TLT is excited to welcome faculty and students back to campus! While you’ve been away, we’ve been hard at work making plans for an exciting new school year. Check out what TLT has been up to:
Meet the Newbie!
We first want to make sure you’ve had an opportunity to meet the newest addition to the TLT team:
Mike Overholt is an Instructional Technologist who works with the School of Languages, Cultures, and World Affairs. He has an undergraduate degree in Religious Studies from Gardner-Webb University and MA and PhD degrees in Classics from the University of Iowa. Mike loves learning environments of all types, having created and directed a philosophy course for elementary students; taught English and Latin at the middle and high school levels; been an instructor of Classics, Humanities, and Rhetoric courses at the university level; and led educational tours of Italy and Greece. Outside of work, Mike enjoys adventures with his wife, Brooke, and their four children, listening to NPR, and classical film noir.
TLT is Going LIVE
Another exciting development in the JC Long building is the opening of our L.I.V.E. Studio. This innovative space features a lightboard, built by the TLT team. A lightboard is an illuminated glass board that allows instructors to create video lectures while facing the camera and simultaneously writing and drawing on a board. Check out this video to learn more about what’s possible in the L.I.V.E. Studio!
In addition to the new lightboard, the L.I.V.E. Studio features a virtual reality system!
The HTC Vive consists of a headset and wireless controllers that are tracked at room-scale. With this immersive new technology, users can explore different experiences such as digital painting, shrinking to the size of a human blood cell, or exploring the world with Google Maps!
William Bares from Computer Science has graciously lent us the HTC Vive to use over the summer and TLT is in the process of purchasing our very own.
For a tour of the studio or to use it yourself, please contact your Instructional Technologist to make an appointment.
TLT In The News
Over the summer, TLT also had the opportunity to give back to the Charleston community. Thanks to Chris Meshanko and Jack Wolfe, TLT was on the Channel 5 News as part of a story about a seagull named Gumpy who had his feet amputated after being caught in fishing line. In conjunction with the South Carolina Aquarium, Chris and Jack designed different styles of feet using TLT’s Makerbot 3-D printer in an effort to help Gumpy walk again.
Cool New Tool
TLT is also excited to announce the availability of Turnitin, a software package that detects plagiarism by comparing student submissions against billions of documents in Turnitin’s repository of previously submitted papers as well as documents and data available online such as periodicals, journals and publications.
Even better, Turnitin is integrated within the OAKS Assignment/Dropbox tool and allows faculty to grade and leave feedback on student submissions without having to download them.
Please take a moment to visit our Turnitin tutorial page for additional resources and video tutorials on how to incorporate Turnitin into your course.
How Well Do You Know Your Instructional Technologist?
Each semester offers a fresh opportunity for TLT to discover new ways to better connect with you. We’d love to know more about the projects you’re working on and the new ideas you’re hoping to implement in your teaching. Your Instructional Technologist is an incredible resource and we’d love to collaborate with you!
In case you didn’t know, TLT is a fun, passionate group of people (who also enjoy a bit of silliness, as the slide show below demonstrates).
Can you answer the following trivia questions about the TLT team?
- Which instructional technologist has built a training course for Special Operation Military Teams on Explosive Drones?
- Which instructional technologist is a black belt in Uechi Ryu Karate?
- Which of the instructional technologists have cats?
