Smeal Academy Newsletter: November 2024

Passing the Gratitude

“The more you practice the art of thankfulness,

the more you have to be thankful for.”

– Norman Vincent Peale

Of all the things you may pass during your Thanksgiving Day celebration this year, our wish is that gratitude would be the one shared and enjoyed the most. As we prepare for Fall 2024’s finale it’s a good time to pause and reflect on the things we have been the most thankful for this semester.

In the spirit of “passing the gratitude” we here at eLDIG are thankful for the opportunity to be a part of such an amazing community in support of its mission to provide excellence in education. We’re thankful for our team members who are passionate about teaching and learning, and for the many opportunities we have to exercise our individual and collective growth mindset muscles!

Thankful for Our Community

We are grateful for the enthusiastic participation of the Smeal community in this semester’s Smeal Academy sessions. Participants this fall have explored and discussed everything from classroom engagement to the ethical implications of AI. We are grateful for your many contributions this semester, and look forward to renewed exploration in the New Year!

Thankful for Innovation

Several of the tools we rely on for teaching and learning with technology are going through major changes as Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more prominent in higher education. One such innovation is highlighted below:

New AI Functionality in Zoom

Recent updates to Zoom include new AI-driven functionality designed to make meetings more efficient. These features are off by default and must be enabled by the meeting Host (either prior to or during the meeting):

• Smart Recording allows you to organize your recorded meetings into sections and identifies editable key takeaways and meeting action items.
• Meeting Summary generates an emailed summary of the meeting with the option for the host to share the summary with participants. Note that if a host enables this feature in a meeting participants may automatically receive summaries after the meeting ends.
• Thread Summary summarizes discussions in the Zoom Team chat threads.

(Note: Meeting audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications are not used to train Zoom’s AI models.)

For more information on these tools please reference the Getting Started with Zoom AI knowledgebase article.