LTC Workshops Prepare College for New Technologies - January 3, 2012

As the fall semester wound down during the final exam period in December, College of Education faculty found time to attend two LTC workshops that will help them prepare to use new technologies to improve their teaching and research.

More than 30 came to the LTC IDEA Studio's Google Apps for Education Working Lunch on December 9. The session was targeted at instructors of first semester teacher education students, but faculty from all College departments and other UT personnel also attended. Most are interested in combining Google's suite of online tools with Blackboard and Canvas to facilitate online collaboration and shared group communications for their students. Brad Englert, UT's Chief Information Officer and Information Technology Services Chief Operating Officer, also attended and provided a pizza lunch for participants.

The group learned about the organizational framework of Google Apps for Education to prepare for next semester's pilot of its use in COE courses. All faculty interested in using Google Apps for Education in their classes and willing to provide feedback to the IDEA Studio may participate in the pilot, which will provide the University valuable information as it moves toward possibly providing the apps for the entire campus. Accessibility issues for those with visual impairments will also be studied in the College during the pilot. More IDEA Studio workshops will be held starting in January on how to use the individual apps.

The following Tuesday, December 13, the LTC held a daylong introduction to Information Visualization and Visual Analytics for 27 COE faculty. The session was offered to help researchers prepare to use the LTC's new Education Visualization Laboratory (EdVisLab), which is equipped with a 64 million pixel tiled display, a 3D system, and a visualization workstation. The LTC partnered with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to develop the lab, which is a satellite to TACC's visualization lab, one of the largest and most sophisticated in the world.

Kelly Gaither, Director of Visualization for TACC, led the workshop, which included an overview of information visualization and visual analytics concepts and how they apply to educational data. Attendees learned the basics of Processing, a popular visualization programming language, to develop information visualizations with their own data. They were later able to view their work on the EdVisLab's large display.

Both Google Apps for Education and visualization techniques for educational research represent new directions for the College of Education and its use of technology in education. The LTC is constantly exploring new technologies and their benefit to education, and has led the way in bringing these new technologies to the College. The apps will be part of the online tools that are replacing TeachNet and will allow student groups to have increased online collaboration, including co-creation of documents, presentations, and Web sites. The EdVisLab will allow faculty to better analyze large and complex data sets, more easily seeing and understanding patterns, trends, and relationships. For more information about the Google Apps for Education pilot, contact Karen French. Contact Ken Tothero to learn more about the EdVisLab.

—Laurie Caldwell, LTC Communications Coordinator