ATC open house

Learn some new tricks: Faculty invited to tech center open house

Blackboards aren't black. Overhead projectors have given way to PowerPoint. Students turn in their work on CDs instead of paper. It can sometimes be a challenge for faculty to keep up with even last year's technology, and some could easily overlook the possibilities in this year's innovations.

For help and inspiration, many turn to the Academic Technology Center (ATC), a service of Cornell Information Technologies created to assist faculty in using modern technology in their teaching and scholarship. To acquaint faculty with its services, ATC will hold an open house from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 29 and 30, at the ATC New Media Center in 124 Computing and Communications Center. Along with demonstrations of the latest technology, ATC promises food, drinks and giveaways.

ATC provides consultation and production services to faculty, graduate students and staff to help them create instructional projects. It offers courses and workshops in the use of popular technologies for Web design, classroom presentations and multimedia. The center also provides services for projects funded by Faculty Innovation in Teaching grants.

Faculty visiting the open house can obtain information on the Lynx program, sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Distance Learning Services, which provides trained student guides to work one-on-one with faculty in the faculty member's own office. Lynx students have completed intensive training in the use of common software and are available to help faculty learn to use specific technologies and to spend 10-15 hours per semester completing small-scale projects.

A guide to common gadgets

Here are some of the gadgets becoming popular with faculty and students:

A tablet PC is a computer that's all screen, about the size of a sheet of typing paper and half an inch thick, that accepts handwritten input, including drawings and equations.

Digital pens write just like ordinary pens, but when used on special paper they digitally record everything they've written or drawn.

PDAs, like the Palm and Handspring Visor, have a wide variety of uses in class and for research. Newer software lets them display Microsoft Word or PowerPoint documents, and the awkward Graffiti text entry system has given way to normal writing.

iPods have a lot of uses besides feeding music into your ears to drown out the lecturer. Students use them for recording lectures and ferrying data from one computer to another.

Digital cameras and camcorders now come with a wide range of capabilities. ATC consultants will be on hand to explain the various features.

Scanners are familiar devices. Now they come with batch feeders that will churn through a stack of papers or photos in a few minutes. New flat scanners can be laid on top of an open book or any other source to scan information in the field.

Data entry tablets replace the mouse and allow users to draw with a pen and see the results on screen; new versions let you draw directly on the screen.

Flash drives the size of a pack of gum or smaller are becoming common and have a variety of instructional uses. Instead of bringing your laptop to the classroom, for example, put your presentation on a flash drive and slip it in your pocket.

November 18, 2004