ITC Equipment
The following equipment is available to all CSI faculty and staff to borrow. There is a great demand for our equipment, so please contact us in advance to make your reservation. Because of the high demand, we are not able to lend equipment out to one faculty member for extended periods of time (such as a whole semester) or allow them to be permanently mounted in any room.
To make reservations, please contact ITC staff.
Laptop
ITC has three laptops available for faculty and staff to borrow. All laptops are equipped with network cards so you can hook up to the Internet and log on to the network. Please contact the Information Technology Services (ITS) department to make sure that the classroom you are teaching in has network connection and whether you will need to change the IP settings. The laptops have Microsoft Office, Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop, as well as many other multimedia development programs installed. If you are borrowing a laptop with a projection unit and need help hooking them up, please ask an ITC staff member for assistance. We also have wireless remote controls available with the laptops so presenters can advance their PowerPoint presentation as they walk around in the classroom instead of having to stand next the laptop throughout the whole presentation.
Projection Unit
One mobile multimedia projector is available through ITC for faculty and staff to borrow for multimedia presentations. Currently there is a great demand for projection units, so please contact us in advance to reserve it. Because of the high demand, we are not able to lend projection units out to one faculty member for extended periods of time (such as a whole semester) or allow them to be permanently mounted in any room.
If you need help hooking up the projection unit to a laptop or desktop computer, please ask an ITC staff member for assistance. We recommend to make an appointment prior to the presentation to go over the connection process and to practice before the actual presentation.
Digital Still Camera
ITC has digital cameras available for faculty and staff to borrow. Some of the cameras save the pictures on tiny memory cards that you can insert into a card reader to transfer your picture onto a computer, or use your computer's USB port and the cable that came with the camera to transfer your pictures. One camera saves your pictures on mini CDs. You have to provide your own CDs or ITC will provide them for a fee. How many pictures you can take depends on the resolution you select and the media used in the camera. If you need help with transferring your images onto a computer and/or disk, please ask one of our ITC staff members for assistance, we would be glad to train you.
Digital Video Camera
ITC also has a digital camcorder available for faculty and staff to capture digital video. Please keep in mind that digital video requires large amounts of disk space and fast computers to edit. Generally speaking, you can create video clips that are a few minutes long, not hours. Although the camera allows you to capture hours of digital video on MiniDV, if you choose to transfer those files onto the computer you may end up with files that are several Gigabytes large and are difficult to edit on regular workstations. Even if you are able to edit a larger file in ITC, you have to make sure that your users will have fast enough computers to run the videos.
Digital Voice Recorder
ITC has digital voice recorders available for faculty and staff. These voice recorders can be used in a variety of ways to improve teaching and learning. Some faculty use them to create podcasts that they make available to their students. Other uses may include: recording music lessons, recording correct pronunciation in language classes, creating downloadable audio files that students who miss classes can access, creating audio files to help auditory learners or students with various disabilities, etc.
ITC staff can help provide training in recording sound, downloading the audio file onto your computer, editing the audio file, and uploading the audio file onto a server to share with students.
iClickers
ITC has iClickers that we use to train faculty. What are iClickers? iClickers are similar to remote controls. Students use their iClickers to submit their answers to various polls, in-class quizzes, etc. that faculty incorporate in their classrooms to track attendance, gauge students’ understanding of the material or opinion on certain topics, and facilitate active learning. The software that comes with the system automatically records students’ responses and allows the instructor to analyze the results.
We also have a limited number of iClickers that faculty can borrow to pilot test the use of iClickers in their classrooms. The use of iClickers does require a base receiver. Departments provide funding to purchase the receivers for their classrooms/faculty. In general if a faculty member decides to use iClickers in his/her class, after the initial pilot, students are asked to purchase their iClickers through the Bookstore.