Category Archives: Helpful Tips

Being equipped with the right tools is one of the key components of success, and when it comes to communication…the right tools are important! At UIS, ITS offers Skype for Business for faculty and staff, which will fit all your needs in a communication tool!

With Skype for Business, engage in real-time communication including chat, audio, video chat, and even desktop sharing. Meetings can even be scheduled in advance to hold via Skype for Business applications with the Skype for Business Scheduler! This tool is a great all-in-one solution. Read more about Skype for Business and learn about even more features here!

Want to schedule a meeting with students and have them attend via Skype for Business? While they are not able to install the program like faculty and staff, they are able to use the web app where they can participate in the meetings, collaboration, desktop sharing!

One of the most popular tools at UIS for faculty is Camtasia Relay, a screen capture system, allowing instructors to record their screen while recording their audio at the same time. Camtasia Relay is so simple to use—simply open the program and begin recording! Your Camtasia recordings will be linked with your Kaltura Media Space so you are able to access them all in one central location. Upload to your Blackboard, download, and distribute links—these videos are so simple to create and a great solution for everyone, but especially online instructors and those utilizing on the flipped classroom model! If you haven’t yet used Camtasia Relay, but would like to get started, find more information here, and check out a few of our favorite ideas for using Camtasia Relay:

o   Record a tutorial on how to navigate a website you’d like to share with your class

o   Record a lecture and post to your Blackboard so during “class time” you can initiate discussions/group work

o   Record supplemental lectures and post to your Blackboard page for students to watch as an assignment

Kicking off the school year is always a great time to re-familiarize yourself with all the great tools and resources offered at UIS to not only the faculty and staff, but also your students! Today, we are sharing some of the services UIS ITS Client Services offers so you can be prepared to share them with your students as the semester begins!

o   Computer Labs: There are various computer labs on campus available for students that are equipped with Macs, PCs, software, printers, an audio lab, equipment checkout and more! Be sure to share this with your students—and that on the ITS webpage, they can find the locations and hours of all labs!

o   Help Desk: The Help Desk is located in the Media Lab and offers assistance at hours that are convenient for student schedules. They are able to assist with repairing issues with computers and can even assist with using the software/services in the labs.

o   Citrix Virtual Desktop: If your student doesn’t have specific software on their computer, but they need it to complete an assignment, it can be a bit frustrating! Citrix Virtual Desktop allows users to connect to a UIS desktop on a personal computer from home (or wherever!), so users are able to access all the software equipped on the UIS desktops! So if you know of any students that perhaps don’t have MS PowerPoint or SAS software, be sure to let them know in addition to using the Computer Labs, they can also use Citrix Virtual Desktop!

o   ITS Workshops: ITS offers weekly workshops teaching how to navigate the ins and outs of programs and UIS resources. Be sure to remind your students they can check the ITS webpage to see when these workshops will take place! From MS Word to Adobe Photoshop and Blackboard…these workshops are a great way to become more familiar and learn these programs!

Welcome back! It’s hard to believe we are already entering the Fall semester! We wanted to kick off the year by sharing some of the great classroom tools and resources ITS Client Services offers to all UIS Faculty. These technologies are available in mostly all classrooms on campus and provide instructors with endless options for adding interactivity to their lectures.

o   Interactive Whiteboards: Classrooms on campus are equipped with interactive whiteboards, which allow instructors to engage their students in a fun and interactive way. Conduct your lecture from where you want to be, write and capture annotations to share with students, and even get your students involved in the lecture by working through problems and sharing their ideas for the rest of the class!

o   iPad Cart: Did you know we have an iPad here on campus available for faculty to check-out for use in their classroom? Another fun, unique way to increase engagement in class is to utilize iPads! Check out the cart, and students can follow along on an iPad of their own for the day. We have tons of apps and ideas of how iPads can be used in the classroom—for more information, checkout our website here!

o   Laptop Cart: Similar to the iPad cart, ITS has laptop carts where instructors can provide their students with a laptop for the day. These are great to check out if you are helping students find resources for papers, providing them with class-time to work on projects, or giving them the opportunity to work together on group projects in class!

o   Audience Response System: If you are looking for a way to increase student participation, “clickers” bring an interactive component to the classroom and can help keep students alert and engaged in class. Incorporate questions throughout your lecture with our Audience Response System—learn more about it here!

This summer, we will be periodically sharing ideas of ways you can use technology to kick off the school year! Incorporating an activity outside of the normal icebreaker games can be a fun way to engage your students and get them to know one another in a unique way.

Our first idea we’d like to share with you is the QR Code Scavenger Hunt. We’ve blogged about QR codes before, and free webtools that allow you to create your own QR codes so simply. A really fun idea to get your student up and moving around campus is to create a scavenger hunt where they walk about campus hunting for the QR code to scan that will send them to their next destination!

This can be a great way to incorporate a little “preview” of some material they will be learning throughout the coming semester and to get them familiar with some valuable locations on campus (send them to some computer labs, the media lab, the library, etc!)

If this interests you and you’d like some assistance getting started with your own QR Code scavenger hunt, feel free to reach out to us and we can help!

In keeping with our tradition of the Summer Bucket List, this week we are sharing our ideas for your Summer 2015! We love sharing these ideas as a way for you to explore the technology options available, and we know how busy it can be to explore these during the school year! So in no particular order, here are our summer bucket list items for you this year:

• Flip your Classroom: This is no new concept, but it always seems that summer is the best time to really check this out because frankly, we have the time to explore our options and plan for the upcoming semester! Basically, incorporating the flipped classroom model into your class would consist of bringing in more discussion and interactive activities during class time, and posting the lecture and informational material on the class website for students to complete as homework. We have tons of ideas on ways to do this—from tools facilitating the use of videos to interactive response tools, be sure to check out our blog to get started!
• Put yourself in your Student’s Shoes: What do we mean by this exactly? Think about being a student in your classroom-what tools would help you? What resources? If your students write a lot, perhaps it would be helpful to include on your Blackboard site a list of great web-based tools that are free, such as Purdue’s OWL resource and Analyze My Writing. There are webtools for just about everything—if you are looking for some options specific to the needs of your class, summertime is a great time to explore the web (and our blog!) to see what you can find! If you’d like help in finding tools, feel free to reach out to us! We would be happy to help search for some solutions that will fit your needs and the needs of your students!
• Check out some of the services offered by ITS: If you haven’t been keeping up with what we’ve been doing throughout the year, ITS offers some great and exciting services! 3D printers are available in the media lab for the use of faculty, staff and students. It may be a neat idea to take this ground-breaking technology and incorporate it in your classroom and ask students to use these printers to design an object. Throughout the summer ITS also will be offering workshops on Microsoft Office programs, Adobe, and more! If you have the time and the desire to pick up some new skills you should definitely join us!

Wrapping up the month of April means we are quickly approaching the end of the semester and finals! Students are busy studying for exams and finishing up their final papers, and today we are sharing a tool that will help them in writing those final papers and ensuring the quality is to the level they strive for!

With Analyze My Writing, students can simply paste their writing into the text box on the website and their writing will be analyzed based on readability, phrases used, words used, and more! This is a great way for students to get an in-depth analysis of their writing and will give them tips on improvement prior to turning it in for grading! Analyze My Writing is free and so simple to use, it’s definitely a must for students to use as they write papers. Not only will it help them improve the particular paper, but it will help them learn more about their learning style and patterns.

Analyze My Writing is definitely a must-use tool for all writers, whether they are being graded or not! Check it out and let us know what you think!

Changing your password just got easier! ITS has implemented the ability for you to set up password recovery options. Setting up your password recovery options will allow you to recover your password on your own, whenever you want, from wherever you want, using three different recovery methods (email, text, and voice).

Although not required, we encourage you to start the process as soon as possible. It will make it easier to change your password as you near your password expiration date. You can access the new system from http://go.uis.edu/password. The process is very easy and should only take you a minute to walk through the set up process.

If you would like assistance in setting up your options, please visit ITS Client Services in the lower level of Brookens Library. We will also be having drop in help sessions in BRK 141B every day this week from 11am-1pm if you would like to walk through this process with an ITS staff member.

This implementation is part of the first phase of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) project and we are excited to be the first University of Illinois campus to roll out this functionality!

Today’s blog post is a little different—we are reaching out to you, our readers, to get the scoop on the information YOU want to see! What blog post topics are your favorites? What would you like to learn more about? Are you looking for tips on an educational technology or tool, specifically? Let us know! We love providing the latest tips and ideas to our readers on our blog, and would love to hear what you would like us to share!

Smartphones and smart devices have been around for a few years now, and it has been a challenge finding their place in the classroom, and deciding if they even belong there. We have definitely come far, and have found innovative and highly educational ways to incorporate these tools into the classroom. Checkout this great infographic we’ve found that details smartphones in education and the features that are best for education.

Some of our favorite features include the ability to turn a smartphone or device into a response tool to answer poll questions during lectures, the great apps that make everyday tasks easier for students and assist with studying, and how students and educators are taking these apps and tools to the next level, making them work for them in education, specifically! Let us know your ideas for mobile devices in the classroom and how you think they could be used!

Today, we are sharing a tool that has many implications in higher education, and is a great tool to use particularly during lectures. Message boards are commonly found on the web, but Tozzl brings the online message board to a new level! With Tozzl, simply create a new message board, set a password if you wish it to be private, and a URL will be assigned to your new message board. Simply distribute the URL to the users you wish to have access to the message board.

Aside from being a forum for discussions, with Tozzl sections can be added for YouTube videos, to-do lists, and file sharing.

One of our favorite ideas to use Tozzl is to use it as a backchannel tool during lectures. During a lecture, students can enter your unique Tozzl and post their questions and comments concerning the lecture! The ways to use Tozzl in the classroom expand beyond using it as a backchannel—it’s a great tool for students to work and collaborate together on projects, too! If you’d like to learn more about Tozzl and are interested in using it in your classroom but have some questions, feel free to reach out to us!

Posting videos on your Blackboard website and utilizing them to enhance and add to content related to your lesson is a great way to add an interactive component to your class and spark student interest in new ways. Want to take it even a step further? Make your videos interactive!

In the past, we’ve shared VideoNotes, a tool that allows users to make their YouTube videos interactive by adding questions throughout for viewers to answer. Today, we’re sharing Vialogues, a tool that does the same thing, only you are not limited to using YouTube videos!

Vialogue allows users to add questions or comments that are tied to specific moments in their own video. Vialogues can be made public or private, but to be posted on a website or blog, they need to be public. This would be a great way to incorporate multiple choice questions for knowledge checks or even insert comments to point out important information!

We always like taking a peek into the potential future of higher education and how technology may evolve! We can’t believe how much it has evolved in just over the last few years…tablets being utilized in classrooms, an endless amount of apps for smart devices targeted towards education, online courses becoming more and more common, and more. Checkout this infographic we found that delves even deeper into what the future may hold!

Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

It’s mid-term time! Can you believe we are already half-way through the semester? Chances are, students are preparing for midterm exams or completing midterm papers. If a paper is not assigned as a midterm project, chances are a final paper is part of the final exam or final project. We want to share a resource with you to share with students (and use yourself!) when it comes to writing papers. The tool is Excelsior College’s Online Writing Lab, commonly known as OWL. You may have heard of it already, but it recently won a WOW award and underwent a website makeover, making it even more functional and easy to navigate!

OWL is a great place to check out how to incorporate a multitude of sources into a paper and how to cite these sources, grammar tips, and even ways to avoid plagiarism. This website is a great resource to utilize as educators, and to share with students, as they will definitely utilize this resource throughout their academic career, and even beyond!