Professor Michael Killian’s “The Bio Blog” is a pretty impressive endeavor that collects and categorizes the posts of over 70 students in his Introduction to Biological Concepts (Biol 121) course. Every student maintained his or her own blog and their posts were tagged according to the section they were part of, which allowed for both an aggregation and categorization of posts in the main blog by section number, student, and most recent posts. But, more importantly, the experiment provided a space where students could actually work through the concepts they were learning about using the innumerable resources all over the web.
In Judith Parker’s Psycholinguistics course students have been asked to create scientific posters, but they were encouraged to explore new ways of presenting their work online. Justin Toney created his science poster for the class with Glogster, an online poster tool that enables linking, embedding, media, as well as re-posting it on other sites, such as a UMW Blog. I think he used Glogster to some great effect—don’t you? I really dig the design and aesthetics of his work. Imagine that, a web-based science poster that isn’t a progeny of PowerPoint and actually has some character and sass! You can see the full screen version of Justin’s work here.
To explore more tools like Glogster take a look at Alan Levin’s incredible resource “50 Ways to Tell a Digital Story.”
Professor Krystyn Moon’s seminar on the history of consumerism in the 20th century is taking a fascinating approach to their topic. They’re not only blogging their reflections on the various texts they are reading throughout the semester, they have also created a group blog for the course wherein everyone features a product on their own personal wish list. I find this a fascinating experiment wherein a class openly inhabits the very space that they are critically examining. Who says personal happiness can’t be equated with the critical examination of purchasing material possessions? Check out their course blog, and do some virtual window shopping.
One of the most interesting elements of UMW Blogs is the way in which things kinda happen on their own accord, and the publishing environment takes on a life of its own. For example, I track a lot of the posts and comments that go through the system, and what I have begun to recognize is that clubs and organizations at Mary Washington are using this space to get their announcements out by using this system to create quick and easy websites with built-in syndication.
So, why not aggregate all the announcements into one space and make things easy for the community to discover, view, and subscribe to? Well, thanks to the wonders of RSS and a WordPress spam plugin it’s a cinch. Check out the UMW Clubs and Organizations blog, which features the latest posts from contributing clubs and organizations at UMW, along with a list of the contributing groups. Additionally, if any club or organization wants to add their site (which can be hosted on UMW Blogs or any other service with a feed), it’s a simple form to fill out to get their announcements syndicated into this site.
Have you seen Uncle Lumpy’s Down-Home Art Blog and Pancake Emporium? It seems to be a wild class experiment that has emerged on UMW Blogs, wherein all the authors are blogging under what seems to be personae (check out the very entertaining contributors page for a few examples). It’s a healthy mix of local art news, pancake recipes, and a Q & A column with Uncle Lumpy himself—which is hysterical. The blog is a lot of fun and is featuring a number of artists which is a great resource for cool information. What becomes immediately apparent is that the unknown souls behind this project are consciously creating an online art news and entertainment space that moves well beyond the classroom and out to the UMW community more generally, and even one step beyond….I’m digging Uncle Lumpy!
Professor Anand Rao has a number of great images documenting his experience of the Obama Rally that took place on campus yesterday. Above is just one of the gems you will find in his Flickr set of 90 images.
Also, you can read other posts about the Obama Rally on UMW Blogs here.
You can use the scanner as a camera!!! Crazy? Maybe…
Art professor Rosemary Jesionowski’s students in her Digital Approaches to Art course just completed their first project titled “Scanograms,” in which they created compositions using images captured on a scanner. Each student scanned five items and then, using Adobe Photoshop, cut out the objects and rearranged them into a new composition. Pretty cool stuff, and quite beautiful too!
Professor Steve Greenlaw’s Freshman Seminar dealing with Globalization is making its mark on UMW Blogs. The class as a whole is already intensely active, engaging some fascinating topics in a distributed manner through their own blogs. Between this post on the ABCs of Globalization and this image of “When old meets new” (both of which are reproduced below), you have to believe that these students are moving far beyond the traditional manner of examining this topic.
The beautiful images in the header of UMW Blogs are courtesy of UMW's own Serena Epstein and Jerry Slezak. If you have a photo of UMW that you would like to share, send it along to us at jgroom_at_umw.edu.
Professor Michael Killian’s “The Bio Blog” is a pretty impressive endeavor that collects and categorizes the posts of over 70 students in his Introduction to Biological Concepts (Biol 121) course. Every student maintained his or her own blog and their posts were tagged according to the section they were part of, which allowed for both an aggregation and categorization of posts in the main blog by section number, student, and most recent posts. But, more importantly, the experiment provided a space where students could actually work through the concepts they were learning about using the innumerable resources all over the web.
