Campus Technology Innovator Awards Presentations

Campus Technology Innovator Awards Presentations

Normally, I am not a he fan of these award presentations. I understand that they can serve as an important spur to other campuses to try new things, but I usually know nothing about the recipients, and, as in this case, they give out 14 awards in an hour session…so how much can you actually gain from listening.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised by the concise, yet very clear presentations. While I am not going to summarize all of them (they are each covered in the August 08 editon of the Campus Technology magazine, I did want to touch on a few in areas that I thought people at NYiT might be more interested in. Anyway, here are they are…

Ball state University: The IDIAA project. The team on this project created “virtual” equipment (including virtual digital cameras that they called “the aesthetic camera”) that allows students in Second Life to do digital arts projects in Second Life. Students would “check out” the virtual camera, take photos of second life in second life (if I’m getting this right” and then work it into a digital art display for Second Life.

Cal State Fullerton: The project used web enabled remote controls of high end, expensive chemistry equipment that allowed students at smaller community colleges to access the expensive equipment from a distance and run experiments. I actually had a long talk with the woman heading this project: an interesting person with good ideas. They used iLink for the remote control part.

Harford Community College: “Sailor” (…it helps students “sail” through the enrollment process. Teaming with vendors, this school set up a system where students swiped their student id card as they entered the registrar area or met with an advisor (didn’t sound like a faculty advisor). As soon as the card was swiped, the student’s information came up on the advisors screen including picture, transcript, that sort of thing. In addition, it started a process of tracking general student activity in the enrollment process so that, after a semester, the office could study when students were most likely to drop, what reasons they might have for dropping, etc., allowing the office to be far more pro active in helping students stay enrolled.

As I mentioned above, all of the award recipients were covered in the August 08 edition of the magazine. Roger subscribes and I usually get a copy at my office. Let me know if there is one of these you want to look at more closely.

More later…