June 2014
Help Desk Summer Hours
Our support team is standing by to help with all your summer class needs. DCS staff is stationed on each New Brunswick campus and at our Help Desk in Tillett Hall 112, ready to assist. For immediate in-class assistance, please call our Help Desk at (848)-445-3612. To request help or equipment, you can also contact us on the web. Our Help Desk hours while summer classes are in session are as follows:
- Monday to Thursday: 8am-10pm
- Friday: 8am-6pm
Classroom Maps and More on the Web
Having trouble finding your classroom? Try out our new interactive classroom map! At dcs.rutgers.edu you can now see your classroom's location on campus and within each building. There are two ways to use the map. On our classroom search page you can select any DCS room using our new map feature. Or if you are already on a classroom's page but are not sure where it is on campus, you can click our new "Map" tab to see it's location. While at the DCS web page, take a look at some of our other new additions. In our Spotlight section, learn about how Rutgers instructors are using Twitter to encourage classroom discussion.
DCS Equipment Donation Program Expanding
Last summer, DCS partnered with Piscataway Township to provide the High School with classroom technology that had been removed from DCS rooms as part of recent upgrades. As we continue to perform classroom renovations this summer we are looking to partner with more New Jersey schools in need of equipment. If you know of a local school district who would be interested in partnering with DCS, please contact us.
Upcoming Workshops
The summer is a great chance to learn new tech tricks to improve your class or work. We are offering workshops on ten different topics this summer, including sessions on Cook/Douglass and College Ave., as well as in our Livingston Training Center. Rutgers Faculty, Staff, and Students are all welcome to attend these hour-long sessions.
Video Chat in the Classroom
Wednesday June 11 at 1pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
The advent of video chat has greatly expanded the reach of the classroom. Using video chat, students in a remote location can watch and participate in class from anywhere. Guest lecturers can lead classes without having to travel to campus. Classroom discussions can continue after class and study groups can work together without having to board a bus. In Video Chat in the Classroom we will discuss three popular video chat services that enable students and instructors to see each other, hear each other, and view digital presentations: Skype, Adobe Connect, and Google Hangouts. We will also explain how DCS can help you begin video chatting in your class.
All About Apps: Google Tools
Friday June 20 at 10am in Tillett Hall Room 118
In this hands on workshop, we introduce you to several mobile apps offered by Google or designed for use with Google products. We will demonstrate some of the benefits of using Chrome and Drive across multiple mobile devices. We will also discuss YouTube's mobile app and how PlayTube can be used to download and playback video. While these apps are available for free on multiple platforms, our All About Apps workshops are great opportunities to learn about and try out an iPad. In this workshop, we will provide attendees with a DCS iPad so they can try out the apps we discuss themselves.
Creative Media in the Classroom
Wednesday July 9 at 1pm in Hickman Hall Room 210
Displaying video and images is a great way to enrich classroom presentations. However, having to close and open programs to access media can take away from valuable classroom time and interrupt the flow of the discussion. Creative Media in the Classroom is a follow up to Giving Engaging Digital Presentations which focuses on how to best identify and incorporate relevant media in to your class. We will review how to create, edit, and embed photos and videos into slide-based presentations.
Beyond PowerPoint
Wednesday July 16 at 10am in Hickman Hall Room 118
Are you interested in using a computer-based presentation to enhance your class, but don't know where to begin? Are you a PowerPoint user looking for alternatives? Over the course of a half-hour, we will introduce you to some of the more commonly-used alternatives to PowerPoint - including Prezi, Keynote, SlideShark, and Adobe. We will feature presentation applications that require software purchases as well as free online options. This workshop will also demonstrate the various ways these presentation tools can be utilized in DCS classrooms.
Perfecting Prezi
Wednesday July 23 at 1pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
Prezi is an exciting alternative to PowerPoint. It is a free, online program that enables you to create presentations that are not limited by a linear structure. Instead, presentation content can be laid out graphically in a manner that many find to be both more intuitive and flexible, allowing the presentation to follow class discussion. In Perfecting Prezi, we provide you with an introduction to some of Prezi's most exciting features and explain the basic steps and short cuts you need to know to begin building your own presentation.
Getting Started with Keynote
Friday August 1 at 10am in Hickman Hall Room 210
Keynote is Mac's answer to PowerPoint. Many instructors find Keynote to be an intuitive and easy way to create and present slides on a Mac. In this workshop, we will give you an introduction to Keynote and demonstrate the basic steps involved in making and projecting presentations. We will also review how to import slides from other sources and export Keynote slides into alternative formats that can be used with other programs. Finally, we will talk about how iCloud can be used to run Keynote presentations on mobile devices and the Digital Classroom Podium.
All About Apps: Creating Content
Friday August 8 at 1pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
In our second workshop focused on mobile apps, our staff has handpicked some of the best apps for creating and delivering content - both inside and outside the classroom. As you follow along with DCS iPads, our staff will walk you through using Evernote - a useful organizational, productivity, and classroom tool. We will also demonstrate how Educreations and Doceri can be used to create and capture lessons. We will explore Videolicious, a quick and easy way to convert images into a video collage. Finally, we will look at CamScanner, which provides a quick and easy way to import documents into your mobile device as an image.
What are They Thinking? Taking the Pulse of Your Class
Wednesday August 13 at 1pm in Scott Hall Room 101
In this showcase workshop, we will demonstrate ways that you can poll your students and receive instant feedback during class. The applications we will discuss are web-based solutions for posing discussion topics, giving quizzes, and receiving questions in real time from your students through their phones, laptops, or tablets. We will focus on polling solutions that are quick, free, easy to use, and require no additional hardware aside from the mobile devices many faculty and students already use. Bring along your phone, laptop, or tablet and you can test out the polling applications during the workshop.
Emerging Technology Now
Wednesday August 27 at 1pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
Friday September 5 at 3:30pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
As you get your syllabus and materials together for upcoming summer classes, don't forget to familiarize yourself with the technology you will be using during the fall semester. To best afford instructors the opportunity to learn about and test their classroom's technology, DCS holds workshops during the weeks before classes begin. These workshops are held near classrooms that have each of the four main types of DCS technology you may find in your classroom: the Digital Classroom Podium, Crestron Touchscreen System, SP Push Button System, and Pixie Push Button System. If y ou are teaching in one of these rooms, DCS staff will bring you to a similar room where we will familiarize you with the equipment you will be using during the semester. We also encourage faculty to bring any media - laptop, DVDs, documents - that you would like to test with the equipment. For a sneak peak of your room, visit our Find a Classroom page.
Intro to Macs
Wednesday August 27 at 2pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
Friday September 5 at 2pm in Tillett Hall Room 118
This workshop is tailored towards instructors using the Digital Classroom Podium and anyone who would like to learn the basics of using a Mac. While you can learn the ins and outs of using the podium at our Emerging Technology Now workshops, in Intro to Macs we will focus on what you need to know to use the podium's Mac computer. We will introduce you to the basics of Mac's operating system, including the dock, desktop, and finder. We will also discuss how to use popular applications that you may have used in Windows but not on Macs, such as Word, PowerPoint, and web browsers. Finally, we will show you different ways you can access your presentation material via a USB drive or over th e web. We will provide you with a Mac laptop so that you can follow along and try out your new skills.
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