[MUSIC]
DANIEL CLARO: What we try to do is
try to figure out what's the best approach.
Taking a flexible perspective and understanding
that people learn differently I think
is a really important part of what
we're trying to do here in the Digital Learning Lab.
And technology is an integral part of that
because technology offers possibilities to suit
different kinds of learning.
These days, students who arrive at Princeton
will have been using computers through most
of their academic life already.
These are digital natives.
And the group that the Digital Learning Lab is part of
is the Educational and Classroom Technologies Group
within the McGraw Center.
And the Educational Technologies Group
helps faculty teach with technology.
I t helps students learn with technology.
But what we bring to the table is a commitment
to making what happens in the classroom more
interesting, more inspiring, more engaging
for a diverse audience.
REBECCA GRAVES-BAYAZITOGLU: The Digital Learning Lab
is a teaching lab.
And it's a space where faculty, who more and more
are asking students to produce not your traditional term
paper, but a video or a blog, and have a space where they can
either send their students or come and work
with their students to do that.
One of the real privileges of a Princeton education
is not only to have access to that,
but have the access to the support and the training.
My colleagues engage in a real dialogue
with the faculty who are employing these technologies
to make sure that they're being used not simply as bells
and whistles, but as a really integral part of conveying
the information to the students and helping the students gain
the capacity to use it in important ways.
DANIEL CLARO: What faculty who have used the space know
and what faculty who inquire find out
is that it's not just a space with a bunch of computers.
But rather it's a space with a bunch of computers and staff
who are actively engaged with the projects that
are happening here.
MARTHA SANDWEISS: I'm teaching a freshman seminar this semester
that is connected to a larger project I've been running
for the past few years that explores
the question of Princeton and slavery.
Each of the students in my class has the assignment
of finding another Princeton student, or an alum,
or a faculty member, or a staff member,
and talking to them about their own family's engagement
at the institution of slavery.
And as I began asking around trying
to understand what resources here at Princeton
would help me help my students, I learned about the DLL.
And what we'll be doing at the Digital Learning Lab
is editing these audio interviews
and then they'll be learning how to overlay
those audio interviews with music, with visual images,
with documents.
So that each student will be producing
about a five-minute audio-visual piece
that will be mounted on the Princeton and Slavery website.
ALEXA FISHMAN: I did a lot of journalism in high school
so I did a lot of interviews in the past.
And I think this is actually a much more interesting way
to present information because hearing the actual subject talk
and the emotion when she discusses her family, pairing
that with the images, it just brings
her audio pieces to life.
TANIA BORE: They may be familiar with it
but they're not familiar with using things like this
for like a classroom setting.
I think it can bring a lot of excitement to projects.
Also learn a new skill that they probably
will end up using at some point, because technology
has become such an integral part of our everyday lives.
DANIEL CLARO: One of the things that we pride ourselves on here
is the peer-to-peer training that we offer.
We have students here who have done many, many video
projects who are really good at using MATLAB, for example.
So if a student comes in here saying,
I have a project in MATLAB, I'm having trouble,
I don't know how to do it, then we
can connect that student who needs
help to one of our student staff members
who are a specialist in that area.
JESSICA COLANGELO: When you're going after school
and working in the industry, an architecture student
or if you're a science major, we have to communicate our work
and Digital Learning Lab is a great resource for the students
to get a jump start into like a primer on the software.
JORDAN ANTEBI: I had never heard of the DLL.
I didn't even know that this room existed.
Before I came to this class, I had no experience at all
with filmmaking, with film editing, with audio editing.
So the staff at the Digital Learning Lab
have been very, very, very, very helpful throughout the process.
MARTHA SANDWEISS: By producing these short videos
for publication on a website, we're
showing students that history matters,
that their work can find an audience,
and it's really exciting.
REBECCA GRAVES-BAYAZITOGLU: The technology
allows us to think about new ways of conveying information
but in no way eclipses the question
of how do we do that well, how do we reach our students,
and help them understand the material
and understand the concepts in such a way
that they're able to apply them beyond whatever problem
we give them in the classroom.