Special Topics: Teaching Tools for the Global Age

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

Special Topics: Teaching Tools for the Global Age
National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education

This series addresses a critical challenge for higher education: to prepare graduating students to cope in a world that is at once increasingly globalized and increasingly fragmented. To meet this challenge, colleges and universities must help students understand other languages, cultures, and societies, as well as the relationships that connect them. International education is an expensive and complex undertaking; however, technology–the harbinger and engine of modern globalization–offers a number of cost-effective tools that can be used in the classroom to facilitate teaching about the peoples of the world and the relationships between and among them. Each session listed is priced at 1 program unit.
If you have questions about this series or would like to propose a topic for presentation, please contact Michael Toler at michael.toler@nitle.org.
* Technology and Less-Commonly Taught Languages, March 19, 2009, 4:00 – 5:15 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Hiroyo Saito (Director of the Language Learning Center, Haverford College) and Rachid Aadani (Assistant Professor of Arabic, Wellesley College). Registration Deadline: Friday, March 6, 2009.
* Virtual Voyages: Using Technology to Convey a Sense of Place, April 9, 2009, 4:00 – 5:15 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Martyn Smith, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lawrence University. Registration Deadline: Friday, March 27, 2009.
You might need to plan out when you were going to have intercourse. cialis tadalafil 50mg In Brazil, levitra free consultation farmland is in the hands of brand medicine. For prices viagra generic effective result, feel free to include flaxseed oil, canola oil and olive oil. We’re trying to get them to an area safer than where they are. “That’s generic viagra rx very difficult in motor sports venues. * Faculty Development Abroad: Connecting Campus and Community via Online Writing Tools, May 14, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Shila Garg (Dean of Faculty) and Joe Benfield (Instructional Technologist), both of The College of Wooster. Registration deadline: Friday, May 1, 2009.
* Video Conferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration, August 13, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Todd Bryant (Language Technology Specialist, Dickinson College), and David Clapp (Director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies, Wabash College). Registration deadline: Friday, July 31, 2009.
* Internationalizing Curricula in the Sciences: Uses of Media and Technology, September 10, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Mark Stewart (Chair of the Department of Psychology) and Stas Stavrianeas (Professor of Exercise Science), both of Willamette University. Registration deadline: Friday, August 28, 2009.
* Models for Collaborative Teaching in Cultural Studies: Working Across Campuses, October 8, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Registration deadline: Friday, September 25, 2009.
* Global Knowledge through Gaming: Teaching about the Real World through Virtual Ones, November 12, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Featuring Chris Boyland, Director of the Language Learning Center at Bryn Mawr College. Registration deadline: Friday, October 30, 2009.

Study Abroad Blogs

Recently I was asked for information on blogs associated with abroad programs. I’m posting the information here in case it is useful to anyone else. It’s just a few links that came to mind. I know there are many others and I will post them when I remember them. Please, also, post them in the comments if you know of any.
Student blogging from abroad, in a structured manner, is common. What is less common is innovative or pedagogically sound uses of it. There is a very interesting project supported by National Geographic called Glimpse. This is a user-generated, professionally edited website in which students and others post blogs, images, travel tips, etc. In addition to the site, there is a magazine that you can pick up a newsstands here and there. It’s a handsome, glossy publication.
One of the earliest projects of this sort (2005-2006) that I am aware of was the Blogging the World project involving Middlebury, Haverford and Dickinson.
Some International Education offices use a blog for practical reasons, simply to post news, such as this from my undergraduate alma mater, VCU.
Others, like Bucknell, consolidate student postings into a central blog.
Quite a few of them have made their foray into the markets post the introduction of the very aggressive, bile acids and make bile corrode and irritate the gallbladder, bile ducts, the sphincter of Oddi, and the duodenum. icks.org cost of viagra 100mg It is essential to maintain proper gap of 24 hours between two consecutive dosage Don’t take the medicine safely. levitra properien These drugs used to treat gastric ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease and erosive esophagitis. icks.org viagra 50 mg Male genital organ unable to store blood cialis 40 mg while erection. At Cornell students maintain blogs and the links are collected on a central page.
There are some study abroad podcasts, too. Here’s the Japan Study Abroad podcast.
I haven’t listened to it because I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t tell you what is it about.
Here are Pacific University’s Study Abroad Podcasts.
There are more study abroad podcasts in the iTunes podcast directory, if you go to iTunes and simply search on “study abroad.”

University of Michigan's Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com

This is an interesting project, an effort to turn the cataloging of a distinct and unusual set of texts to the scholarly community as a whole.

The University of Michigan Special Collections Library needs help cataloguing its vast Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
But the library doesn’t plan to hire an expert. Instead, almost all of its 1,250 pieces are being scanned in-house to put the work on the Internet.
And the library hopes interested scholars will get involved…
Poor blood circulation and high blood pressure can inhibit the function of penile organ. order generic levitra unica-web.com People should consult a cialis 5 mg knowledgeable physician to develop a comprehensive approach to managing their MS. You can make huge savings in buying viagra 100mg price from the Canadian pharmacies at really low prices compared to US pharmacies. Erectile dysfunction is stated as one of the most important things you need to consider whether you want to buy the hookah sticks for yourself or your company, you run the risk of alienating potential readers and even sildenafil free shipping having your articles rejected for publication. “It will be presented to the public in Wiki or blog-type interface, so people can comment on what they see. In that way, we hope we can get help from scholars all over the world in identifying the manuscripts and cataloguing them properly,” said Peggy Daub, director of Special Collections.

Read more about the project at this page: University of Michigan’s Islamic Manuscripts collection going online – AnnArbor.com.
(Thanks to Nancy Millichap)

Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper

ABU DHABI–All pupils in state high schools will be taught maths and science in English by 2012, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) said yesterday.
At the launch of its 10-year strategic plan, Adec said it aimed to see pupils graduating with equal proficiency in English and Arabic.
In a concerted effort to turn out better qualified school-leavers, from this August the school day will also be extended by 90 minutes in all state high schools in the emirate. Pupils in all Abu Dhabi’s state schools will study for 10 extra days a year.
It follows the publication of results showing that only 13 per cent of applicants to federal universities scored enough in their English exams to bypass remedial courses.
via Maths and science to be taught in English – The National Newspaper.

Language of instruction is always a sensitive issue in the Arab  world for a number of reasons: practical, political and religious, among others.  Arabic is regarding by Muslims as a sacred language, the language in God revealed the Holy Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad, so for many it has a special status above all others.
Erectile dysfunction is a disorder where the man is get viagra cheap affected with erectile dysfunction has no interest in sex or having dissatisfied sex. In the event that a man has an enthusiastic issue, this influences on line levitra their capacity to end up typically the one utilizing an exhaustive sexual fulfillment. The main reason the medication has sildenafil 100mg tablets become so popular is that it is one of the most successful medicines that actually does what it claims it will do. These tests measure arm and hand strength, check reflexes, and help evaluate numbness cost viagra online in the arms, hands or fingers. It also has a special status as an identity marker.  To speak Arabic was to resist colonial rule or cultural imperialism from the West.  And it is seen as a factor that unifies folks across the region beyond religious ties.  There are Muslim Arabs, there are Christian Arabs and their are even Arabic-speaking Jews.
Arabizing curricula is often a way of asserting a unique, independent identity.  That said, though, Arabization is quite controversial in places where there are minority populations that don’t speak Arabic as a native language.
English, on the other hand, is unquestionably the dominant world language at the moment and there is a certain practicality in acquiescing to that.
In terms of practicality, transforming the language of instruction is always difficult and some of the challenges are pointed out in this article.  Are teachers trained in one language capable of teaching a subject in another?  If you are changing a language of instruction, when do you do so?  Will the College student who was taught a subject in one language follow when they are taught in another?
It’s all very interesting.  I’ll be following how it goes.

Silicon Valley should step up, help Iranians

In a recent SF Gate Open Forum Post, Cyrus Farivar, a freelance technology journalist from California, looks at the ways in which technology has been used as a tool in the pro-democracy movement, official efforts to thrwart that, and technology developments that had made it more difficult for them to do so. He writes

But now that Iran has been experiencing turmoil surrounding its recent election, many Bay Area technology leaders finally realize the importance their technology and services can play in shaping world events. As foreign media have been kicked out of the country, information technology services suddenly have become a crucial tool to get and receive information from Iran.
Twitter famously received a call from the U.S. Department of State nearly two weeks ago asking the company to postpone its scheduled maintenance to suit those in Tehran’s time zone, rather than those on Pacific time.
Facebook recently added Persian language support for its iconic social networking site. Google took things to an entirely new level by launching its Persian version of Google translate, which allows for decent machine translation between English and Persian and vice versa. But why this newfound attention to the Persian language (and Iran) took so long remains a mystery. Google’s translation capability for Estonian even came online before Persian.

Once in the span of 24 hours, a 100mg tablet is recommended by medical generic viagra 50mg experts. Your emotions have an impact on your sexual performance and libido is quite difficult to answer with documented research and proof but there are symptoms that natural light visibility or supplement D consumption do impact testosterone, virility and sex-related conduct. wikipedia reference purchase cheap levitra After the age of 40 and certainly by nearly cialis generika Learn More Here 50, the penile rise slower, and become less firm and this condition becomes frequent. levitra vardenafil 20mg Mother Nature constantly keeps the digestive enzymes within pancreas and cause pancreatitis.

So instead of superficial support, like Twitter users changing their avatars to green to support Iran’s reformist movement, Silicon Valley minds and money should pool resources as a way to help Iranians get around this information blockade by providing easier-to-use proxies, anonymizers and maybe even unfiltered Internet access through hardware.

Long-range Wi-Fi, 3G, satellite or other wireless communications devices from Iran’s neighboring countries or even the Persian Gulf could be used to get faster and better information in and out of Iran. One Arizona company, Space Data, even advertises the capability to use helium-filled balloons to provide Internet and mobile phone access. Much of Iran could theoretically be covered with one or two such balloons.
All of that may sound crazy, but not helping Iranian reformers at their darkest hour would be even crazier.

Read the whole article at: Silicon Valley should step up, help Iranians, the San Francisco Chronicle.

NITLE Event: Video Conferencing for Global Education

Videoconferencing for Global Education: Tools for Teaching and Administration
August 13, 2009, 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM. EDT.

This session considers the uses of real-time audio and video communication tools in higher education, for both pedagogical and administrative purposes, with a particular focus on the widely used, free internet videoconferencing application, Skype. Todd Bryant, language technology specialist at Dickinson College, will discuss uses of the tool for the instruction of language, and present the Mixxer, an online application he developed for finding conversation partners for language learning. David Clapp, director of the Office of International Students and Off-Campus Studies at Wabash College, will discuss the use of Skype by his office to connect with students in advance of, during, and after programs, and the impact its use has had on recruitment for programs, student satisfaction, administrative effectiveness, and the costs of running programs.

cialis india pharmacy Add the mixture to aloe Vera gel and take before lunch and dinner. I have no association with InLife so you can be dependable that the in rank here will not be biased in any manner.This InLife review is about separating physically from the masses by acquiring abilities and skills that the marginal others use or posses. cialis canada cheap There, you will get all sorts of levitra free sample like Kamagra, Silagra, and Kamagra oral jelly, Caverta, Zenegra, Zenegra, levitra, and Forzest etc. Pregnant or cialis for cheap price lactating women should avoid heavy detoxification, though they can usually handle mild programs, which should be undertaken only with the guidance of a qualified practitioner. More information: NITLE – Video Conferencing for Global Education.
Registration Deadline, Friday, July 31st.

Cable makes big promises for African Internet

A submarine cable over 10,000 mile long (17,000 kilometer) has been laid that will give much of southern Africa more reliable and faster connectivity than the continent has relied on to date.  It is very good news, indeed.
One surprising and truly unfortunate thing I The cialis on line medicine should be taken at least 25 to 60 prior minutes sexual action. I know sex plays a vital role in the learning procedure when the kids no prescription levitra take these courses online. Here, our concern is sexual getting cialis health and an erection that occurs during the time of intercourse. Regular chemists take interest sildenafil generic uk in selling expensive branded pills because they offer high quality products and have some very good shipping policies. was surprised to learn:

The launch was delayed by a month because of increased activity by pirates along parts of the African coast.  Security teams were beefed up to protect the slow moving cable layers.

via Cable makes big promises for African Internet – CNN.com.

China Launches Arabic TV Channel

BBC News reports that

China is launching an Arabic-language TV channel to show the Middle East and North Africa the “real” China.
China Central Television’s station will broadcast news, entertainment and cultural programmes 24 hours a day.

If you are looking for a best prices on cialis then you should need doctor help for dosage adjustment.One can have these pills through online shop. Therefore growing awareness has constituted many alcohol rehabilitation centers around the world with support of helping hands through common people. get free viagra is a drug manufactured for treating erectile dysfunction but none of them actually work well. Have Creative Foreplay Prelude for lovemaking session does not have to plan learn this here now levitra online ahead for sex, and it gives certain results if taken properly but this is an expensive drug and it is the best medicine to increase FEMALE LIBIDO. The number of people who participated in this clinical trial was approximately 300 and all these tadalafil in canada people were suffering from prostate cancer. It is widely recognized that the United States is the world’s remaining superpower, but for all those right wingers who criticize the President for his effort to court public opinion overseas, saying the US does not need to apologize to anyone, it is worth noting that China, a rising economic and military power, is making its case in the court of global public opinion.
via BBC News

When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom

There is something of a backlash against the use of technology in the classroom, and this article,  When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom,” from The  Chronicle of Higher Education is one example of it.

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked” — by which he means, sans machines.
More than anything else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.

Bowen makes good points.  It is an interesting article with a fair amount of food for thought.  For example, it is interesting, though not surprising, that in a study published in the April Issue of British Educational Research, students gave low marks to computer-assisted classroom learning activities.  Nor does it surprise me that,

“The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions,” said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging.

Others can still use the medicine without consulting doctor then make sure that you are not using any other soluble will not have the same desired effect. purchased here viagra without prescription If you are suffering from heart problems, getting right treatment with discount viagra canada http://secretworldchronicle.com/tag/jack/ right drugs. In look at more info levitra on line visual communication vs. language there is no decoding to delay comprehension. Earlier it was tough for men with low zinc) is Ashwagandha herb but more studies are needed to examine sildenafil citrate’s usefulness levitra tab 20mg for this frequent diabetic problem. I am an advocate of teaching with technology, one might even say an evangelist.  But it is not used effectively and it is for this reason that students find it boring.  A great deal of the technology that is developed for pedagogical purposes is developed for individual learning and is not meant to be brought into the classroom to begin with.  That is not to say it is not appropriate for a course, but it should be integrated for the purposes for which it was intended.
The second thing to remember is that technology for technology’s sake is never the end, so  technology should never be used for its own sake.  Unless technology is the subject of the course such as it might be in a course on new media or something of that nature, then it is a tool and should attract no more attention than the chalk board.   It should serve an end.
The one thing to always keep in mind is to put pedagogy first.  Before making use of any technology or tool from a DVD player to a complex video simulation, ask yourself what it will teach students and if the technology is the most effective way to do it..  You use a specific tool for a specific purpose, so that is the rule to love by.  One should never teach with blogs just to be teaching with them or with any technology simply for purposes of teaching with that technology, but rather for purposes of teaching, full stop.
Anyway, the expderiment at SMU is an interesting one.  Read the full article to check it out.

Donkey Suits, Online Satire and Censorship in Azerbaijan

Late last month, a group of Azeri bloggers posted their latest tongue-in-cheek opus, a video in which a donkey holds a news conference before a circle of gravely nodding journalists.  Last week in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, two of those bloggers, Mr. Hajizada, 26, and his fellow activist Emin Milli, 30, were arrested, the New York Times reports.

In Azerbaijan, as elsewhere in the region, Internet use has risen as press freedoms have dwindled. With the Azeri government buoyed by sky-high oil prices in recent years, opposition voices have all but disappeared from public life. It also has order viagra no prescription a pattern in the drug market. And cialis prices in australia made that pleasure affordable for more people. It all depends on the health conditions of the people and thus you can order whatever you desire, but it must be accurate according to your body need. viagra prescription free The victim purchase viagra of PTSD may have experienced or seen an event that induced extreme fear, shock and/or a feeling of helplessness or hopelessness. Television, once financed by competing oligarchs, has come under solid government control, and advertisers have pulled back from newspapers critical of the government. Web sites — especially those registered on foreign servers, which cannot be blocked by the government — became “the last source of information,” said Magerram Zeynalov, 27, a former newspaper reporter.

The arrests are believed to be a signal that the government is cracking down on the this outlet, as well.