Instructional technology at Grinnell is supported primarily by three Curricular Technology Specialists. Faculty are encouraged to contact a CTS with projects, questions or special needs. The CTSs have experience in a wide range of technology in addition to a background in curricular development and pedagogy. Please refer to the table above to find the CTS that serves your discipline. See below for a sampling of recent Instructional Technology projects at Grinnell College.

PDID is central image database, designed to meet the digital image collection needs of faculty. PDID is a rebranded version of the Madison Digital Image Database, an open source tool from James Madison University. Currently, our system includes the entire Grinnell College Art Image Database and Faculty Image Management System (formerly hosted on Fine Arts Server using Filemaker Pro 5) as well as the Paul Wilson Plant Image Database (formerly hosted on db.grinnell.edu using ASPDB and MS Access). The system is already being used in several courses thanks to the interest, input, and courage from many faculty.
URL for more information: PDID project description
URL to Project: http://pdid.grinnell.edu

CD-based application developed by Kathy Kamp and several instructional technologists over 8 years of development. This tool serves three purposes: to instruct and quiz students on ceramic typologies, to serve as a reference with samples of different ceramics from northern Arizona, and as a key for typing ceramics from the region.
URL for more information: IFGNAC project description
URL to Project: Since the project is CD-based, please contact Kathy Kamp or Fred Hagemeister to see it.

El Mirador is a project undertaken by Carmen Valentin, Dennis Perri and Mike Conner which seeks to involve Spanish language students with Spanish-speaking cultures. Students of Grinnell College who are studying abroad in Spanish-speaking countries provide accounts of their experiences in the form of journal entries, images, and audio files that are shared with the campus community through El mirador. The goal of the project is to enhance Spanish classes on campus and give students on campus the opportunity to glean valuable knowledge and understanding of Spanish-speaking cultures through the first-hand experience of their peers.
URL to Project: http://language.grinnell.edu/elmirador/

Ear training software developed by Todd Coleman. The game is designed to motivate users to test and improve their ability to recognize musical intervals and to remember a sequence of tones. It is based on the children's memory game Simon.™ The game accomodates players at a wide range of musical levels by allowing users to customize the program's help features to suit their needs. Total time from conceptualization to delivery of all three modules will be about nine months. You can try out module three, 12-tone rows, which is currently in beta testing, by following the link below.
URL to project: http://web.grinnell.edu/CTS/finearts/iTones

Website containing essays and sketches by W.E.B. Du Bois developed by Stephen Andrews, Ralph Russell, David Berk and Munindra Khaund. The website allows students to experience the blurred nature of black-white cultural activity that Du Bois seems concerned to expose. Total time from conceptualization to completion: four months

URL to project: http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/andrewss/dubois

A psychology experiment by Ken Short and Fred Hagemeister. In psychology, learned helplessness is a mental state in which a laboratory subject forced to bear aversive stimuli becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent applications, even if "escapable," presumably through having learned that situational control is generally out of his or her hands. This experiment is designed for students to investigate this topic. In this case, stage 1 includes a cognitive pretreatment where subjects must determine whether a stimulus is true or false based on an ungiven rule. In stage 2, the subject must decipher anagrams and determine the associated rule. How will subjects who learn helplessness in stage 1 react in stage 2? This program is currently planned to be used in a course later in this semester. Since this project required learning the E-Prime psychology experiment development package, this project required about 10 hours per week for 5 weeks to complete.