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Tablet PC Tips - Online and F2F @ Virginia Western Community College
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In their project, "Enhance Project-Based Team Learning in the Mobile Computing Curriculum with Tablet PC's", the faculty at Virginia Western Community College are using tablet pc's in their college level programming courses taught ONLINE, and for face-to-face robot control projects for local middle school students. Not surprisingly, the tablet pcs are making the learning experiences more engaging AND more efficient for the instructors...

Dr. Diane Wolff and colleagues received an HP Technology for Teaching grant in 2007. Not surprisingly, they are finding great benefits from using the "digital ink" capability of their tablets to support their online course discussions. Specifically, they are using:

  • Techsmith's Camtasia software to generate audio-annotated screen-capture movies
  • PowerPoint's built-in audio recording capability (Instead of running the "show" directly, launch it via "record narration"; as you talk and advance slides, your audio is linke to each slide for later reply)
  • OneNote for note-taking and feedback
  • Macromedia Breeze (now an Adobe webcast solution) for live online sessions with students

According to Dr. Wolff, "The ability to draw out ideas and brain storm in online meetings has been a real plus for numerous classes."

Their project also includes an outreach component designed to raise the awareness and interest of Middle School students in the field of computer programming. By programming Lego robots in JAVA via the tablet pcs, the effort appears to be exciting the students.  "In the short time that we have done this in pilot projects, I see the light go on for many of the students, and the excitement is very rewarding", says Dr. Wolff.

The team at Virginia Western Community College has gone one step further - they have created a fantastic set of guide "booklets" (online pdf documents) that contain very helpful, illustrated tips for using tablet pcs in various ways, which they offer for free: http://virginiawestern.edu/istgrants/tablettips.html. You can read more about their "mobile programming" grants and projects at http://virginiawestern.edu/istgrants/

Thanks for sharing, Dr. Wolff and team!

 

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Worldwide Education Programs
HP Global Social Investment
Hewlett-Packard
Twitter @jgvanides

For information about the HP Global Social Investments, visit www.hp.com/hpinfo/grants

 

 

Posted 07-22-2009 11:49 PM by jgvanides
Filed under: ,

Comments

Steph K wrote re: Tablet PC Tips - Online and F2F @ Virginia Western Community College
on 08-04-2009 3:10 PM

Hi Jim,

Steph K here, over at the Careers blog.  Speaking of Tablet PCs, there was a follow up question to your comment that you helped me out with earlier; I'm attaching Lizette's follow up question here for you -- thanks!

Steph K

jgvanides wrote re: Tips on Applying to HP

on Mon, Jul 20 2009 10:34 PM

Lizette Foley - Thank you for being a HP Tablet PC advocate! I work with educators around the world who are also finding great benefits from using tablet pcs and "digital ink" to support learning and instruction. My blog, http://www.hp.com/go/hied-blog is full of examples...

Specific to your interest in a job at HP to promote tablet pc technology, do you have any background in marketing or sales? Those are two potential career avenues to explore.

My particular niche, corporate philanthropy, is highly unusual and opportunities like this are rare. The work also requires an interesting mix of job skills such as program management, public speaking, social media writing, strategy development, and the ability to work effectively inside a large, complex corporation - and build bridges to the external world (in my case, educators).

Good luck to you in your pursuits...!

Best regards, Jim Vanides

Lizette Foley wrote re: Tips on Applying to HP

on Sat, Aug 1 2009 2:08 AM

Hello,

I'd love to do what you do.  My skills are very suited to this.  My talents are very broad.  Can you give me some tips on how you become a "corporate philanthropist?"

Thanks,

Lizette Foley

jgvanides wrote re: Tablet PC Tips - Online and F2F @ Virginia Western Community College
on 08-04-2009 4:34 PM

Lizette - I'm not sure there's a clearly defined path to jobs in corporate philanthropy! There are different roles (program management, operations, communications...), and there are different requirements depending on the organization you are targeting to work for (not all corporate philanthropy orgs operate the same way).

One thing I see in common from peers within and outside HP is that everyone is intensely passionate about the work. So my first recommendation is, express your compassion! Even if you don't land a job in corporate philanthropy, you'll be making a difference in the world - and if you do get an interview, you'll have a lot of credible content to share...

- Jim

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