Upcoming Brown Bags at Harper College

All faculty and staff are invited to attend two upcoming Brown Bag presentations offered by Harper faculty members Pardess Mitchell and Andy Geary, who were each awarded Instructional Technology Committee mini-grants and look forward to sharing ideas on best practices from their recent conference involvements.  No registration is required.  Specific details regarding each presentation are as follows:

I.  Please join us for a Brown Bag lunch session on April 23^rd with Pardess Mitchell who will share ideas on "Using Cognitive Strategies to Improve your Online Class" following participation in the recent Sloan-C conference:

TITLE: Using Cognitive Strategies to Improve your Online Class

DATE:  Tuesday, April 23, 2013

TIME: 12:00-12:45PM

LOCATION:  A242

PRESENTER: Pardess Mitchell, Chair, Physical Education Department

DESCRIPTION:  This session will present some of the best practices in online learning. The strategies that will be presented can work within any online course. These techniques are pulled from cognitive psychology and research suggests they can help improve student outcomes in online classes.

II.  Please join Andy Geary for an afternoon Brown Bag session on May 2^nd to learn new tips for communicating with online, blended, and even traditional students using a variety of tools and programs.  Before or after attending Andy’s sharing session, be sure to check out the CII Area’s Open House showcasing their newly renovated facilities (hospitality will be provided).

TITLE: Facilitating Indirect Communication with Online/Blended (and Traditional) Students

DATE:  Thursday May 2, 2013

TIME: 3:00-3:45PM

LOCATION:   F124 (CII Lab)

PRESENTER: Andy Geary of the Harper Math Department

DESCRIPTION:  Online and Blended classes offer unique communication challenges. Often times it is difficult to answer complicated questions for students via e-mail or even speaking with them directly on the phone. Students are often working at odd hours because of their schedules and direct communication, although available, is not convenient. There are several ways to effectively communicate ideas and problem solving to your students indirectly using the tablet PC and programs like JING. We will look at writing messages with image capturing, creating demonstration videos of websites and programs, problem solving videos and more. We will be using SnagIt, JING, www.ScreenCast.com and possibly a few other programs in this presentation.

Intro to Wolfram's Computable Document Format (CDF)

Please join us for an afternoon presentation by Math professor David Clydesdale. Dave attended the AMATYC Conference last year with an Instructional Technology Committee mini-grant and looks forward to sharing details regarding a free software product that may be of interest to others:

DATE: Thursday, Nov. 1st, 2012

TIME: 3:30 – 4:15PM

LOCATION: F124 (CII Lab)

TITLE: An Introduction to Wolfram’s Computable Document Format (CDF) Free Software Product

PRESENTER: David Clydesdale of the Harper Math Department

DESCRIPTION: Drop by the CII Lab (F124) on Thursday afternoon for a brief introduction/demonstration of the free Wolfram Computable Document Format (CDF) Software Product (www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/). Wolfram’s CDF product enables easy creation and deployment of interactive documents that can be used in a variety of courses. Just bring your questions and your curiosity along to the session.

SPONSORED by: The Instructional Technology Committee

Registration/RSVP: Not required

Brown Bag Session:Community College Completion Agenda

Terry O’Banion, President Emeritus, League for Innovation in the Community College, has been a leader in community college education for several decades. Marianne Farinas de Leon, Assistant Professor in the Department of Academic Success, attended the Innovations 2012 Conference in March where O’Banion was a keynote speaker and she had the good fortune to engage one-on-one with him. A brown bag session will be held on 9/26/12 at 12:30 p.m. in F-124. Marianne will share O’Banion’s perspective of the six main principles of a successful community college completion agenda.

Brown Bag Lunch - Upgrade Your Group Work

Students learn more when they work together—and even more when that collaboration is enhanced by technology.

Join Marjorie Allen and Kathleen Reynolds of the ESL/Linguistics Department as they demonstrate three group projects that use technology: audio pen pals, blogs, and discussion boards. Marjorie and Kathleen will model reading, writing, and other language activities, but the projects are also applicable in other disciplines.

Drop by any time between 12:30 and 1:30 PM to try the group projects in the ESL Language Lab (F342). Feel free to bring your lunch and join us for discussion at the conference table after the demonstration.

DATE: Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
TIME: 12:30-1:30 PM
LOCATION: F342 (ESL Language Lab)

ITC Brown Bag Session: Communicating With Your Students Using JING

DATE: Wednesday 11/16/11

TIME: 10:30-11:15AM

LOCATION: F124

TITLE: Communicating With Your Students Using JING

PRESENTER: Jason Andrew Geary, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

DESCRIPTION: Here's the challenge. . . you have received a student question through e-mail. While the answer is simple enough, it will require either a long explanation via e-mail alone or could easily be explained by including a short conversation. Wouldn't you prefer to send along an explanation, possibly accompanying a chart, graph, or pictorial representation to your student via e-mail? You can do exactly that using JING. Please join us in a brief conversation with Andy Geary about how to accomplish this with ease.

SPONSORED by: The Instructional Technology Committee

Registration/RSVP: Not required

Flip Video Camera Featured at ITC Brown Bag Lunch

Leslye Hess, Harper College Health Careers faculty member, presented a session about using the Flip Video Camera in her classes at the ITC Brown Bag Lunch on 4/27/10.

Good ideas for use were exchanged and several people gave the Flip a whirl! Contact the Center for Innovative Instructions (Cii) at Harper College for assistance with Flip Video.

SoftChalk Featured at ITC Brown Bag Lunch

Mary Hood, Harper College Health Careers faculty member, shared her experiences creating interactive review and self-assessment activities with SoftChalk LessonBuilder at the ITC Brown Bag Lunch on 3/30/10. Contact the Center for Innovative Instructions (Cii) at Harper College for assistance with using SoftChalk.

Resource Links:

• Sample SoftChalk Lessons


• Softchalk Video Tutorial


• SoftChalk Tutorials by Task