ELI

Ustream is an interactive web streaming platform that lets users broadcast their own channels on the Ustream network or on a third-party website such as MySpace or Facebook. Ustream offers a platform for users to host events, promote their own shows, or set up interactive conversations with participants across the globe.

The 7 Things You Should Know About Ustream, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how Ustream’s broadcasting model offers an attractive new way for Internet broadcasters to connect with audiences, allowing dialogue between users and opportunities to build connections across the globe.

Browse the complete 7 Things You Should Know About… monthly series.

Assessment. Learning space design. Changing student and faculty practice. When polled, focus groups within the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community identified their top “challenges” in teaching and learning with IT. But how does your list compare? What big issues dominate your campus conversations and water cooler debates? What challenges would you add?

ELI has released a new white paper, Collaboration Tools, by Cyprien P. Lomas (The University of British Columbia), Michael Burke (The University of Tennessee), and Carie Lee Page (EDUCAUSE). This paper discusses how easily accessible and user-friendly collaboration tools allow students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for collaboration across geographic boundaries.

Geolocation, also called geotagging, is the practice of associating a digital resource with a physical location. A photographer, for example, might include the longitude and latitude coordinates for where a picture was taken, allowing others to pinpoint that location on a map.

The 7 Things You Should Know About Geolocation, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how geolocation is increasingly being applied to infrastructure components and end-user devices for the purpose of knowing where people are. This additional layer of location data can make resources much more useful to a broad range of users.

Browse the complete 7 Things You Should Know About… monthly series.

The Wii is a video game system that uses a wireless controller capable of sensing position and motion, allowing users to interact with the game applications through physical movements. The controller has captured the interest of academic researchers and hackers, who have used the technology to create applications such as a collaborative choreography tool and an inexpensive, interactive whiteboard.

The 7 Things You Should Know About Wii, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how Wii technology is used as an input device in virtual worlds and as a training tool that allows learners to perform physical tasks in a digital, risk-free environment.

Browse the complete 7 Things You Should Know About… monthly series.

Second Life is a virtual world with tens of millions of square meters of virtual lands, more than 13 million "residents," and a thriving economy. The ease in which users can build and modify virtual spaces has made it an attractive choice for experiments in learning space design and educational experiences such as virtual field trips or the creation of galleries to display student-created media. The 7 Things You Should Know About Second Life, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how Second Life lets educators easily build and modify learning spaces to test how different strategies for a physical space affect learning and how a similar approach can be taken toward educational activities in those spaces.

Planning for emerging technologies is an important part of much of the work people do supporting IT in higher education. The Horizon Report can assist with this effort, as it identifies "emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused institutions."

Multi-touch interfaces are input devices that recognize two or more simultaneous touches, allowing one or more users to interact with computer applications through various gestures created by fingers on a surface. Multi-touch technology introduces users to swipes, pinches, rotations, and other actions that allow for richer, more immediate interaction with digital content. The 7 Things You Should Know About Multi-Touch Interfaces, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how these devices and supporting applications offer diverse ways of visualizing information to improve understanding, as well as facilitating new ways to foster collaborative creation, permitting several users to work simultaneously on a single screen.

Ning is an online service where users create their own social networks and join and participate in other networks. No technical skill is required to set up a social network, and there are no limits to the number of networks a user can join. The 7 Things You Should Know About Ning, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how Ning allows instructors to use social networks in a neutral setting to help facilitate a strong sense of community among students and encourage personal interactions that can lead to the creation of new knowledge.

Browse the complete 7 Things You Should Know About… monthly series.

Google Apps is a collection of web-based programs and file storage that run in a web browser. The applications include communication tools (Gmail, Google Talk, and Google Calendar), productivity tools (Google Docs: text files, spreadsheets, and presentations), a customizable start page (iGoogle), and Google Sites (to develop web pages). Google stores all of the files and content centrally and keeps a record of the different versions of a file. The 7 Things You Should Know About Google Apps, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI) latest brief in the monthly series, examines how Google Apps makes sharing content as simple as granting someone access, which facilitates collaboration, peer review of academic materials, and the collective generation of knowledge.