CollabrATEC

• By Linda L Briggs
• 04/01/09 

If there’s a single most powerful benefit from using a collaborative software tool called ClassSpot, according to Stanford’s Menko Johnson, it’s this: It lets an instructor control multiple display screens in a classroom simply and cost-effectively. “That’s huge,” Johnson said. “Whenever you have a classroom beyond a single display, you enter a whole new environment of multiple computers displaying different things at the same time…. But how do you run this multimedia show without letting it take over the entire class?”

Johnson, who is currently an instructional designer and technologist at the … Continue Reading

Children in the UK using an interactive learning tool.

The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) research group at Durham University has created SynergyNet. The researchers from the departments of Computer Science, Education and Psychology have focused on motivational techniques involved in teaching and learning to create a network that will allow schools in the UK to use multi-touch interactive desks in the next ten years according to The Register. These desks use a multitude of technologies including the … Continue Reading

Here are 2 examples of how people are collaborating over the web-one is a writing project, the other a video project- it could give us ideas on virtual collaboration and ways to teach these subjects in ATEC

One Million Monkeys Typing- A Collaborative Writing Project

http://www.1000000monkeys.com/

Root Clip- “We did the first chapter, it’s your job to finish”

http://rootclip.com/

Abstract: The Arts and Technology program at the University of Texas at Dallas is a model of collaborative learning. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to education and research, ATEC brings together students and experts from many fields of study to explore ideas in often unconventional ways with imaginative, far reaching results. The success of this young program has resulted in a rapidly growing student population. Computer labs and classrooms are now at full capacity; ATEC is running out of space. Plans are currently in the works to create an new, … Continue Reading