Leonard White, right, of Duke Institute for Brain Sciences presents "Learning Human Brain Anatomy Anytime Anywhere" with an iPod touch at the CIT IT Showcase. Photo credit: Jared Lazarus

Durham, NC - Video. Mobile devices. Virtual worlds.

At last Friday's ninth annual Instructional Technology Showcase, Duke faculty shared their successes using new technologies to teach classes in a wide variety of disciplines.

The event -- which drew more than 200 attendees from across Duke and other local universities to Perkins/Bostock and the Link -- included a series of presentations aimed at highlighting creative classroom uses of technology. Among the sessions:

-- Distance education using a virtual School of Nursing developed in Second Life.

-- A class project to develop a multimedia mapping kit for Duke Engage students.

-- The use of student-produced video to build language skills and cultural understanding in French cinematography.

-- An initiative that matched student writers with alumni and Duke staff to provide real-life feedback.

-- Emerging tools for capturing and delivering lectures online.

-- A Duke-developed computer simulation that trains students in international conflict resolution.

More ideas are forthcoming from faculty, according to organizers from the Center for Instructional Technology (CIT). Through the Duke Digital Initiative (DDI) -- a collaboration between CIT and Duke's Office of Information Technology -- they hope to inspire faculty and students to explore new ways of creating and sharing digital media.

"We want to support experimentation with widely available low-cost or no-cost technologies that work with devices people already have or tools people already use," said Samantha Earp, OIT's director of academic services.

In the coming academic year, DDI will focus on encouraging faculty and student innovation with new multimedia tools across various platforms, Earp said. As part of that effort, DDI equipment -- including Flip video cameras, high-definition video and Web cameras -- will be available for faculty and students to borrow from the Link.

That kind of experimentation fueled innovative uses of blogs at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) in Fredericksburg, Va., according to the showcase's keynote speaker James Groom, an instructional technology specialist at that school.

Faculty and students there have used blogs (http://umwblogs.org/) as a quick, easy way to share online content, build student e-portfolios and integrate various resources into a grassroots, community publishing platform, Groom said.

"There was no committee -- it just happened," Groom said. "This organic community grew out of folks playing with this stuff. The uses exploded as people have explored."

Started in 2007 with 200 blogs, the site now has more than 2,200 blogs and 2,700 users, Groom said.

To see more photos and videos from the IT Showcase, click here. For more information about showcase presentations, visit http://cit.duke.edu/showcase/2009/.