The Academic Technology Specialist Program works with faculty, lecturers, and researchers within Stanford's departments, programs, and schools to advance the application of software and information technology in teaching and research.
New ATS in Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages
This winter, the Academic Technology Specialist (ATS) Program welcomed the addition of a new specialist to work with the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages (DLCL), which bridges together six humanities departments all with some common and some disparate interests that will be served by technology projects initiated by the ATS.
Zach Chandler joins the ATS group having previously directed the Language Resources Center at Colby College where he managed a production media lab and directed a program providing multimedia support and developed unique projects for language learning support - not unlike projects that are being done here at Stanford with Languages and other areas in the Humanities. He has extensive experience with video media production and Web site development, as well as php/mySQL backend supported applications such as wikis and blogs.
Increasing the presence of ATS in humanities programs helps support existing needs to apply innovative approaches and exploit technologies that demonstrate new methods and means of teaching and learning in areas that are not traditionally viewed as technology driven. At the same time, it solidifies the notion that technology is an enabling force and integral part of the future of approaches to humanities teaching and research through computing and related tools.
New Projects
The ATS Program is beginning a number of new projects to explore the potential uses of newer "Web 2.0" technologies in education, such as RSS feeds and tagging/folksonomies. (See also VPUE Academic Technology Program Explores Interactivity in this issue.) We are hoping to see some of these efforts develop into more specific projects that might benefit programs and departments currently supported by ATS.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology used by many news source web sites to "push" or deliver custom content (also known as "feeds") to end users who ask specifically for it. In the past year, these tools have been increasingly used by commercial news providers to provide text feeds for end users. However, most recently they have been packaged with other media (such as "podcasting"). Three potential projects utilizing feeds include:
- Substituting typical "mailing list" content with RSS feeds through the English department Web site. This allows end users to select from six different types of news categories delivered by the department.
- Coordinating cross-departmental RSS feeds to provide specifically tailored categories of information from one department to a larger community of interested students, faculty, and researchers. For example, this would be a way for a department to deliver announcements about a lecture series that would interest a community larger than their department but represent a broad subset of the university community.
- Delivering new acquisitions and library holdings. The Digital Library Systems and Services (DLSS) group of SULAIR is working with the ATS Program to determine specific types of content categories and metadata that would enable delivery of citations of new acquisitions to satellite libraries and departments, or even research groups. ATS' are currently experimenting with implantations and conditions of the citation data.
For More Information
For more information about the Academic Technology Specialist Program, see:
