Introducing CCCOnline’s Math Team

In coming weeks, we’ll be introducing CCCOnline’s Academic Team, division by division. This week, say hello to our Math Team!

Photo: From L-R, Tonia, Heidi, and Jan.

Heidi Barrett, Associate Dean
Heidi is an old friend of CCCOnline, having most recently served as our Assistant Math Department Chair. She has been sharing her talents with the CCCS system for more than 11 years; she began teaching at Arapahoe Community College in 2000 and CCCOnline in 2002.

Heidi earned her Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education from DePaul University in Chicago and her Master’s in Mathematics from the University of Iowa. She enjoys being outdoors and is an avid runner: she recently completed her first marathon, and also has done a few half-marathons and triathlons. In addition, she enjoys biking, swimming, hiking, playing board games with her children and cards with her friends.

Jan Butler, College Level Program Chair
Jan is a valued member of the CCCOnline team. She has been teaching college-level math courses since 1971; she started teaching with CCCOnline in 1991 and in 2000 became co-chair of Mathematics, Sciences and Health with Chuck Sherrill. In August 2002, Jan became CCCOnline’s Mathematics Department Chair.

Jan has had a varied career from being a mathematician at U.S. Geological Resources, to Systems Analyst and Assistant Director of the Computer Center at University of Colorado at Denver, to teaching and academic administration around the Denver area. She worked at Metropolitan State College and was very involved with their Veteran's Upward Bound program from 1973 - 1985. Jan also taught at Community College of Aurora, Metro State, and University of Colorado at Denver in addition to her teaching and administration at CCCOnline.

Jan loves to take long walks, hike in the mountains, and read (especially science fiction and fantasy). She also loves dark chocolate and is always looking for new recipes to add to her collection.

Tonia Lock, Developmental Math Program Chair
Tonia has taught developmental Math for CCCOnline since 2008. She earned her Associate’s of Science degree from Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado, her Bachelor's degree in Mathematics Secondary Education from Regis University in Denver, and her Master's degree in Educational Technology from University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

Her interests are hunting, fishing and camping with her family and friends. She also enjoys reading, traveling, and being outside on a nice summer day.

Math News
Some of the projects underway in the Math department are transitioning more classes to digital content, increasing student participation in the STAR Center, and researching methods to improve student success in Math courses.

What’s Your Super Power?

As we count down to the CCCOnline Annual Conference, we’d like to ask you, our instructors:

What is YOUR super power and how does it help you to teach online?

Please respond in the companion Community discussion thread!

CCCOnline Annual Conference Information:
When: Sept. 30, 2011, 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Where: Arapahoe Community College

For more information, including registration instructions, please visit http://media.ccconline.org/ccco/Conference/index.html.

What We Learned at COLTT

Some of the CCCOnline academic staff attended COLTT (the Colorado Learning and Teaching with Technology Conference) at CU-Boulder last week. Here’s what they reported:

The Best Ideas under the Sun
“One session of COLTT discussed the tool Voice Thread as used for enhancing student participation with each other in foreign language courses. Saturday after COLTT, I had the privilege of sitting in Sloan’s Lake Park with some of our vibrant Spanish instructors in a gathering arranged by Jeri Heinicke. Some of the instructors expressed interest in incorporating this tool in a couple of assignments for fall. We’ll let you know how it goes!”
-Karla Schorzman, Associate Dean of Arts and Humanities

Cool Tools!
“My experience of COLTT introduced me to or reminded me of some cool web sites and tools:

*Arounder.com, which provides panoramic views of various places around the world: http://www.arounder.com/
*VIMEO, which is like YouTube without the ads: http://vimeo.com/
*XTRANORMAL: http://www.xtranormal.com/
*Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/
*Zoomerang: http://www.zoomerang.com/
*Symphony of Science: http://www.symphonyofscience.com/”
-Karen Kaemmerling, Associate Dean of Social Sciences

“I learned about two interesting tools that have come on the scene recently.

The first is http://storify.com/; this is a tool to aid story authors using quick and easy drop-in content from other sites. The demo given is that you would intersperse text, online videos or other multimedia in way to tell a story. Their demos are interesting.

The second is http://instagrok.com/ which is a meta search engine for academic materials. It’s a Boulder, CO startup that looks very promising for students and instructors seeking high quality materials to embed into various works. It sorts from K-12 to college level postings by analyzing work usage, style, etc. and gives a word cloud so you can see at a glance the content without having to do a bunch of ‘go look and return to the index.’ ”
-Joseph Foss, AT Professional

Welcome to Our New Associate Dean of Science!

CCCOnline extends a warm welcome to Norma Hollebeke, our new Associate Dean of Science. Norma is new to the Colorado Community College System; she most recently served as Associate Professor of Biology at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.

Norma’s accomplishments include developing innovative curriculum to pave the way to student success in both face-to-face and online environments. She has an extensive Biology teaching background, having taught at El Paso Community College, University of Texas-El Paso, University of Toronto, and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.

In addition, Norma has served as Director of the Dayton Urban STEM Teacher Academy (funded by the National Science Foundation) and past-Affiliate Director of Biomedical Science for Project Lead the Way, Ohio (an organization dedicated to improving programs and supporting future graduates in science and technology).

Norma earned her Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology and Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Texas-El Paso; her post-graduate research was at the University of Toronto. She enjoys hiking, camping, fishing, canoeing, gardening, photography, bird watching, entomology, and “herping” (searching for reptiles and amphibians).

What We Learned at FUSION, Part II

This week continues our discussion of lessons learned at FUSION.

Lisa Marie Johnson, Cultural Science Instructor, contributes:

“I attended many useful sessions at Fusion 2011, but the one that gave me the most pause for thought was 'The Future of Mobile: Insight and Vision from Desire2Learn' presented by David Kruis.

David discussed how the first internet experience for most developing nations' citizens is mobile technology. He examined the difficulty for educators in design and delivery of mobile due to the different definitions of ‘smartphone’ in the USA and abroad. Some phones are merely web enabled while others do truly mimic a personal computing experience.

Following that discussion, David explored a framework for understanding what mobile computing and learning means. . .”

Lisa Marie continues a summary of the framework in the CCCOnline Community. As always, please feel free to join in the conversation!

What We Learned at FUSION

We asked CCCOnline staff what they learned from last week’s Desire2Learn FUSION conference. Responses follow, and we’ll continue to showcase them next week!

• David Chatham, Dean of Academic Technology, commented on Jonah Lehrer’s keynote, in which Mr. Lehrer discussed the marshmallow kids experiment* and the possibility of predicting factors for success:
  
  “That is the key to our interest in analytics. If we can determine the key factors for keeping students progressing in their college career, then we’ve accomplished something additionally worthwhile with our D2L installation by mining the data that provides us with the clues.”
  
  *See “Don’t! The Secret of Self-Control,” Jonah Lehrer, The New Yorker, 5/18/2009.



• Natalie Jeremijenko, another keynote speaker, discussed the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic at NYU and its use of emerging technologies for social change. Sean Renner, Instructional Designer, found Prof. Jeremijenko’s keynote to be the most inspirational part of the conference:
  
  “I thought it was an amazing way to combine activism with art, and was an incredible example of thinking way outside the box making a difference in an area you care about in some of the most creative ways possible. For me, and I think for all of us working to provide new and creative opportunities for education, there’s a lot there that inspired me.
  
  The most useful thing I learned was the current, and upcoming features in the ‘insert stuff’ tool, allowing users to directly embed videos almost anywhere in D2L, and soon add youtube and flickr videos via a direct connection with D2L.”
  

CCCOnline Library Database Access

Mary Cash, CCCOnline Librarian, is our guest today with a special library announcement and question for you. As always, please feel free to join the conversation in the companion Community thread!

IMPORTANT! CCCOnline students will no longer be able to access the online article databases at the FRCC College Hill Library. CCCOnline students and faculty now have access to CCCOnline’s subscriptions to the EBSCO article databases and the FirstSearch (WorldCat) databases!!!

To access CCCOnline’s article databases, log on to your CCCOnline D2L account. Once you're logged on, locate the Helpful Links widget on your MyHome page or one of your Course Home pages. Look for the Online Library heading and then find the link to the EBSCO Article Databases or First Search and click on the link. That will take you right in to where you can begin your search. With EBSCO, you'll want to click on the top icon to get to the different databases. See the Library Article Databases Tutorial (http://at.ccconline.org/students/wiki/Academic_Resources_-_CCCOnline_Library_Resources_-_Library_Article_Databases_Tutorial) for more information.

You can also check out the CCCOnline Library Resources (http://at.ccconline.org/students/wiki/Academic_Resources_-_CCCOnline_Library_Resources) on the Student Wiki for information on evaluating sources, online reference resources, finding your local library and Ask a Librarian.

Have questions? Contact the CCCOnline Librarian: http://www.blogger.com/cccolibrarian@ccconline.org

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Now that we have our own library article databases, how can we help you work them into your classes, or how can we help your students learn to use the databases better?

-Mary Cash

Note: since next week is the Desire2Learn FUSION Conference, we will not be posting here; however, we will be back the week of 7/18!