Build Your Tech Skills This Summer

School's out for summer!  Congratulations to all of the CAIS faculty and staff on wrapping up a terrific school year.

While you are enjoying your time off this summer, why not take advantage of your free time and learn a new technology skill?  CAIS recently subscribed to lynda.com, a website with thousands of classes you can take on subjects such as digital photography, video, software, basic computer use, operating systems...the list goes on and on!  Peter Moore described this as being like "great surf, Christmas, and my birthday all rolled into one."


Take a look at Lynda and see what courses interest you.  You can watch just one short tutorial per day (each video is about 2 minutes long) and complete a course in no time at all.  You will learn more about a topic than you ever thought possible!


Here is how to get started:

1. While you are on campus at 150 Oak St. (you cannot set up an account from home), go to: http://iplogin.lynda.com
2. Click "Create a Profile"
3. Sign up using your CAIS email address
4. Start using lynda.com!  (Once you have signed up, you will be able to access Lynda from anywhere.)

Hope that you enjoy using lynda.com!  We think it will be a terrific resource for our faculty in providing another way to build new technology skills.  The beauty of lynda.com is that you can access it anytime, anywhere, whenever it is convenient for you.

From all of us here in the IT Department, we wish you and your families a fun, relaxing, rejuvenating summer break!

Tech Tool of the Week: TED Talks

This week's highlighted technology tool is TED Talks.  TED (Technology, Education, and Design) is a nonprofit organization that sponsors "riveting talks by remarkable people".  These talks are made free to the world through TED's website.  More than 900 talks are available, and they are all free to watch and use!  There are many fascinating talks by smart, interesting, creative people.  TED Talks are great for watching on your own or for sharing with your class!


Now you can not only watch TED talks on your computer, but also on your iPhone or iPad!  TED just released a free iPhone/iPad app which you can use to download any TED talk and watch it offline.  In addition, our school iPads all have the TED app installed.  So if you find a TED talk that you would like your students to watch, you could either project it in front of the entire class or have individuals students watch it on the iPads.


Here are a few recommendations for TED Talks to get you started.  These are all favorites of our very own Peter Moore.


Steve Jobs
John Wooden
Sheena Iyengar
Ken Robinson
The 20 most-watched TED Talks (as of June 2011)