Ogden, Senior Video Specialist and her intern assistants, Ndlela Nkobi, Stephen Padilla.

Announcements:
Inauguration Investiture Ceremony Webcast

Update: October 3, 2002. The archive of the Investiture broadcast is now available.
September 25, 2002.The Inauguration Investiture Ceremony of Lee C. Bollinger as the 19th President of Columbia University will be broadcast live on October 3rd at 10am ET. Please visit the broadcast page for additional information.

CCNMTL Inauguration Broadcast Web page

Columbia University Inauguration Site

Announcements:
Revitalizing Epidemiology 101

August 25, 2002. In Vivo, a publication of the Columbia University Health Sciences, describes how the Mailman School of Public Health is revitalizing its introductory epidemiology course. One of the elements contributing to this revitalization is an outbreak simulation developed by CCNMTL. Working with Dr. Daniel Herman, Dr. Lydia Zablotska, and Dr. Ian Lapp, CCNMTL has developed a fictional town, Epiville, complete with newscasts, and other online materials.

See full story in the August 21, 2002 issue of In Vivo

Disease Outbreak Simulation: Epiville

Announcements:
CourseWorks Reminder Sent to Instructors

August 23, 2002. The following note has been sent to Fall 2002 instructors:

Your CourseWorks@Columbia course Web site is ready for your use! To begin working on your course Web site or migrate content from a previous semester, log in with your University Network ID, UNI and password at http://courseworks.columbia.edu.

One-hour CourseWorks workshops will be offered daily during the first two weeks of classes. For more information and to sign up for a session at Morningside or Health Sciences campuses, visit the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) Web site at http://www.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/services/workshops/

Sincerely, The CourseWorks Team
courseworks@columbia.edu

Announcements:
CCNMTL Moves Into a New Home: 505 Butler

August 16, 2002. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) has moved from 605 Butler into its new home--505 Butler Library--on August 9, 2002. The other CCNMTL locations (Lewisohn and Health Science) remain the same.

Announcements:
Online Facebook for Film and Theater Students Released

June 17, 2002. CCNMTL in partnership with Lenore Dekoven, Assistant Professor of Film at the School of the Arts, released the online Casting Files/Facebook for use as a resource in Film and Theater classes. The digital archive allows students to review hundreds of actors' headshots and resumes online in order to select casts for their productions.

Learning to cast actors is a significant part of the core workshops required of first year film students. The site, which contains headshots and resumes for over 1000 actors, offers students easier access to these resources, which were previously only available in hard copy in an office with limited hours. The online version allows students to view, save or print files any time, as well as select from four different criteria (type, age, sex and ethnicity) to identify desirable candidates. Used with tools like the CU Analyzer, the Facebook can help students visualize a potential cast.

Film and theater students can begin using the Casting Files/Facebook immediately.

Facebook Demo: Track

Announcements:
State of the Planet 2002 Broadcast Archived

May 28, 2002. CCNMTL has archived the Web broadcast of the State of the Planet 2002 Conference.

State of the Planet 2002: Track

Media Archive: Conferences

Announcements:
Commencement 2002 Archived Broadcast

May 23, 2002. CCNMTL has archived the Web broadcast of the Columbia College and School of Engineering Class Day proceedings as well as the May 22nd Commencement 2002 proceedings.

Internet Broadcast: Commencement 2002

Media Archive: University Commencement

Announcements:
Live Webcast of State of the Planet 2002

May 10, 2002. CCNMTL is producing the live Webcast of the State of the Planet 2002 Conference: Science and Sustainability, May 13-14, in partnership with Columbia's Earth Institute. The Webcast is presented live to the world via the conference Web site, and is being recorded for future use. With assistance from Academic Information Systems (AcIS), we are also multicasting an MPEG-1 stream (1.5Mbps) accessible to any Internet2 location.

About the 2002 State of the Planet Conference
Responding to the global call for greater clarity about the sustainable future of planet Earth, Columbia University, in collaboration with London School of Economics and Political Science, Harvard University, and UNESCO, will convene the State of the Planet 2002 Conference on May 13 and 14, 2002. The event will take place at the University's Roone Arledge Auditorium, Lerner Hall, New York City.

Preceding the World Summit on Sustainable Development, scheduled for August 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the State of the Planet Conference will bring together leading international scientists, opinion-makers, and policy experts to explore the theme: Science And Sustainability.

Recordings of the conference proceedings will be available in the CCNMTL Media Archive right after the conference, along with other CCNMTL-produced recordings, including the State of the Planet 1999 conference. Faculty members are invited to use these recordings in their courses by including links to them in their course Web sites. Recorded lectures can be used for classroom presentation and student use. Please contact ccnmtl@columbia.edu for help with course Web site development.

State of the Planet 2002

CCNMTL Media Archive

Announcements:
Film Analysis Tool Released

May 7, 2002.CCNMTL in partnership with Larry Engel, Adjunct Professor of Film at the School of the Arts, released Deconstructor: A Film Analysis Tool, which will aid film students in learning, understanding and applying the language used in film analysis. Dr. Engel envisioned this new media tool to change the student role from a passive film viewer to an active critical thinker about the construction of a film scenes, a skill they will carry into their own work as filmmakers.

Using Deconstructor, students will view film scenes, dissect them into a series of shots, then annotate each shot according to a standard film analysis template. They will be prompted to look at scene analysis with a set of criteria used to identify film elements, such as shot type, angle and camera movement.

Analyzing a series of shots, students will build a visual score for a scene by layering and juxtaposing different variables across time. The graphing feature will aid them in identifying relationships and patterns among different film elements.

Professor Engel modeled Deconstructor on the teaching of former Columbia Professor Stefan Sharff. Says Professor Engel, Sharff's "approach to film grammar and syntax opened a way of seeing film that I hadn't thought of before. This new tool is a way of continuing his work and helping students more easily collect data necessary to discuss and learn about film's inherent grammatical underpinnings."

A beta of Deconstructor was introduced to Engel's course, Analysis of Film, this Spring. The final version, which will be ready for use in Fall 2002, will include many more graphing options and interface changes based on comments from students in the Spring course.

The Deconstructor

Announcements:
Thomas de Zengotita Spices Up University Seminar on New Media

March 27, 2002. New York University Professor Thomas de Zengotita presented his controversial and entertaining view on education in a virtual world to the University Seminar on New Media Teaching and Learning.

Says de Zengotita, "Freedom in a virtualized world means being able to choose among unlimited options in every sphere of experience and activity because it doesn't really matter what you choose. That is the condition we face as educators." His presentation offered examples of what happens to people in virtuality and the implications for education.

Thomas de Zengotita teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. He has published numerous articles on the impact of new media in society and, in 1975, contributed to "Language and Learning: the Debate Between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky," the published notes of the conference held that year at Abbaye de Royaumont near Paris.

View Thomas de Zengotita's presentation

The University Seminars in New Media Teaching and Learning

Media Archive: University Seminars

Announcements:
CCNMTL and Oxford University Awarded $300K Grant by the Mellon Foundation for Development of Simulation to Train Public Health Professionals in Refugee Aid

Mar 27, 2002. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded CCNMTL (with the Program on Forced Migration and Public Health, Columbia University) and the Refugee Studies Centre (with the Technology Assisted Lifelong Learning Group, University of Oxford) a major grant to develop simulations that will train workers in humanitarian emergencies. The pilot program, launching Fall 2002, will be used by Professor Ronald Waldman at the School of Public Health, Columbia University.

Responding the growing needs for effective humanitarian aid around the world, Columbia and Oxford Universities are developing this project for use in the field by public health professionals, international relations professionals, and other NGO volunteers, as well as in the classroom by students of public health. The initial research will evaluate different simulation models and technical solutions, the results of which CCNMTL and Oxford will share with the wider community. Later iterations will address increasingly complex issues facing humanitarian workers as the research and development team evaluates the use of the pilot project and discovers appropriate courses that might be enriched by simulation components.

Program on Forced Migration Online

Announcements:
Frank Moretti Delivers Keynote Address at SCUP Conference

March 18, 2002. On March 13-15, 2002, more than 250 campus facilities directors, administrators, planners, architects and builders from the north east and Canada met at Columbia University to explore the close relationship between technology, teaching and educational facilities at a Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) conference entitled "Bricks and Clicks: Challenges in the Digital Age."

Invited to deliver the keynote address, Frank Moretti, CCNMTL's Executive Director, presented a lecture entitled "Digital Media: Implications for Academia."

View Frank Moretti's keynote address

Society for College and University Planning Conference

Announcements:
Current CCNMTL University Seminar Focuses on General Education and Global Stability

February 26, 2002. Taking for its topic General Education, New Media and the Challenge of Global Stability, the University Seminar on New Media Teaching and Learning welcomes the insights of major leaders at the University and beyond, including Lisa Anderson, Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs; Alan Brinkley, Allan Nevins Professor of History; James Carey, CBS Professor of International Journalism; Robbie McClintock, Co-Director of Institute for Learning Technologies and John and Sue Anne Weinberg Professor of History and Education; and Frank Moretti, Executive Director, Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of Institute for Learning Technologies.

On March 11, the Seminar welcomes Tom de Zengotita, Adjunct Associate Professor at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University, who will speak to the question of Education in a Virtual World. According to de Zengotita, "freedom in a virtual world means being able to choose among unlimited options in every sphere of experience and activity because it doesn't really matter what you choose." This compelling statement frames his talk and promises to engage participants in a lively discussion.

Seminars are open to invited participants, but all members of the Columbia community are invited to participate in the online discussion at the Seminar Web site.

For a complete schedule, to read more about the current seminar and to view past presentations and participate in the online discussion, please visit the Seminar Web site.

Announcements:
CourseWorks@Columbia Launched for Spring 2002; CCNMTL Supports Faculty Learning

January 22, 2002. Following Columbia's launch of CourseWorks@Columbia, the University's new course management system that aids students and faculty in the management of their online course materials, CCNMTL offers faculty at the University support for building their course Web sites and training to learn how to use the application on their own.

CourseWorks@Columbia is an evolution of several technologies introduced by AcIS and CCNMTL, including CUBboard, the Course Web Site template and the Directory of Classes (DOC). With it, faculty can publish course information and content, communicate with students via bulletin boards and e-mail lists, maintain digital assets (text, slides, video and audio), deliver and receive files (such as readings and assignments) and manage group projects with ease. The hundreds of faculty who have developed course Web sites in the past will notice a remarkable difference between this simple, Web-based publishing environment, which allows them to post information and materials just before a class begins, and the more complicated, time-consuming protocols used in the past.

CCNMTL is offering regularly-scheduled workshops to teach faculty the ABCs of publishing their course Web sites and to help them develop pedagogical frameworks for presenting their course materials online. Basic course Web site development workshops are offered the first and third Friday of every month. For those faculty who want a more specialized consultation, CCNMTL Educational Technologists are available for one-on-one training.

For students, CourseWorks@Columbia serves as a single point of entry for all of their course information and content, including links to digital library reserve materials, a calendar they can use to track assignments and deadlines, bulletin boards and groups for which they are registered, and announcements from their instructors.

CourseWorks@Columbia is available to all schools and joins similar systems at the Graduate School of Business and Teachers College. It is based on Prometheus, a community-based, commercial, open architecture software platform originally developed by the George Washington University.

Faculty and instructors may contact CCNMTL at (212) 854-9058 or ccnmtl@columbia.edu for help on developing a Web site or learning to use CourseWorks.

Workshops at CCNMTL: For training

Announcements:
CCNMTL Contributions Recognized by the American Dental Education Association

December 5, 2001. In its annual compendium of Best Practices in Dental Education 2001, the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) acknowledged the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) for its success in integrating new media in the dental curriculum.

According to the ADEA report, the School of Dental and Oral Surgery "has combined resources and formed a unique cooperative venture with the university's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. This collaboration has catalyzed a new effort in integrating new media in the dental curriculum." The result of these initiatives, according to SDOS, is that they "have been able to design and begin implementation on a comprehensive electronic curriculum." In particular, the study notes the innovative design of electronic pre-clinical lab instruction, development of new tools for learning diagnosis and treatment planning as well as critical thinking in other areas of the curriculum and curriculum management tools.

Citing Community DentCare, a community-based project at the school that provides dental services to the local, low-income community in partnership with health centers, neighborhood practices, public schools and others, the report acknowledges the primary role CCNMTL played in facilitating the dental education network. Community DentCare provides the framework for educational programs including an AEGD Primary Care program, dental student rotations and specialty student training. The network also serves as a foundation for health services research.

CCNMTL continues to partner with the School of Dental and Oral Surgery, as well as all schools on the Health Sciences campus, on new media initiatives that support teaching and learning.

Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD) program

American Dental Education Association

Announcements:
University Seminar: New Media, General Education, and the Challenge of Global Stability.

For more detailed information about the University Seminar on New Media, General Education and the Challenge of Global Stability, please visit the Seminar site.

November 26, 2001. On Tuesday, December 4, 2001, CCNMTL presents its latest University Seminar on New Media Teaching and Learning on the subject New Media, General Education, and the Challenge of Global Stability. The Seminar features Lisa Anderson, James W. Carey, Robbie McClintock and Frank Moretti as the key presenters, with the extended group of Seminar members serving as respondents.

Participants will examine the ways in which a national crisis, such as the Sept. 11 attacks on American soil, move educators to consider how best to nurture the generative values of civilization as defined by Columbia's Core Curriculum. The issue will be presented in the framework of how new media transform the creation and use of knowledge, alter the conditions of participation in culture, and vastly amplify the reach, the scope, and the power of individual action, for good and for ill. One of the crucial questions for discussion will be, "What form of general education do we need to create in order to enable society to be both global and free?"

To continue the discussion beyond the limitations of the two-hour seminar, CCNMTL is creating a Seminar Web site to facilitate ongoing global discussion forums and netcasts of significant related events, inviting key partners at other institutions and public sector groups to deepen the intellectual discussion.

The University Seminars at Columbia University make possible sustained interaction of scholars, cutting across traditional boundaries of learning to generate fresh approaches and ideas and camaraderie and intellectual fellowship that enrich and challenge members. Participants are selected by invitation from the Columbia faculty and other experts.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Resources Available on Columbia Interactive.

November 14, 2001. CCNMTL is pleased to be a part of Columbia Interactive (CI), the new gateway to e-learning resources developed at Columbia University. Launching on November 14, 2001, CI provides access to course Web sites, projects and digital tools produced by CCNMTL in partnership with faculty.

For more information about CCNMTL and Columbia's other digital initiatives, please pick up the special November 14 "Columbia Digital" issue of the Columbia Record.

Columbia Interactive

Announcements:
News Reporting Simulation Launches at Journalism School.

October 23, 2001. The Graduate School of Journalism launched version one of their News Reporting Simulation (NewsSim) this fall. Developed by John Pavlik, Professor and Melvin Mencher, Professor Emeritus, at the Graduate School of Journalism in collaboration with CCNMTL, elements of NewsSim—from the simulated scenario to sources to supplemental reading lists—can be customized for faculty members based on their individual curriculum needs.

Students will use the simulation to practice news gathering, interviewing and writing skills in a controlled digital environment that approximates some of the conditions found in the real world by reporters covering common news stories. In the first version of NewsSim, students cover a fire in a local apartment building as a spot news story. The simulation will ultimately contain several scenarios, each intended to teach students a different aspect of news reporting.

NewsSim includes simulated video interviews with key witnesses and officials. As it guides students through the fire scenario, the simulation offers suggestions on how to proceed and provides feedback based on the students1 choices. Students also listen to fire codes broadcast over a police scanner in order to find a potential story and navigate the town using an interactive map. At the end of the simulation, they identify the story elements and submit their story covering the simulated event, which is sent to the instructor to be read and graded.

NewsSim has already received overwhelmingly positive feedback from students who are using it in Professor Pavlik's class Exploring New Media. The project is undergoing evaluation this fall, with comprehensive results expected to be released by the Summer of 2002.

News Reporting Simulation

Reporting and Writing I

Exploring New Media

Announcements:
New Digital Classroom in Lewisohn Hall.

October 23, 2001. 308A Lewisohn Hall is now The Digital Classroom. Overseen by CCNMTL, General Studies and the Registrar's office, the Digital Classroom is designed to encourage interactive learning for small groups in and beyond the classroom.

With seating for 18 students, the classroom is designed for seminars that require students and faculty to work together in small groups. The furniture itself is flexible—easy-to-move, color-coded tables allow the instructor to control the room set-up.

Control also extends to the presentation of course content, including class notes, Web sites, Word documents, the course Web site, DVD or videotapes. All of these features can be viewed, and many can be created, on the freestanding console called the SmartBoard. Housed in a cabinet resembling a rear projection television set, the SmartBoard is a dynamic, networked computer display with electronic whiteboard, which includes VCR and DVD players and an integrated audio system. A short training session, provided by CCNMTL, prepares any faculty member to use all of the SmartBoard features in their class.

Faculty making use of new media in their teaching are encouraged to request The Digital Classroom for the Spring 2002 semester by contacting ccnmtl@columbia.edu.

SmartBoard demonstrations for groups of faculty will be given by CCNMTL on request. To schedule a demonstration for your department, please contact CCNMTL at ccnmtl@columbia.edu.

Digital Classroom

Announcements:
The School of Social Work to create course Web sites for every class.

June 29, 2001. Beginning Fall 2001, syllabi, reading lists (with links to library databases), bulletin boards, and other course materials will be available online to Social Work students for every class taught at the School of Social Work (SSW).

The SSW's Office of Computing and Instructional Technology is working with faculty to compile, digitize and publish course materials using the Course Web Site Template developed by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.

In addition, each course will have a bulletin board that allows students and instructors to share information throughout the life of the class. According to Ann McCann Oakley, Director of the school's Office of Computing and Instructional Technology, "bulletin boards encourage a higher level of discourse," removing the limitations of the traditional classroom environment. "We think it is important for all courses to make good use of one and we have learned best practices through our work with CCNMTL," she concluded.

The CCNMTL Course Web Site format has proven popular with SSW students, who have come to expect the high level of interaction with classmates and instructors it affords them. The consistent, easy-to-navigate interface is appreciated by faculty, as well, since it helps them maintain course materials and encourages students to become more fully engaged with the subject. Says Ms. Oakley, "getting readings online is a great advantage for faculty," since materials that have been digitized once are easily accessible in the future and student have access to them at any time.

A number of SSW classes have been online in the last few years, but with this new effort, students will benefit from a consistent digital environment in all classes. This initiative at SSW is the continuation of a multi-year collaboration with CCNMTL, which includes the development of Third Space, a method of referencing and including video snippets within a bulletin board message and will continue as the School finds new ways to bridge the gaps between class work, fieldwork and professional practice.

Course Web Site Template

Third Space

Announcements:
"The Rohde to Srebrenica," a multimedia case study.

July 23, 2001. Under the guidance of Anne Nelson, Director of the International Program at the School of Journalism, students from the Elements of International Reporting class developed "The Rohde to Srebrenica: A Case Study of Human Rights Reporting." The case study is presented in the form of a Web site that documents U.S. reporter David Rohde's journey through Bosnia, where he spent several months in 1995 researching and reporting on the genocide of Bosnian Muslims.

Visitors to the Web site —which consists of six chronological stages told through a series of student essays, interviews and newspaper articles —can view Rohde's photographs of the gravesites, read the correspondence with his editor, find links to related organizations (such as Freedom Forum and the Committee to Protect Journalists) and read articles that comprised Rohde's ground-breaking series published in the Christian Science Monitor.

Central to the study is a multimedia treatment of Rohde and his editor, Faye Bowers, retelling their story at a special lecture held at Columbia in April 2001. The video is presented as a series of clips organized by theme, making individual topics easy to find and study. The Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) is used with RealVideo clips to provide this uniquely educational video interface.

The site can be used as a resource for all Columbia faculty and students —from the School of Journalism to the School of International Public Affairs to the School of Law.

["!^(homepage)images/web.gif 17×15! Case Study: "The Rohde to Srebrenica"":http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/]

["!^(homepage)images/video.gif 17×15! Video Interface: "The Rohde to Srebrenica: Stage One"":http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/nelson/rohde/ram_files/stage_1.ram]

Course Web Site: Elements of International Reporting

Announcements:
New versions for CU Analyzer for Windows and Macintosh released.

June 27, 2001. A new version of the CU Analyzer (v1.1.214) for Windows is now available for download. In addition, we have released for the first time a Macintosh version which is also available from the download pages. See the CU Analyzer Web pages for details.

CU Analyzer Web Site

Announcements:
CU Analyzer (v1.1.150) for Windows released.

April 30, 2001. A new version of the CU Analyzer (v1.1.150) for Windows is now available for download. See the CU Analyzer Web pages for details. A MacOS beta is being tested and will be made available during the summer.

CU Analyzer Website

Announcements:
CCNMTL finds and reports Internet Explorer vulnerability.

February 8, 2001. During its research with XML and images, the Center discovered a security problem with Internet Explorer. CCNMTL staff Anders Pearson and Peter Leonard discovered that the security hole affects both Mac (version 5.0) and Windows (version 4.0) and can lead to Web-mail spoofing attacks. The report has been covered by a number of online news sites, including SecurityFocus.com and Macintouch.com.

Announcements:
CCNMTL to present a conference on digital technology and pedagogy.

February 7, 2001. CCNMTL announces a conference focusing on the impact of new media on education entitled, "Columbia University: Moving Education Into the 21st Century With New Media" to take place on Friday, March 9, 2001. Provost Jonathan R. Cole, CCNMTL Executive Director Frank Moretti, Associate Vice Provost Raphael Kasper, Fathom CEO Ann Kirschner, and Columbia Faculty will be among those who will speak at the conference, which will be open to all Columbia University affiliates. The conference will take place in the Faculty Room of Low Memorial Library. A complete schedule of the conference is now available online. For information or to be added to a mailing list, please visit the Conference Web site.

Announcements:
CCNMTL Health Sciences open house to be held on January 25, 2001

January 9, 2001. CCNMTL will hold an Open House on Thursday, January 25, 2001, from 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM to welcome CU affiliates to visit the new the new Health Sciences Campus location and enjoy some light refreshments with CCNMTL staff.

Announcements:
Columbia University Record articles focus on CCNMTL efforts

December 15, 2000. The Columbia University RECORD published two articles focusing on the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning's (CCNMTL's) pedagogical role at the university.

The first, "General Studies Offers a Paperless Undergraduate Class", was also referred to in New York Magazine's December 18-25, 2000 special Spring Education advertising editorial section.

The second, "Grad Students Help Place Course Syllabi Online" Record story describes the role of Departmental Associate Education Technologists (DAETs), a group of graduate students trained under a CCNMTL program designed to provided greater support for faculty.

Announcements:
CCNMTL office at the Health Sciences campus now open for business

December 1, 2000. The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) opened its new Health Sciences Campus location this week. While the Center has been in operation serving the faculty from the uptown campus since early this Fall, the staff had been working out of a crowded makeshift office making it difficult to function effectively. The new location is conveniently located across the street from the Hammer Building at the Armory Track and Field Center at 168th Street. The Armory, soon to be home of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and already the home of several national and community organizations as well as the Columbia Center for Population and Family Health gives the Center a connection to the community and the University.

A unique feature of this new location is that the office is entirely wireless, connected to Columbia University and the rest of the Internet using a wireless access point that intercepts a beam of information that is sent from a similarly configured access point on the wired network. This focus on exploring new technologies is representative of the Center's goals of integrating new media tools with the health sciences curriculum. Thus far, the emphasis uptown has been on working with imaging and digital video technologies to provide health care students with patient simulations, virtual charts, and case studies, as well as providing the same services provided by CCNMTL at the Morningside campus.

In early January, The Center will announce an open house for faculty and staff to visit and become acquainted with the work of the Center. Until then, Dr. John Zimmerman, Associate Director of the Center and head of the uptown office, invites inquiries and visitors. John can be reached at (646) 772-8607 or zim@columbia.edu.

Announcements:
Columbia College Today features CCNMTL in its special edition on "Technology and Columbia"

December 2000. Columbia College Today (CCT) features a story on the digital revolution taking place at Columbia University entitled "Columbia Goes Digital" with an extensive discussion of the mission of CCNMTL.

The magazine is distributed to all College Alumni as well as all currently affiliated students, staff, and faculty to the university. If you would like to obtain a copy you may contact CCT directly at cct@columbia.edu, fax: 212.870.2747, or by telephone: 212.870.2752.

Announcements:
eCompany features CCNMTL Executive Director, Frank Moretti in article on the transformation of the university by new media technologies

November 22, 2000. eCompany (December 2000), a new media industry magazine, published the feature story, "The Web is Transforming the University. How and Why?", describing the current debate surrounding technology and how it is changing the university as we know it. Dr. Moretti’s picture is accompanied by the following text:

"This is the third great paradigmatic shift in learning history," argues Frank Moretti, head of the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University, one of the leaders in embracing the Web. (The first two great paradigmatic shifts were the inventions of the Greek alphabet in the eight century B.C. and Gutenberg's press in the 15th century.) "Now we have the chance to reinvent education and create something better," Moretti adds.

Full text of the article is available at eCompany.com

Announcements:
Brownfield Action 2.0 launches in Barnard Environmental Science course

October 2, 2000. Brownfield Action 2.0, the second iteration of an interactive simulation of contaminated landsite on CD-ROM developed by CCNMTL, began this week in Barnard College's environmental science department. The simulation integrates knowledge from a wide range of sources (environmental science, chemistry, geography, geology, epidemiology, the etiology of illness, civics and economics) to solve problems of environmental contamination.

Brownfield Action is intended for use as the main laboratory exercise of the Introduction to Environmental Science course at Barnard College, taught by Prof. Peter Bower. Over 100 students working in pairs will spend the next 10 weeks experiencing what it is like to be an environmental site investigator as they explore a brownfield in a virtual town. Using maps, interviews with residents, government documents, and a comprehensive set of environmental testing tools, students will generate a report on the cause and extent of any pollution they find on an abandoned factory site that is ready for sale to a real estate developer who wishes to build a mall on the property.

Brownfield Action 2.0 project description

ENV BC1001 Introduction to Environmental Science

Brownfield Action 2.0 reference Website

What is a brownfield?

Announcements:
The CU Analyzer (Windows) 1.0 now available

September 25, 2000. The Windows version of the Columbia University Analyzer has been released. This unique web-based tool allows one to capture, analyze, and ultimately express new knowledge using multimedia objects culled from the Web. The CU Analyzer, known as HyperFolio during the beta stages, is a plug-in for your browser that allows you to collect assets (text, images, and audio and video links) off any Web site simply by dragging and dropping. You can then expand the CU Analyzer to manipulate those assets on worksheets that can be made to represent an unlimited number of organizational structures.

Additional information, demos, and dowload options are available at the CU Analyzer project pages. . Downloading requires a University Network ID. The Macintosh version is now in beta and will also be released this Fall.

Columbia University Analyzer project pages.

Announcements:
Apple.com features CCNMTL Summer Intensive Training Program in its Higher Education Website

August 25, 2000. CCNMTL Summer Intensive Training Program is the subject of Apple.com’s Macs in Action: a collection of stories about how Macs and Apple technology are being used by faculty, administrators, and students.

It the article “Grad Students Rev Up Web for Faculty”, Apple highlights the Summer Program and focuses on the Macintosh portable, wireless networking, and software solutions employed by CCNMTL throughout the course of the program.

This piece was also picked up by the Macintosh News Network.

Read this article at Apple.com

Announcements:
CNN interviews Frank Moretti on the use of technology in education

August 18, 2000. CNNfn broadcasted a seven minute interview of Frank Moretti, CCNMTL’s Executive Director, during a technology in education segment. The segment was aired live on August 11, 2000 at 7:50 AM.

See the video clip from CNNfn (Real Video)

Announcements:
CCNMTL satellite will open at the Health Sciences campus early Fall 2000

August 2, 2000. CCNMTL will be expanding to include a satellite at the Health Sciences campus later this summer. The Center will occupy two separate locations. One will be a small office in the Hammer Building and a second larger space across the street at the Armory Track and Field Center, which has become one of the vitalizing forces for community re-development in Washington Heights (armorytrack.com. Work has started on the renovation of the Armory space and we expect to move into both of these locations by the end of 2000.

Dr. John Zimmerman has joined CCNMTL as the Associate Director for the Health Science campus. Dr. Zimmerman (zim@columbia.edu) will continue his appointment as Associate Professor of Clinical Dentistry and Clinical Medical Informatics while directing the efforts of the Center uptown. He will bring into the fold of the Center his team of developers and technicians. While we work on the physical presence, the Center has begun a number of digital efforts with the faculty across each of the four schools at the Health Sciences campus. Current projects include developing the Science Basic to the Practice of Medicine and Dentistry course, a required course for all first-year students, a nutrition course, and the Primary Care and Pediatric Clerkships among others.

For further information, please contact John Zimmerman at (646) 772-8607.

Announcements:
The Christian Science Monitor features the use of technology in education in two articles on CCNMTL

August 2, 2000. The Christian Science Monitor (August 1 2000) features two stories on the use of technology in education and how CCNMTL is meeting that challenge. The main article, “Professors try to keep up with cyberage” and the sidebar, “Digging for signs of pollution—with a mouse and a hard drive”, focus on the efforts of the Center to date and includes quotes by faculty, staff of the center, and visitors to the center.

This piece was also picked up by University Business Daily, a site covering changes in education, and geek.com. The geek.com article includes an editorial comment and reader responses to the article.

Read these articles at the Christian Science Monitor Web site.

Read the article and editorial comment at geek.com

Announcements:
Columbia University Copyright Policy approved by the Trustees

June 3, 2000. The University Copyright Policy prepared by a Provostial faculty committee and adopted by the University Senate was approved and adopted by the Trustees of the University at their June 3, 2000 meeting. The Policy is effective as of that date.

Columbia University Copyright Policy.

Announcements:
The Summer Ecosystem Experience for Undergraduates (SEE-U)

May 2000. The The Summer Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduates (SEE-U) is an innovative collaboration between Columbia University’s Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC) and the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning. The digitally networked five-week field ecology program consists of a network of introductory ecology courses running simultaneously during the summer in different biomes around the world. CCNMTL is developing a variety of digital resources that will allow students in a particular biome to contextualize their local research within a broader understanding of global ecology.

In conjunction with CERC and Center for International Earth Sciences Information Network (CIESIN), the Center is working to develop eBiome. eBiome is an innovative, integrated tool for storing and retrieving all types of field ecology data ranging from climatic and abiotic information to ethological and behavioral data. This tool has been developed exclusively for the SEE-U program and will serve as one of the centerpieces of the class. All data collected during the class will be entered into eBiome for use by students at the field site as well as by students who are in the other SEE-U field sites. eBiome will help students gain a unique understanding of how similar processes occur around the globe, because they will compare data from many biomes. In so doing, eBiome will help students to more thoroughly grasp and comprehend important ecological concepts.

The Center is also constructing websites featuring web-based communications infrastructure that will allow students from different biomes to share ideas and exchange information that pertains to their field research. The websites will also serve as a curriculum portal for the SEE-U program—a platform for assignments; lecture and multimedia archive; and other online resources.

Announcements:
CCNMTL and GSAS team-up students to support educational technology at the departmental levels

May 2000. CCNMTL has partnered with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in developing a program to train students over the summer and place them within academic departments. This highly selective program will provide faculty with additional support for the use of new media in teaching and learning and will extend the Center’s ability to reach out to increasing numbers of faculty across the campus. Ten departments have students in the program with seven additional students who will be trained to support projects in courses ranging from Infectious Disease to African American Studies and Psychology.

The seventeen graduate students, Departmental Associate Educational Technologists (AETs) will participate in an immersive six-week summer training program to aquire Web development skills and learn about pedagogical strategies that exploit the full educational potential of digital technologies. During the academic year, AETs will work closely with Center staff to get all courses in their department online and work with faculty on larger course development projects. In addition to stipends, AETs will have the use of a laptop for the year so they can demonstrate possibilities to faculty and develop course Web content anywhere on campus.

CCNMTL Summer Intensive Training Program

Archives

Archive Category: Announcements

Announcements:Please subscribe to our new RSS feed

Announcements:Fall Premiere Launches New Services

Announcements:Video from Open Content Conference Available

Announcements:Fall Workshops and Events

In The News:Global Health Research Center in Central Asia Opens

Announcements:Press Release: NIMH Grant for Multimedia Connect

Announcements:Summer CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:Summer Session II CourseWorks Workshops

Announcements:CCNMTL Videos Vital in Texas

Announcements:Press Release: CCNMTL Hosts Open Content Meeting

Announcements:University Seminar: Harlem Digital Archive

Announcements:CourseWorks Adds Wimba Voice Boards

Announcements:Chief Judge Kaye Supports Collateral Consequences Site

Announcements:E-Portfolios in Dental Schools

Announcements:University Seminar: Toward a Democratic Digital Past

Announcements:Decision-Making Tools for CRED

Announcements:New Site: Podcasting at Columbia

Announcements:University Seminar: The Triangle Initiative, Feb. 8

Announcements:Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:Spring CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside

Announcements:Havel at Columbia Podcasts Featured on iTunes

Announcements:University Seminar: Siva Vaidhyanathan

Announcements:Five Years of CourseWorks at Columbia

Announcements:Press Release: Havel at Columbia Site Released

Announcements:University Seminar: The Evolution of Video in Education

Announcements:University Seminar: Yochai Benkler

Announcements:New VITAL Released to Columbia and Hunter College

Announcements:NSF Grant to Enhance Brownfield Action

Announcements:Havel at Columbia site released

Announcements:Virtual Techniques in Dentistry (VirTechs) Released

Announcements:Press Release: Spring Grants for CCNMTL and Partners

Announcements:CCNMTL Hosts Big Apple Plone Sprint

Announcements:College of Dental Medicine Faculty Discuss CCNMTL Tools

Announcements:CCNMTL's International Journeys

Announcements:Film Language Glossary Evaluation Now Available

Announcements:CDC Grant for School of Social Work's HIV Intervention

Announcements:Released: ePrep | Emergency Preparedness Training

Announcements:Rebalancing Copyright Conference Podcasts Released

Announcements:CCNMTL Projects Included in World Leaders Forum

Announcements:African-American Poets Wiki Launched

Announcements:Open CourseWare Presented

Announcements:Carnegie Mellon Scientists Present at University Seminar

Announcements:School of Social Work Maps Social Support Networks

Announcements:SimCity Incorporated into Art History Course

Announcements:New Media in Education 2006 Conference

Announcements:Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:2005 Client Survey Report Released

Announcements:CourseWorks Workshops for Instructors

Announcements:Personal Life-Long Learning Plans Launched

Announcements:Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn Discusses the IAT

Announcements:CCNMTL Contributes MediaWiki Plug-ins

Announcements:Columbia and Stanford Share a Virtual Classroom

Announcements:Mark Phillipson Discusses Wikis in the Classroom

Announcements:Use of VITAL Continues to Grow

Announcements:Du Bois MSE in Intro to African-American Studies

Announcements:New Online Music Reserves Launched

Announcements:Expanded Film Language Glossary Released

Announcements:Fall CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside Campus

Announcements:Fall CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:Recent Publications by CCNMTL

Announcements:Deconstructing Commercials

Announcements:CCNMTL Shares Stickies Product With Plone Community

Announcements:Instructional Design for GIS Fellows

Announcements:Black Rock Forest Data in the Classroom

Announcements:Record Number of CourseWorks Sites

Announcements:CCNMTL and CUL Discuss Collaboration at ACRL

Announcements:Journalism School Presents Case Study

Announcements:NIH Grant for School of Nursing and CCNMTL

Announcements:Educational Multimedia Case Constructor Expanded

Announcements:Social Justice Movements Wiki Launches

Announcements:Tierno Bokar Resources Site Launches

Announcements:Image Annotation Tool Released

Announcements:March 23: CourseWorks Workshop for Instructors

Announcements:Tech note: QuickTime and Firewalls

Announcements:CCNMTL Celebrates 6th Anniversary

Announcements:Malcolm X MSE Article in SOULS

Announcements:Kaleidoscope: Italian Cinema for Language Instruction

Announcements:Multimedia Study Environment Forum

Announcements:
Please subscribe to our new RSS feed

Announcements:
Fall Premiere Launches New Services

Announcements:
Video from Open Content Conference Available

Announcements:
Fall Workshops and Events

In The News:
Global Health Research Center in Central Asia Opens

Announcements:
Press Release: NIMH Grant for Multimedia Connect

Announcements:
Summer CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:
Summer Session II CourseWorks Workshops

Announcements:
CCNMTL Videos Vital in Texas

Announcements:
Press Release: CCNMTL Hosts Open Content Meeting

Announcements:
University Seminar: Harlem Digital Archive

Announcements:
CourseWorks Adds Wimba Voice Boards

Announcements:
Chief Judge Kaye Supports Collateral Consequences Site

Announcements:
E-Portfolios in Dental Schools

Announcements:
University Seminar: Toward a Democratic Digital Past

Announcements:
Decision-Making Tools for CRED

Announcements:
New Site: Podcasting at Columbia

Announcements:
University Seminar: The Triangle Initiative, Feb. 8

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside

Announcements:
Havel at Columbia Podcasts Featured on iTunes

Announcements:
University Seminar: Siva Vaidhyanathan

Announcements:
Five Years of CourseWorks at Columbia

Announcements:
Press Release: Havel at Columbia Site Released

Announcements:
University Seminar: The Evolution of Video in Education

Announcements:
University Seminar: Yochai Benkler

Announcements:
New VITAL Released to Columbia and Hunter College

Announcements:
NSF Grant to Enhance Brownfield Action

Announcements:
Havel at Columbia site released

Announcements:
Virtual Techniques in Dentistry (VirTechs) Released

Announcements:
Press Release: Spring Grants for CCNMTL and Partners

Announcements:
CCNMTL Hosts Big Apple Plone Sprint

Announcements:
College of Dental Medicine Faculty Discuss CCNMTL Tools

Announcements:
CCNMTL's International Journeys

Announcements:
Film Language Glossary Evaluation Now Available

Announcements:
CDC Grant for School of Social Work's HIV Intervention

Announcements:
Released: ePrep | Emergency Preparedness Training

Announcements:
Rebalancing Copyright Conference Podcasts Released

Announcements:
CCNMTL Projects Included in World Leaders Forum

Announcements:
African-American Poets Wiki Launched

Announcements:
Open CourseWare Presented

Announcements:
Carnegie Mellon Scientists Present at University Seminar

Announcements:
School of Social Work Maps Social Support Networks

Announcements:
SimCity Incorporated into Art History Course

Announcements:
New Media in Education 2006 Conference

Announcements:
Spring CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:
2005 Client Survey Report Released

Announcements:
CourseWorks Workshops for Instructors

Announcements:
Personal Life-Long Learning Plans Launched

Announcements:
Dr. Letty Moss-Salentijn Discusses the IAT

Announcements:
CCNMTL Contributes MediaWiki Plug-ins

Announcements:
Columbia and Stanford Share a Virtual Classroom

Announcements:
Mark Phillipson Discusses Wikis in the Classroom

Announcements:
Use of VITAL Continues to Grow

Announcements:
Du Bois MSE in Intro to African-American Studies

Announcements:
New Online Music Reserves Launched

Announcements:
Expanded Film Language Glossary Released

Announcements:
Fall CourseWorks Workshops: Morningside Campus

Announcements:
Fall CourseWorks Workshops: CU Medical Center

Announcements:
Recent Publications by CCNMTL

Announcements:
Deconstructing Commercials

Announcements:
CCNMTL Shares Stickies Product With Plone Community

Announcements:
Instructional Design for GIS Fellows

Announcements:
Black Rock Forest Data in the Classroom

Announcements:
Record Number of CourseWorks Sites

Announcements:
CCNMTL and CUL Discuss Collaboration at ACRL

Announcements:
Journalism School Presents Case Study

Announcements:
NIH Grant for School of Nursing and CCNMTL

Announcements:
Educational Multimedia Case Constructor Expanded

Announcements:
Social Justice Movements Wiki Launches

Announcements:
Tierno Bokar Resources Site Launches

Announcements:
Image Annotation Tool Released

Announcements:
March 23: CourseWorks Workshop for Instructors

Announcements:
Tech note: QuickTime and Firewalls

Announcements:
CCNMTL Celebrates 6th Anniversary

Announcements:
Malcolm X MSE Article in SOULS

Announcements:
Kaleidoscope: Italian Cinema for Language Instruction

Announcements:
Multimedia Study Environment Forum

Announcements:
Digital Media and the History of Science

Announcements:
Wikis: Experimenting in the classroom