Invitation to present your special use of technology in academia

Every year, OIRT's Technology Showcase brings together faculty and staff from around the university to share novel uses of technology in academia.

Do you use technology to organize your research in a novel way? Do your students grasp your material better because of the way you present it using a specific technology? We'd love to hear about it and have you share your experiences with other faculty and staff at the university.

In past years, we've had faculty talk about their use of a variety of technologies including, but certainly not limited to:

- Google Earth for showing GIS data
- Second Life for language acquisition
- Sakai for coursework, student organization, and research projects
- Podcasting for complex course content that bears repeating
- Voicethread as a rich feedback mechanism for student assignment submissions

This year's Technology Showcase is on December 18th from 11am-5pm. OIRT is looking for faculty and staff to present their own special uses of technology in academia. Note that if you are selected, we'd ask you to be available at the event for at least half of the day.

Send us an e-mail at oirt@rutgers.edu if you have something to contribute to our ongoing conversation about how we can all better use technology in academia! Please include your name, department, a brief description of the technology you'd like to present, and your availability on the day of the event.

Faculty researchers: be a YouTube star!

Back in early 2008, OIRT started a web video series called The OIRT Faculty Research Spotlight. Its goal is to highlight the contributions our faculty make to the academic community through their research. If you'd like to get interviewed about your research, please read on to see how you can get involved!

Since the inception of the series, we've interviewed 50 faculty members in 36 departments across the university. We've published about 30 of these interviews so far, with more to come every few weeks.

You can see the videos on the Rutgers YouTube channel. I've embedded an example below for your convenience: Dr. Lee Clarke (Sociology) discussing disaster and the human response.



We do have a sizable log of footage left to edit, but we'd like more! If you're a faculty researcher here at the university and you'd like to showcase your work, send an e-mail to podcasting@rutgers.edu and we'll schedule a meeting with you to discuss your involvement in the project.

Your involvement in this project consists of about 20 minutes during the initial meeting (we'll come to your office for this) and about 40 minutes for the actual interview (which will also take place at your office, if you so desire).

OIRT is looking for a few outstanding undgergraduate researchers

Late last semester, OIRT and the Aresty Research Center started a video series called The Undergraduate Research Spotlight. The goal of the series is to recognize the contributions of those students who are at the heart of this university's strong research tradition. We asked faculty to nominate their outstanding undergraduate researchers, and we got an amazing response: 34 faculty nominated 87 students from 50 departments!

Check out some of the videos by clicking the links below (Quicktime required to view):
Aradia Herbst-Gervasoni - Pituitary cancer and its relationship to ethanol and estrogen
Preeti Khanolkar - Video gaming through the eyes of its practitioners

We're still buried in the editing process for all of these interviews, but we're looking for more undergraduate researchers to come in and talk to us about their research.

Nominees should be current or former undergraduate researchers here at the university. Nominees should also be comfortable (and excited to be) talking about their research in front of a camera!

If you'd like to nominate someone, please send an e-mail to podcasting@rutgers.edu with the student's name, e-mail address, and a bit about the nature of their research. You can even self-nominate, if you like!

The videos are being uploaded into the Rutgers iTunes U media repository as they are being completed. Check out the rest of the videos, and other great Rutgers content, by going to http://itunes.rutgers.edu and clicking the big red button (download iTunes).