Category: News

Debut of a new MIIS Knowledge Base for Technology FAQs

The staff members of the Teaching & Learning Collaborative have been working with our friends in IT to develop a knowledge base of frequently asked questions related to campus technologies. We gathered useful information from wikis and other campus resources, updated the content, and formatted them as sets of questions and answers. We are continually improving these FAQs by adding screenshots and video tutorials where appropriate. Next time you have a question about the various technologies on campus, take the Knowledge Base for a spin.

You can find the Knowledge Base at http://sites.miis.edu/kb. Please check it out and feel free to suggest some additional questions you think we should address in this space.

3 new WordPress themes for Blogs @ MIIS

I have been doing some housekeeping on Blogs @ MIIS today. I went through and deleted any themes that weren’t being used by any of the blogs in our community (that means they’re lame, right?). I have added 3 new themes that you can now apply to your blogs hosted on the Blogs @ MIIS site. If you take these new themes for a spin on your blog, please let me know what you think!

Notepad

The Notepad theme is inspired by the iPhone’s Notes app. It’s a modern WordPress theme with a subtle touch of the sketchy effect. Key features include multi-level dropdown menus, threaded & paged comments, and widget support.

Clean Home


Clean Home is a minimalistic theme with lots of the space at the top to introduce your blog and what it’s all about. It also has giant numbers next to the comments that look pretty slick. This theme can display subpages in the navigation menu and also has a widget-ready sidebar.

Cleanr


At first glance, the Cleanr theme looks very similar to Clean Home, but don’t be fooled, there are definitely some differences. My favorite part about this theme is the BIG typography; no more squinting at the screen trying to read your post categories or image captions. A few other cool features:

  • Dropdown menu for Categories and Pages
  • Current menu highlights itself
  • Threaded Comments

What else are we missing?

Let me know what other types of themes you would like to see available on the blogging community in the future. More minimalistic themes? Slicker themes for hosting your portfolio? More pink? Comment and tell me!

Announcing the 2009 B@Mmy Award Winners

The Teaching & Learning Collaborative recently hosted the first annual B@Mmy awards for blogging and tweeting excellence. We are pleased to announce the winners, who are welcome to post these ribbons to their respective blogs.

Best Group Blog: GSIPM

The Graduate School of International Policy & Management blog is one of the most active organizational blogs on campus delivering relevant information to an audience of 500+. Topics include campus events, course information, fellowships, and scholarships.

Best Class Blog: Art of Sunzi

Many of you probably noticed the sheer volume of activity in Chinese by the students in Chinese 460. The use of the P2 WordPress theme seemed to really promote interaction and certainly encouraged a great deal of output from students.

Best Student Blogger: Molly Ammons

Molly Ammons has displayed an incredible energy and enthusiasm for blogging this semester. Through creating her own blogs, posting on the DMC blog, and constantly being active on Blogs @ MIIS through sharing new ideas and reflecting, she helped foster the online blogging community here at MIIS.

Best Faculty Blog: Nuket Kardam

Nuket Kardam is the first faculty member to venture into the blogging community.  She is using her blog as a professional portfolio documenting her teaching, travels, and research activities.  We look forward to more updates as Nuket continues to explore the possibilities!

Best Staff Blog: Coleman Library

The William Tell Coleman Library blog draws people into a community of researchers and provides a great deal of useful information.

Best Use of Twitter: @MIIS_GSIPM

The MIIS_GSIPM Twitter account not only posts all new announcements from the GSIPM blog but also actively follows other international organizations that have relevance to the interests of GSIPM students. The latest current affairs information is collected and shared with the GSIPM student body.

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Other B@Mmy Awards nominees included the following members of the Blogs @ MIIS community:

MIIS Approved for iTunes U Public Presence

The Monterey Institute of International Studies was recently approved by Apple for inclusion in the public portion of iTunes U. This means that MIIS will now show up when people search for the Institute through the iTunes Store. iTunes U can be used to distribute media content to faculty, staff, students, and the general public in the form of podcasts. Audio and video podcasts are available to download free of cost, and can then be watched on a computer or portable device whenever, wherever.

Our iTunes U presence will serve as a valuable recruitment tool, offering an inexpensive way to explain the benefits MIIS has to offer potential students. With the help of the Digital Media Commons, we hope to create an army of podcasters across the globe. Visit MIIS on iTunes U and help MIIS gain recognition as we reach out and share our stories with the world.

Sites DOT MIISThe Middlebury Institute site network.