The Maricopa Experience

Online Quizzing in the Absence of a CMS

2011-01-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

I survived my first semester of online teaching sans Blackboard. Overall I felt as if it was a success, but there were some things that I just wasn't happy with. The biggest being the lack of a good quizzing feature. Now I'm not saying quizzing in Blackboard was any treat, so this is by no means a negative on my switch to Wordpress for my online classes. In fact, I think if I were still using Bb, I'd more than likely start using my new quizzing solution with it as well.

So here's the run down. I like to give reading quizzes to keep my students on their toes and hold them accountable for the required reading in the class. These quizzes are not major and usually consist of about 15-20 questions. I'm not a fan of "multiple guess" questions, so I like to be able to ask questions in a variety of ways. My favorite quiz question types are fill in the blank and matching. My solution last semester was to use ClassMarker to create and deliver my quizzes online. It's actually a fairly good tool, but I had two problems with it. First, I couldn't write fill in the blank and matching quiz questions. Well, I could do fill in the one blank, but no multiple blanks, and no matching at all. I was bummed, but I made do. The second problem was that I couldn't embed the quizzes into my Wordpress site. Students had to visit the ClassMarker site, log in with a username and password, and then take the quiz. This doesn't sound like much of a problem, but it just creates one more username/password for students to remember. They already have email, the class site, and the online gradebook, plus we used Diigo and Bibme for our research projects. I did simplify things my making everything I set up for them use the same student ID for username, but I still felt guilty about the number of required logins students needed.

So for this semester my goal was to try to simplify things for them, and my first solution was to retire ClassMarker and find a better quiz solution that would allow me to create flash quizzes that I could install on my own web server and then embed right in the course site. I don't really need anything fancy for storing or analyzing quiz results. This is not real assessment for me. I just want a score. I was surprised to find many tools available, but I narrowed it down to two. What follows are my thoughts on the two products.

Wondershare QuizCreator

Wondershare QuizCreator is a powerful Flash quiz maker that enables trainers and educators to make quizzes with multimedia objects for online testing.

I like QuizCreator because it is easy to use. I can create 9 different questions types, and I can create questions with images, audio and narration, and embed videos. But best of all I can publish a flash quiz to the web that sends student results to my email address. I created an orientation quiz in QuizCreator. I was able to create the kinds of questions I like: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Fill in the Blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, Click Map and Short Essay. But one downfall is I couldn't create fill in multiple blanks questions. Also I didn't like that you couldn't easily award partial credit for a question if students got part of the answer correctly. To do this, I think I would have to make each part of the answer worth at least 1 point and then go in individually and designate each part of the answer as worth 1 point. That makes the question worth too much then. I would like to have partial points (1/4, 1/2). I like how I could add images, videos, and audio. I can either upload or record audio right in the question, but videos have to be in the flash format (swf or flv). That was a bummer.

In quiz properties I had the option to collect name, email and other information about students or even create accounts for students. That was a nice touch. The default was to ask for a username and email address. I would love to have it ask for a real name instead of the username. I could also create a one password entrance to the quiz and set it up so the student results are emailed to both me and the student. You can buy a QuizCreator educational license for $99.95, and I certainly think it is worth it.

iSpring QuizMaker

iSpring QuizMaker: Create interactive and fully customized Flash quizzes with 10 different question formats and results based feedback.

QuizMaker is also very easy to use, but right off the bat I noticed that QuizMaker has a much nicer look on the published quizzes. I'm not sure what the difference is, but it just looks nicer. It also has different question types: True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Type In, Matching, Sequence, Numeric, Fill in the Blank, and Multiple Choice Text (Choose one correct answer in each drop-down list). The Fill in the Blank can have multiple blanks (Yay!), and I've never seen the Multiple Choice Text question, but I already love it. Questions can be marked to score with partial credit without having to figure out the scoring on your own. It does it for you. I can add photos, videos and images. I can't record audio directly into the question, like with QuizCreator, but for videos I could upload all the major formats (avi, mpg, mp4, wmv). I'm guessing it converts it to flash for you, saving you the extra step.

In the Settings, I don't have as many options for collecting student data. Default is to request real name and email address. Quiz results are sent of my email address by default, but there is no option to send results to the student as well. You can buy a QuizMaker educational license for $150, although I think that is just a tad bit high if I have to pay out of pocket. Interestingly enough if you buy a User Pack of 10, the price is $98 each, so it's cheaper if you get your school to buy it for you and 9 other teachers.

Overall Impressions

I really like both, and both do so much more than I mentioned in this post. I just tried to touch on the differences. For instance, they both have customizable players, integration with Blackboard and SCORM compliance, offer an online LMS to manage quizzes, testing time limit, pass score, shuffle questions, question pools, custom feedback, and self grading. Both are fairly inexpensive and offer a free trial so you can try it out. I could live with either, but iSpring QuizMaker almost makes it feel like I'd be choosing a Mac over a PC. They both work great, but it seems to work and look just a little bit better. And just like a Mac, it costs more. I have 30 days to decide, or better yet, beg for some money from the college. I haven't tried that yet at GCC. Wish me luck.

What does an Online Course in Wordpress Look Like?

2010-10-29T15:58:00.000-07:00

So I've been writing about my escape from Blackboard to Wordpress for my online course management system. Some people were wondering what this looks like. I can't just give you the link because the classes are live and are in locked down mode (private), so I create a screencast so you can see an what an online course in Wordpress might look like. I also talk about the feature I like best in comparison to Bb.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part III: Missing Essentials

2010-10-29T15:35:00.002-07:00

The hardest part about doing away with the standard LMS is replacing the essentials like gradebook, quizzing, and assignment dropbox. The assignment dropbox feature is used to collect assignments from students. I’ve tried using email for this in the past, but I’m not organized enough or consistently organized enough to make that work. Besides I’m a stickler about submitting assignments on time, and if your email inbox is your dropbox, you can’t simply turn that off or lock it down when the due date has passed. So I had to come up with a solution for this, as well as a gradebook and quizzing function.

Increasingly book publishers are replacing standard LMS services with new companion sites that come packaged with textbooks. Last year we adopted both the McGraw-Hill Guide with Connect Composition Plus and Cengage’s A College Writer with Enhanced InSite. Both offer online textbooks and companion sites that provide lots of resources for both faculty and students. I chose to use the McGraw-Hill text with Connect Composition Plus.

Connect Composition Plus provides comprehensive, reliable writing and research content that is searchable, assignable, and inviting. It includes a fully integrated eBook with exercises, peer review tools and editing skills diagnostic tests.

With this new tool, it’s easy for me to assign custom assignments for students that provide detailed instructions and then gives the students a place to submit the assignment. Connect Composition, as well as Enhanced Insite, have built in grading features. I can quickly annotate student assignments and post grades for students to see.There are also features in both that allow for students to peer review essays.

This is a great setup as it gives me one place for all submitted work, and one place to go to grade submitted work. I can create as many assignments as I want and set due dates. The down side is that their is no internal gradebook attached. There is a gradebook, but you can’t add outside assignments or exclude ebook assignments or grammar exercises you might assign students for extra practice. Basically you don’t have any control over the gradebook - weighting grades and assigning point value. Everything is just graded on a 100% scale. Ultimately I would like to see a gradebook built into this system, but in the mean time, I’ve decided to use Engrade for my gradebook.

Engrade is a free set of web-based tools for educators allowing them to manage their classes online while providing students with 24/7 real-time online access. It's private, secure, truly free, and unbelievably easy to use.

It was very easy to set up all of my classes in Engrade. I just created rosters with the FirstName LastName IDNumber (MEIDs for Maricopa) and Engrade creates an access code for each student. I just emailed this access code with instructions to all students along with instructions on how to access their grades.

Engrade just recently added a feature that allows you to create quizzes, although it is a bit limiting at the moment. You can only create multiple choice quizzes. That doesn't work for me, so I'm using Classmarker.com for my quizzing needs.

The ClassMarker online testing website is a professional, easy to use, online quiz maker that marks your tests and quizzes for you.

ClassMarker has educational pricing at $24 for the year and I'm able to create quizzes with different types of questions, including fill in the blank and essay - my favorites. It keeps track of all the scores and I can provide feedback on the quizzes. Initially I wanted to use ClassMarker because they have an external quiz feature that allows you to embed quizzes into your site. I couldn't figure out how to make that work, but that is ultimately what I want to see on my Wordpress site, quizzes embedded directly into the site.

So those are the three essentials that I had to replace when I made the move from Blackboard to Wordpress. I'll discuss more about the social aspect of Wordpress over Blackboard in my next post.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard Part II - Student Blogs & Privacy

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part I

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard Part II - Student Blogs & Privacy

2010-09-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

In my first post I explained how I am using Wordpress as a course management system, and in this post I will explain how I was able to easily add students to the class and set up their blogs. Keep in mind that my new course network is completely private, so only registered users can see who users are and participate in activities. To achieve this privacy, I installed a plug-in called Private Wordpress. “Private WP will make sure people can only read your blog after they log in. Already logged in users will see no difference. Users who are logged out will get the login page, and only that.” I like to keep my options open, so although we are completely private, I still set up the students so they can have an option to use an alias.

First I added every student as a user to the main “hub” blog using their MEID and their Maricopa email address. This information is easily accessible in both Blackboard and SIS so I can do this before the semester begins. After I add them to the network, students are sent an email with log in instructions and a password to access the site. When they log-in they are instructed to edit their profiles to add their real name and a photo. At this point they can choose to display their first name only, first and last name or just their MEID. They can also use a chosen alias instead of their real names if they want. Students cannot change the initial username given (MEID), so no matter what they provide for their names, I can always identify them on the back end by the MEID. So far, all of my students have chosen to use their real names or stick with the MEID as the display name.

Next I create a blog or site for each user. You are given the choice between sub-domains or sub-directories in Step 4: Installing a Network. This means each additional site in your network will be created as a new virtual subdomain or subdirectory.

Sub-domains -- like site1.example.com and site2.example.com
Sub-directories -- like example.com/site1 and example.com/site2

I wanted to try them both, so ENG101 uses sub-domains and ENG102 and ENH295 both use sub-directories. I think I like sub-directories better so. To add a site I need a site name, site title and an admin email. For the site name I used MEIDs again because they will be easily identifiable by me, and if students neglect to make their site private, they are not automatically identifiable to the world. For site title I use the student’s first name temporarily, and then I add their Maricopa email for the admin email. Once I add the site, students are sent another email with log in instructions. They are then instructed to either leave their blogs public or make them private by using the same plug-in I used on the main site. If they choose to go private, I instruct them to choose the option to “Allow all feed access - Guests may continue read your blog via feed readers. “ This is essentially the same option we would have in Blackboard if our district had the balls to turn it on. The blogs are not accessible by search engines, and you have to have the feed url in order to see the posts. So it’s still private, but I can still access it via a feed reader. This makes me very happy. :)

Students are also instructed that they can change the title of their blog to whatever they want, thus removing their names. So they can change Mary’s blog (default) to MJ’s Hangout if they want. I don’t really need to have their name in the title because when I set up the blogs initially I created a blogroll for each class using their real name and subscribed to each blog using the real name. This blogroll list is only viewable by logged in users from the main site, and my Google Reader list is private as well. When I want to grade Mary’s blog, I either click on her real name or visit my GReader. And if I ever get confused I can just look at the URL: http://eng102online.com/mar1234567 (fake) and the MEID on the end will identify the student. My initial impression is that either students don’t care about privacy or they’re too confused to care. Not one student has changed the name of their blog, and I haven’t check to see if any have gone private. I’ll do that soon.

Blogroll at the bottom of the main course site.

Students have most of the same controls over their blogs that I have over mine. When I add and install plug-ins to the main blog, I have the option to activate site wide meaning students will now have access to the plug-in on their site. I can even control what themes are available to students, so if I want for their blogs to all look the same, I could just provide the one option. Or in the future I like to create a custom theme built just for writing portfolios for my ENG101 class. I could have all the pages prebuilt to make it easier for students. It can be a little confusing at first for students because they have two sites, the main class site (hub) and their own blog. When they click from the main site to go the dashboard, they end up first in the main site’s dashboard and there is not much there. They have to then click on the My Sites to see their blog and to be able to get to that dashboard.

Students cannot add themes or plug-ins to their site on their own. They can only activate themes or plug-ins that you have activated sitewide. The only problem that I can see so far is with the spam filter Akismet. I activated it sitewide so that all the student blogs could be protected, but it prompts all students to add their API key that you get by signing up for Wordpress.com. I didn’t want to have students go through all of that, so at the moment all their blogs are exposed to spam. I like how the Private Wordpress plug-in reminds students to activate privacy on their blog in case they missed my instructions to do so.

Overall, I'm pleased with how it’s all working out. I created lots of screencasts to help students, and I haven’t had too many questions about how to do things. I haven’t had too many complaints yet either. Only time will tell. In my next post I’ll talk more about how I’m collecting assignments and doling out quizzes and grades.

Saying Goodbye to Blackboard - Part I

2010-09-15T12:10:00.003-07:00

Ah, free! It’s a great feeling to be free of the closed course management system. I could say tons about why I wanted, craved this freedom, but I have enough to say with how I freed myself. So this post will focus solely on that -How I said goodbye to Blackboard for good.

First off, let’s discuss what I’m currently using. Wordpress recently came out with the latest version, 3.0, which added the old Wordpress MU install into the regular installation. What this does is provide the opportunity to create a network setup where you can have a blog as a hub, and then have students’ blogs branch out from the hub to create a network or class. So you have a class site (hub) that students are all users, and each of the users (students) has their own blog. For a writing class this is a perfect set up. Students have space to write and collaborate with classmates. So Wordpress replaces the main CMS function of housing course content and student interaction (blogs, groups, discussions), but I needed some other tools to replace the other functions of a CMS like gradebook, dropbox, and quizzes. I will talk about these functions in a later post.

Setting up Wordpress is actually quite easy, but if schools adopted this method, the most challenging part can be done by IT departments before a faculty member even signs on for this adventure. This part involves installing Wordpress on a server and setting up the network. Since I don’t have help from my IT department, I did this myself. Most hosting companies have one-button install, are cheap, reliable and optimized for your WordPress blog. I currently use HostGator and Siteground to host my blogs. For my three classes this semester I’m paying $6 month to host all three sites on HostGator, and HostGator has one click install.

Adding the network part is a little more difficult, but not impossible. You just have to follow directions and know how to edit the wp-config file. You also have to be familiar with FTP programs. I followed the directions straight from the Wordpress site – Create a Network, and I used the FireFTP addon for FireFox to upload files to and from the server and Notepad on a PC to edit the wp-config file. This is the part that IT professionals could do in support of faculty if a college chose to support this. If that were the case, then faculty could start the process with choosing a theme and adding course content.

Wordpress lets you create pages and blog posts for adding content. I use the blog posts for announcements and weekly activities (semester specific content), and I use pages for permanent course content (assignments, etc.). If you choose the right theme, you can have nestled pages with dropdown menus. I’m using the Mystique theme by digitalnature for all three courses. See photo below. This provides easy navigation for students. You have to really think about how you want to organize your content for this to work. It helps if you have modules. I can also set the default front page to be a specific page (i.e. syllabus) or my blog posts. I use my blog posts for announcements, so that is my default front page. Once students log in, they are dumped into the front page where they can read any new announcements before moving on to access the course content. This is where we see the first advantage over Blackboard. Since the announcements are now individual blog posts, if a student has a question about the announcement, they can quickly hit Add a Comment and leave their question. All students can see the question and any subsequent answer I provide.

Once you figure out how you want to add your content, doing so is quite simple. You can type directly into the page edit window in either Visual (WYSIWYG) or HTML. You can also cut and paste from Word documents using the Paste from Word option. This cuts out all the crappy Word code that you normally get. Mark that up as another advantage over Bb which takes your Word code and mangles it, making it almost impossible to edit. You can also set up page templates to help customize your content pages. Templates help remove the sidebars if you need to so you can have a bigger column for showing movies or just to have less distraction on the page. My current theme came with built in templates, so I’m current just using those.

For my discussion forums, I had a few options. I started out with a plug-in called Mingle Forum, and it worked well, but there was something missing. Can’t remember what. So instead, I decided to just use blog posts for discussions since they have threaded comments built in. In order to get them to show up on a page and not just in the blog post (announcement) page, I had to install the Page Links To plug-in, which allows you to create a page that links to a URL. So what I did was created a category for discussions and added each discussion question post to that category. Then when I click on the category tag it takes me to a page with all the posts in that category. I grabbed the URL and add that to the Discussion page I create. Now when students click on the Discussion tab they see all the discussions in one place. To participate in a discussion, you can just leave a comment. Commenting in Wordpress is threaded, so students can comment to each other, and it’s very easy to follow the conversation – another plus over Bb. Also their profile pictures show up next to their post so it adds a little personalization to the discussion. I can turn off commenting on any post at any time, in effect closing a discussion. So far it works great.

In my next posts I will talk about adding users (students) and user blogs to the main site. I will also share with you how I replaced the other aspects of the course management system, like gradebook, dropbox, and quizzing.

New Portable Document Camera Review

2010-07-16T12:19:00.003-07:00

IPEVO Point 2 View USB Document Camera

Last week I was reading my feeds in Google Reader, and I came across a post by Steve Dembo (@Teach42) titled: Accessorizing the iPad. I don't own an iPad, but I wanted to see what new accessories people were using with it. In his post, Steve writes about different methods for displaying the content on your iPad. Of course, Apple doesn't have a simple way to hook up the iPad to a projector and display everything on it. The VGA Dock Connector only works with certain apps on the iPad. If you want to display the other stuff, you'll need the IPEVO Point 2 View document camera.

So on Steve's recommendation, I got on Amazon and ordered me a IPEVO Point 2 View document camera for $65. I ended up paying $75 total because I had to choose expedited shipping. I wanted to make sure I got it in time to try it out before we leave for San Jose, CA next Tuesday for our mobile learning workshop. So although I don't have an iPad, I do have lots of mobile devices that we will be demonstrating in the workshop, and my co-presenter Lisa Young will have several iPads with her. My IPEVO arrived yesterday, but I waited until this morning to open it and try it out. I literally had the thing out of the box, installed and working in 5 minutes.

We'll be using Lisa's MacBook Pro for our presentation computer next week, so I chose to test the camera out on my Mac Mini. I put the CD in the drive, chose Intel Mac over PowerPC Mac, and then clicked the icon once the software loaded. The program opened up and nothing was there. So I plugged the camera into a USB drive and a picture displayed in the program on my screen. It was that easy. The hardest part about the whole thing was sticking the camera onto the bendable display base. I was afraid I might break it since it is plastic.

I made this video to show you how well the camera works. The image is as clear as any image displayed on the ELMO document cameras we have a school, and those cameras cost over $700. The IPEVO is a steal. The displayed image looked great at all resolution settings. Resolution is adjustable to up to 1600 x 1200. It also has a vertical mirror setting so your image doesn't appear upside down on the screen, and it has an auto focus button the camera and on the screen in the program. That was all I needed. I'll try Zoom and Exposure later when I need it.

Keynote: Student Engagement for the 21st Century Learner

2009-12-27T12:10:00.004-07:00

Recently I was asked to present a keynote at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ. I was both surprised and honored for the invitation, and I immediately accepted. I talk about teaching with technology all the time, so this was a great opportunity to share my insights on the topic. But first I had to narrow my focus, as there is so much to be said today about teaching with technology. Thanks to the help of my colleagues, Lisa Young and Shelley Rodrigo, I was able to come up with my topic of student engagement. One of my goals in this presentation was to try to engage my audience by using some of the same technology tools I would talk about in the keynote. I was able to use Animoto, Wordle, Poll Everywhere, YouTube, Voicethread, and MindMeister. The presentation was recorded and put together by Thatcher Bohrman at Yavapai College. Thanks Thatcher!

Links from the Presentation:

Animoto: http://animoto.com
CCSSE: http://www.ccsse.org/
2009 CCSSE Executive Summary (PDF)
Seven Principles of Good Practice: http://www.aahea.org/bulletins/articles/sevenprinciples1987.htm
Pay Attention - Final Cut (YouTube video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT2E2F0DmyE and http://t4.jordandistrict.org/payattention
21st Century Literacies (pdf): http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/PolicyResearch/21stCenturyResearchBrief.pdf
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/
MindMeister: http://www.mindmeister.com/
Voicethread: http://voicethread.com/share/802220/
Poll Everywhere: http://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_polls/NTA2OTgxOTc0

Presentation Slides: http://freshmancomp.com/Yavapai%20Keynote.zip

Student Engagement for the 21st Century Learner by Dr. Alisa Cooper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at freshmancomp.com.

Schedule Student Conferences with TimeDriver

2009-11-23T20:45:00.002-07:00

Every semester I schedule conferences with all my students to talk about their final papers before they start to finalize the paper. It was always a pain trying to schedule these 60+ conferences with students until I found TimeDriver. Watch how I use TimeDrive to schedule student conference fast and easily.

How to Collaborate Using GDocs (Students)

2009-11-16T20:52:00.000-07:00

We recently started our group project module in ENG101, so I introduced students to a few tools to help them be able to collaborate with each other during this process. One tool in particular is Google Docs. This video was created for students to show them how to collaborate using Google Docs to complete their projects.

Creating Macros in Word 2007 for a Grading Toolbar

2009-11-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

One of my most popular posts on this blog was a post on how to create a grading toolbar in Word. Well, it has since become outdated after Office 2007 was introduced a few years ago. I'm finally getting around to creating a new version, so here it is.

Teaching with Email in the Online Classroom

2009-08-24T17:02:00.011-07:00

Over the years education has continually changed, or evolved into something that is considerably different from what education was when I was in school. One major difference is the inclusion of online and hybrid courses into the course offerings. This is still evolving on most campuses, so it's understandable that many people in charge of educational institutions aren't always clear about how faculty use certain technologies in their classrooms. So I'm going to try to clarify some things.

First, we've used email for many years in our district, and all employees are given an email address to use to communicate official district business amongst ourselves. This system works well, as it's easy to find an email address in the district and send a fellow employee a message. We can even create distribution lists to send to certain groups of people. It works so well, that we used to get tons of emails on a daily basis from just about anyone who had a cause, a need, a show, or any important information they felt everyone in the district needed to know. Mercifully someone recognized the overload we all experienced, and we adapted to a "only specially designated people on each campus can send ALL district emails. Thank God or whoever made that decision. It was nice to see that we could recognize a problem and find a solution.

But as I mention, delivery methods of teaching have changed too, and faculty are now using email in lots of different ways. Before I started teaching online classes, I never gave my students my email address. I couldn't imagine how I would handle all that email, and there wasn't really a need. If they had a question, they could just ask me in class. When I first started teaching online, I recognized the need for students to be able to contact me and quickly created an email account just for that purpose. Since then how I use email in my online and hybrid courses has evolved along with the courses themselves. I don't use email as just a way for students to ask questions. It is so much more than that.

Email can be a drafting space, prewriting activity, organizational tool, assignment dropbox, conferencing space, peer review tool, and so much more. It is so essential to teaching online that it always surprises me that as an educational institution, we have never sought a more robust email tool for faculty to work with. It has always been up to us to figure out how best to make it work. It wasn't until webmail evolved that some of us began to dream big with email and start to use it in more ways than the obvious. Now it's hard to imagine teaching without it.

Here's a brief example of how I use email in the first week of school. I begin by sending all my students an email introducing myself and giving them a list of things I'd like for them to do before the first week of the semester ends. This list includes filling out a form and providing me with a convenient email address for them. If it's convenient, they'll use it and hopefully read my correspondence to them. I use the collected information to set up folders, filters and auto-responders in my email client. To get students familiar with using email in my classes and to help me set up the filters, I have students send me an email after they have completed the first assignment. That email is received, filed, and an auto-responder to that particular email is sent out. It all works quite smoothly. I get what I need and students get instant feedback.

I also keep track of student activity on the course network via email. When students fill out the form, register for the network, and participate in the first discussion, I get an email notification for each. This allows me to quickly approve their registration and then welcome them to the network right away. Students feel a part of a community and feel as if there is someone present to interact with in the online environment. In the first week, many students are nervous about the online class and have questions. During this week, I try to answer questions as soon as possible. For instance, the bookstore had a mix-up with the books for my class. After reading the syllabus, students discovered that the book listed in the bookstore was different than what was listed on my syllabus. Many emailed me to asked about this. One student had even emailed from his phone while he was still in the bookstore and got a response right away. He was able to purchase the correct book right then.

I don't profess to respond that quickly all semester long, but to me it equates to all that extra time all faculty spend during the first week giving directions, advice, answering questions and just plain being "present" on campus for students. Students have responded well to this interaction in my classes. Just today a student responded to me with,

"Wow, I am seriously impressed by the quick response. I will have to remember this when I do 'Rate my professor'."

Once the first week is in the books, I continually use email as a teaching tool in my online courses. Students in the ENG102 course send me research prospectuses and we have email conferences about their research progress. Students collaborate on writing projects in Google Docs and use email to invite me to see their work and to receive updates on revisions made. And I use my email contacts groups feature to take role and keep track of attendance in my hybrid and face to face classes. These are just a few of the ways that email has evolved for me.

When I'm teaching, I don't have time to deal with emails about:
Biology instructors needed, weekly air quality, and employment opportunities. I'll handle that later when I get back to my work "office." I have email for teaching, and I have email for work. My work email stays at work, and my teaching email goes with me to my many teaching environments and teaching moments. I control when, where and how I want to deal with it. I love that freedom, and I love that it allows for me to serve my students. I couldn't do this if I had to deal with all my email in one standard, made for business, work email account. That just doesn't work for me.

Update your Calendar & ToDo Lists via Twitter

2009-07-05T19:26:00.007-07:00

My first post about Twitter, Little Known Facts about Twitter in the Classroom, talked about some easy uses for Twitter in the classroom. I said, Twitter is connected to everything. I can update my Google calendar and ToDo tasks via Twitter, and I can set it up so Twitter will broadcast my blog posts from my blog to Twitter with a link sending people back to my blog to read the post. Think announcements for students with that one. It's also connected with a very nice polling site, Poll Everywhere, that lets your respondents vote in your polls via Twitter. Twitter makes their API available so any company can develop tools that will work through Twitter.

This post follows up that and talks about the calendar and ToDo updates via Twitter. If you're busy, like most people are, you might find that your calendar and a ToDo list are very helpful in keeping you going. I rely heavily on both in my everyday life. Usually when I'm out and about, and I need to either add an event or meeting to my calendar, I find it a hassle to pull up my calendar program and add it. Same thing with my ToDo lists. But I've found that sending a text message directly to Twitter can do that for me. All I have to do is text a direct message to my Google Calendar or Remember the Milk ToDo service and it automatically posts to my calendar or list. Click the links for more information about each.

I use this when I schedule conferences with students. I grab my phone and send a text message to 40404 with "d gcal Meeting with 'Student' Tuesday at 11am." The d is for direct message, which is private on Twitter, and gcal is the Google Calendar Twitter name. The rest is the event I want added to the calendar. When I get to a computer, all the appointments are there in my calendar. And since I sync my Google calendar with my Blackberry, they show up on my phone calendar too within minutes. The screencast below shows you how this all works.

Part II of III tips for using Twitter in the classroom. Part I covers using Twitter via text messaging on your cell phone, Part II update calendar/ToDo list via Twitter. The last tip will show you how to use Twitter with a polling service PollEverywhere.

Teaching Kids Technology

2009-07-02T11:42:00.002-07:00

I had and opportunity to teach a bunch of Upward Bound students how to use various technologies over a 6 week period this summer. We learned to create photo essays using Animoto, and plain Word documents using Creative Commons images. We used Picnik to remix photos. We also learned to create videos using Flip cameras and Windows Movie Maker. And our last project was creating podcasts using Audacity. Below are a few of the podcasts they created. I was really proud of their work.

What's on Your iPod Touch? Mobile Apps for Learning

2009-05-28T11:20:00.008-07:00

We've been having a little exchange on our list about mobile gadgets and apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, so I decided to blog about what I have on my iPod Touch. Not so surprisingly, I have very little music. I have an iPod Video and Nano for that. The Touch is for mobile learning. I'm trying to see how this gadget can be used in education. The obvious is podcasts, both audio and video. It's easy to find good podcasts to share and recommend with students, as well as create your own. So I have over 3 GB of video on my Touch, mostly video podcasts. One of my favorite apps on the Touch is iTalk. I can hook up an external microphone and record lectures right on the Touch. Then I can sync and have the podcast uploaded to where ever in a matter of minutes. Sound quality is really good.

Most of my apps are free, unless indicated by (paid). Here is a list of my first page of apps on my Touch.

Google
YouTube
Remember the Milk (RTM)
Twitterific & TwitterFon
iTalk
Facebook
Bb Learn

These are all obvious choices. We haven't had a chance to try out the Bb Learn app yet. District says we will be able to do so after the upgrade, which just happened, so I'll check into that next week.

My second page of apps is a mixed bag. I have a few ereaders I'm trying out and some blogging tools.

Kindle & eReader & GReader (Readers)
Google Voice & GV Mobile (Paid)
Google Talk & Skype (chat)
Gyminee
Wordpress
Animoto
WootWatch
Tumblr
Where
Brightkite
TripIt
Nike +iPod

These are some of the more important mobile tools for blogging, reading documents, books and RSS feeds, and communicating via chat, voicemail and text messaging.

As I move through my app pages, the apps get less and less relevant to mobile learning. So far we've seen lots of social networking apps and reading and writing apps. That trend continues, but I start to add more home automation and fun stuff. I mean, you never know when you will need to Tivo a show for class, right.

myhomework (Keep track of classes and homework)
Evernote (This could be a big elearning app)
Shakespeare (Complete works on my iPod)
Yelp
Yahoo!
LinkedIn
i.TV & DirecTV & PhoneFlix (Schedule DVRs & Netflix)
fring (IM & Skype in one/VOIP)
Assistant (PageOnce - Acct Management)
WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
Flickr
Ustream (watching only)

I found lots of apps that have created collections of works like the Shakespeare one. This would make teaching a lit class easy in terms of access to free books. Evernote has the biggest potential for impact in the mobile learning space. I will be exploring this a bit more this summer.

My last two pages are just a bunch of games and sports apps like for the Master's and the NBA playoffs. Also MLB (At Bat) lets you listen to live game audio for $10 for the whole season. I also have the Stanza ebook reader, a dictionary, notes, and a calculator. That's it. And like I mentioned earlier, I only paid for 3 apps. As I explore and try new ones, I'll probably purchase more if they are worth it. We'll see.

So what's on your iPod Touch or iPhone? Leave a comment and let me know so I can add to my collection.

Little Known Facts about Twitter in the Classroom

2009-05-22T12:00:00.008-07:00

The whole world is talking about Twitter, so this post is probably nothing new to some. Most people get that you can post a short message about what you are doing, and anyone who follows you on Twitter will be able to see the message. I follow you, I see your messages. You follow me, you see mine. But many people still don't understand how it works beyond that. For instance, many aren't aware that you can have selective tweeters' tweets delivered directly to your cell phone via text message. And you can reply back to Twitter via text message. Once you and your students are signed up and properly set up, the whole process can be conducted via cell phone text messaging, making the whole process mobile and not tied to a web page on a computer.

Another little known secret to novice Twitter users is that Twitter is connected to everything. I can update my Google calendar and ToDo tasks via Twitter, and I can set it up so Twitter will broadcast my blog posts from my blog to Twitter with a link sending people back to my blog to read the post. Think announcements for students with that one. It's also connected with a very nice polling site, Poll Everywhere, that lets your respondents vote in your polls via Twitter. Twitter makes their API available so any company can develop tools that will work through Twitter. There are so many more, but in the following movie I focus on the first tool mentioned above. In subsequent posts I'll show you the other tips. Have a look.

Using Text Messaging with Twitter from soul4real on Vimeo.

Part I of III tips for using Twitter in the classroom. Part I covers using Twitter via text messaging on your cell phone.

One of the things I forgot to mention is once you get your cell phone set up to receive text messages from Twitter, you can post a tweet by sending it to 40404 from your phone. Next up, update your Google calender and ToDo tasks via Twitter.

Twitter Killed My Blog - Almost

2009-05-22T10:56:00.003-07:00

Wow! I hardly posted at all this semester. Two times. That's it. I'm going to blame Twitter on that. Who has time to blog when we're tweeting all day. :) Well, I was inspired to come back to traditional blogging after the MaricopaTech conference earlier this week. So here I am. I'm breathing a little life into "The Maricopa Experience" because it is quite an experience working in one of the largest community college systems in the country. Not only that, but times are tough, and as the district cuts more and more of our resources, like faculty professional growth, this blog may become a valuable tool. It can be used either for whining and complaining about the cuts or building resources for others who are stuck in the same situation. I'm leaning more towards the latter.

I anticipate next semester I'll have more to blog about since I'm transferring from my current campus to a much larger one, GCC. That should be enough fodder alone, but I have some ideas to share until I get to that point. My plan for this summer is a series on mobile learning. I will be reading up mLearning and playing with lots of mobile devices and programs designed for these devices. I'll also be looking a ways to enhance online courses using mobile gadgets. Can't wait to blog about all that. In addition, I plan a series of posts on how I'm using some of the newer Web 2.0 tools in my classes or how I plan to.

So the blog is not abandoned; just consider it having been on vacation. Now if you'll be patient, I'll be back with a post about "something" in a few. If you want, you can follow me on Twitter. I'm soul4real.

Wordles are Really Cool

2009-04-22T21:01:00.003-07:00

I've been seeing Wordles around all over the place lately, and I've been wanting to create one but didn't really have a need. I still don't, but I thought it might be fun to see what my Delicious bookmarks look like in a Wordle. If you're wondering the same thing, wonder no more. Here it is:

Moving on Up to the West Side

2009-04-15T13:17:00.001-07:00

I'm in a funk at the moment, and just can't get motivated to do all the things I really need to do. So I'm blogging. I think the reality of my decision to leave my current job has something to do with my funk. I decided some time ago to leave South Mountain CC and transfer over to Glendale CC. It's the same job, just a new location in the district. I spent a semester over there 3 years ago and enjoyed it, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on a transfer until now. So why am I leaving? Many have asked, and this is my response. It varies depending on what day it is.

I guess I'm leaving because I'm ready for a change. 11 years in one job is a long time to me. It's the same old thing over and over again each semester. And I realized that it's really up to me to make things fun, to make things happen. So for the last few years I've been social networking with other techie geeks in the district, some from my college, but most from other colleges in the district. I realized that Maricopa is a wonderful place to work because of the many resources we have available to us and the awesome people that work in the district. But Maricopa isn't always fair in their distribution of resources to the various colleges. South being the smallest gets left in the dust in many areas. As a result, technology isn't a big focus for most of the faculty on the SMCC campus. There's nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that I live for technology and with all the research I've done in the last 8 years, I realize our future in education relies on that technology.

So I guess what I'm saying is I love the people at SMCC, but SMCC isn't helping much for my portfolio in terms of being innovative and using technology in my teaching. I'm very limited in what I can do with the limited resources and expertise on campus, and I spend way too much of my money on resources and too much time on other campuses in the district learning new things. What I've learned is I can still be friends and socialize with the friends I've made at South, the best part of South, but work elsewhere where I'll have the resources available and the money needed for more. Those resources include a faculty that is experimenting with new technologies and teaching in creative ways I have yet to experience.

I will always love South and the people I've worked with for the last 11 years. It is truly a special place and has grown tremendously since I first arrived on campus in 1998. They even have wireless on campus now (except for in my building). South Mountain CC will continue to be a great college whether I'm there or not, but will I still be the teacher I want to be if I stick around. Who knows, but I'm not sticking around to find out. I am the master of my own destiny, and the master says I need to go give GCC a try.

New FAQ Avatar for my Online Students

2009-01-20T21:59:00.007-07:00

I've been playing around with SitePal for a year and a half now. I love the idea of having an avatar for students to interact with, but it has proven to be a bit time consuming and expensive. My initial investment was a cool $99 to get five avatars and scenes with 1 minute of audio each (Bronze). One minute is not a lot of time and during the first year I had a hard time keeping to the limit, so I ended up neglecting my avatar, dubbed Associate Professor Sam.

But instead of giving up completely on the idea, I decided to invest a bit more money into it and see if I could make it work. Initially the lowest SitePal plan costs $99 but didn't include Text to Speech (TTS). That is how I make Sam talk to my students. Without the more expensive plan, I had to create my own TTS, which I did with a separate program called TextAloud. The program works great and I use it for other non-avatar announcements from Assoc. Prof. Sam that are usually much longer than 1 minute. But if I was going to really utilize the avatar, I needed to eliminate a few steps. So I upgraded to the Silver package for this semester only (3 months). The additional costs ($100) is a bit much for me to have to pay out of pocket, but for 3 months it wasn't so bad ($24), especially since SitePal was offering a discount.

So I created a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) box for Sam and posted a few questions for students on the Ning Social Network. It was really easy to type out the answers to the questions and have SitePal convert to speech. They even had my same voice for Sam. I posted the widget below so you could give ole Sam a try.

Reflecting on an Almost Done Semester

2008-12-14T20:12:00.004-07:00

Finals start tomorrow, and I've spent most of the last week grading and tying up loose ends in my hybrid and online courses. I finally feel as if I have my hybrid and online ENG102 course right where I want it to be in terms of design. It only took 7 years. I started designing the course in 2001 when I started grad school. Back then it was just a face to face course with lots of different technologies added in here and there. It grew to a hybrid that I studied and wrote my dissertation on. Now it's a fully online Quality Matters certified course, one of the first QM certified courses in the district.

I'm proud of this course, but as I wrap up this semester and reflect on what I think went well and what I think didn't, I can't help but feel a bit down about the student retention rates in my courses. I've come to the conclusion that no matter how much time and effort you put into a course to make it the best it can be, sometimes your students just aren't ready for it. In the case with our students at South Mountain Community College, they're not ready in more than one way. Many are not prepared for a rigorous college load and still others are not ready for online and hybrid courses, yet they end up in my courses.

I teach the only hybrid and online English courses on campus, two hybrid and one online. There are plenty of other sections that are face to face available all through out the day and week, but my classes fill up. When asked, most students signed up for the class because the time fit well with their schedule and not because they particularly wanted a hybrid class. And I don't even want to start to talk about why students sign up for my online class. That's just down right scary. Anyway, student don't realize until it's too late that maybe hybrid or online is not the best course format for them. Not only do they struggle with using the technology, but some struggle with the demands of a writing class. It's almost as if they didn't expect that they would have work to do.

My students are having trouble completing just one assignment a week. The assignment is designed to take 2-3 hours to complete. When I designed the assignments, I followed an honors students around the library while he completed the assignments. I timed him and took notes about questions he had about the directions. Most assignments he completed in under an hour. I took that research and adjusted the assignments accordingly. The assignments are designed to guide a student through the research process culminating in an extended documented argumentative research paper. Each step is crucial to completion of the final product, and each assignment builds off the previous one. Students who are prepared do really well. I get a good number of A's, but I get even more drops and F's.

The students who fail or just give up and drop don't do the work. They turn in incomplete assignments. They don't do rewrites or come for additional help. It's like they don't even try. They complain that the assignments are too hard and take too long to complete. Even if an assignment took 5 hours to complete, a whole week is plenty of time to complete it. I'm at a lost as to what to do about all this. I think the only solution is to force students to a study session or tutoring. I'm not sure how I could do that, but that's where I am now with this. I'm struggling with the whole idea that I teach college, but I really can't treat all of them like college students, expecting that they will take the initiative to get help if they need it. It's frustrating indeed.

Educause 2008 was Depressing

2008-10-31T08:34:00.009-07:00

No, don't get me wrong. Educause is a great conference and definitely worth while to fly across the country to sit in on some amazing conference sessions. But when I start thinking about going back to my campus and never having the possibility to experience any of the great tech tools I learned about, I get depressed. We don't even have any IT leaders from our campus that even come to Educause, so I ended up hanging out with all the other IT, VP's, faculty and instructional designers from our sister colleges. What a treat that was as well. I get so jazzed hearing about all the cool things they are doing on their campuses.

I saw an amazing presentation this morning from some guys at Drexel University talking about a lecture capture solution they implemented on their campus:

Increasingly, colleges and universities are adopting lecture capture solutions to increase student satisfaction and learning. Join Drexel University's innovative team and other universities for an in-depth panel discussion focusing on how these institutions have implemented TechSmith's Camtasia Relay to integrate lecture capture into their existing infrastructures simply, quickly, and affordably.

It was amazing to see what they were able to do with Camtasia Relay in such a short period of time and even before the product was released out of beta. It was that easy. What was most amazing to me is that it was the IT guys and the instructional designer who came up with this solution and made it happen for the college. Sigh. Why can't we do things like that?

Our IT department and instructional designer are all caught up in doing other stuff to be able to come up with technology solutions for teaching & learning issues on our campus. I've been there 10 years and I don't think I've ever been asked what I need to help me teach my students better. Why is that? Is it not important because too few of our faculty will utilize it? or is it because only a small number of students will be impacted by the technology initially? Who knows, but it doesn't sound much like forward thinking to me.

Another session I sat in on this morning was Thinking Outside the Virtual Classroom presented by Shannon Ritter, Social Networks Adviser, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University.

Educating our students is certainly our priority, but how can we connect learners to each other in a way that provides more opportunities for personal growth, networking, and connections? By taking advantage of virtual spaces like Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life, we give our students space to learn outside the classroom.

This was a great presentation. Ritter talked about how students in online distance programs are missing out on the college experience and have no real connection to the college because those students don't get the same interactions with their peers like the on campus students do. Many aren't learning together, and they don't have a sense of belonging. So the Penn State World Campus created orientation videos to help give students a sense of belonging. They also use Second Life, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter to help building a sense of community.

This is the same idea behind my decision to use a social network to teach my freshman composition courses in. The network has some of the same features Ritter talks about embedded in the site, like videos, photos, walls, and updates. And the whole idea is to help students feel more connected to their peers, the instructor and the class.

Those were just two of the many ideas I experienced this week at Educause. Surprisingly some of the most valuable information was obtained just from hanging out with peers from the Maricopa district and my Twitter friends from across the country. That community we build is very valuable for sharing experiences and expertise in a wide variety of areas, and their willingness to help each other is refreshing. It would be really nice to have that kind of community on my own campus, a group of like minded faculty who like to come together and share ideas about education and technology. Some day, right?

Check out the live simulcasts from the conference:

Live Simulcasts

Those unable to attend the EDUCAUSE 2008 Annual Conference are invited to watch General, Featured, and Point/Counterpoint Sessions virtually in live simulcasts sponsored by Sonic Foundry, an EDUCAUSE Silver Partner. Watch and ask questions at the Featured and Point/Counterpoint sessions.

Get ready to watch the videos by reading the Mediasite System Requirements and Mediasite Player Tutorial.

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

2008-10-10T01:05:00.001-07:00

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

From: soul4real, 1 hour ago

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: multimedia tyca-west)

Presentation for the TYCA-West conference in Clarkdale, AZ. Using pod/vodcasting in freshman composition courses.

SlideShare Link

Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp Live Presentation

2008-10-09T11:47:00.008-07:00

2008 TYCA- West Annual Conference
Reaching Across Communities: Service in and out of the Classroom
Friday, October 10 & Saturday, October 11
Valley Verde Campus of Yavapai College
Clarkdale, Arizona

My presentation, Multimedia Infused Freshman Comp (M-203), begins at 4:30pm on Friday, October 10th. Join me live right here or visit my Presentation Wiki: https://drcoop.pbwiki.com/TYCAWest08

Synopsis: Come see how the new generation of freshman composition courses use podcasting, video, still images and interactivity to engage students in the writing process. Using various Web 2.0 tools, see how podcasting can be used not only as a mode of delivering content, but also as a mode of interaction between faculty and students. Video is used not just as a prewriting activity, but also as a mode of expression and argument. These and many others can be accomplished with little training and inexpensive tools that many students already own.

Come Experience PodCampAZ Nov. 1st & 2nd

2008-09-23T08:23:00.004-07:00

I can still remember last year when I first heard about PodCampAZ. I was so excited only to discover that I had missed it. I was so bummed. But I'm not going to miss it this year, and I'm not going to let you miss it either. So mark your calendars for November 1st and 2nd at UAT in Tempe. VIEW MAP

This year is sure to be another successful podcamp. People still talk about it being one of, if not, the best one. So what is it anyway? Well, it's not all about podcasting, as the web concedes, but if that is your interest, you're sure to find plenty of podcasters abound.

PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers, and anyone interested in New Media. It was held for the first time from September 8-10 in Boston, Massachusetts and is now spreading across the world. (PodCampAZ.com)

Yes, it says free, and it is unlike any conference you may have attended before. That's why you just have to come out and experience it.

Shelley Rodrigo and I, along with ASU professor, Time Barrow, will be presenting on the use of Web 2.0 tools in education. There are many exciting presenters, so you're sure to find something of interest to you. Take a look at the line up: Look Who Is Speaking At PodCamp AZ and I'll see you on November 1st and/or 2nd at PodCampAZ.

Justifying My Teaching Methods

2008-08-27T13:22:00.003-07:00

I had an administrator object to my taking a regular class and turning it into a more dynamic hybrid course out of necessity, so I was forced to respond with this message:

(My Division Chair) searched high and low (that's the story she gave me) for an adjunct to teach the night class, and I'm all she could fine. I haven't taught a traditional class in 7 years. I'm not even sure how anyone can teach an ENG102 class without any technology. It's research. You need a library and you need the internet. How do you teach students to do research sitting in a room with nothing in it but a Smartboard hooked up to nothing. That's a nice smartboard, by the way. Anyhoo, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying. There are 10 students enrolled. 6 of the 10 were actively participating in online activities 2-3 days before the first class meeting tonight. The other 4 were excited about the opportunity after I explained the course to them.

Hybrid just means there's online content and responsibilities involved. I teach all my classes the same way even if they're not "labeled" hybrid, as this one is not. In order to be able to spend one on one time with students, you have to give them activities in class to free up in class time where the instructor is not the focus of the class. Online activities free up in class time so that students get more individual attention. But if the classroom environment doesn't support the activities, you move them outside the classroom.

Let me explain how it works, and I'm sure you'll see there is some benefit in offering a class this way. In this class there are 10 research assignments that require students to use the internet and/or the library (an uncensored internet and a college/public library). Research is independent in that each student has their own topic. Tuesday's class students meet in the classroom where they receive general instruction on the week's research assignment. Hopefully we'll at least have an internet connection and I can hook my own laptop up to that shiny new overhead projector hanging from the ceiling. On Thursday students will work online or at their local library (with several class library visits planned-not sure where yet). When working independently students can ask questions via IM, email or phone to me about their individual project (anytime, not just Thursday night). They can also schedule appointments during this time.

There are also online materials available for students 24/7. For every assignment there are written instructions, a student example and a screencast online demonstrating how to do the assignment. Reinforcement for what I teach on Tuesday. We also have weekly podcasts to reinforce material covered in class and live office hours via Ustream.tv (woot!). In addition, here's the best part. With students working independently on Thursdays, it frees up time to work one on one with students who need individual attention. I can schedule conferences with students during a time that is convenient for us both because it's already scheduled class time (Thursday). Good luck getting night students to come to a conference outside of classtime. It really works well.

That was my email response to why I turned a perfectly "good" course into a much better one. I haven't heard back from the administrator.

Freshmancomp Ning Site as LMS Replacement

2008-08-21T23:03:00.001-07:00

Playing with Online Video Editing Sites - Video Series (Part 5)

2008-07-18T13:44:00.006-07:00

I've pretty much come to the conclusion that the best way to have any fun with video online is for it to be as simple as possible and to not have high expectations for quality. One thing you have to know about working with video online, the end result will be Flash Video (.flv) files. It has become the default video format on the web and most online video sites use FLV to stream videos online. What I've discovered in the process is it's probably best to just leave your fancy expensive camcorder at home and grab something inexpensive and simple to use if you're planning on posting your video on the web. By simple I mean, no file conversion and no tapes. What you want is a camera that saves video files to either a hard drive or media card in a format that is highly compatible. Make sure the camera saves files in one of these video formats: wmv, avi, asf, mov, qt, mpg, mp4, vob, rm or dv. Most online editing sites will even take your cell phone video: 3gp, 3g2 and even Flash (flv) files.

Here's a short video I shot using both the Flip Mino and my digital camera, a Canon PowerShot SD10. I wanted to compare the quality and to give you an idea of what kinds of cameras are available for you to use.
Exploring Video Cameras from Coop on Vimeo.

I made this video in Windows Movie Maker, but I also uploaded the files to several online video editing sites:

These seem to be the top online editing sites, but there are many others. I just wanted to see how easy it would be to duplicate my editing and movie making experience with Windows Movie Maker. I want to first say that these sites do so much more than edit videos, and I'm not even going to come close to giving you a review of each. I just want to share my first impressions with each.

I tried Eyespot first. It's a pretty slick site, easy to use. I was able to easily upload my 3 short videos. To edit the video I had to go the Mixer area. That is what these sites call the editing area. In there I could trim the videos before placing them in a timeline for my movie. I could also add photos, music, transitions, effects and something called Mixables. It took me a minute or two to figure out how the trimming process worked, but it's simple enough. Put the green arrow where you want the video to start and the red where you want it to stop. Hit the Done button and it places the trimmed piece in your timeline. After adding all my trimmed pieces, I added some transitions and a song and made my movie. My Lady: Yamaha V-Star

The first thing you'll notice about my movie made in Eyespot is the ads on the bottom of the movie. Yep, Ads by Google. I do like that you can allow visitors to download your video in various formats: PC|Mac|iPod|PSP|DivX. That's sweet, but I hope the downloads don't have ads.

I tried Motionbox next, and it was just as easy to upload my files to their site. They have a different focus at Motionbox it seems. There are no ads, which is good, but it didn't seem like the typical social networking site. Trimming the clips was easy, although I was stumped at first. I had one of those Doh! moments. Anyway, from what I could see, trimming was the only thing I could do with my video - nothing else. That's it. Trim and put clips together. Okay. Next.

JumpCut is a Yahoo! site, so I was able to log in using my Yahoo! ID. I really liked JumpCut. It was super easy and I even had a little fun playing around with all the options. I could do everything I was able to do at Eyespot. It's hard to explain, but it just had a friendlier feel to the site, and I found it easier to explore the option without fear of losing my work. I also made the best movie here. Oh, and guess what - no ads.

Overall, the video quality at all three sites was equal, and I feel confidant that if I ever needed to edit video online that I would have a good place to do so. And I wouldn't hesitate to have my students use any of the sites for a class project, although my current preference would be Jumpcut. Give it a try.

Windows Movie Maker vs VideoSpin: Which is Best? (Part 4)

2008-07-16T13:13:00.013-07:00

I'm trying out several different video editing software programs for my summer project. After spending considerable time on the Mac using iMovie and Quicktime, I decided to switch over to the PC and try a couple of free programs before exploring online editing programs. For the PC there are two options: Windows Movie Maker and Pinnacle's free VideoSpin. Let's start with Windows Movie Maker (WMM).

For a free program, Windows Movie Maker is not too bad. I was able to import different types of video, with the exception of HD video files, but most people who are going to be working with HD will probably spring for a more robust video editing software package. For standard video WMM is just fine. You can read more about my first impressions with the program here: Editing Video with Windows Movie Maker - Video Series (Part 3) and the results of a movie created using Windows Movie Maker are below.

Trimming Bush from Coop on Vimeo.

Windows Movie Maker is probably the most widely used free video editor for Windows, but there is another out there that can give it a run for its money. It really just depends on what your needs are. And let's face it. If you're looking for free, you're probably not looking to be a master video editor. You just want to get your video from your camera and onto the web with a little bit of style as quickly as possible. Both WMM and VideoSpin can do that.

Both are easy to use. You just locate your video and audio files from your hard drive, arrange them on a timeline, and start clipping or rearranging. VideoSpin requires you purchase an upgrade if you want to use MPEG 2/4 codecs, and that will set you back $15, but it's probably worth it. You can add a variety of transitions, sound effects, and titles to your movie in both programs. Adding titles is one place where VideoSpin wins over WMM. It has some pretty fancy title options that I'd never seen before. I liked that. I also like that VideoSpin gives you the option to upload your finished videos directly to YouTube or Yahoo! Video. That's a time saving feature I like.

When it really comes down to it, both programs will work just fine for the average movie maker on the cheap. Just remember, you get what you pay for, and VideoSpin will give you more features for an inexpensive price when you're ready to move up in the world of video editing. VideoSpin is basically a slimmed down version of the commercial Pinnacle Studio, which normally sells for $50. Windows Movie Maker is free and when you've out grown it, you'll have to move on to something else.

For more information on my video project, visit Coop's Word Wiki, and read more articles below.

Editing Video with Windows Movie Maker - Video Series (Part 3)

2008-07-10T13:33:00.003-07:00

Up until this point I've been playing with my video on my MacBook Pro, but the majority of people out there aren't lucky enough to have a Mac. So today I'm playing around with editing some video on a HP Pavilion machine running MS Windows XP Media Center (2005). It's an inexpensive machine costing only $400 after a $50 rebate. It has an AMD Athlon 64 processor 3800+ 2.41 GHz and 960MB of RAM. So not much firepower here. :-) I have Service Pac 2 installed, so the Windows Movie Maker program is automatically installed. I tried to download the program directly from the site, but had trouble doing so. Here are the instructions from the Microsoft site:

Movie Maker 2.1 is available for download with Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). You can download SP2, Movie Maker 2.1, and all future critical updates automatically by turning on the Automatic Updates feature in Windows XP.
You can also download SP2 and Movie Maker 2.1 from Microsoft Update. If you cannot use Automatic Updates or download SP2 via Windows Update, order a CD.

I tried to see if the program could be downloaded alone without the Automatic Updates feature and was unable to. First, the site didn't like that I was using FireFox instead of IE, then I was forced to download an .exe file to validate that I indeed owned my copy of Windows XP. After that I couldn't find the program for XP, only Vista. What a hassle, but most people will already have the program installed if they run automatic updates, so it wasn't too much of a big deal. You can find information about the Windows Movie Maker program here.

I started out by importing some AVI video files from an external hard drive that I have attached to the PC. The video I was playing with last week on the Mac is stored there. Some of the files came over, but the ones I converted from the HD format didn't work. I kept getting an error message. Files from the Flip Mino worked fine, so I plugged in the Flip to see if I could capture directly from the camera. You can't actually capture live video from the Flip, so I had to import the clips from the camera into MM like I did the ones on the hard drive. When I tried to capture the video, however, my webcam came on and the program opened up a video capture wizard to walk me through the process of setting up my QuickCam with MM. MM captures the webcam video in 512kbps in WMV format at 320x240 display size and 15 frames per second. This is what was recommended if I planned to edit the files in the program.

The files I imported from the Mac via my hard drive didn't look great in MM, so I'm going to stick with files I imported directly from the Flip Mino for now. But I must say, I'm not sure what the program is doing to the files on import, but it is taking forever. I definitely need more RAM on this machine if I'm going to be editing video, so I'm going to buy some before I talking my editing in Windows Movie Maker. Instead I'll tell you a little about the features of this free program.

MM has most of the basic movie making features like transitions, special effects, titles, credits, narration and music. Your options are just limited, although Microsoft does have some "Creative Fun Packs" that you can download to add more features to MM. You can edit your video in both storyboard view and timeline view. The timeline views consist of one video with accompanying audio bar, one music/audio bar, and one titles bar.When in storyboard view, the video project appears as a film strip showing each scene in clips. Windows Movie Maker can only export video in Windows Media formats (WMV) or DV AVI. Both are fine for viewing on a PC. I do like how it has some predefined profiles and users can create custom profiles which utilize newer codecs.

So I'll give Windows Movie Maker a run through after I've install more memory in my PC, and I'll be back to share the experience with you in Part IV of this Summer Project Video Series. Visit Coop's Word Wiki for more information on my research.

Summer Project Video Experiment: HD Video on Mac (Part 2)

2008-06-28T18:29:00.016-07:00

This is Part II of the Summer Project Video Experiment: HD Video on Mac (Part 1)

I've been playing around with my HD video camcorder, a Panasonic HDC-SD5, and playing with different output settings as part of my summer project, to learn as much about video as I can in 4 weeks. Check out Coop's Word Wiki for my research.

When I left off with the last post, I showed you how I was able to convert my HD files in the AVCHD format to MOV files on my MacBookPro, which are editable on the Mac in both iMovie HD and Quicktime Pro. Then we had to decide which output format to use to share the videos. I decided that I would first try uploading our HD movies to popular video file sharing sites, keeping in mind that most video sharing sites, especially YouTube, will compress the video into the FLV flash format, and the beautiful HD movie will look less than spectacular. But before we even got to that we had to decide on which program to edit the files in. My two inexpensive options were: iMovie HD, free with every Mac, and QuickTime Pro ($30 upgrade). I mentioned that there are other options for editing video on the Mac, but they are out of my "cheap" range.

I decided to try iMovie HD first. I was able to create a spectacular movie by adding music, transitions, titles and still photos, and when it was time to export, my options were unlimited. I chose the Quicktime option Expert Settings and got all the options shown to the right. I chose to use the Divx since it has an HD setting. The output file size was only 36MB.

Editing the HD files in Quicktime was a different story. I got all the same options for output, but the bad thing is the editing features in QT are limited to cropping and piecing files together. You won't find themes, music, or even transitions in QT, but you'll be able to produce a movie a lot quicker. It might be just me but I thought the QT movie looked better than the iMovie HD one.

So let's take a look at the four video sharing sites that advertise HD uploads:

For the life of me I couldn't figure out if I was able to upload HD videos on YouTube, so I just uploaded my test files and then waited to see if they would play in HD. It didn't happen right away, but eventually an option appeared under the video: watch in high quality. I uploaded a Divx encoded HD file from Quicktime and iMovie HD to YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and ViddYou. DailyMotion says that the file will eventually be encoded in HD format, but it has yet to happen; same with Vimeo. And with ViddYou you have to upgrade to premium to be able to upload HD content. The quality on Vimeo was noticeably better, but a little jittery (based on other HD videos uploaded previously). Let's just face the reality, web video is just not great when you're relying on free video sharing sites who limit your upload file sizes.

If you'd like to see the results of my efforts, here is the list:

My favorite site was Vimeo even though it has a 500MB weekly limit, but if you encode using Divx you'll end up with small file sizes and will be able to upload lots of videos. Vimeo doesn't give you a time limit. YouTube lets you upload as many videos as you want as long as they are under 100MB and less than 10 minutes. Same goes for ViddYou and DailyMotion. ViddYou allows 5 minute videos for a max of 250MB, and DailyMotion allows 20 minutes/150MB. Vimeo and YouTube displayed the movie in their version of HD, although YouTube makes you click a link to switch to the higher quality. I thought the Vimeo video looked better. All four sites offer all the basic features of a file sharing site, so it really comes down to two things: if you want the possibility of your video going viral then YouTube is your choice, and if you want simplicity and a less cluttered site to deal with, go with Vimeo. YouTube does have one up on the others with their newly added video annotation feature. Learn more about video annotations.

Next time I'll take a look at editing standard video files on a PC using free video editing sotware.

Playing with a Flip Mino Video Recorder

2008-06-27T11:54:00.017-07:00

I got my Flip Mino from Amazon yesterday, and I couldn't wait to play with it. It's part of my summer project to learn all about video, video editing software and camcorders. I first saw the Flip at the Sloan C conference and then talked to Lisa Young at GWCC who has one. Both owners absolutely love their Flip Ultra. My first impression then was, it's cool, but it's a little big for me. Then a month later they came out with the Flip Mino, a much smaller version of the Ultra with touch controls, better resolution and a rechargeable battery. I was in for that.

First impressions: HOT! This thing is tiny. It's smaller than my Blackberry Pearl, which I carry everywhere with me and fits nicely into my pocket. Dimensions are 3.94" x 1.97" x 0.63" and it weighs in at 3.3 oz. That's 2 oz lighter than the Ultra. All three Flip cameras shoot at 640 x 480 resolution, but the Mino has a little better compression using the Pure Digital Video Engine 2.5. It also has a omni-directional mic.

Of course the best feature on any Flip is the flip out USB "thingy". I plugged it right into my MacBookPro first, and although I didn't like how it makes the camera dangle in mid air, it didn't seem to be a problem. It created a drive icon on the desktop and when I click on it I was able to open up the Flip installer and install the software. It first prompted for a 3ivx player to install before I could load the software. Surprisingly, things were even easier on the PC. Once I plugged in the Flip there, a dialogue box opened up and asked if I wanted to "View your Flip camcorder videos using the program provided on the device." Sure!

The program was installed and I was viewing the videos I'd shot just moments before. I was also able to make some quick edits, which included chopping off the beginning or end. I'm sure I could probably crop in the middle too, although I didn't try that.

Next I wanted to see what I could do with the video. The software makes it easy to upload your videos to AOL Video, YouTube and now MySpace. If you want to upload to other services, it will compress the video for you and put it in a folder on your hard drive. I tried YouTube on for size, and as always the compression really sucks. I'm not a fan of YouTube, so I tried it on Vimeo, but I didn't let the Flip program compress it. I just uploaded the video from the Flip directly to Vimeo. Vimeo also compresses the video, but for some reason, I think it looks better than it does on YouTube. What do you think?

YouTube Video:

On Vimeo:

Yamaha V-Star Custom & Classic from Coop on Vimeo.

So far I'm pleased with my purchase, and although the price of the Flip Mino is much higher than the entry Flip's $100, I still think it was worth it. I'm sure you'll find a deal out there. I found the Flip Mino White for $20 less on Amazon ($157) just because it was white. You can also try out Creative's entry into this field for a lot less, the Creative Vado, but beware if you're using a Mac. The only knock on the Vado is it doesn't play nice with some Macs.

Summer Project Video Experiment: HD Video on Mac (Part 1)

2008-06-25T10:52:00.007-07:00

I'm working on my summer project, which basically is to learn as much about video as I can in 4 weeks. I did some research about video formats, codecs, commercial editing programs, online editing and free editing programs, video sharing sites, videocameras, and system requirements for working with video on both the Mac and PC. I compiled all the information over on my Coop's Word Wiki. Now I'm going to play with the 6 video cameras I own and talk about the process from shooting video to editing to posting the video online. I'll start with my best camera, the Panasonic HDC-SD5.

This is a full HD camcorder that shoots on SDHC cards. Those are just fancy Secure Digital cards. I have a 4GB and an 8GB card for this camera. It shoots in 1920x1080 HD in the AVCHD file format. The AVCHD file format is a nightmare right now. More on that later. But the video from this camera is beautiful on my 50" Plasma HD television. I love this camera.

So I shot some footage a few weeks ago while at Hawley Lake in the White Mountains, AZ. I'll use that footage for this experiment. I don't think I have many options for editing this footage on my PC unless I fork over the dough for one of the upgraded commercial packages I listed on my Video wiki page. Most of the trial packages don't provide support for AVCHD files. That's an upgrade, so I'll start with my MacBookPro.

The first thing I noticed is that iMovie HD doesn't support AVCHD files. How ironic is that - iMovie HD doesn't support HD? After doing a Google search I found a program, VoltaicHD, that would convert the AVCHD files to MOV files so I could then edit them in iMovie or Quicktime.They make a PC version of VoltaicHD as well and it only costs $30.

VoltaicHD lets you copy all your footage to your Mac, unplug your camera, then convert the footage while you (and your camera) go and do other things.

There's definitely some truth in that statement. It takes a long time for those files to be converted. On a 2.0 GHz MacBookPro with 2Gb of RAM, a 10 second AVCHD clip takes about 2 minutes to convert. Yes, it really takes that long. But the good thing is, you have to remove the SDHC card from the camera and use a card reader to get the files on the Mac, and you need to make sure it's a newer card reader because the old ones won't read the new SDHC cards.

One other thing to note is that the files are bigger after they are converted, so you have to be sure you have plenty of hard drive room. I only have a 80GB hard drive on my Mac, so I hook it up to an external hard drive. The converted output file will be about four times the size of the input. My first file was 11 seconds long and 17MB but the output file was 64MB.

I could use Final Cut Pro or Express to convert and edit these AVCHD files, but I'm trying to find affordable ways to make movies, and if you don't already have Final Cut, it's too expensive to go out and buy. FC Express is $200 and the Pro version is part of FC Studio which runs $1300. Ouch! Another option would be to upgrade to iLife '08 and iMovie '08 for $80, which is affordable but iMovie '08 is not worth the upgrade.

Once the files have been converted, the quality still looks pretty good. What happens is the AVCHD file is a highly compressed HD format and VoltaicHD uncompresses it into a Quicktime-friendly high definition format - HDV 1080i formatted Quicktime movie, encoded using the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). Now I can edit these files (MOV) in either iMovie HD or Quicktime Pro ($30). I opted for QT Pro first for ease of use. I can quickly trim off the beginning and end, edit out any pieces in the middle, and join files together into one movie. For more movie like effects like titles, transitions and a fancy theme, iMovie HD is the ticket. I created two movies on the Mac.

Deciding which output format to use can be confusing. You have to decide what you are going to be doing with the movie. If you plan to upload it to the internet, then be warned, most video sharing sites, especially YouTube, will compress your video into the FLV flash format. Your beautiful HD movie will look better than most on YouTube, but it will still look like crap. I tried out four video sharing sites that advertise HD uploads:

We'll take a look at the end result for each site and how I prepared my HD video for upload in my next post, so stay tuned. Making movies in HD takes time.

Zoho Notebook as CMS, Part 2

2008-06-24T11:51:00.009-07:00

This is the second post in a series of posts about moving from Blackboard, our current CMS in the district, to Web 2.0 sites. The first post, Moving from Blackboard to Web 2.0, Part 1, is about how I used Zoho Writer, Notebook, & Show to compile my course content into one place. This post shows you how I'm using Zoho Notebook as a writing portfolio for students and as a way to collect assignments from them.

As mentioned before, Zoho Notebook allows for users to create a notebook that can include a number of different pages. Each page can be created adding either a sheet, writer or web page. Sheet pages are spreadsheets, writer pages are word processor pages created in Zoho Writer, and adding a web page embeds the site into one of your notebook pages.

You can also add a blank page which then can have numerous elements added to it and can be edited just like a Writer page. The picture to the left shows all the options available to build a page. I like how the Add Audio and Add Video options automatically build a player for the media right into the page, and add HTML makes it possible to embed just about any kind of widget from anywhere on the web. The add video option requires that you paste the embed code from the site where you posted the original media, meaning you can't upload video directly to the Zoho site. There is, however, the option to upload audio files to Zoho, although I couldn't get it to work for me. Best bet is to upload the media elsewhere and add the URL to file into the page. It creates a nice player for you so the file can be played right on the page.

Students are required to sign up for Zoho and create a notebook. With each major assignment they are required to create a page in the notebook and post the assignment in the page. The notebook will then have tabs for each of the assignments, and thus be a collection of their work. Student can then "share" their notebooks with me, which allows for me to view and grade their work. Zoho gives you two options for sharing, and students need to be sure to share using the Read/Write option. That way I can add comments to their notebook and help make corrections.

This brings me to one of the things I'm not too excited about in Zoho notebook. There really isn't a good way to add comments to a page. You literally have to add a text box over the original content, which makes both the note and the page difficult to read. Currently I'm downloading the pages that need to be graded, grading them in Word using the tracking and comments features, and then posting the graded work back on the students notebook as an attached file. This only works if the student used a Writer page to post the assignment. If he/she used a blank page and added text, then I have to cut and paste the assignment into Word.

I've also had a little trouble with the links I get in the notices from Zoho. Whenever someone shares a notebook with you, Zoho sends you an email alert with a link to the notebook. The link takes me to my Zoho Notebook, but the shared notebook never displays. I can see it, but I have to click on my Shared tab for it to show up. All the notebooks shared with me are compiled in one spot, and I can open then all in tabs in my Zoho site.
Here is a shot of 4 student notebooks tabbed across the top, and a view of the first student's notebook with her assignments tabbed on the right (click to enlarge). This makes it easy for me to click on a name at the top and then review his/her work by clicking on the tabs on the right.

It's not even close to being perfect, but surprisingly it's working well. We'll see how the students are liking it after their midterm poll. Until then, we're moving on to the next step in our move from Blackboard to Web 2.0. - social network as CMS.

Moving from Blackboard to Web 2.0, Part 1

2008-05-30T15:24:00.012-07:00

I made my move finally to ditch Blackboard, our course management system (CMS) of choice in the district. I don't even want to start talking about why I must leave it behind. I'll just stick with the story that I prefer to blaze my own trail. Yes, that works fine for me. No headaches thinking about it that way.

So my biggest need moving from a CMS is a gradebook, quizzing/testing capabilities, and content management. I just need a place to keep my stuff. I have already moved all the other essential course elements out of Blackboard in favor of a blog, wiki and social network. I haven't used all three at the same time, but I've tried all three. My top choice is the social network because it incorporates more of the course elements I want to maintain, and the only thing really missing is a "wiki like" tool. It's not so much the collaboration aspect of a wiki that I'm looking for, but more of a place to manage course content. I want to be able to easily and quickly edit course content and make it available. A wiki allows for me to do that, but so does Google Docs and Zoho.

So what's it going to be? I'm going with Zoho for now, so let me tell you why.

Zoho has a whole suite of productivity and collaboration apps, and I like the way they all work together. It has the usual word processor, spreadsheet and presentation apps, but it also has a notebook that is much different than Google's notebook. It works more like a content management or webpage than normal notebooks which usually just give you a place for your notes. Zoho Notebook allows you to build content which can be quickly and easily organized and published or shared with your class. Here's a video showing how Zoho Notebook works.

The biggest advantage that Zoho has over Google Docs and other online suites is that it makes it easy to group your content and documents in one place that is easy to view. It even looks a little like a CMS. Zoho creates these tabs in a notebook that you can label. New pages and tabs can be created by adding any of the Zoho apps. For instance, if I want to add a spreadsheet to the notebook, there's an option to do so on the right side menu. I can also add a word processor document, called a Writer page, to the notebook, an outside website page which gets embedded into the notebook, or I can start with a blank page and build. Now this is where the Zoho Notebook shines. It allows for you to add all kinds of things into a blank page, most notably html, which makes it possible to add widgets to a page. There is also an add RSS option which creates a RSS widget.

So I set up my summer ENG101 course in Zoho and published it so I could share it with you. I don't have to publish the course. I can just share it with only the students in the class making it private as well. I created pages for my syllabus, videos, modules, daily schedule, module I, module II, module III, module IV, Handouts, and Final Exam. I created most of the pages in Zoho Writer and then added them to the notebook, however, the handouts page is unique. I added a blank page and then added the pdf files (handouts) to the page. I will make this page private and share it with students instead of making it public for copyright reasons, but it's great how you can upload and share files on a page.

An important feature for me is also the ability to add video and audio podcasts to my pages. Zoho Notebook makes it easy to do that. I created a "Daily Podcast" for students and posted them on the "Daily Activities" pages, and I created a video page to post videos. There's also an example of a presentation that I added to my page using Zoho Show.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how Zoho is working for me. I can't say that there hasn't been a few obstacles and bugs, but it is still in beta. In my next post, I'll talk a bit more about that and how I'm using Zoho Notebook as my method of collecting student assignments and building their writing portfolios.

*Blackboard image from: http://www.downes.ca/blackboard_patent.htm

TechEd 2008: Working Together... When Apart

2008-04-14T13:16:00.003-07:00

Working Together... When Apart – Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World

Dr. Robert Leneway, Educational Technology Program Coordinator, Western Michigan University

Web 2.0 now offers previously undreamed of potential for virtual projects and teams. But, what are some principles for getting started and ensuring success when working together but apart?

Leneway began by introducing the book Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything by Tapscott and Williams. He talked about the need for Microsoft to open up their software programs – used his son who works for MS as an example of how the thinking there has changed. He uses Adobe Connect to connect with his face to face students when he is traveling around the country.

Virtual groups – why do some succeed where others do not? Same for professional organizations – can they survive in the age of web 2.0?

Presented some traits and practices of successful virtual teams, but first, virtual groups that don't succeed don't develop desired chemistry due to their physical separation, lack of familiarity and time zones. They need social networking tools and the right mix of members, and they must:

establish network
promote communication
keep it interesting
find workable technologies to support your efforts

The biggest challenge is the inability to easily learn about one another and what each person is good at doing. Successful groups:

allow members to learn quickly about each other,
have a few team members who already know each other
idenyify “boundary spanners” with contacts and connection outside of the group

It's also a good idea to create an online site where a team can collaborate, exchange ideas and inspire each other. Assign only tasks that are challenging and interesting, meaningful tasks. Bring in outsiders to stir the pot and add a different perspective.

Why is there failure in virtual teams? He didn't answer, but added that virtual teams buzz when ignited by a question or a task so compelling and exciting that people from across the organization are drawn toward it.

Web 2.0 Tools

bubbl.us – concept mapping

Adobe Buzzword – docs supposedly better than Google Docs

Live Skyspace – new from Microsoft

Google Docs

Office Live, Workspace Live

Adobe Acrobat 8.0

Drupal for content management

IHMC Cmap tools http://cmap.ihmc.us/

Web Conferencing

Ning – create your own social network

Demoed Adobe Connect Enterprise Server. Used to be Macromedia Breeze. Didn't know about pricing, but it's expensive.

Grading Sakai's Gradebook --> B-

2008-04-03T18:42:00.004-07:00

The gradebook in any course management system is the staple of that system. It almost seems pointless if there isn't one, and it's probably the only reason why I still use a CMS in my online and hybrid courses. I've been using the gradebook in Sakai this semester and there are some things I really like about it, but I have to admit, after 13 weeks I'm still a bit confused by it as well.

First, I really like that you can create an assignment and then attach it to the gradebook as part of the process. Then you can grade the assignments and return them to students for the option of a rewrite. This gradebook is cool because you can then create another assignment for students to submit the rewrite to and then attach it to the original assignment in the gradebook. This is in addition to being able to allow students to submit resubmission in the original assignment. There is a good reason to have both options, which I don't mention here.

The gradebook can be a bit confusing. I'm still not sure about releasing grades, and I'm almost certain I will export the grades out of Sakai into an Excel sheet to make sure they are correct. Currently my whole class is failing, not because they truly are, but because I can't figure out some of the things in the gradebook to make all the grades display correctly. And as the instructor, I can't see a total grade anywhere. According to my students, they can't either, which is good right now because I'm sure they'd all be freaking out if they could. :-)

So I like a lot of the functionality of the gradebook, but I think the use of frames in Sakai makes it difficult to maneuver around and see all the students. It is a pain to have to scroll both left and right and up and down. I wish there was a way to limit either the assignments or the students.

With that said, I'm rating the Sakai gradebook higher than expected because it does have features that I've longed for in Blackboard, like the ability to resubmit assignments, and the issues I've had are probably my fault since I never had any training. But in my defense, a CMS should be fairly easy to use and learn without having training if it is to be a success.

Dumb Stuff in Sakai: Assignment Links

2008-04-02T11:05:00.003-07:00

This is my first of a few posts about things in Sakai that just don't seem right or they don't work right. First up is linking to an announcement. Evidently I'm not viewing this whole lesson space in Sakai the same way the developers are/did when they created it. When I create a lesson, there is always an assignment attached to that lesson. In the Lesson area I can create a page with all the text, audio, video, handouts, etc for that lesson, but there isn't a way that I can see to link to an assignment that is related to that lesson. I have to type out instructions to click on the assignment link on the menu bar to see the assignment. Or I can create a document of the assignment and post it in the Resources folder and then link to that. But still students must then leave that document and find their way over to the assignment area. Why is that? That doesn't make sense.

And to make matters worse, for a few weeks this semester, linking to files in the Resources folder wasn't possible. Oh, I think they think we didn't notice, but I did! Yes, I noticed. I had to upload my documents to Google Docs instead and link to them that way. Turns out I like that method better anyway, so thanks Sakai.

Sakai Announcement Dilemma

2008-04-02T09:27:00.005-07:00

One thing I learned early on about using technology in my courses is that I have to be creative and persistent because the technology doesn't always work the way you planned. I've been experiencing that a lot this semester working in Sakai. It really takes some ingenuity to keep the class running the way I think is best.

Let's start with announcements. I feel that podcasts and videos are best received if they are part of the initial announcement students see when they first log in to the course management system (CMS). In Blackboard, you can have the announcements be the first page students see when they log in, and I can make it the first menu item for easy access. In Sakai, the announcement page is buried on the menu. It is listed 7th and many students don't bother to click to go read announcements. There is an option to have a window in the first page in Sakai open an external webpage. I tried posting the course blog link in there but it just made a mess. Plus the available space is so small; it only showed 1/3 of the page, and it would redirect to the whole page after a few seconds leaving Sakai all together. This was not good.

What would work better is if I could put an RSS feed from a blog in there and it would show the posts from the blog as announcements. You can do this on the announcement page, but not on the front page. In fact, this is what I do. I post all announcements on the course network blog (Ning) and then I run the RSS feed through the announcements in Sakai. I do the same thing in Blackboard, and it works flawlessly in Firefox and okay in IE. But in Sakai, there are problems in both browsers.

Like I said earlier, I like to post podcasts, screencasts and videos, with the flash players, in my announcements. They play fine on the original Ning site and in Blackboard, but not so in Sakai. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with how I'm using the feed. In Blackboard I'm using Feedburner to create html code for the feed and I paste that into one announcement that then displays 5 posts from the original blog right in the announcement. It updates instantly when I post a new announcement. In Sakai, my only option is to add the RSS URL in a box. I can't add the html code for the feed. As a result, not all of my flash players will play the audio. Videos seem to work, but not all of my mp3 files. I've tried changing the flash player; for instance, the Google player will work sometimes, but the Yahoo! player will not. My work around for this was to post the URL of the podcast (mp3 file) right in the announcements. Those links work.

So I've seemed to find a work around for the podcasts, but there doesn't seem to be one for making the announcements a bit more accessible.

Using SlideShare's Slidecast Feature

2008-03-25T07:31:00.005-07:00

SlideShare has a feature called Slidecast which allows you to sync up an audio track with your slides that you post on the SlideShare website. When I first heard about this, I thought it was pretty cool, but I didn't really have a need for it. However, lately I've changed my mind. I can do that you know. If you're not familiar with SlideShare:

SlideShare is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar.

SlideShare allows you to post your slideshow presentations on the web. Formats accepted are PowerPoint (ppt, pps & pot), PDF, OpenOffice (odp); Keynote users on a Mac can "Save as pdf"; and the max file size is 30 MB.

Initially I wasn't interested in created slidecasts because I don't use a lot of PowerPoint in my classes, and I was starting to create more screencasts for my online lessons. I didn't think there was a need for a slidecast. Then I needed to recreate a podcasting presentation I did for MCLI for faculty on my campus who could not attend. I already had slides uploaded to Slideshare, so I just recorded some audio and uploaded that too to create a slidecast.

I created the audio in the same way I would create a podcast because essentially it is a podcast, hence the name slidecast. I used Audacity. As I read through the slides on one computer, I recorded the audio on another. This can be done all on one computer as well. It just so happens that I had two, so I used them both. Once I was finished recording, I exported the audio as mp3 and uploaded it to my server. SlideShare requires that you host your audio files elsewhere, so you can pay for the bandwidth. Then in Slideshare you just post a link to the audio file. But why should I type out how to do this when you can just watch a slidecast showing you how? Enjoy.

| View | Upload your own

For more information on creating your audio files and uploading to The Internet Archive, check out my wiki presentation: http://drcoop.pbwiki.com/HowToPodcast

Drop.io a New Kind of Dropbox

2008-02-23T15:34:00.007-07:00

I just posted a quick commentary on Drop.io on my podcasting blog. The post, Drop.io as a Podcasting Tool? explores how one could possibly use it in that manner. Over here on The Maricopa Experience I want to explore a different way to use Drop.io.

First, here's a snippet from my first post explaining what it is:

Drop.io advertises itself as a simple private exchange.

Drop.io enables you to create simple private exchange points called “drops.” The service has no email signup and no “accounts.” Each drop is private, and only as accessible as you choose to deliberately make it. Create multiple drops, add any type of media, and share or subscribe as you want.

And I would have to agree. The site is very clean and simple, so much in fact, that I didn’t really understand how I could use the site until I actually played with it. Drop.io allows for you to make drops.

A drop is a ‘discrete’ chunk of space you can use to store and share anything (pictures, video, audio, docs, etc) privately, without accounts, personal registration, or email addresses.

The first thing that caught my attention was the “no personal registration, or email addresses.” I’m not so concerned about myself signing up for yet another Web 2.0 site on the web, but more so that if I had my students use it they wouldn’t have to sign up or register for anything.

My students are currently working on research projects, and as usual common groups start to form. I'm thinking of using a drop for each of the common groups so students can share resources and collaborate with each other while they are working in their groups. Drop.io makes it easy to so by giving you a widget that can be placed on a course network or blog or even in Blackboard. The widget allows for students to quickly and easily make a drop to the shared space. Here's an example of the widget below:

drop.io: simple private sharing

Once files are added to the drop, anyone given the address can access them, and if you want for it to be private, you can password protect the site. Here's an example of my practice drop:

The above view is the media view, but in blog view the files are listed in order of the time they were uploaded - newest items on top like a mini blog.
Blog View: http://www.drop.io/soul4real/blog

Students can add files and links to their shared site via email, on the drop.io website or via the widget. It's too easy for them not to want to use it. They don't even have to sign up. And drop.io makes it easy for anyone to subscribe to the drop via RSS or email subscription. I really like this idea for a quick and easy collaborative tool. Have a look for yourself.

New Player for ENG101 Podcast

2008-02-16T21:15:00.004-07:00

I've been experimenting with flash players for my weekly podcasts in my freshman composition courses. I this one from MyFlashFetish.com was pretty cool. I'll paste the code into the course blog and see how students like it.

I made this music player at MyFlashFetish.com.

Created My First Quiz in Sakai

2008-02-16T20:00:00.004-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I waited until the last minute to do this, and I really panicked. In my continued efforts to test out the power of Sakai, it was time to try quiz making. I had originally planned to re-create my quizzes in Sakai instead going the route of importing them from Blackboard. A fellow colleague was already experiencing that joy, and I wanted no part of it. Well, you can probably guess what happened. Yes, I forgot that I still needed to do that- re-create and left myself with about an hour to do it.

Sakai is not very intuitive at all, and can be downright frustrating. To begin, I clicked on Tests & Quizzes from the main menu. That was easy enough. I like that you don't have to go into a Control Panel to create a quiz. The picture below is what I was presented with.

The word optional is what caused all the confusion. To me, optional means I can create a quiz without "Choosing Existing Assessment Type." Turns out you can't. I typed in a title and hit Quick Create because I was in a hurry. Then things got confusing. My only options for creating quiz questions were:

General Instructions

Multiple Choice

Multiple Correct Answer

Fill in the Blank

Short Essay

True/False

My first two questions I needed to add were fill in multiple blanks and the next two were matching. Neither of which I was able to create in this set-up. Yes, I was cursing Sakai, and myself for not doing this sooner. After fiddling around with it for a bit, I discovered that if I had indeed choosen an existing assessment type - Quiz, I would have been given more options for quiz questions. So I did that.

In actuality, Sakai ended up being easier to create a quiz. For instance, when creating matching questions, you get to put the the option and the answer in the same field. Sakai will then take your options and answers and mix them up for you. I hated that in Blackboard because it was always time consuming to have to match up your own question. You have to be careful not to follow the same pattern: A, C, B, or in my case, I gave a quiz and every answer for a matching question was C, A, B. The ordering was up to me, and unknowingly I created this same pattern.

Creating a fill in multiple blanks questions was easy enough. In Sakai you write the question with the answers in it, but you enclose the word that will appear as a blank in { }. In Blackboard you enclose a number in [ ]. Then you have to later add the answers. The Sakai way is faster.

I could find an option for giving the quiz a password. Still looking. I was able to set a time limit for the quiz, and I'm experimenting with releasing the feedback for the quiz after a set date. In this case, on Monday, after everyone has had a chance to take the quiz, students will be able to see the questions and the correct answers.

Students had two complaints about the quiz. The first was that they wanted to be able to skip a question and then be able to come back to it later. You can actually set up the quiz that way in Sakai, but I had not chosen that option. I will next time. And the second complaint was that on some questions, you couldn't read the whole question unless you could scroll sideways, and the only way to scroll sideways was to type in the box enough text that it forced the window over to the far right. That was strange.

Overall, creating a quiz in Sakai turned out to be a pretty good experience. It will be close to awesome if it had password protection. I still need to figure out how to grade the quizzes.

Created a Slidecast of my Podcasting Presentation

2008-02-13T20:48:00.003-07:00

I presented the first of four podcasting presentation today at GateWay Community College. Today's presentation was an informational session/discussion about the theory and practice of podcasting in education. I shared the information I have presented on the wiki and lead a brief discussion. Hopefully, participants left with a better understanding of what podcasting is, how it can be and is used in education, and what are the implications for teaching and learning. If you would like to view a shortened version of the presentation, click the play button below.

| View | Upload your own

This Slidecast was created on Slideshare.net, and it was made by mashing up my podcast with my Keynote slides. I had to export from Keynote to pdf in order to upload the slides to Slideshare. I tried using a PowerPoint file at first, but the export messed up the slides, so I went with pdf. I'm happy with the results.

Sakai is Not Playing Nice with Others - My Bad!

2008-02-04T09:51:00.001-07:00

One thing I love about Web 2.0 is how RSS allows for us to share content, move content, do with the content what ever we please. Well, Sakai is not playing fair. I'm using both a course social network (Ning) and Sakai with my ENG101 students. I do the same with my ENG102 students, but they are using Blackboard instead of Sakai. In both classes I post announcements on the course network, and I do two things with those announcements:

Burn the feed in FeedBurner and set up an email subscription form for students to use to subscribe to the announcements
Then I use BuzzBoost in FeedBurner to republish my burned feed's content as go-anywhere HTML. I post this in a static announcement in both Sakai and Blackboard.

Okay, it works like a charm in Blackboard. All the pictures and text show up, and any media displayed in the post will display properly. For instance, I posted a podcast player from the network in an announcement. It's a flash player. It displays fine in Blackboard and plays the podcast, but in Sakai, the player doesn't display and therefore doesn't play the podcast. That was a bummer.

It works a little different in Sakai though. For instance, instead of using the BuzzBoost republish html, I set up the announcement page using Sakai's RSS Feed option. That might be why the flash player didn't display.

On the plus side, Sakai gives you a link at the top of the announcements to subscribe to the announcements in a feed reader. But I don't understand why it's called: (Graphic Version) - Feb 4, 2008. I'm sure my students understand that Graphic Version means subscribe in a feed reader, right? Blackboard does the same, but it give a title of the feed to click: Freshman Comp II Network Announcements. Either way I've got some explaining to do if I want students to use the RSS feed.

What I Learned Today: I actually learned why the flash player didn't work just by writing this post. If I set up the feed using the html code in the regular announcement area in Sakai, it will more than likely work.

Podcasting in Sakai & Some Annoyances

2008-02-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

I've changed my mind about podcasting in Sakai. Mostly because Shelley got them to increase the limit from 10mb to 20mb. That was the same limitation with Wimba Podcaster in Blackboard and why I never used it. So with the increased size limit, I will be able to upload most of my podcasts. What's nice about having a podcasting tool built into your CMS is that it's all right there for students. They don't have to go anywhere, i.e. iTunes, to listen. That's not saying that I don't like iTunes U; I do. But for instructors who want to keep it simple, that's what you'll get. So I posted a podcast, and this is what students see:

Podcasts

Subscribe now by copying this RSS feed address and pasting it into your favorite podcatcher:
http://sakai.mc.maricopa.edu/podcasts/site/6276b28b-2fbd-44d8-80ad-4f1b3f7aa12f

Tuesday, 15 January 2008 05:13 PM MST
ENG101_ Module I-Week 1.mp3
This podcast is the Module I, Week 1 information podcast. I will cover the activities for Week 1.
Download (2.7MB MP3)

Posted by Alisa Cooper at 05:13 PM MST on 01/15/2008

I can create a link to this podcast in the Lessons area, but the link only allows for students to download the mp3 to their computer. I really want for the file to open up and play right in the browser. I'm not sure it will do that. I really like Odeo for this reason. They give you the option of several players that you can embed into blogs, webpages or your CMS that will play the podcast right there when you click the play button. Unfortunately Odeo Studio is not working properly right now. So for an alternative I'm using the Internet Archive because they have a pop up player that doesn't force students to download the file to their computers.

So that's my first impression of the podcasting tool in Sakai. I have a few other annoyances to discuss. For one, if you don't "finish" a process on a page and you leave the area, your old business pops up when you return to that area. I don't know why that is annoying to me, but it is. I could see how others might like that. For instance, if they left on accident, you would love for your previous work to still be there because you didn't get a chance to save. I'm in too much of a hurry for that. If I leave, I'm leaving for a reason. And when I go back, I want to start fresh. So I get lost often trying to figure out how to get out of places.

Not having access to stats is driving me crazy, and having to ask an administrator for not only that, but also to reset passwords is a pain. I'm just feeling like I don't have enough control. Maybe I'm a control freak and I want to be Sakai God like Shelley. Who knows. I just like doing stuff myself I guess.

What I learned today: Each student has his/her own blog in the My Workspace area, but it is not public and I can't see it as an instructor. That would be nice if I could.

Maricopa Girls @ ELI Annual Meeting

2008-01-30T12:05:00.001-07:00

Maricopa Girls @ ELI Annual Meeting
Originally uploaded by dr.coop

This week's learning adventure took me and a group of others from Maricopa to San Antonio, Texas for the ELI 2008 Annual Meeting, Connecting and Reflecting: Preparing Learners for Life 2.0 at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio–Riverwalk. http://www.educause.edu/ELI081

I've never been to an ELI conference before, but when Veronica suggested we write a proposal to present, I took her up on it. We enlisted both Amy MacPherson and Cheri Hebert to join us in our presentation: Your 2.0 Life: Models and Methods to Meet Learners' Needs in a Technological Age (Innovative Practice). It was a great presentation if I have to say so myself. I think there will be a podcast of it soon on the ELI website. Our interactive session reviewed characteristics of Life 2.0 learners and examined how they impact faculty and their teaching and learning practices. We presented data and research on instructional models, emerging web 2.0 technologies, and organizational strategies that address new learner needs and faculty instructional challenges.

I'll post more reflections from the conference once I get home. In the picture we have: Jennifer Strickland, PVCC, Veronica Diaz, MCLI; Cheri Hebert, EMCC; Alisa Cooper, SMCC; and Amy MacPherson, SMCC.

Students are Loving the Network

2008-01-22T18:38:00.001-07:00

I'm trying out a social network in my ENG101 and ENG102 courses this spring. I'm trying to make English fun, but there are also some very useful features built into the Ning social network. So far I'm loving just about everything but the adds. I'm not ready to fork over cash to get rid of them, but if I can make a compelling enough argument, make my division chair might consider picking up the tab. We'll see.

One thing that is really neat is that the students just naturally pick up on the fun things there are to do in there. I instructed that there were only two required parts: discussion forum and personal blog posts. Everything else they do is just for fun and up to you if you want to participate. Well, it didn't take long for them to fill up the site slide show. It's neat to see all their faces and their families too!

Find more photos like this on Freshman Comp

I've been using it to post my weekly podcasts too. It has an embeddable player that I can add mp3s to. I can either upload to the site or upload via a web link. I like to upload my content on my own servers and then link to it. This will save me later with having to deal with bandwidth and file size. Here's our podcast player from the network.

Find more music like this on Freshman Comp

In case you're wondering, most of the content in our class network is private, so content that students create for the class and a grade is private - only members can see it. But adding photos and videos is optional, not class related, and acknowledged that it will be public because it shows up on the front page. I could make the whole site including the front page private, but then my announcements won't have a RSS feed and I won't be able to subscribe and feed them into Blackboard or offer email subscriptions. So I leave the front page public, and protect the rest.

I'll post more about this experiment as we play with it more. So far we're all loving it.

Made Decisions About What to Use in Sakai

2008-01-09T18:20:00.000-07:00

This is technically my 3rd day working in Sakai. At the start of today's work, I really didn't have much accomplished. I'm really rushing because I didn't give myself enough time, and I'm getting frustrated that I can't just make it happen all right now. So today I decided to just create the first module instead of all five. I really like having it all designed and ready before the semester begins, but I'll settle for one module. So I had to make some decisions.

You have removed the following:

Announcements
Discussion Board
Forums
Sakai News (News Tool)
ENG101 Blog (Web Content Tool)

And have selected the following for your site:

Home
Assignments
Calendar
Chat Room
Gradebook
Lessons
Messages
Podcasts
Announcements (News Tool)
Resources
Site Editor
Statistics
Syllabus
Tests & Quizzes
User Profiles
Wiki

I'm scaling back my plans for using Sakai. I really wanted to try to use it all for everything, but I'll end up using it just like I use Blackboard. I have a RSS feed coming in for announcements. I like posting announcements on a blog because it's more convenientfor me and students can subscribe to get email updates. I can post via email or log into the site. I can easily add photos and make it look nice. CMS announcements often look boring.

I've also opted against using both the Discussion Board and Forums in Sakai, mostly because having my students keep a blog is very important in my course. I really couldn't figure out how I would have each student keep a blog in Sakai that was going to be easy for me and other students to read. I like being able to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the blogs and read them in a feed reader. Students also use their blogs (Wordpress) as their writing portfolio. I guess I could have used the wiki in Sakai, but I really like the blog route.

For now, I'll be using everything else.

I discovered today that you can link to files that I uploaded in Sakai. I created a folder in the Resources section and uploaded a few files. Then in the Lesson section I made a list of readings for the lesson and created a link to a file I had uploaded in the Resources section. We didn't have that ability in Blackboard. I really like this. It's like having a file drawer in your CMS and all your files are in one place.

My Sakai Experiment

2008-01-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

Shelley Rodrigo over at MCC wrote a grant to do a pilot study of Sakai, an open source course management system, for this spring. She got awarded and sent out a plea for some victims to volunteer to switch over from either Blackboard or WebCT. I thought anything that can get me away from Blackboard can't be all that bad. So here I am.

I just started playing in Sakai this week (Monday). My first impressions are that it is slick, full featured, yet minimalistic. There's not a lot there to make this thing look fancy, but it is adequate for conducting an online class in. I think it's more similar to WebCT than it is to Blackboard, so Bb users may feel like they're playing with a whole new toy. At least I do.

Playing in Sakai is teaching me a whole new perspective about learning and using technology. I now understand that fear that some faculty have. I fear that I will create something and then decide it doesn't work. Then I will not be able to change or remove the offensive object or tool. I'd be stuck with it. So I've been hesitant to jump right in. Sound familiar? Well, it's not realistic to think that I can create a complete online class in a week using a new tool. Remove the stress and Sakai is a user friendly tool. The Site Editor, similar to Bb's Control Panel, only has 9 options. I kept looking for more stuff. Where is everything? It's all built into the individual tool section.

As an instructor I automatically see editing features when I log in and go to a certain section. I don't have to go into the control panel. I like that. So I have to make some decision about Sakai and get that course built. I only have six days left.

Student Blogging & Privacy

2008-01-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

I love helping faculty, but I also love being faculty. I got this email today from a faculty member in the district, and I thought I'd share with others in case they had a similar question.

Hi Alisa,

I attended one of the podcasting workshops that you did. I had a question not about podcasting, but about something you mentioned during the session. You stated that you have students blog their journals. As the blogs are open for anyone to see, what instructions and or disclaimer do you include in your syllabus or tell students in class regarding privacy issues? I am helping a faculty member get her students blogging and that is one concern we had. Any advice you can offer would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
J

Here is my reply:
I begin with a discussion with my students about writing and the writer/audience relationship in writing. I tell them that writing that has no audience is generally not good writing, so they must take into consideration who their audience will be. We talk about how the audience will help determine not only what they say, but how they say it. Then I have them imagine that their audience could be anyone they want and that leads us to blogs.

When I have students register for their blog, I give them instructions to not use their full name - first name only. I have them Google their name (lots of fun) and we talk about how stuff they publish online is easily found by doing a Google search, so if they don't want it out there... I also remind them to not disclose any personal information. I give them a list: address, phone, ss#, workplace. Also, my journal prompts don't really give students much room for personal disclosure. Most are directed at the writing assignment and the module theme. Example:

Respond to one of the articles in the Module 1 Readings on Education (Your Choice). Comment on a particular excerpt that was enlightening or interesting in some way to you. Be sure to include the title of the article in your post title.

In the summer I often get students under the age of 18. I let them know up front what the requirements are and that they should talk about it with their parents. They need an audience, so if their parents object, they have to type up every journal and make copies for everyone in the class. Haven't had to do that yet.

Lastly, if you use Wordpress (my fave), you don't have to make the blogs visible to the whole world. You have options:

Blog visibility:
I would like my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Sphere, and in public listings around WordPress.com.
I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors
I would like my blog to be visible only to users I choose

The last options works well for only having students see each others blogs, but you have to get every students to register with each blog OR get every student to add all the others to his/her blog. A better option is to use a social network like Ning. You can make it public or private and all the student blogs are built into the site. Here's an example: http://freshmancomp.ning.com We are just getting started so it's open for now.

Okay, so I let J off the hook at this point even though I wanted to go on and on. I mean there are so many options out there. LiveJournal is another good one with the friends feature built in. And there's always a wiki...

Give Your Students a Little TV for Homework

2007-12-29T13:05:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't they just love that? I don't watch much television anymore, but when I did, I remember saying many times, "I would love to have my students see this." It was usually a program that had a message and could teach my students in a way that could hold their attention. Well, I'm sure there's still some good stuff on the tube that might be useful for students to watch, especially if you're teaching college students. And guess what, we don't have to bring in bootleg VHS tapes anymore. I'm not saying that is what I did or anything.

Today's new revolution is Internet TV. 2007 was a big year for Internet TV. Yes, we all know that YouTube is king, but it has it's limitation. For one, you're not going to to find the latest episodes of your favorite primetime shows. So that gem of a program that you're hoping to show your students is probably not available. And good luck trying to show only a piece of a YouTube video. But lately the Networks have changed their tune about Internet TV. Yes, there's iTunes, but I don't want to go broke buying shows I only want to show pieces of, and there's just something odd about spending money to educate. It should be free for education. That's my motto. Anyway, some of the major networks are bailing on iTunes.

So the networks are experimenting with offering their shows on the web. Read more about that at Last.100.com - Internet TV: 2007 Year in Review. I've personally tried NBC Direct, and I just didn't get it. What I do get is Hulu. They offer network shows in full length with short 15 second commercial that can't be skipped. Yes, I tried :-(. The commercials are so short you can't even get up to go to the bathroom in that amount of time. Anyway, what I like most about Hulu is that you can embed the video anywhere you like, including your course blog or Blackboard. And, I love this part, you can choose only the clip you want to show when you embed, so your viewers (students) don't have to watch all of Jay Leno. See below. I clipped only the part of the Tonight Show where Jay shows what a horrible job teachers in America are doing. How about that for a tease.

The whole show shows up, so viewers can watch the rest, including the commercials, if they want. Hulu is in private beta right now, but I'm sure it will open up soon enough. It will be interesting to see how much content they will be able to get on the site. So far NBC, Fox and Bravo are the big names. Quality is good too.

So the next time you're watching a television program and you think it might be appropriate for your students to watch, check out Hulu and see if it's there. You'll have it posted on your site in no time.

The Best Web 2.0 Applications for College Faculty & Students in 2007

2007-12-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year where everyone is making lists, so I'm going to make my own. For inspiration I've read both Larry Ferlazzo's at http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2007/12/21/the-best-web-20-applic...
and Silvia Tolisano's at http://www.langwitches.org/blog/2007/12/22/best-web-20-applications...
I got the scoop from a discussion started by Steve Hargadon on Classroom 2.0, which is a social network for educators created in Ning. I mention this because Ning is number one on my list, which has a clear theme: Communication and FREE. Have a look at my list:

Ning - Like the idea of a social network like Facebook and MySpace to link students and communicate with them, but hate the lack of control and total distraction that these major networks bring? Try Ning. Ning is an online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds. You choose a combination of features (videos, blogs, photos, forums, etc.) from an ever-growing list of options. Then customize how it looks, decide if it's public or private, and add your school logo if you have one. People who join your network will automatically have a customizable profile page and will be able to message and friend each other.
Jing - I know. Ning, now Jing. Funny. But they're both awesome. I posted about Jing from TechSmith before. Jing is an app that makes it possible to record screencasts for free on a Mac or PC. After you create your screencast, you're able to upload the file seamlessly to Screencast.com for free. Well, free for 2 months. It's only a trial, but hosting rates aren't too bad. I think it was $69 for a year for 25gb of space and bandwidth. This is the easiest and fastest option for sharing your screencast, but getting back to my theme of free, there are options for exporting directly to a file on your computer or ftp to your own server.
Twitter - People just don't understand Twitter, but it has some great uses for college faculty and students. I don't think I'd want to use Twitter in the traditional way with students, but how about this. Can't afford those expensive clickers or handheld wireless devices that resemble television remote controls? Try Twitter. Students sign up for accounts, you befriend them all, and when you ask a question in class, you can have them all twitter their responses. Display your twitter feed on the overhead projector and discuss the responses. If students don't have texting on their phones, they can use the web and still participate. It's fun.
TextMarks - Create a TextMark to publish information and let people get in touch with you via text message. Select a Keyword that people will use to access your TextMark. Decide whether you want to create a social TextMark for information sharing and chatting, or if you want a dynamic TextMark that interacts with a web application. If you chose a social TextMark, you may enter up to 125 characters of text for a response. Users then text your keyword to 41411 and they get your response in return. If you chose a dynamic TextMark, enter the URL you want to interact with and pull content from. I have mine pull content from the course blog, so students get updates from TextMark when there is new information posted on the blog. In this case, all subscribers to my TextMark get the the update automatically. Subscribers can also communicate with you and other subscribers via text without displaying any real phone numbers.
Zotero - I explored Zotero some time ago, but got interested again after a presentation at Educause this year in Seattle. I'm planning to incorporate it into my freshman composition courses next year. Zotero is a "free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself." It works with most databases like Jstor and EbscoHost, books sites like Amazon, and newspaper websites like New York Times, and Wikipedia. The list is unlimited. It allows you to collect the citation information as well as archive the page (for webpages). Read more here.
Firefox - Yep, a browser. It's worth mentioning again because it just keeps getting better. I can't believe my school still doesn't allow us to have it. So my students and I have it installed on our usb thumbdrives, required equipment for my classes. What makes Firefox superior are the extensions. Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox, from a simple toolbar button to a completely new feature. They allow you to customize Firefox to fit your own needs and preferences. A few notable extensions are Zotero, mentioned above, Greasemonkey, Better Gmail, FireFTP, and Answers. There are too many to explain in detail, so here's one example. 1-Click Answers is an extension that will save you even more time with AnswerTips that instantly deliver the information you are looking for. Just point at any word, hold the Alt key (Ctrl in Linux) and click. Upon letting go, an AnswerTip in the form of a pop-up "information bubble" appears on the screen explaining the term. It's great for students.
Gmail - I can't believe some faculty are still trying to manage student email using Outlook. Outlook is good, but it's not Gmail. And to be fair, I use Yahoo! too, and they both have awesome features for helping you manage email. I'm going with Gmail because our district will be adopting Google Apps soon. First, Gmail has superior spam filtering without having to set up a bunch of filters. It has integration with Google Talk and now AIM so you can chat with your contacts right in Gmail. You get a ton of storage space, so you don't really have to delete anything. And with that, Gmail has great search, go figure. You can tag emails with labels that now have color. And with Better Gmail, a Firefox extension, you can add a ton more features. For instance, I have now have my GTD app, Remember the Milk, integrated right in Gmail, and Google Reader is integrated as well. Lastly, although there a quite a bit more I could say about Gmail, the filtering system is easy to set up and use. Oh, one more. There's IMAP, so you can use it on the iPhone or in Thunderbird.
GrandCentral - You get a new phone number that does incredible things. The number can ring to any number you already own or all of them at the same time. You can screen callers, listen in on messages as they leave them, pick up the call during the message, block callers, and access messages online or have them sent to email or text message. You can set up different rings and greetings for individuals or groups, and you can switch phones in the middle of a call. All your regular phone numbers stay private even when you return calls. Voicemail box is a great organizational tool as well. Keep records of all student contact.
Utterz - Utterz mashes together the voice, video, pictures, and text you call or send in and creates an 'Utter' that can immediately update your existing web pages or blogs. Take a picture of a plant with your cell phone and send it to Utterz. Then dial 712-432-Mooo and leave a voice description of the plant. The two are mashed together and automatically posted to your Biology class blog or any web page for that matter. Think of the possibilities.
*jangl - *jangl allows for you to call or text anyone for free without knowing the number. All you need is his/her email address, and your phone number stays private. It helps you turn your list of email addresses into a list of local phone numbers. This is a great way of communicating with students via your cell phone without having to give up your private cell number. You can also block users.

This is for 2007, so that is why there are some notable apps missing. Let's just say they are valuable for college faculty and students, but they are "old school." This lists consists of apps like YouTube, Flickr, Wordpress/Blogger, PBWiki/Wetpaint, Meebo, Del.icio.us, Odeo and Feedburner. I still use them all, but 2007 brough a whole new crop of tools that make it easier for faculty to communicate and interact with their students. Are you using any of these tools? Leave a comment and let me know how.

Social Networking in the Classroom

2007-11-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

Up until this point I've found very little use in the classroom for the popular social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, Plaxo Pulse and the many others. I've literally tried them all, and I've lost count with how many profiles I have on the internet. My running joke is after I've signed up for a new social network, I do a search for Alan Levine, and of course he's always there. I usually lose myself in the service for a few hours, playing, tagging, posting, and adding all kinds of fun widgets. Soon I realize that the site is just too distracting to have any use in the classroom. I can't even control myself enough to stay focused on the goal. My students would never make it. There's just too much to do and too many people to play with.

The biggest drawback is the inability to separate your personal profile on any give network from a professional or student profile. Students already networking in MySpace with their friends sharing videos and photos of parties don't want to have to share that with their English teacher or their classmates they barely know. And as a teacher, I don't want to be responsible for policing what students are doing on their social networking sites. There would then be a necessity for more than one account, but I still have no control.

The benefits of using social networking are there if there was a way to limit the distractions. It would be so neat if I could create my own social networking site, I could utilize some of these benefits in the classroom, especially for online courses. Here's my list of benefits:

Building community among students
Harnessing collective intelligence
Centralizing communications (forums, email, direct messages)
Sharing
Folksonomy

Well, there are "create your own" social networking sites out there, but none that I tried were as easy to use as Ning. It has straight forward set up with a few options to have to deal with initially, and lots of color choices for themes. I was up and running in a matter of minutes. I know that's a cliche, but it's true. I just typed in the name of my new network and my url choice and I was off and running. This is my choice for creating my ENG102 social network for next semester.

TechCrunch took a look at some of the players in this field, including Ning. See their post:
Nine Ways to Build Your Own Social Network

We have taken a sample of nine of these companies - Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack, and ONEsite - all of which provide free baseline services, and reviewed them individually below. We have also included the chart on the right summarizing all of these companies’ offerings.

I've only tried KickApps, CollectiveX, and Me.com in this group. They each have good features, but KickApps was way too complicated for me, and I didn't like the look and feel of it. GoingOn and some of the others will only let this "begging for free stuff educator" have limited users in a network before forcing me to spend $20 a month. That's just not going to happen. I'm a teacher. It should be free for education. Ning is doing a trial offer of removing ads from K-12 networks, so if you're teaching the youngins, that's a great deal for you. As for the college crowd, we're stuck with ads for now. At least they're not too intrusive. We'll see how that goes.

Using USB Thumb Drives in the Classroom

2007-11-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about USB thumb drives and how students can utilize them better in the classroom. As part of my learning grant, I want to look at how faculty can set up these portable drives with open source software to help students obtain and use the software needed to do assignments in a more efficient manner. My idea is to utilize a few Firefox Extensions to help with the online research process in the ENG102 course. More on that later, but first let's talk about what a thumb drive is.

In the old days (I love saying that), we used to transfer files from one computer to another using floppy discs. You can find an interesting history of the floppy disk at Wikipedia. The first disks I remember using were the 5 1/4 disks that had a storage capacity of only 360 KB. Wow! That wasn't much space, and when we got upgraded to the 3 1/2 disk in the late 80's, we thought we had a lot of room with 1.44MB. Of course, we laugh at that now with the invention of CD and DVD drives and now the portable drives. I use my iPod as a portable drive, so I carry around 60GB of space with me.

But today it's all about size, speed, and convenience, and that is what the USB thumb drive gives us. I've seen them as small as a half a stick of gum. Do they sell stick gum anymore? Well, you get the point. They're small.

They are also convenient because they work in most computers without having any special software to install or any special hardware attached, like a special drive. Most computers come with USB drive installed. I can plug my USB drive into my Mac and access/save files, and I can do the same on my PC with the same USB drive.

One of the reasons we need these portable drives is because many colleges don't allow for students to install software on the school computers, so if they want to use something like say, Firefox on our campus, they have to have a portable version installed on their own drive. It's also helpful if they don't have internet access at home, they can carry a portable version of an office program and email program, so they can access their files from home. The glory is in the fact that what happens on your portable drives stays on your portable drive. Your work is always with you and not spread out on every computer you happen to use on a daily basis.

I'm going to focus on two specific portable apps for the USB thumb drive even though there are many out there to explore. Here are a few options:

U3 - Grand-daddy of USB App Platforms

Pre-loaded on select flash drives
Platform not user installable
Apps in compressed format
Auto-run apps via CD-ROM emulation
Released September 2006

Ceedo - Mobilize "any" Windows Apps

Runs on any USB storage
Apps are uncompressed
InstallAnything can move Windows apps to Ceedo
Can't auto-run apps
$34.99; 30-day free trial
Released September 2006

PortableApps Suite

Runs on any USB storage
Runs on Windows 98 and up
User installable
Not Proprietary
Free / OpenSource
Released November 2006

I'm using the last one, Portable Apps. My idea is to provide students with OpenOffice and Portable Firefox with several extensions installed. The extensions being Zotero and del.icio.us bookmarks. OpenOffice is a open source office program to replace MS Office. This is an easy one to explain - Free vs. $100. As for Firefox, one of the greatest things about web browsers is the ability to personalize for your needs, and then having access to the things you collect within the browser. Zotero and del.icio.us will do just that. As soon as students load up their portable app on any computer they will be ready to pick up where they've left off. Zotero is an awesome tool that help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. I'll be posting more about Zotero soon.

So get out and grab a USB thumb drive and see what you can put on it. You'll be amazed at how easy it is to carry your computer around everywhere with you. Just don't leave it behind. That could be a disaster.

Educause2007: Managing Online Discussions Through a "Participation Portfolio"

2007-10-26T08:12:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: Managing Online Discussions Through a "Participation Portfolio"

John Fritz, Director of Instructional Technology & New Media at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, presented on student use of online discussions and how to avoid initiating every thread or simply counting all their replies.

John discussed his alternative delivery program for faculty at his institution. Delivers a hybrid training for faculty and there is a set list of items for what faculty must accomplish in the program.
Evolution of Course Management System: user and document management pull students into the website. They use Blackboard. The communications aspect is push where there are announcements, email, discussion and chat. Then there is push and pull with electronic assignment delivery and collection, and there are quizzes, surveys and other course usage.
Online discussion problems: too much to read and grade (amen!) or there is not enough. Also students write to the instructor instead to each other. He discuss the major assessment problems. You have either quantity problems = how to avoid rewarding "me too" responses vs. quality + tedious to find, subjective responses.
The solution is to have a self-graded portfolio where students propose the grade they feel they deserve based on 3-5 examples of each. He uses a template for students to copy and paste their best examples.
There are three discussion interaction types: student to content, student to student, and student to group. These are three narrowed down types by John, and he does a great job of defining each.
He provided a great example of a grading rubric that encompasses these three discussion interaction types. Four point scale.
He sets fixed durations for his discussions to avoid the piling on at the end of a semester.
Developed a MS Word form for students to use for submitting their portfolio (evidence of participation). Students can complete and submit online. He showed us how to created the forms in MS Word. Works in both Mac and PC. He has the template available on the conference website.
Showed a video of one of his faculty discussing his use of this "Participation Portfolio." Video was in his iTunes U site - UMBC Teaching & Learning podcast.

Educause2007: Riding the 2.0 Wave (Successfully)

2007-10-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: Riding the 2.0 Wave (Successfully): A Strategy for Deploying Web 2.0 Technologies

Joshua D. Baron, Director of Academic Technology and eLearning, and William T. Thirsk, VP of Information Technology/CIO at Marist College, presented on Marist College's award-winning work with Web 2.0 applications. This has led to the development of an e-learning 2.0 strategy for the pedagogically based deployment of these technologies. They present their strategy and lessons learned from recent implementations, including methodologies for controlling costs, enhancing learning, and ensuring alignment with strategic goals.

Today's faculty automate teaching using technology. Automation is easy, yet innovation is hard, so we must rethink what we do. A conceptual framework for learning include interactions with content, subject matter experts and peers. Josh did a run down with how each interactions has changed from the traditional way of doing it, to Web 1.0 to ultimately Web 2.0. Here's the run down:

Interactions with content: Traditional - textbooks, Web 1.0 - webpages with hyperlinks, Web 2.0 - podcasting. He showed us an example of a faculty member distributed iPods with Belkin recorders to students so they could record interviews in a language class to create course content.
Interactions with subject matter experts: Traditional - I forgot this one, Web 1.0 - forgot, Web 2.0 - video chat with SMEs. Example was students learning a foreign language could chat with native speakers.
Interactions with peers: Traditional - group projects, Web 1.0 - discussion boards, Web 2.0 - web conferencing using something like YakPac.

I was a bad notetaker on this one. My Macbook Pro battery died on me.

Educause2007: There Has to Be a Better Way: Zotero and Research 2.0

2007-10-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: There Has to Be a Better Way: Zotero and Research 2.0

Trevor Owens, Technology Evangelist from George Mason University, presented a new way to do research on the internet using Zotero. Zotero is a "free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself." It works with most databases like Jstor and EbscoHost, books sites like Amazon, and newspaper websites like New York Times, and Wikipedia. The list is unlimited. It allows you to collect the citation information as well as archive the page (for webpages).

You can create collections (folders) within the program and drag and drop sources over to the collection to create your project or paper, what ever the assignment is. The collections can have sub-folders too. The sources collected are stored locally on the computer being used, so students could use portable Firefox on a USB drive and have all the content stored on their portable drives.

You can also using tagging for your collected items and you easily search using a search box built into the viewer. There is also an advanced search option to help you narrow down your searches. Another feature of Zotero is Notes. You can add notes to any source collected. You can take an unlimited amount of notes, and spell check is built into it because it runs in Firefox which has spell check natively.

To export your data, you can set up the preferences to the documentation style you prefer and then just drag and drop the citations into a Word document. Your bibliography page is automatically created in the correct format. This is a sweet feature. You have to use the added plugins for Word or Open Office to use this feature. OpenOffice is another program you can have students load onto their portable thumbdrives to help make this process easier for them.

New version of Zotero will be a server version - Zotero 2.0. New features include:

shared collections, notes, and public domain documents so you can work in groups
scholarly groups in macro adn micro disciplines and official groups - collaborations
ability to make recommendations on sources in the collections
bibliographic feeds so people can subscribe to your research collections
APIs will open the program up even further

This is an awesome program. I've been playing around with it and have already started looking at possibly writing a learning grant to help me implement it as part of my ENG102 Web2.0 course.

Educause2007: Empowerment by Sharing: Tools for Today's Classroom

2007-10-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: Empowerment by Sharing: Tools for Today's Classroom

Stacey Kizer, grad student from Pepperdine University, discusses how both faculty and students can gather knowledge and shape course content that is accessible anywhere, anytime. She demonstrates best practices in developing, sharing, and using course content online through wikis, blogs, podcasting, and social bookmarking. So basically she is using Web 2.0 tools to empower students by sharing. New collaborative computer technologies are changing the skills that students need, and we live in a culture that is becoming more collaborative, so we have to adapt.

Stacey is having technical difficulties trying to play a divx file on a PC that doesn't have a divx player.

She's back up and running now, as she runs down her list of tools, giving us examples. I've listed her links below:

Wikis: Wikiversity
Podcasting: Nature.com Podcasts, The Educational Podcast Network
Video Blogging: TeacherTube, Animoto
Social Bookmarking: diigo,

Educause2007: Integrating iTunes U into your Campus Infrastructure

2007-10-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

Apple Inc. walks us through the process of setting up our iTunes U site. Public sites have a different template than the private sites. Stanford site uses the public template.

Planning site: Looks like you only have two levels - course and then courses are listed in that section.
Authenticating users: site admin, instructor, student, public visitors. Authentication controls authorization.
Student authentication can allow students to upload content to authorized courses. Create a Drop Box tab, that only each individual students can see their own uploaded content. You can also create a Shared tab where all students can share the uploaded content that they upload.
Tips: Edit Track Preferences from the Welcome page. check Enable Course page podcasting at the bottom where it says Turn podcasting on or off for all Coruse pages within your iTunes U site.

Educause2007: Creating Engaging Multimedia Course Content

2007-10-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: Creating Engaging Multimedia Course Content Using a Database-Driven Template

Elizabeth Clark, Director of eTeaching Services at Boston College demonstrated how faculty can use database driven, media-rich content for their courses at BC.

She used a really cool art class and a class on Rome to show how video, music, photos and text can be blended together to create an interesting tour of the course content. Looks like it was developed using Flash and maybe Ajax.
Structure is important: multi-purpose access and dynamic interface. User driven navigation was really cool, and it has the ability to search.
Creating such a course was time consuming for one individual instructor. Need to create a template that all faculty could use to create similar content for their courses.
Built using PHP, MySql database, Flash and AJAX. Beyond that, I'm not sure how they built this template/application. It Includes timeline, mapping, slideshows, zooming, etc.
She gave us a peek at the application they built to create these templates. Very slick. It reminds me of a fancy updated version of Softchalk. I'm assuming Softchalk doesn't use AJAX.
All data is loading in on the back end and then added to the template.
Taxonomy: Used a tagging feature to allow users to corss reference items in the overall presentation.
They use Drupal on campus, so they're looking for ways to wrap this application into Drupal. And they are also looking for integrated user authentication. (Aren't we all?)
Lastly, they want to share this with other academic institutions. This would be a fun application to play with.

Educause2007: Presentation on Designing Rich Media Online Courses

2007-10-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Educause2007: Using Video Streaming and Podcasting to Design Rich-Media Online Course

Diane Zorn of York University takes us on a tour of her online course that she designed around ten principles for good practice for innovative online education. She's using Mediasite video streaming to create her content for her online courses. Read more about Zorn on her school website: http://www.yorku.ca/zorn/

Some key points she makes in her presentation, as to what instructors should include when designing their courses:

Include a welcome message from instructor (video or audio)
Give a website and course orientation quiz as first assignment
Include mentoring all over the website (video) - tips on how to succeed for each module or assignment
Provide lecture worksheets with podcasts (interactive lectures - pause podcast and go do something). Active learning technique (3).
Use time stamp on video to map out on handouts where instructor is in the lecture
Encourage reciprocity and cooperation by providing public discussion room, learning team private tutorial rooms, student ombuds-buddies, and online letters from previous students (tips from past students to new students) (2).
Communicate high expectations - email coaching and mentoring, code of conduct, calendar

I may add more to this post if I can get my hands on a handout. She keeps mentioning that we can go visit her course, but I don't have a link yet.

MediaRoll Those Screencasts into One Widget

2007-09-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Screencast.com has added a new feature to help users share their screencasts with others. If you remember, I posted previously about Jing, a TechSmith project that allows for you to easily create screencasts on both the Mac and PC. Screencasts created with Jing can be easily uploaded to Screencast.com and shared quickly. Now they've added the MediaRoll:

The new MediaRoll organizes your Screencast.com files into a sleek, presentable Flash widget that can be embedded on a blog or Web site. It's like a blogroll...for media files.

Here's my MediaRoll with a few podcasting screencasts I've created. I'll add the others later, and this roll will automatically update. This is cool.

Podcasting Question

2007-09-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've been doing the podcasting series this fall in the district, and it has been going well. The sessions have been full, both at SCC and Rio. This Friday we will be at GCC for Session II: Creating Audio for a Podcast. Workshop starts at 2pm in the Library classroom, LMC-138. The session is full, but if you're on campus, poke your head in and share a computer with someone.

I've been getting some good questions, so I decided I would post a few here on the blog. This questions is from Kim at CGCC. She asks:

I made a podcast in Garageband (I'm in your workshop this fall) for the upcoming
Oct session. But I don't know how to save it as a MP3 file in Garageband.
Save as just asks for a "where" not a type of file.

Here's the answer to Kim's question, as well as a screencast to guide her through the steps:

In Garageband, you want to "share" your podcast to iTunes. It will save it in the AAC format, which is good if you have an "enhanced" podcast - slides and chapters. If it is just audio, then you can convert the file in iTunes to mp3. If you don't convert it to mp3, it is still good for a podcast, although listeners can only listen to it in itunes.

To convert: Once the file is in iTunes, all you have to do is choose the file and then click on the Advanced tab at the top. Scroll down and choose Convert to mp3. You have to set your preferences first. Watch this 2 minute screencast to see how it is done: http://screencast.com/t/IcR0OuaZ

Still Don't Get Del.cio.us Social Bookmarking?

2007-08-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

Try watching this short tutorial by CommonCraft.com called Social Bookmarking in Plain English. It is a very simplistic explanation of bookmarking using del.icio.us written for the non-techie crowd. CommonCraft says:

We made this video because we want others to feel the power of social bookmarking and how it works to make web pages easier to remember, organize and share. This video is focused on Del.icio.us, but you could also try social bookmarking sites like Magnolia or Furl.

If you can't see the video, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

Grading Papers the Electronic Way

2007-08-03T14:58:00.000-07:00

I began teaching a paperless ENG101 course about two years ago. My students when I first tell them that they've enrolled in a paperless class, most are elated by my announcement. Of course, they are thinking paperless means no writing essays. Well, you know I don't mean that. Paperless means we don't exchanges papers printed out on paper in this class. Everything is electronic.

I've been teaching for 17 years, and I've got my share of essay grading stories, but the one that relates best to this post is the time a stack of student essays flew out the back of my truck bed. I used to carry a stack of papers to grade everywhere with me, even to the bar for happy hour. I would use every spare moment I had to grade those papers. And I always had a huge stack. When I was younger I had a Toyota pick-up with a bench seat. I could get three people in there comfortably if there was nothing else in the cab, hence the need to put my "stuff" in the bed of the truck. Well, some things shifted around when I turned a corner, and out flew a stack of essays into the street. I quickly stopped and gathered all the escaped essays, but not before they got a few tire marks.

I'm glad to say those essay toting days are over. Now all my students' essays are either in Blackboard or Google Docs waiting for me to grade them. It was a slow transition to get to the point where I could grade the essays on the computer without printing them out though. And slow for an English teacher can be agonizing for both the teacher and the students, so I had to find a way to simplify the grading process. What I came up with was using macros in MS Word to create a grading toolbar. The following screencast shows you how to create macros and use the grading toolbar in MS Word.

Screencast created using Jing: http://www.screencast.com/t/z4eNPt1rSC6

iTunesU is Finally Here!

2007-07-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Our 21st Thing is podcasting. I just signed on with MCLI to do more podcasting workshops throughout the fall and spring semesters. See the schedule below. We added a fourth workshop to share information about iTunesU and copyright issues.

iTunes U, Copyright for Podcasting (1.5 hours) (prerequisite: none)

iTunes U overview

Maricopa college sites
Depositing content

Overview
Resources

Blackboard Learning Objects: podcasting tool

Overview
http://www.learningobjects.com/podcast.jsp

I feel like an evangelist for podcasting. But with the addition of iTunesU, I'm hoping everyone will want to jump on the bandwagon. So far Mesa, CGVV, PVCC and SMC have functional sites. Some are live to the public now and others will be in the fall. I'm quite surprised we at South are not the last for a change to jump in on something new in technology. We get to help lead the way for a change. Veronica Diaz is working hard to get all the other colleges on board by creating an iTunes user group. Many of the administrators are having some of the same problems with getting up and running, so she will try to get them all on the same page so they can share resources and knowledge. It will be tough with most everyone at the district buried in New Student System implementation.

So, I'm playing alone now in iTunesU with not a clue in the world. I'll be blogging about my experience on my podcasting blog starting in the fall. If any one out there (in the district) wants to come play with me, let me know. I'll have our guys create an account for you, and we can figure this iTunes thing out together. You can view our site as a guest. There's not much there, and we haven't even skinned it yet. I posted all three types of media that you can use in iTunes, audio (mp3), video (screencast saved in iTunes format) and pdf files. But there's a lot to figure out still. Help!

Podcasting Schedule for Fall 2007

Getting Started with Podcasting	SCC (9/7, 2-3p) & Rio (9/12,2-3)
Creating Audio for Podcasts using Audacity (PC) and GarageBand (Mac)	GCC (9/21, 2-4p) & Rio (9/14, 2-4p)
Making a Podcast	CGCC (10/19, 3-4:30p) & GCC (10/5, 3-4:30p)
iTunes U, Copyright for Podcasting	CGCC (10/30, 3:30-5) & SCC (11/7, 3:30-5)

22nd Thing and Working Backwards

2007-07-25T09:36:00.001-07:00

Books on tape? I have to admit that I've never listened to a book on tape. Just seems odd to me, especially since I was a English Lit major in college. Where were these books on tape then? Now that I read for fun, I still like the feel of the book in my hand and the look of the words on the page. I need to see the word to fully understand it sometimes, and I don't want to be rushed through a passage that might need to be paused and thought about to fully absorb the full meaning of the words and action on the page. So no thank you; I'll take my books in print.

A few years ago, however, I bought the Kenwood Music Keg, a mp3 hard drive player, for my SUV. In the package was a coupon for two free books from Audible.com. I thought, what the heck; it's free. I downloaded White Oleander by Janet Fitch and This Much I Know is True by Wally Lamb. Both were listed on the Oprah Reading List, so I figured I couldn't go wrong with an Oprah suggestion. Let me just say that listening to an audio book in your car is NOT a good idea. I never wanted to get out of the car. I'd arrive home, pull into the driveway, and sit. My partner would have to send the kids out to get me. When I'd arrive at school, again I'd sit listening, checking the clock so I wouldn't be late for class. I spent way too much time in my car.

I like the idea of textbooks in audio form though. Audible has my ENG101 Handbook in audible form for sell, but it's not cheap. I would never require students to purchase it. After having a quick look at all the free options posted on the 23 Things blog, I might have to give audio books another try. It would be especially useful for literature teachers. LibriVox is really neat and has all the books I had to read in college. I think Karen should volunteer to read and record chapters of books in the public domain. She has a great podcasting voice.

Bye Bye Microsoft: Word Processor Review

2007-07-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

I probably could write a review on all the word processors out there myself since I've used just about all of them at some point, but I'll leave this to Zaine Ridling of DonationCoder.com. He does a very thorough job of reviewing the most popular word processors on the market, including all the free ones. He even covers the online word processors, like Zoho Writer, Google Docs and my favorite ThinkFree Office Write.

This is great information to share with students because they struggle with the high costs of getting an education, and laying down $100 for MS Word is not always an option, especially since Ridling agrees that some of the other options are just as good if not better. He says,

Telling someone which word processor is best is like telling someone which browser is better; I'll leave that up to you. As you've read through the review, there are many good choices, and always more than one that will fit your needs and workflow. And if you reread it, you'll notice that the major word processors are in a gray area right now, still tied to the desktop (naturally), but wondering how to tie themselves to the web.

Give it a read.
(Thing #18)

You Have to Watch This

2007-07-19T21:51:00.000-07:00

I was reading my RSS feeds when I came across this video in "Loads of People Are Feeling Web 2.0 Fatigue." on the Digital Inspiration blog by Amit Agarwal. That's not really what the video, titled "Did You Know? 2.0," is about. Just watch, and let me know what you think.

Did You Know? 2.0 - video powered by Metacafe

If you don't see the video, you may have to visit the blog. (Thing #20)

Twit Twit Twitter Useful Uses

2007-07-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

I've been using Twitter for 4 months now. There are some interesting blog posts out there about the Twitter cycle, so I won't bore you with my rendition, but I will say I wholeheartedly agree. I just can't convince any of my friends that Twitter is useful, so I'm going to try again. Right here.

I have 11 Friends. Well, a few are really friends, but the others are just people who I follow, like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. The latter is not the real Clinton, but Obama was:

"In DC heading to Howard University for the presidential debate @ 9pm EDT on PBS stations. Txt your thoughts on the debate to OBAMA (62262) 06:49 PM June 28, 2007 from web "

I have 9 Followers. When you follow people on Twitter, it means that you get all of their updates when they post. The question you answer on Twitter is: What are you doing? Whenever you feel the urge, just type in the box your response, and all of your followers will get your post. You can only post 140 characters, so you can't really say too much.

So what can be useful about telling people what you're doing all the time? Well, all fun aside, let's talk about organization and getting things done.

I'm in the middle of selling a house and preparing another for new tenants. It's a big project that needs to be organized into my normal already busy life. It doesn't help that the house I'm trying to sell is the one I'm living in. So I use technology (of course) to help me. First is Remember the Milk (RTM). RTM is a GTD (Get Things Done) website that helps you get things done by creating to do lists. I'm a list maker. I can't do anything until I have a list. If it's not on the list, sorry, no can do. :-) And yes, I do have a list of blog posts I want to write. I can check this one off now.

The hardest part of being organized and staying on top of your to do list is being able to quickly add to and check your list. The one thing that I have with me always can help with that - my Blackberry. I can use my Blackberry to quickly add things to my to-do lists using Twitter. I can also have RTM and Twitter send me reminders about things I have to do on my list. And if your friends or significant other is using Twitter, he/she can add things to your list for you to do to. Hmmm... I'm not sure I really want for that to be known.

One other thing I use to help keep me organized is an online calendar. I'm constantly checking my calendar, but I'm not always good about syncing my calendar with my Blackberry. As a result I don't get the reminders I always need to get me going. Plus, sometimes I just don't have the time to add events on my phone when I'm in a hurry. Sending a SMS text to Twittercal is so much easier.

Twittercal is a twitter bot that allows you to send a special coded message via twitter, through any twitter channel (web, sms, mobile, twitter client etc.) that will update your calendar at Google.

All I have to do to add to my to do list or calendar is send a direct message to either RTM or Twittercal through Twitter. It looks something like this:

d rtm pick up the kids after school on Friday or d gcal dinner with Jo @ 5pm on Thursday

Send the text and it shows up in Remember the Milk and/or my Google Calendar. Then they both will bug me to death to get it done or make it on time. It's great.

Here's a quick list of posts about Useful Uses for Twitter

If you think you might want to give Twitter a try, add me, soul4real, as a friend.

Easy Screencast Creation with Jing (aling)

2007-07-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

I just want to say Jingaling for some reason. :-) Veronica and I were talking about podcasting, Thing 21, the other day while we were planning our podcasting workshops for the fall. One thing we discussed was that podcasting is starting to be used in more broad terms in education. For some, the line starts to blur between podcasts, straight audio files, video, and screencasts. But if you've read the post on the 23 Things blog, you'll know that it's not a podcast unless you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the audio file. But hey, let's blur the line a little further by blogging about screencasting in a podcasting post.

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration (Answers.com).

I was reading about this new website that makes it possible to record screencasts for free on a Mac or PC. The site is called Jing, and it comes from a company called TechSmith. This company might sound familiar since they are the creators of Camtasia Studio, a screencasting program available for the PC (no Mac). I've posted about Camtasia on my podcasting blog. The program makes it possible to record enhanced podcasts on a PC, as well as the regular screencasts. I really like the program and use it just about everyday, but it's not cheap.

It's a great program and worth every penny, but I wasn't happy about having to pay for it out of my pocket since I primarily use it for school. I paid $179 for version 3, and then shelled out another $90 bucks for the upgrade to version 4 a few months later. I was surprised to see a watered down free version offered online at Jing.

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

Actually Jing is not even close to being as robust as Camasia Studio, but the basic concept of capturing your screen is there. It looks like it might be a marketing ploy to draw users to Screencast.com, since that is the main focus of the site. After you create your screencast, you're able to upload the file seamlessly to Screencast.com for free. Well, free for 2 months. It's only a trial, but hosting rates aren't too bad. I think it was $69 for a year for 25gb of space and bandwidth. Very reasonable if you're not a heavy user. See pricing plans.

I'm not doing the program or website justice. Watch their video below for a better explanation. If you find yourself needing to share screen captures and video of what you're doing on the computer, this might be a great solution for you. Go download the free software and give it trial.

Want some tips on how to create better screencasts? Check out: Screencasting 101 - Fundamentals of Screencasting

Tech Overload, but it's Still Fun

2007-07-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

I completely understand why so many professors shy away from technology use in their lives and in the classroom. It can be overwhelming at times. I can admit I'm overwhelmed a bit at the moment. There's so much out there to learn and experience that I just want to do it all. I want to podcast, shoot video, play in Second Life, explore iTunesU, get organized with GTDs, read my RSS feeds, listen to new music, play with Twitter and Pownce and Facebook and del.icio.us. And I need to organize my wiki, update my blogs, and I can't forget my 15 online students stumbling through ENG102 in a 5 week summer course. Poor souls. Better yet, poor me. When did having fun become so much work?

Ah, but it's still fun. It's like working out. It's such hard work and you get all sweaty. It takes an hour or more out of your day. You might have to drive to the gym or get your bike ready to ride. But once you're out there doing it, it's fun. And when you're all finished, you know you did something good for yourself. Tech is like that. It might seem like a lot of work, but in the end it can end up being something good for you. For me, it has saved me tons of time and helped me become a better teacher.

So here I sit with so much to share about technology and so many "23 Things" to catch up on, and I just don't know where to start. I want to blog about Twitter, but I haven't found a good way to describe what it is or share any useful educational way one might use it. It's just fun. I was just reading an article in Wired, "Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense." He has an interesting take on what Twitter is:

It's like proprioception, your body's ability to know where your limbs are.
That subliminal sense of orientation is crucial for coordination: It keeps
you from accidentally bumping into objects, and it makes possible amazing
feats of balance and dexterity.

I found myself shaking my head in agreement with this one. Maybe I'll start with blogging about Twitter afterall.

Two Days Without Tech

2007-07-14T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'll jump to the chase and say right up front that I didn't make it. It was a great plan to get away from the computer for a few days and enjoy nature, but I failed miserably. I just couldn't do it. My downfall started when I packed the car. Not only did I have a boat load of tech that goes with all my bicycling equipment, like GPS, heart rate monitor, data collector, and bike computer, but I also had good justifications for bringing my Blackberry and two iPods. Hey, I can't drive 4 hours without having some tunes in the car, right? And what if I break down? I need my phone to call for help. Never mind the fact that my car is already equipped with OnStar and a Kenwood Music Keg with 3,000 songs stored on it.

So I packed up the car and headed to Pinetop, AZ for Track Camp. Yep, track camp - high altitude running in the pines. Cool air, rain, star filled nights and no tech! Riiiiight.

One hour into the trip, as I was listening to my iPod hooked up to my car stereo, my phone rings. It has bluetooth technology, so I can answer it through the stereo system. It was a student with a question, and as I listened through the car stereo speakers it dawned on me that I should send a note to the whole class with my answer, since it was a good question. So after I hung up, I sent an email post to our course blog using my Blackberry with the information that the student needed so the whole class could have it. Fifteen of the 20 students have signed up for email updates from the blog, so at 11am everyday they get an email with all the updates on the blog. For the five that didn't bother to sign-up, they'll see the RSS feed from the blog on the Blackboard Announcement page if they choose to log in since I have an automatic feed set up to display them there. So with that completed, I continue on with my "two days without tech" trip.

A few moments later, I get a Twitter update from the CogDog, Alan Levine, on my Blackberry. That reminds me that I haven't updated yet today, so I type in "heading out of town. Pinetop here i come" into a text message and update my Twitter account. But you see, Twitter is addicting. When ever you find yourself doing anything remotely cool, you just feel the urge to share it with the world, so you twitter. When I ended up on the rim between Payson and Heber, I just had to twit about the beautiful views from up on the rim. Oh, and who would pass up a photo op like that? Not me. Whipped out the Canon Digital Rebel and took a few shots. Hmmm... Did I pack a camera too?

There's generally not much tech involved with running. You lace up your shoes and hit the pavement. When I coached, we discouraged runners from running with music players, so I'm still not big on it to this day. But I do like to know how far I've run and how long it took me, so I bought the Nike+iPod kit to attach to my iPod Nano and my hacked Adidas shoes. I was planning on logging some serious miles while up at track camp, so I couldn't resist this tech. It was to be my one indulgence. When I laced up my shoes for my first run at camp, I strapped on my Nano sans headphones and hit the road with 100 kids from all over the valley. My Nano reported later that I had run 3.2 miles in 30 minutes.

I'd pretty much given up the idea that this would be a techless trip for me half way up the mountain on route 260. Okay, okay. I knew before I left the valley. It's just a part of me I guess. I did find myself bored for most of the day while I was there. I even read a book, but my mind ached to be engaged in some technology. So I hooked up the bike with the Timex Bodylink system and hit the road. And later when I was finished I whipped out my MacBook Pro and blogged about it. Yeah. Guilty. I packed that too!

Meebo: 2007 Web 2.0 Award Winner

2007-07-09T21:15:00.000-07:00

I'm killing two birds... uh, I mean two things at once here. I'm posting about Meebo, a 2007 Web 2.0 Awards winner, using my Google Docs account. I use both quite a bit, but I'll talk about Meebo. Most people I know my age don't want to have anything to do with chatting on the internet. I'm not so much into it either any more, but I recognized the convenience of it long ago. I can remember chatting in the chat rooms on AOL back in 1994. If you don't remember, AOL launched a windows version with links to graphics in January of 1993. I think I was on Prodigy too at that time. I really thought I was a pioneer. I spent a lot time online chatting back then. It was a complete time waster, but I loved it.

Today, I barely have enough time to read and respond to all the email I get, let alone waste time chatting online. So I limit my chatting to work related tasks. I've found that many students like online chatting, also known as IMing (instant messaging), and actually prefer to send a short message asking a question rather than calling or writing out an email. With the latter two, you never know if you are going to make a connection, so you may just end up leaving a message and waiting for a response. With IM you know if the person you want to talk to is online right now, and your chance of getting an immediate response is greater.

But somewhere along the line, trying to keep up with different students and friends online left me with every imaginable IM service available. There's AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) and ICQ, Yahoo! IM and Google Talk, Microsoft's MSN (now Windows Live Messenger) and Jabber, an open, secure, ad-free alternative to consumer IM services. I have accounts for them all. You can imagine what a hassle it would be to have to download, install and log into all 6 of these clients everytime I wanted to chat, so it was a great service to see Meebo show up on the scene last year. Yes, there were other clients available that allowed you to combine all six services with one client, but they have to be downloaded to the desktop you are currently using (Trillian and Adium). This is troublesome if you want to chat at school because IT departments don't usually let you install software on the school computers. But Meebo is different because it is a web program (Web 2.0). All you have to do is log in.

You can either log into Meebo, which logs you into all of your clients, or you can log into one individually. Below you can see that I've logged into all six, including Meebo.

It does a nice job of combining all of your buddies into a nice neat buddy list. Your buddies are identified by the icons from each client like the ones you see in the above photo.

What makes Meebo and websites like it so revolutionary is that they make it possible for people to chat anywhere with out the need of altering the host computer by downloading files. The old way was good for education because you could keep students from chatting if you wanted, but with these new sites, anyone can chat when ever and where ever they like. Today's a good day, no IM's. I must be doing a good job.
(Thing #19)

Quick Update on Bluegrind

2007-07-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

I got an email from a developer of the Bluegrind engine today, and he was eager to help me troubleshoot the problem I was having with getting the service to work on my Blogger blog. He read my post that I wrote two days ago about the service, posted here and on my Podcasting blog. I sent him a screenshot of what I was doing, and he quickly discovered the problem and fixed it for me. I was then able to add the audio players to my posts on my Maricopa Experience & 23 Things blog on Blogger. I'm so happy, because I really like the service.

One of the reasons I like this site is because their main focus is not just to create a text-to-speech engine to make blogs more interesting, but to help make the web more accessible to visibly impaired users. Serge shared this with me:

As a little background history, we started bluegrind in the hopes to make the web more accessible to visually impaired users. We have a completely operational mirror site on bluegrind that has no visual elements and is completely navigable using audio and key presses. You can see this version by going to http://www.bluegrind.com and pressing "1" on your keyboard. The more sites and blogs that have audio enabled posts, the more accessible we can make the web, that is why we try to reach out to all our users and help them set up the audio player.

The mission of the Disability Resources and Services Office (DRS) at South Mountain Community College is to provide qualified, self-identifying students with disabilities equal access to a quality postsecondary educational experience by administering reasonable accommodations as needed. With more and more use of the internet, it's getting increasingly difficult to accommodate disabled students if we aren't aware of them when we design our hybrid and online courses. There are many tools available to help with this as I've mentioned several in the past: TextAloud, Feed2Podcast, and now Bluegrind. It would be a wonderful thing to have a service like this on every website. I have it on all of my mine now thanks to Bluegrind.

If you're reading from a feedreader, you'll have to visit the site to see my audio players above each post. Just click the title of this post.

Animate Yourself with Gizmoz

2007-07-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

Express Yourself with Gizmoz Video Clips

You have to visit the blog to get the full effect of this post. I've animated myself using Gizmoz. It was really easy. I took a head shot of myself and uploaded it to the website. Then I chose my fancy outfit and hairdo. That was fun! Then I recorded my voice just by clicking on the record button. It was fast and easy, and the end result is hilarious if you ask me. Check it out, and create your own avatar.

Gizmoz characters can be fashioned either as a self-portrait starting from a single personal photo, or created using images from the Gizmoz library, all in just a matter of minutes. The result is a customized digital character that consumers can use to deliver personalized, lip-synched messages in video clips and other forms of original content.

Stop Reading, Start Listening

2007-07-04T13:06:00.001-07:00

I was reading a great blog post, Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources, on the Mashable Social Networking News blog earlier when I came across an interesting website that converts written text from blogs into audio for easy listening. I've written about text to speech in the past on my podcasting blog, Podcasting & Blogging in Education, and I was just looking for a few more resources to add.

The Podcasting Toolbox blog posts offers up a few options in this area to explore:

BlueGrind - Converts text (especially blogs) into podcasts.
Feed2Podcast - Convert any RSS feed into a podcast.
Talkr - Convert blogs to audio podcasts.
Odiogo - convert RSS feeds, text articles and blog posts to podcasts.

I've tried and currently use Feed2Podcast. You can read my post HERE, but I thought it might be fun to see what else is out there in this area.

Bluegrind boasts:

If you like reading the news, you will love "hearing the news". With BlueGrind.com, you can have your personal news anchor reading the news to you every day. It doesn't just stop at your computer, you can take it with you wherever you go. Long wait at the airport? No problem, you can download enough for hours and hours of News and Blogs that you can listen to.

I can't say the Bluegrind was easy to figure out at first. I had to sign up before I could discover what it actually does. Within a few minutes I had added two of my blogs. I just added the URL of the blogs to my blog list. Bluegrind then gets the posts from the blog and creates audio - automatically. And it was quick. It displays all of your posts with media players on the bottom, so you can either read or listen. It looks nice, but the most amazing part is the voice is quite good. It's almost realistic. I could listen to it for a while if I had to. This is one up on the Feed2podcast service.

They make it easy to download the audio to take on the go. All you have to do is click the "Add to List" button on the side of each blog post and the audio gets added to a download file:

The Download File will include all the Articles you have selected to Add. Each article will be downloaded as separate MP3 files, which will give you the ability to play in an Audio player, and/or burn them on a CD.

I'm not sure if my blog page is viewable to the public. Guess we'll find out: http://www.bluegrind.com/feed.html?feed_id=38

You can offer up this wonderful text to speech service to your visitors on your own blog by adding a snippet of code to your blog index template file. Sounds complicated, and it actually was with this Blogger blog. I just couldn't figure it out. It kept telling me my code was incorrect. I was successful on my first try with the Wordpress blog I tried. The code embeds a media player with the audio on each blog post, right on your blog. You can see what I mean here: Freshman Comp II Online. I'm thinking it's a little overkill for audio on that blog, but it might work nicely for a blog that doesn't already offer podcasts, like this one. Too bad I can't get it to work.

I tried subscribing to the blog in iTunes after I set up Bluegrind on it, but it doesn't pick up the audio as a podcast. It only gathered the podcast audio that I placed in each post. This is probably the case because Bluegrind doesn't post the actual mp3 file on your site; I believe they stream it from their server. Podcatchers only catch the audio that is actually on the site.

So I'm not finished playing with this new tool, but I think it really has potential. I'm off to see if I can change voices. Enjoy.

Web 2.0 and the Implications on Education

2007-06-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to catch up on my 23 Things to-do list. It's supposed to be summer where I can relax and have fun, but I'm surprisingly finding myself busier than I am during the fall and spring. Teaching online is tough, especially in these shortened summer sessions. It's tough for me, but it's even harder for my newbie students who don't have a clue about what an online class entails. So for my #15 Thing, I'm going to blog about Web 2.0 and the implications on education. I'll work my way back down to the 12th, 13th and 14th Things later. (Photo by Peter Forret)

Thing #15 asks you to blog about one or two key issues about 2.0-ness and education. What's bugging you? You can use any of the tools we've introduced so far to find blogs on Web 2.0 or learning 2.0...

Web 2.0 is made up of some great ideas that are changing the way we interact on the web using key 2.0 tools. Rick Voithofer in "Web 2.0: What is it and how can it apply to teaching and teacher preparation?" says it best,"This architecture of participation marked by folksonomy, blogging, and Wikis, among others, is making the web a place that resembles an interactive learning environment that makes learning more personal, social and flexible (O'Hear, 2005)." We've been exploring these tools as part of our 23 Things adventure this summer.

blogs
tagging and social bookmarking (folksonomy)
collective collections and sharing
RSS and syndication
podcasting
wikis

But what are the implications of such tools on higher education? Well, Paul Anderson does a much better job than I possibly could in answering this question in his report: "What is Web 2.0? Ideas, Technologies and Implications for Education." But I'll share a few of my own personal views anyway since I agree with Voithofer's view that learning is becoming more interactive and social.

The biggest impact I see for students in composition courses comes with the use of blogs and wikis. Writing was always so static "in the old days" (I love saying that). Writing was always just an exchange between student and instructor. Many students have a hard time imagining that someone other than their instructor would read their work. But now not only are their classmates reading, but they are reflecting and commenting on each other's writing. This interaction helps students develop better writing skills because learning is more active. Check out some wiki examples from years past:

Freshman Composition Presentation Wiki 2005 (SMC)
Freshman Composition Writing Portfolio Wiki 2006 (GCC)

Blogs also give students a public voice and forum to express their thoughts and opinion. That is what writing is all about, isn't it. I try to teach my students to think critically and then express their views with strong arguments that are supported by sound reasoning and solid evidence. It's a tough road, but blogs, if used in this manner, give us lots of opportunity for practice. Here is an interesting student discussion of an article titled "The Dea(r)th of Student Responsibility" on my Freshman Composition LiveJournal Blog. Students are no longer permitted to sit in silence during a class discussion. They must blog!

If you're interested in reading more about blogs, wikis and student writing, here's a quick list. Go to Jstor in the GCC library to get the journal article.

Gelb, Steven A. and Don Dippo. "Audience, Empowerment and Student Writing: A Response to Harker." Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring, 1989), pp. 261-264.
How my students benefit from responding to each other's writing by Emma Pathare

Blackberry: A True Love Affair

2007-06-21T23:07:00.001-07:00

blackberry.JPG
Originally uploaded by dr.coop

Okay, I've blogged about my Blackberry before, so most people know it's an important tool for me. It's really part of my life, sad but true. It is the one thing I interact with everyday, besides my family of course. But what makes the Blackberry so important? Yeah, it does email, but that 's not all it does.

Because the Blackberry Pearl uses a qwerty keyboard structure, it makes it easier to type on it. On my device pictured, yes, that's my actual Blackberry, I have the qwerty keyboard that uses 1 key for 2 letters. It uses the SureType® keyboard technology that surprisingly predicts the words you type so that you only have to push a key once to select a letter. I can type messages quickly with little trouble. And the best part for me is I can type commas and apostrophes so that my sentences are grammatically and structurally correct. Hey, I'm an English teacher.

The keyboard is the key here because not only is the Blackberry an email device, it also has a digital camera, multimedia player, web browser, address book and calendar, IM client, and maps. So here’s how I use two of my favorite features.

Text Messaging using Google Voice Local Search & Mobile SMS

“Google Voice Local Search is Google’s experimental service to make local-business search accessible over the phone. To try this service, just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone.”

Calling information (411) is nothing revolutionary, but what is unique is that it’s free. Yep, and when you call to get the directions you don’t have to write them down. I can just say “text message” and Google sends me the number or address via text message. I love that.

With Google Mobile SMS, I can text message my search query to 466453. That spells 'GOOGLE' on most devices, but not mine, so I added the number to my address book. I send my text and Google sends a text message back with results. If I’m feeling like a little sushi, I just text “sushi 85381” to 466453, and wait for the results. 85381 is the zip code. Almost instantly I got three listing for sushi restaurants in my area. It’s great. I’m so addicted to this tool.

Blackberry Digital Camera and Flickr
Email your photos directly to your Flickr photostream using a special upload by email address. Most people aren’t aware of this feature in Flickr. You can send photos directly into your Flickr account from your cameraphone or your email program. So I’m constantly snapping pics with my Blackberry, and I just send them straight to Flickr. I hardly ever use my digital camera any more. It’s just one more thing to carry. The Blackberry Pearl has a 1.3 megapixel camera with a built in flash. It takes pretty good pictures.

Now you know I could go on and on about my Blackberry, but I’ll spare you for now. It’s time to plug her in for nightly charge. We’ve got a busy day planned for tomorrow.

The Theory of Collective Intelligence

2007-06-18T18:16:00.001-07:00

Collective Intelligence is an intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals, an intelligence that seemingly has a mind of its own (Wikipedia).

This is part of the theory behind web 2.0. If you do any amount of research on web 2.0, you'll discover that one of the main principles of web 2.0 is that it attempts to harness collective intelligence.

"The principle behind collective intelligence is that a conclusion reached in collaboration with and from competition among multiple individuals will be more intelligent than any conclusion reached by an individual, no matter how smart" (by msaleem on December 10, 2006).

An idea that encompasses this principle is: We Are Smarter Than Me. This is a group of authors who will write the book on how the emergence of community and social networks will change the future rules of business. This community of over 4000 members proposes to write a compelling book better than individual writers. It will be interesting to see if it can be done.

So with those two definitions in mind, it's easy to see why "collective collection" sites are so popular. There are very few things that I've purchased in the last 3 years that I haven't researched on Amazon first. I love the collective intelligence of the reviews. They come from ordinary people just like me who buy things and want to get their money's worth out of their purchase. I've joined the group and often add my own reviews, adding to the collective intelligence of the site.

This seems to be the case everywhere you go online these days. When I went to visit the LibraryThing website, I was really surprised that it looked identical to Listal. Well, the old Listal. They got a rounded web 2.0 make over and added some new features. For instance, you can keep a collection of books, music, movies, DVDs, television shows and games. Good idea if you have a good number of all that stuff. I can't imagine trying to catalog my music collection anywhere else besides in iTunes, but plenty of people do. So Listal is a bit more comprehensive than LibraryThings, but both provide an interesting way to collect books and give lots of interesting information about the books collected on the site. Below is a look at a Listal Popular Books page.

I'm not much into Harry Potter, but obviously others are. When I was on sabbatical two years ago, along with finishing my dissertation, I made time for some leisure reading. I ended up reading over 100 romance novels that year, and I housed my growing collection on Listal. We're (I recruited some friends) close to 200 books now, although I get criticized for not being able to keep up with the reading list (Hey, I'm busy here!). Listal let's us keep track of who has what book and who has read what. And for me, I love the tagging and ability to write reviews because after a few months have gone by, I can't remember if I've read the book (Yeah, I'm over 40). I'll be half way through one before I realize I've already read it. Oops! Forgot to check Listal.

One other book collection site is Shelfari, still listed as being in beta. They have a nice web 2.0ey flavor and they allow you to add cool widgets like the one below to your blog (Flash widgets don't appear in feedreaders. You must visit the site to see it). What's interesting about Listal and Shelfari is that they both allow you to purchase books, but the purchases go through, guess who... Amazon. Interesting. LibraryThing is a bit more diplomatic, giving you links to several booksellers. I think you'll be happy with any of these collection sites, so if you have a growing collection of books, or any media for that matter, give one of these a try.

Do Your Students Call You?

2007-06-18T15:23:00.001-07:00

"Are you crazy!" "I don't want students calling me at home!" Yep, I hear that all the time. My co-workers think I'm crazy, but I can't figure out how I'm suppose to help online students, or face-to-face for that matter, without giving them access to me in the evenings. That is when they do their homework, after work, after life settles down. Well, the phone calls and the email can be overwhelming at times, and there are some good web 2.0 tools to help manage it all. I'll share some tips on how to manage phone calls and email in two posts.

Let's start with the phone. I love email, but I hate talking on the phone. And when I do talk on the phone, it's not for socializing. I like to get right to the point and get off. I'm a woman of few spoken words. So I am quick to let a call go to voicemail so I can listen to what the caller wants before I have to talk to him/her. But what a pain to have to wait until the call is over and then you have to dial into voicemail to listen. With GrandCentral you don't have to do that. When someone calls on your phone, you can choose option 3 to send the call to voice mail and listen in on the call. At any point in the call you can hit the star key to take the call. I love it.

GrandCentral is a web 2.0 company that touts "one phone number for life."
It's a really interesting concept. I give my students my GrandCentral number, and then I can determine which of my phones I want to ring when someone calls that number. So if a student calls my GC number and I'm in my office, my office phone will ring. If I'm out and about, my cell phone will ring, or if I'm at home, my home phone will ring. But the best part is if I don't want to be interrupted I can set my GC number to go directly to voicemail. Here is a list of features that GC offers:

Check your messages by phone, email, or online
Keep all your messages online for eternity
Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail)
Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
Click-to-dial from your address book
Surprise your callers with a custom voicemail greeting
Turn your Mp3s into the ring tones your callers hear
Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

I use GC like a course management system in that I keep track of all phone correspondence. Sometimes there is a need to have a record of these things, but I can say I rarely record conversations. I do like to have phone numbers handy in case I need to call a student. And I like that GC keeps a record of my calls made. I can also add notes to the messages to help me keep track of the conversation. I make notes like, "Third call to student, and still no response."

I spend a lot of time online (who would have guessed?), and sometimes it's easier to just call from the computer. I can just choose the number and click dial. GC rings my phone, which ever one I choose (home, office, cell) and when I pick it up, it dials the number I want to call automatically. The person you call only sees your GC number and not the number of the phone you use. I also like listening to my voicemail online. When I get a message, I get an email with the mp3 voicemail embedded. I can just click and listen.

I can also set up personalized messages to groups or individuals, so that when they call and get voicemail they will have a personalized message. For instance, I can set up a message for students that lets them know that I am unavailable for the day and to check the Help Boards for answers to their questions. But when a friend calls, they get a different message that says come join me at the bar. :-)

If a student or anyone gets your number and you don't want to receive calls from them any more, you can block that number from calling you in the future. Sweeeet! So I now give my GC number out freely. Go ahead, call me: 602-325-3259.

Check it out. It's free. If you like these features, but are happy with your current number, check out YouMail. I use that too.

Time's a Wasting

2007-06-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, I call foul on Christine and Karen. How can I get any work done when you bring up Last.fm and iLike? It's music. I love music. I already need a bigger iPod (20gb presently) because I have so much music and podcasts crammed on it. Time for 60 or 80gb or maybe an iPhone. Nah, that's only 4gb. I listen to music everyday. What else can I do on my hour long commute every morning and afternoon? I refuse to act like an adult and listen to talk radio. Podcasts don't count as talk radio do they?

So, I've used Last.fm for a while now although I always forget to turn on my scrobbler. What's a scrobbler you ask. It's a little program that you download from the Last.fm site that works with your music player on your computer. It then tracks what you listen to and uploads the data to your Last.fm profile page. From there you are given recommendations of music based on your listening history. If you have friends on Last.fm, they can leave recommendations as well. And you also have neighbors, people who listen to music similar to what you listen to.

I like exploring and listening to music I find on the site. It's interesting to see what people like. I'm sure people think my tastes are strange. I can go from listening to country to listening to rap and then back to alternative. I like it all except for heavy metal. The one thing that is amazing about music is there is always something new and you will never know every artist out there.

I Love Mosaics

2007-06-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Mosaics are awesome if you understand the concept behind them. I can say I didn't really understand how they worked until recently. While under orders from Christine to play around and have fun "in the spirit of the 7 1/2th Habit," I lost myself in web 2.0 for about 2 hours. I made badges, buttons, favicons, warning signs, email icons, book covers and finally mosaics.

Images used in the creation of image mosaics are collected from Flickr and copyright of their respective owners.

So here's my face made up from a collection of smaller photos gathered from Flickr. The mosaic was created using The Image Mosaic Generator. If you click on the image and blow it up to 100%, you will see that the part of the red in my lips is made from a red stop sign and my nose has a Shell sign on it. My face is made up of a conglomeration of things including a cat, many body parts, and hundreds of faces. It's so cool that it still looks like me. I guess that's the whole idea of a mosaic.

Here are some cool mosaic links to explore:

post-it mosaic howto

Create photo mosaics with Mosaickr

Create huge mosaics to hang on your wall

I have a large blank white wall in my new office at SMC that I need to decorate. I left it blank for a whole semester because I wasn't sure I was staying. I think I might just create a huge mosaic with The Rasterbator to fill that wall. The mailable mosaic is a great idea too. It would be fun to send C's mother in NJ a collection of postcards that she can piece together in a mosaic once she gets them all. So many ideas, so little time. I hope you have as much fun playing as I did.