CAL Educational Technology

We are hiring 2 new Tech Support and 2 new Web Developer/Programmers to start this semester. Read below to find out more about each position – If you are interested in applying please email Brian Adams at adamsb@msu.edu with a resume and short statement of interest.

Tech Support

The College of Arts and Letters is looking for self-motivated undergraduate students to become Technology Guides. As a Tech Guide you have the opportunity to work in a team environment to help provide quality technology support for the College community. Technology Guides are the first line of support for faculty, staff and graduate instructors experiencing technology problems. Support issues can range from email/Internet connectivity to hardware/software trouble and new computer deployments. Additionally, you will have opportunities to work with the CAL Technology Staff on various projects supporting teaching, learning and research in the College. These are paid support positions available to all undergraduate students at MSU. Preference will be given to those who have two years or more left in their program (current sophomore status).

Experience/Abilities:

• Customer service experience
• Prior technology support experience preferred
• Problem solving skills
• Ability to work individually and as a member of a team
• Excellent communication skills

Web Developer/Programmer
The position works with the Lead Developer and other student developers/designers to create web applications for academic use. Student developers work in teams to envision, create and test applications. Strong communication skills and ability to work in a collaborative environment is required.

The successful candidate will have:

• Proficiency in PHP/MySQL (required)
• Proficiency in HTML/CSS (required)
• Problem solving skills
• Ability to work individually and as a member of a team
• Excellent communication skills

Additional Preferred Skills:

• Experience with MVC frameworks
• Database design/administration
• Web/Graphic design experience

The College of Arts and Letters Academic Technology Office is seeking a Educational Technology/Museum Studies Intern to join our team. The intern will be responsible for assisting with the design and development of a mobile application for museum tours. Specifically, the intern will collaborate on developing pedagogy and other educational aspects of museum based tours, participate in user experience design, and work with the design team on building the technology aspects of the tool.

Strong communication skills and ability to work in a collaborative environment is required.

To apply, email a resume and short statement of interest to Scott Schopieray, Director of Academic Technology at schopie1(at)msu.edu

• Background in educational technology, teaching and/or museum studies
• Experience with HTML/CSS development
• Ability to work in a team-based environment
• Excellent communication skills

Additional Preferred Skills:

• Experience working in a museum or other informal learning setting
• Experience working with PHP, Javascript or other web-based languages

We’ve launched 2 new widgets this fall in beta, along with the 2 that we launched during summer semester.

Timeline (beta) – Timeline creation tool
Gallery (beta) – Image gallery tool

Lists – Crowd source lists and vote them up/down
Introductions – Class profile/introduction tool for online courses

Find out more or use the widgets at http://widgets.cal.msu.edu/

Introductions is a tool created by the College of Arts and Letters Educational Technology Office to support community building in blended and online courses.

Introductions allows instructors to provide a place for students to introduce themselves including a picture upload and optional video profile. Profiles are then displayed in a grid-based page allowing for all students in the course to browse other profiles.

Introductions is in beta testing during Summer 2011 and is expected to be released more widely Fall Semester 2011. If you are a College of Arts and Letters faculty member or instructor and would like to try out Introductions please contact us!

On Thursday May 12 the MSU Graduate School hosted their annual Certification in College Teaching Institute at the MSU Union. You can access the notes and resources from the Technology in the Classroom panel discussion in our past events section of the website.

Notes have been posted for the fourth meeting of the Spring 2011 CAL Blended Learning Community. Topics covered include course demonstrations, lecture engagement tools and suggestions for conferences. Access the notes at https://wiki.cal.msu.edu/groups/ss11blended/wiki/f3b21/Meeting_4__Notes_and_Information.html

We’ve posted an Overview of ANGEL Options tipsheet that gives a general view of what content items you have available to you in the ANGEL system and what some of their settings contain. You can view the document here.