It's hard to believe, but the fall semester is actually over! While many people think this is the most wonderful time of the year because of the holidays and the onset of winter, many college students think this is true because they have five weeks off now until the spring semester begins at the end of January.
Many of them don't realize it now, but they will probably wish they were back in college sometime in the future. Five weeks off for winter break, another week or more for spring break, and then over three months off for summer break! Sounds like a pretty nice schedule!
Anyhow, so much has happened at UNH during the fall semester that it would be impossible to tell you about all of it here, but check out these two updates from the University of New Haven:
1. The Laurel Vlock Center for Convergent Media opened and what an impressive facility it is. Our Communication students can now be Apple certified on Final Cut Pro, the top of the line video editing software available, in the only commerical traning facility of it s kind in Connecticut. The Vlock Center includes 32 brand new Mac G5 pros that will allow students to converge "old" media (Tv, radio, film, and print) with "new" media (blogs, web videos, podcasts, etc.) This facility along with our TV and Film Production Studios, Film and Editing Suites, and FM Radio Station, give UNH the most modern and high profile facilties around!!
2. Students at UNH are continually exposed to new technology. In addition to our Tegrity Learning System, which allows faculty members to record their course lectures and then post them on-line for students top downlaod the actual audio and video later, UNH students are beginning to use Twitter more and more frequently. Faculty members are also starting to use Twitter as an extremely valuable academic tool. Twitter is a new social networking site that allows users to continually post (or "tweet") very short text messages to the web from computers or cell phones. These quick public messages simply describe what a user is currently doing or thinking. Twitter's popularity continues to grow, especially with 18- to 25-year old users. By using Twitter to feel connected to people and news items, faculty members can change classroom dynamics in a positive manner. It can serve as a means of analysis and an object of analysis, particularly in courses pertaining to communication and media studies. Faculty always attempt to teach students that context determines meaning. Since Twitter has very defined rules (posts of only 140 characters for example), it "forces" users to get to their points, productive for all types of communication. It gives people much more insight as to what is going on with a person or a specific incident, and it helps faculty relate better to their students!
Well, that's probably enough for today. UNH continues to emerge as a national leader in experiential education which is why so many of our graduates are out there working in fields related to their degree. Something to think about! Happy Holidays from UNH!
