Jason Rhode, Ph.D.

As the fly home from the Sloan-C International Symposium, I’m preparing to attend the 2008 Faculty Summer Institute on Teaching with Technology at UIUC.  Although I’m not leading a Learning Team this year, I look forward to giving the following presentations:

• Introduction to Social Bookmarking
• Mastering Microblogging
• Getting Started Creating Web Pages with Google Page Creator
• Media Mashups

I’m giving a presentation at the 2008 Sloan-C International Symposium on Emerging Technology Applications for Online Learning on the topic of socially constructed self-paced learning environments. In particular, I discuss the implementation of CMUOnet, an instance of the Elgg open source social application engine, for fostering organic, informal interaction among participants in an online self-paced professional development certificate program.The slides for the presentation are available here along with the links I reference.

If I am successful in recording the audio for my presentation, I’ll eventually add there here as well as on my edtech podcast.

Read the rest of this entry »

Free Webcast: New Features in Blackboard 8.0
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm (CDT)
With the upgrade of the Blackboard course management system to version 8.0, faculty can expect to see a number of new and enhanced features when they log in to Blackboard. The new version introduces significant changes in the functionality of the discussion board, transition of the Blackboard Gradebook to the completely redesigned Grade Center, as well as a new “Self and Peer” assessment tool that will allow students to review and grade their own work and the work of their peers, among others. This online session offered by NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center will highlight these new and enhanced features and tools in Blackboard version 8.0. All are welcome. Advanced registration is required.

Registration Information:
Please email your name, institution, title, and email address, to jrhode@niu.edu. You will then receive confirmation of your registration.

This video by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University, creatively and powerfully looks at today’s students and how they are changing the world of learning and education.

Do you find these attributes as characteristic of the students you teach? What steps might you take to engage students of the 21st century? Please post a comment with your thoughts and reflections.

Biographies of the 5 fallen NIU students are now available on the NIU memorial site at http://www.niu.edu/tragedy/memorial/biographies.html

Apparently, the young man who died, Daniel Parmenter, was actually shielding his girlfriend from the attack. Click here to read the complete story.

As some of you are aware, I have been putting in a lot of hours over the past few days as my department has been helping prepare resources for NIU faculty and assist with various logistics involved in dealing with the tragic events of the past week. For example, my office has created a handout for faculty on “Teaching in Times of Crisis” as well as compiled numerous resources for teaching after crisis. His office has also setup a new blog that they’ll be using as yet another way to communicate with NIU faculty and provide support resources moving forward.

You may or may not have heard on the news of the incredible efforts that are going on at the campus to respond to this tragedy and help faculty and students deal with the issues. A few of these efforts include:

• NIU administrators have been in close communications with Virginia Tech and University of Arkansas officials, among others.
• Many NIU offices, including Student Affairs and Counseling and Student Development Center, have been working night and day since the shootings
• 300 counselors will be on campus for the first day of classes [Mon., 2/25] with the goal of having 1 counselor in each class for the first day. The recent memo from the Provost provides more details.
• All NIU faculty as well as staff who work directly with students will be involved a 2 hour counseling session in preparations for welcoming students back to class. The complete schedule of sessions is here.

There are many other efforts going on behind-the-scenes that you may not ever hear about in the news but are further examples of why NIU is such a great university. After witnessing first-hand the response, I couldn’t be more impressed with the level of student support and safety on the campus. I’d have absolutely no reservations with someday sending my child to school at NIU.

The outpouring of support from other institutions as well as colleagues and friends has been overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who has expressed your support and been praying for the students, families, faculty and staff of NIU.

For those who have blogs or other sites and would like to help honor those who have lost their lives in this tragedy, NIU has made a memorial graphic available that can be posted on any site. The image is available here. When posting the image on your site, please make it a link to the NIU memorial page at http://www.niu.edu/tragedy/memorial.html

In response to the recent tragedy at NIU, my department is compiling information and resources for faculty at http://www.niu.edu/facdev/resources/crisis as the campus community begins the healing process. This page will be frequently updated in the days ahead to provide links to resources and details on special programs to be offered for NIU faculty.

In addition, our center has just launched a new blog that will also be using to help communicate information and updates to faculty, staff, and graduate teaching assistants in the days ahead. The new NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center Blog is at http://facdev3.niu.edu/blog

As I posted earlier, the NIU campus is reeling from the recent shooting on campus. For those who are interested and weren’t able to watch it live, here’s a video of the press conference featuring comments from NIU President John Peters and NIU Police Chief Donald Grady responding to the tragic events.

In the press conference, Chief Grady discussed the rapid response of the NIU campus police force in response to first reports of the shooting. I can attest personally to the responsiveness of NIU police…they certainly are a highly trained and VERY responsive unit. There’s no doubt that police were on the scene within 29 seconds as Chief Grady noted.

Please continuing praying for the entire NIU community.

As you most likely have heard by now, yesterday afternoon (2/14) there was a tragic shooting at NIU. If you’ve been watching the news, you likely know as many details at this point as I do. At the time of the shooting, I was in my office which was about 2 blocks away from Cole Hall, the building where the shooting took place.

Thanks to everyone who has called or emailed to check and make sure that I was ok. It was a chaotic scene on campus yesterday with media and emergency personnel flooding the scene. The news of what was happening on campus initially spread faster by word of mouth and cell phone text messages than any other means. It was a surreal experience to be watching events happening live on CNN while also watching it happen through an office window. Waking up the day after, it still is hard to believe that such a horrendous event could take place in DeKalb.

Here’s a video with a few photos from the past day at NIU:

For more details on the healing process on campus in the days ahead as well as any further news, you can check the NIU website at www.niu.edu. Please keep the campus administration, faculty, students, and most importantly the students and families of those directly affected by the shooting in your thoughts and prayers. The university community has a long road of healing ahead…