TLP Blog

Update:
Play the archive of the presentation.
Download the PowerPoint slides.

This presentation was delivered live online for Wimba’s Desktop Lecture Series on January 27, 2009

Description: A growing trend in education is the use of virtual worlds to complement or replace physical and web-based classrooms. With the availability of services like “Second Life”, the barrier to entry is being lowered dramatically. This presentation will examine the strengths and challenges of using Second Life from two perspectives and two institutions: a faculty member using SL to teach Business concepts at University of Northern Iowa and an educational developer supporting Nursing faculty and students who use SL at Cal State University, Chico. Please join us as we explore effective practices in use and deployment of Virtual Worlds.

Since we’ve set up some high-speed document scanners in the TLP Faculty lab and started using optical-character recognition (OCR) software, we’ve seen a huge increase in the quantity and quality of scanned, accessible Acrobat documents which are being uploaded to Blackboard Vista courses. But many faculty are still using PDF files which lack even the basic level of accessibility, simply because they were created long ago or gleaned from sources which aren’t aware of modern PDF document practices.

Find out more about accessible PDF files at this free public webinar hosted by EASI, Equal Access to Software and Information:

Title: Improving Accessibilty of Troublesome PDF Files
Date/Time: September 24, 2008 at 11 AM Pacific
Information link | Registration link

Remember that the TLP staff offer help for faculty scanning or converting documents to accessible PDF!

Brett Christie’s presentation, “Teaching and Technology Horizons: Presentation and Discussion” and is now available via an archive.(Simply type your name in the participant window and go! No password necessary.) Links to the Horizon Report websites used in today’s presentation can be found here.