The Duke Digital Initiative plans to provide students and faculty with a new supply of small appliances for their big ideas.
This year, DDI's efforts to keep cutting-edge technology within the reach of students and faculty have involved making video cameras more available for academic purposes. Although DDI video equipment has been accessible for faculty during the past two years, its use previously required an application and advance planning. Now, a pool of equipment is available for both student and faculty use on a short-term or experimental basis.
Julian Lombardi, assistant vice president of the Office of Information Technology, said the three-year-old DDI is focusing on video cameras as a new way to share information.
"We want to encourage people to use the newest types of media in their academic work," he said. "[Video] is a very powerful way to communicate knowledge when used effectively."
The cameras, which are available at The Link in Perkins Library, have been used by several individual students prior to this year for academic purposes as well as DukeEngage projects, said Samantha Earp, head of instructional media and language technology services at Duke's Center for Instructional Technology.
She added that she expects the number of students using the cameras to increase significantly this year because now that students can check out the equipment directly.
Earp added that the cameras will be lent free of charge.
"Borrowing the equipment is like borrowing a library book," she wrote in an e-mail.
Camera equipment available to students through DDI includes Flip video cameras, web cameras, standard definition hard drive video camera kits and miniDV video camera kits.
A number of professors who have used the video technology in the past said it has enhanced the academic environment of their classes.
Naoko Kurokawa, a lecturer in the department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, gave her students a project last year in which they made videos in Japanese using the camera equipment. She praised the technology, adding that she plans to incorporate it into her future classes.
"The cameras allowed students to be creative with their use of language and reinforced language skills more than a written project," she said.
Mbaye Lo, a professor in the Duke Islamic Studies Center and director of DukeEngage in Cairo, used DDI video equipment to document his DukeEngage project this past summer. He mentioned that the CIT staff was extremely helpful in training him to use the cameras and edit his videos.
Lo, who teaches Arabic, also said the technology has been useful in his language courses.
"Since adopting technology into the classroom has become the hallmark of an ideal [21st] century classroom, the [Department] of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is now promoting this approach in all its six language programs," he wrote in an e-mail. "With these cameras, instructors are able to tie practice to theory as well as [illustrate] to students the two main images of language acquisition in the classroom and language production outside the classroom."
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