Arduino Inventor’s Kits Now Available for Checkout

Arduino is an open source electronics platform that you can program to interact with the real world: make lights flash, buzzers buzz, and motors spin.  You can use Arduinos to build an invention, animate a sculpture, or automate your house.   ITS has purchased several Arduino-based SparkFun Inventor’s Kits now available for checkout from the Media Center.  These are great for learning about Arduino and come with lots of fun stuff like motors, LEDs, an LCD display, temperature and light sensors, a buzzer, and supporting electronics.  The kit also includes an excellent guide with 16 sample projects starting from the basic blinking … Continue reading Arduino Inventor’s Kits Now Available for Checkout

New Digital Tools for Reading

I recently read an interesting article in Educause Review talking about the development of a series of tools to support Social Reading. These tools vary in how they work, but generally allow individuals to create notes/questions about a digital text and then allow the Professor (and possibly fellow students in the class) to see all the comments.  With MIT’s tool more intense color reflects more comments on that part of the text.  LACOL’s Active and Engaged Reading (AER) working group, also focuses on issues of reading in a digital age, including the goals and practices for academic reading as they evolve on our campuses. If this … Continue reading New Digital Tools for Reading

Spring 2017 Academic Technology Workshops Announced

The Swarthmore Academic Technology Spring 2017 Lunchtime Workshop series is now available. We have a lineup of sessions available to the entire campus community. The first half of the workshops are focused on website and online portfolio development. This is a great chance to learn how to get your content online using modern web publishing tools. The second half of the series contains maker-related technology topics such as Arduinos, quadcopters, programming Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, and laser cutting. Come learn what resources are available for you to use or checkout from ITS. All the workshops are on Fridays from 12:30-1:30PM … Continue reading Spring 2017 Academic Technology Workshops Announced