The folks at MIT have developed a new design tool for realtime online demonstrations that take the “whiteboard” to another level. (FYI…Whiteboard is a feature of most online “learning management systems” such as Blackboard, WebCT,etc. It simulates writing on a board with a marker.)
Here’s a brief and very simple demo of their “Assist Sketch Understanding System“. Imagine what our digital design students would do with it.
1 response so far ↓
Derek Tutschulte // October 14, 2006 at 2:36 am |
Anybody watching the “clicker” space? Have always been fascinated by these little gadgets. Would love to see them in action.
Read about them over at Educause:
http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=666&ID=ELI7002&bhcp=1
Also, anybody catch the announcement by Berkley (home of the renowned Berkley School of Information) that they will be putting up classroom lectures on Google’s Video Portal? Not a bad way of getting yourself out there, eh? I would imagine this approach will become mandatory for those schools that want to be “in the running” for prospective student consideration.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/09/berkley-offers-course-lectures-in.html
Also, thought Berkley’s experimentation with a school “backchannel” was quite fascinating. I have attended conferences where a backchannel has been deployed and was blown away by the concept. Basically, a backchannel is a live chatroom that is accessible to students, or any group thereof, at any time 24-7. When a student has questions about anything, ranging from the general to arcane, they post it to the backchannel, where it is replied to by other students monitoring backchannel activity.
On it’s face, the idea seems rather disruptive and anarchic, however unleashing the power of unedited live conversation in a educational context to students in order to allow them to educate eachother can acheive a surprisingly different result.
There is a paper on Berkley’s backchannel experiment that’s worth checking out here:
http://groups.sims.berkeley.edu/classchat/papers/SaritaYardi_ISLS2006.pdf