Adobe Spark allows both web and mobile users to create and share visual content – like posts for social media, graphics, web stories, and animated videos. The goal with the new Spark suite is to allow anyone, including small businesses, bloggers, marketers, and students, the ability to create and share visual stories without needing to be professional designers. The tools also don’t require a lot of time to use – which is helpful in particular when it comes to the sped-up age of social media, where posts fly by on users’ timelines in days and hours, if not minutes.

Spark Post is aimed at letting you create professional graphics in minutes. While it leverages concepts from Adobe’s pro tools like Photoshop and InDesign, like the ability to layer images with text and filters, it makes this accessible to everyday users who can make these sorts of changes just by tapping buttons.

Spark Page is focused on helping you craft web stories. That means you can use it for things like magazine-style travel stories, photo albums, online newsletters, reports, or anything else that you want to present on the web.

Spark Video lets you create animated videos in a matter of minutes. This isn’t a tool for filming content, however. Instead, you combine text, images, icons and themes in a presentation, then speak your voice over the story in order to create the video.

This session will concentrate on using all three of these tools to help students engage better with your content.

Come to a Blackboard How-To session on Thursday, January 12 from 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm to discuss how to use Blackboard and answer any of your questions that you may have regarding the use of Blackboard.

The session will be held in room 347 Katzer Collaboratory Room in Hinds Hall.

This will be a working session so bring your laptop.

Coffee and snacks will be served.

The Spring 2017 iSchool Adjunct Get Together will occur on Monday, January 9th, 2017. The session will take place in the Katzer Collaboratory room, room 347 Hinds Hall, from 5 pm to 7 pm. This session is open to all iSchool graduate and undergraduate faculty members. If you are unable to attend physically, this session will also be hosted virtually via Adobe Connect (the Adobe Connect URL will be sent out a couple of days before the session begins).

The agenda will be as follows:

Please register to attend this session so we can get an accurate headcount for dinner.

Please let us know if you require any special needs or food concerns before attending.

Thank you and we look forward to seeing you on the 9th.

Intended Audience: All Syracuse University Full time, Adjunct and Ph.D. Face-to-Face and Online Faculty

Description: Tired of using the same techniques, activities and lesson plans? This session outlines techniques to inject new life into your classroom, including numerous creative teaching tips and strategies and best practices for infusing technology into the curriculum.

We will also talk about 3 creative online tools that you can use right now to help stimulate creativity and excitement back into the classroom. These tools will help to build friendly competition, poll your students for instant feedback, and create personal learning environments that your students can utilize to help them stay organized and for project-based learning.

Learning goals:

• Be reinvigorated and inspired to enhance your teaching and adapt new techniques
• Reframe or modify your approach to teaching by incorporating engaging and student-centered learning tools
• Create exciting learning-centered environments driven by creativity, engagement, and the maximization of student learning

After this workshop, you will be able to:

• Implement techniques to help invigorate your classroom, whether online or face-to-face.
• Assess the potential for meeting your instructional goals and challenges.
• Formulate a plan for moving beyond gaining an initial understanding of selected tools to using them for specific instructional purposes.

**REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED**

The Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning at the iSchool looks forward to having you join us for what will be an enlightening and engaging workshop on breathing new life into your classroom.

IF YOU NEED AN ACCOMMODATION IN ORDER TO FULLY PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT, PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENT FIELD. PLEASE GIVE US 1-2 WEEKS BEFORE THIS EVENT OCCURS. 

The Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning in conjunction with the Director of Undergraduate Programs cordially invites all iSchool adjunct faculty members to a Saturday adjunct instructor get together. The purpose of the get together is to learn more about how each of your courses fits into the big picture at the iSchool. We will also be including two other workshops for you to participate in. One will discuss exemplary course design in Blackboard and the other will focus on creating an engaging slidedeck for your course presentations.

Please RSVP by Friday, October 28th, 2016 so that we can get an accurate headcount on food.

There will be networking opportunities throughout the morning as well.

What: Adjunct Instructor Get Together

When: Saturday, November 5, 2016

Time: 8:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Where: Tech Garden, 235 Harrison Street, Syracuse, NY 13202

Parking: Parking is Free. Bring in your receipt for instant reimbursement.

Please Note: Breakfast will be served