CATE's Project DIRECT gets exposure at ISTE 2011...

From June 26th-29th, the International Society for Technology is hosting their annual conference this year in Philadelphia. It has been estimated that nearly 20,000 people from 60 countries attend five days of professional learning and collaboration at the conference and exposition.  According to ISTE's conference page, "the conference program is selected from more than 2,000 peer reviewed submissions and is comprised of 700 immersive, interactive sessions, 145 special topic workshops, three inspiring keynotes, and numerous informal networking lounges and cafés." 

Ok, so this is obviously pretty exciting stuff, but it get's better!  This year, ISTE is hosting Machinima Fest 2011.  As noted on the ISTE SIGVE wikipage,  "in the tradition of Sundance and Cannes, ISTE SIGVE is hosting Machinima Fest 2011 featuring examples of the BEST Machinima in the educational realm. Machinima, video created using 3D virtual worlds or games, is a new form of media showing incredible potential for learning and communicating."


This is where Project DIRECT factors in.  I received word over the weekend that our submission was accepted and is considered for a spotlight feature at the celebration.  This is great news.  Take a look at some of the other submissions in our category.  Clearly we are on board with some of the best work being done out there right now using this technique.  Keep your fingers crossed that we get a spotlight!!

Active Response to Current Events

On May 11th 2011, Joe Harwood presented on "Active Response to Current Events" to the Project DIRECT group. In this presentation we learned about active/passive voice, summary leads, 5Ws and an H, "hooking a reader" and power verbs. Take a look at the video below for a recap.

BuddyPress – A Social Network You Can Build!

If you need a an easy digital way to create a social network for your school, your company, or your colleagues and you enjoy the ease of sites like Facebook, you will be delighted in designing your own social network platform through BuddyPress, which is designed to bring people together and enable people to communicate.   Unlike Facebook, which is very global, BuddyPress is built on your own webiste and target very particular niche networks. If you are familiar with WordPress, you will find BuddyPress  (developed in 2007) easy and uncomplicated to set up as it is based on all the power and flexibility of WordPress.  BuddyPress is open source and completely free to use.  You and your group can stay in complete control of how it is managed and how you customize the site to meet the particular needs of your group.

The Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the University of Oregon, plans to introduce BuddyPress at their summer institute (GLEN) for foreign language teachers starting 2011, to help build a learning community and mentor based relationships as professional development training occurs.

Here are some of the exciting features:

·      WordPress Blogging – You and your colleagues can start your own blogs and track new post and comments across your site.

·      Discussion Forums – Full powered discussion forums are built directly into groups to allow for more in-depth conversations.

·      Activity Streams – Global, personal and group activity streams include threaded commenting, direct posting, favoriting and @mentions.   All of this with full RSS feed and email notification support.

·      Private Messaging – can allow you and your colleagues to talk to each other directly and in private.  Your colleagues can send messages to multiple recipients.

·      Profile creation – Profiles are fully editable and fields can be customized to suite your audience.

·      Need something special for your site?  BuddyPress is a WordPress plug in so there is an infinite number of ways you can extend the capabilities.

·      BuddyPress can become a very easy teacher website, as well.

If you have ever created a blog in WordPress, creating a BuddyPress social networking platform will only take you a few minutes.

Here’s how in three easy steps:

Step One:  Download and setup WordPress with its quick install.

Step Two:  Go to “Plugins, Add New” menu and automatically install

                      BuddyPress.

Step Three:  Choose any of several bundled themes, or any other BuddyPress

                      Compatible WordPress themes.  

If you would like to see some very inspiring BuddyPress designs, go to:

http://www.bpinspire.com/

If you would like to see a more in-depth video discussing BuddyPreess in depth please take a few minutes to view this video:

http://wordpress.tv/2010/07/10/sabin-wilson-buddypress-boulder10/

Written by Deborah Heal, Instructional Design and Online Course Specialist, Research Assistant for the Center for Advanced Technology and Education and the Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.  She may be contacted at:  ddheal@gmail.com.