Billie Hughes and Jim Walters tell us that
Project MariMUSE
is moving from text-based MUD (Multi-User
Dimension) to MOO (MUD Object Oriented) with help from
Xerox PARC
and Enterprise Integration Technology.
A partnership
with Longview Elementary School
electronically links at-risk
children with college faculty and students. The children,
who are building virtual communities, are engaging in
problem solving and creative writing skills at a level that
is amazing their teachers.
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is a team of
faculty with expertise in instructional design, video
production, and multimedia development (Betsy Frank, Mike
Poplin, and Dorothy McKay) that supports innovative
teaching and learning ideas that use technology. A current
CTL project for the Interpreter Training Program (ITP,
American Sign Language Studies) combines video, animation,
and computer graphics. The program is distributed on
videotape for use in class or at home by students. Dorothy
McKay is working with Sylvia Johns on a computer program
for students to determine whether they have the abilities to
enter the ITP. McKay also helped Carol Martin develop
Let's Talk Baseball, a Hypercard program to help foreign
students learn American idioms. Martin reports that students
had little difficulty using the program: "They also seemed
to be able to learn the idioms efficiently with the program.
One very important aspect of this program for me was that
the students said it was fun." Cathee Tankersley and
McKay used Macromedia Director to create learning modules to
supplement the seven-week phlebotomy techniques course. The
program includes animation, life-like photos of procedures
and equipment not normally seen in classroom lectures, and a
self-test.
Angela Ambrosia, in the Applied Business Department,
is using technology to "prepare students for the 21st
century," by accessing information in a timely and global
manner (databases, news services, Internet) and taking
advantage of technology advances to help the disabled such
as zoom text, voice synthesizers, and track-ball computer
controls. Students in her Open Entry/Open Exit Internet
course dial in to a new UNIX server and Ambrosia is busy
converting her material for distribution via the World Wide
Web.
Supported by a District Instructional Technology grant,
Lisa Miller's Creative Writing class (ENG 210)
incorporated the MariMUSE
virtual reality program for an on-line
Critique Center, Revision Center, Classroom, and
Workroom. Students not only collaborated with each other,
but tapped into the expertise of Virginia Sutton at PC
and Alison Deming, director of the University of Arizona
Poetry Center.
Miller and Sutton are also working with Rod
Freeman (EMCCC) to develop a creative writing workshop to
be taught almost entirely via computer.