Publicizing our faculty wherever we go

I've been struggling to figure out how to publicize what we do at Hofstra in the area of instructional technology more. It's hard to have regular "publicity" that doesn't sound like it's all about Me or even all about My Staff. To me the revolution is what happens every day. Like many schools, we have fantastic forward-thinking faculty who are leaders in the area of teaching with technology, but I think it's a failure if those faculty are our only actively innovating faculty. I'm really pleased with the percentage of Hofstra faculty who aren't just using basic tools in a way that replicates old teaching methods (here's your handouts in Blackboard, yawn), but are really teaching in a twenty-first century way.

To me (me again!), that's about communicating with our students and constantly connecting them with new material or new ideas. This is the information age. Computers are great for communicating. Most faculty keep up to date with late-breaking news in their field with online tools... but few faculty show that activity to their students. Even fewer ask students to then make the next great leap: connect the new idea with good solid research or reflective synthesis. Integrate what you know into your knowledge base into an academically responsible way!

Here's a video of Terri Shapiro, one of our psychology professors, talking about using Twitter with her class.

(You'll notice that Terri makes the choices that make learning a new tool worthwhile: it's fundamental to the class, it's graded, and it's essentially reusable - she could do what she's doing with any class she teaches.)

Now I don't want to damn Terri with faint praise by saying she's not necessarily a techhead. She's an involved, innovative teacher who uses many of our services here at Hofstra Faculty Computing Services. But I wouldn't call her an early adopter. I'd like to think she's not even that far ahead of the curve in relationship to other Hofstra faculty. This is the sort of customer that I hope represents many if not most of our faculty: someone who's trying something new and using it to make her class more alive, more clearly connected to the world at large.

These are the people who are making a difference. It's them, not us.