Featured Staff: Nancy Hust and Amy Sands

This week we feature Nancy Hust and Amy Sands for their innovative ideas to help students retain vital information to pass their tests and nursing boards.

The RCTC Nursing instructors decided that the current procedural materials used in their courses could be better explained through video to aid students. Using an instructional design approach, Hust and Sands broke down several procedures into a detailed step-by-step process. With the aid of the RCTC Educational Technology Department, the nurses used their acting talents and nursing professionalism to recreate these situations for videotape. The edited procedures were then captured and streamed through the RCTC server and the links were posted in their D2L class sites. To view these exciting procedures, click on the link below. Congratulations to Nancy Hust and Amy Sands for using technology to enhance student learning!

CLICK HERE

Doodle!

Tired of the time it takes to plan a date and time for a meeting between several people? You can either do it the old fashioned way and send out an Outlook invite - and receive several “Decline to attend” responses - or you can set up a poll in Doodle to see what time works best for everyone, and then lock it in place. In short, Doodle makes it easy by using a web poll-based scheduling system. (It’s not a calendar. )

Doodle takes the pain out of scheduling events by replacing the human coordinator with a simple web application. No registration is required for organizers or attendees and it's free! It has a clean, simple, intuitive interface. Schedule meeting options in 3 easy steps then email the link to attendees to gather their input. That’s it. When the organizer views the results, a tally appears at the bottom of each suggested date.

For more information and to sign up, click here: http://www.doodle.com/

Educational Gaming

For those that may have missed the gaming seminar at last week's staff development day, Educational Technology would like to share links to some great games you may find useful in your classes.

Purpose Games

These first two examples come from purpose games (www.purposegames.com)

How well do you know your Minnesota geography? Take this quiz to find out!

CLICK HERE

Think you know Hollywood? Match the P name with the leading actor or actress.

CLICK HERE


Study Mate

Studymate provides games that can be used by learners such as Flash Cards, Crossword Puzzles, Matching, and Pick a Letter. RCTC has paid for Studymate licenses, and you can download the application to your home PC, or ask the friendly TSC Staff to install it on your imaged workstation. Your completed quiz can easily be uploaded into your D2L class site. Contact Educational Technology if you would like assistance. (Sorry Mac users, this is currently a PC only download.)

How to access: Log into your D2L account. Under "Course Offerings," enter the Resource Room. Click on the Studymate Link (about 1/3 of the way down the page.) Download by clicking on the Studymate 2.0 link. When the installer has completed its job, launch the application. Copy and Paste the RCTC institution name, Support Contact (Missy Hagen,) and serial number into the required field when prompted.

Do you know your Springsteen from Springfield? Ann Gillian from Gilligan? Take this Pop Culture quiz to test your knowledge.

Click Here

Game Show Presenter

Want to turn your class into a game show? This fun (and sometimes obnoxious) game can be purchased for $149. per license. If you want to try it out, you can download a copy to evaluate with the link below.

CLICK HERE

Quia

Quia allows users to play classic games like Husker Du and Battleship while learning course materials. This game is sort of a hybrid between Purpose Games and Studymate, with many different type of games available for creation. Licenses cost at most $49. per instructor annually, and are actually cheaper if more licenses are purchased. For more information...

Click Here

The Last Lecture

If you enjoyed the Last Lecture and want to learn basic computer programming, try Alice. This free program allows you to animate 3D characters using fun, easy to follow tutorials. Kids enjoy it too!

Click Here

Have you built a game using one of these tools? Using a game not featured here? Tell us about it!

Online Learning Club

This week the Distance Education Committee unveiled their new Online Learning Club. The first presenter was adjunct faculty business instructor Todd Johnson. These sessions are presented virtually using Adobe Connect and recorded for later viewing to those who can't attend the meeting live. The topic for their first meeting was "Rapid Fire Feedback" in which Johnson gives audio and visual feedback to students while scrolling through their paper. Check it out:

click here to view Todd's presentation



Todd Johnson
Rapid Fire Feedback