Renton Technical College December 2004
Office of Instructional Improvement Volume 3 No. 5
Create Your Own Clip Art
Noreen Light from the Emergency Dispatch Program suggests this great site for designing your own cartoons from pre-drawn components.http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic/index.html There is some interest in a workshop on doing quick drawing to enliven a white board or flip chart. Anyone out there with that awesome talent? Let us know at Instructional Improvement and we’ll set something up:
What’s your Stress Style?
Are you a Drifter, a Speed Freak, or perhaps a Loner when it comes to handling stress? According to Richard Earle, PhD., there are actually six Stress Types. This site will help you and your students identify a personal stress type along with a personalized prescription for handling stress – not a one-size-fits-all plan – to keeping stress in a healthy place - energizing your lifestyle, not draining it. Check out “Discovering your stress type” http://stress.about.com/cs/inthenews/a/ucstresstypes.htm
Webliography of Teaching and Learning sites
Paul Baeder of the Major Appliance Repair Program adds this site to our arsenal of resources. http://www.teacheroz.com/teachers.htm It has a wealth of topics and also direct links to more teaching sites than you ever believe existed. Lots to explore here, whether you are looking for learning activities, rubrics or crosswords and other games.
Flash cards Taken to a Whole New Dimension
If you recommend flashcards to your students to acquire specialized vocabulary, you may find an electronic stack of flashcards on this site to help your students drill. There are stacks on this site for everything from massage therapy to pharmacology, GPS to effective teams, nursing to anatomy. http://studystack.com
A New Twist to Online Assignments
The Department of Chemistry at the University of Washington uses WebAssign (an internet-based learning tool) to generate homework problems and track student progress. A randomizing feature will change the variables in problems so that all students may be completing the same homework, only using different data—so there might be as many “right answers” as students in the class—putting the focus on how the problem is solved. The approach offers other significant advantages, including immediate feedback to students.
http://www.artsci.washington.edu/innovate/details.asp?ID=5
Choosing Colors for PowerPoint Slide Shows
Do you know what feelings are evoked by using certain colors as backgrounds for PowerPoint presentations? Want to make your PowerPoint shows more effective? Choose the right background. We discovered our white Faculty Focus background reflects: Purity, reverence, cleanliness and simplicity. http://www.communicateusingtechnology.com/articles/choosing_colors_for_slides.htm
While We’re on the Subject of Color
Here’s a site that explains the meaning of color and demonstrates what can be done in screen design. Even if you are not teaching this and are just looking for a relaxing experience or just to be wowed by the power of color to affect your mood, click on this for a restorative experience.
http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com
Changing Places
Several instructors have been exchanging classes to teach from their expertise. Jim Coan’s students from the Land Surveying/Field Survey Technician Program have been working with Mike Biell on Computer-Aided Design (CAD). At the same time, Mike’s Drafting Program students have been working with Jim to get exposure on Land Development Desktop. This is a great way to enrich the curriculum. Let us know if we can help with match-making.
National Technical Honor Society
Rich Brownell of the Major Appliance and Refrigeration Program is planning the launch of our RTC National Technical Honor Society chapter. Students qualify by their grade point average and must be nominated by an instructor. Besides the recognition, members receive three free letters of reference from the national organization to use when applying for employment. If you think this would be a good incentive in your program contact Rich
Disability Services Grant Update
As part of the Universal Design for Learning theme of this project, we are promoting the use of Assistive Technology for all students, not just those with diagnosed disabilities! The grant has purchased a top-notch program called TextHelp Read&Write which reads text to students and is also an excellent writing tool. It has an extensive dictionary, thesaurus, homophone checker, and word prediction. It even has a talking calculator—great for students with English, vision or math concerns. It “floats” over the top of Word or other applications and is extremely user-friendly. Students can catch on to it with little instruction. This is a great over-all tool for helping students with reading or writing. And best of all, it’s free to your classroom! (You do have to have headsets.) The grant provides free training to you and your students on this technology if you are interested. For more information, contact Cathy Jenner at x5639 or at
Does the Classroom Environment Really Affect Learning and Retention?
An argument over tile vs. carpet in a classroom let a community college to experiment with the redesign of a classroom, with surprising results.http://www.league.org/leaguetlc/express/inn0410.html
New Titles from your friendly RTC Library:
Community College Assessment edited by Trudy W. Banta.Call Number:378.166 COMMUNI 2004a / Charting Your Course: How to Prepare to Teach More Effectively by Richard Prégent.
Call Number: 378.125 PREGENT 2000 / Rubrics: A Handbook for Construction and Use edited by Germaine Taggart ... [et al.]
Call Number: 371.33 RUBRICS 2001h / Core Indicators of Effectiveness for Community Colleges by Richard Alfred ... [et al.] Call Number: 378.052 CORE-IN 1999e
Overview of Career and Technical Education by John L. Scott,
Michelle Sarkees-Wircenski
Call Number: 370.113 SCOTT 2004 / Differentiated Instruct-ional Strategies in Practice: Training, Implementation, and Supervision
by Gayle H. Gregory
Call Number: 371.394 GREGORY 2003 / College Deans: Leading From Within by Mimi Wolverton andWalter H. Gmelch
Call Number: 378.111 WOLVERT 2002 / Differentiated Instructional Strategies: One Size Doesn't Fit All
by Gayle H. Gregory, Carolyn Chapman.
Call Number: 371.394 GREGORY 2002
Quotable: "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” William A. Ward~
For more information regarding the articles in the Faculty Focus or to give input or suggestions of things you would like to see incorporated into this newsletter please contact the Office of Instructional Improvement
The mission of the Office of Instructional Improvement is to advance educational strategies, seek to improve the quality of learning environments, and support RTC staff as they prepare a diverse student population for work.