Tutorials
We are pleased to present a growing collection of free tutorials aimed at helping teachers integrate technology into their classroom. These tutorials are presented as learning modules in MCLA’s course management system, Blackboard Vista. The current collection includes the following tutorials:
√ Introduction to iPhoto√ What Teachers Need to Know about Copyright
√ Finding Digital Resources
√ Introduction to WebQuests
When you sign up for this site, you will receive a confirmation e-mail with instructions for activating your MCLA account (if you do not already have one) and with directions for using the tutorials.
Login to explore one or more of the tutorials.
Welcome
This site provides educators with a place to share best practices and teaching ideas and to access information about MCLA courses and offerings. It includes a set of Learning Modules (tutorials), a Resource Center, and an Announcements area.
We encourage educators in Berkshire County and the surrounding area to become part of this new community. When you sign up for this site, you will be provided with access to all site materials.
Login (Use current MCLA login and password)
Register (Apply for an MCLA login and password)
Announcements
ENGL 20589: Reading and Writing in a New Media Age
A new English Graduate Education course, Reading and Writing in a New Media Age, will be offered in Spring 2009. Taught by Dawn Rodrigues, the course will focus on best practices for using technology in English Language Arts and Humanities classes. For more information, write to .
This is a hybrid course. It meets two times per month, with the rest of the meetings online.
Location: Intermodal Center, Pittsfield
Dates: Every other Wednesday, starting on January 14.
Time: 4:30 to 7:30
Course Description:
Participants explore ways technology can enrich the study of literature, grammar, and writing. The course includes an examination of traditional technologies, such as word processing and the Internet, along with the challenges and the potential of new media and web 2.0 technologies—including blogs, wikis, and podcasts.
Goals:
Students who complete this course will be able to:
• Understand the influence of media and technology on culture and communication (by participating in activities that require responses in a variety of media, including video, image, audio, and print).
• Analyze relationships between literacy development and technology, including ways specific tools such as word processing, desktop publishing programs, blogs, wikis, and podcasts can enhance reading, writing, and critical thinking.
• Answer practical and hypothetical questions such as the following:
Will students have sufficient opportunities to develop their text-based writing abilities if schools integrate multimedia approaches to composition? How do multi-modal/multi-media texts enhance (or complicate) a reader’s experience?
• Analyze and create a text in at least one “new media” genre (such as interactive fiction, hypertext, a digital story, or a video documentary).
• Design reading and writing activities that integrate a range of print and non-print genres.
Sample Course Activities:
1. Read and respond (in a course blog) to selected books, articles, and other resources that address literacy development (see Reading List).
2. Help create an anthology of Exemplary New Media Texts by examining an array of possibilities and selecting several to recommend to your colleagues. A wiki tool available at MCLA will be used for this activity.
3. Produce a text in a multimedia format, such as an annotated hypertext poem—with graphic and audio annotations--or a digital story, including images and sound that will be part of a lesson or unit for your classroom.
4. Work with a colleague on a research project that explores research in new media literacy.
5. Create classroom projects that infuse new technologies into the standard curriculum.