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Edmund Burke |
As last week's show celebrated the final week of
the spring semester, this one celebrates the first
week of the summer semester. We have exactly 2
days between semesters--and even that is not
accurate, since there are technically still some
spring semester classes going. We now also run
a growing number of 4-week "intersession" classes,
classified as summer semester classes. So it
just keeps keeping on. The up side: more
educational opportunities for the community.
The down side: no time to perform maintenance
to online systems.
This was a really big week for upgrades and
downloads. Starting with us. Dave
performed a tech support miracle in getting our
large and growing Blackboard system upgraded to
version 7.1 on Saturday, May 20. After a 21
hour stint, he still did not have time to integrate
the new database server into the server platform.
That will have to be done this Sunday, from noon to
6pm. We will discuss the upgrade during his
Blackboard feature of the week. There were
also big upgrades and previews from Microsoft and
Sun. Haydn will discuss "How to Teach Online
Like a Pro" in his teaching
with technology segment. In my tech talk topic
I have a "Dear Blackboard" open letter to our
Courseware Management System producer.
Frustration will be evident, but fairness will be
maintained during the finger pointing, I hope.
Finally, for our gizmo of the week, the iPod has
been boomboxified.
Palomar Tech and Download News
- The Blackboard system will be unavailable
Sunday, May 28 for maintenance. We will
be backing up system data, and integrating the new database server
into the server platform mix. We were
unable to complete this task last weekend, and
it is urgent that it be completed.
The primary impact of the new 7.1 is to fix the
course copy feature, to deploy a new, and more
full-featured, discussion board and grader, to
add some other test deployment options, and
perform other bug fixes and interface
improvements, including cross-platform,
cross-browser support for the visual text editor
box.
Click here for a more complete list of
upgrade features.
-
Microsoft made a good deal of Beta software
available for download this week.
Remember, this is Beta software:
-
Windows media player 11 Beta is now
available for download. It looks
cool--Windows Vista-ish--and is much more visual
in it's presentation of the music library.
The big change is its association with URGE, the
online music store from MTV. The download
web site has a number of excellent resources for
learning about the new player.
-
Office 2007 Beta 2 is publicly available for
download this week. It looks quite
impressive. Native RSS in Outlook, blog
posting from Word, a slew of new galleries and
help features, integration with Office Live, and
a multiplicity of "scenario" choices, meaning
different combinations of software bundles to
purchase. Released along with the Office
standard products were betas of Visio, OneNote,
Sharepoint Forms Designer, and Groove, a new
collaboration tool.
-
The
Microsoft Expression Web Designer (the
replacement for FrontPage) first "Community
Technology Preview" (read Beta 1) is now
available for download and inspection. It
is much more visual-studio-ish, but seems to
have kept all the old FrontPage features,
including support for server extensions, just in
different places. There will be a Web
Designer Express available later, which will
probably become the tool of choice for
light-duty web authors, but if you want to look
at its big brother now, click the link above.
- New also from Sun this week is an upgrade to
their java run-time environment for Internet
Explorer. This looms large in concert with
the Blackboard upgrade. If you have
automatic java updates turned on, you will have
been prompted to upgrade the first time you
tried to use a java feature--like the visual
text box editor in Blackboard--to upgrade.
If not,
here is the link--remember, for IE users--to
the Sun web site. The upgrade is numbered
"version 5 upgrade 6.
How
do I know what java version I am using?
For Windows XP users, go to the Control Panel,
double-click the java icon (in classic view),
then click the "About" button:
How do I know what java certificates I have
installed?
On that same java control panel, click the
Security tab, then click the Certificates
button.
Note that the two certificates shown in the
illustration above were installed as a result of
using controls in Blackboard. The "Design
Sciences" certificate was required to use the
visual text editor, the "Horizon Wimba" one to
use the voice tools. Please note
that these can be browser specific, and you may
not see exactly what is illustrated here if you
are using a browser other than IE.
Be prepared for these java controls, however,
when you use Blackboard. The first time
you attempt to use the new visual text editor
(the wysiwyg input box) you will be challenged
to accept a certificate, as illustrated below:
This application should be trusted for
Blackboard purposes and run.
- The six and eight week summer semester
classes begin Monday, June 19.
Training Opportunities
This week the @ONE system announced their
summer training schedule. They offer what
are called "lunch 'n learn"
desktop seminars, facilitated
online courses, and an in-person
summer institute, which will be held at San
Diego City College this year from June 13-15,
followed by a 1-day
Teaching Online workshop at the same location on
June 16. Of special interest should be the
facilitated online course they are offering "Introduction
to Teaching with Blackboard 6.0" from July
24-August 11.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
David's topic this week is the joys and despairs of
upgrading Blackboard. Fresh from his 21 hour
stint last weekend, and another 6 hour stint coming
this weekend--and in the afterglow of certain
critical faculty responses--he reflects on what's
wrong with the way things are done, and what needs
to be done to make it better.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
17:30]
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Haydn's topic is "Tips and Tricks from the Field:
How to Teach Online Like a Pro."
Haydn's Notes [PDF]
Links
King's translation of Chickering
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
14:04]
Tech-Talk-Topic
An open letter to Blackboard
Dear Blackboard,
We like you. We really do. But
listen, we are tired of being your beta testers.
We never volunteered to be beta testers.
We pay a very substantial amount of money for
your Learning System product each year, and expect
it to work correctly once upgrades are publicly released.
You claim to have a rigorous beta testing
program in place, but why are there so many
simple bugs in the released product? We
are tired of discovering bugs, and being the
first to report them, and what's far, far worse,
having to face our faculty with a faulty
product. It makes us look bad, and it
makes you look worse.
We chose Blackboard as our course management
system in the first place for ease of use, and
generally it has maintained its ease of use, but
with growing complexity, both little and big
bugs have become more common, and the wait time
between fixes has extended.
We lived for 6 months with a defective course
copy feature in Blackboard 7.0. It was fixed in 7.1
(which in fact was our compelling reason to
upgrade), but
other bugs--granted not so serious, though final
reports are not yet in--have revealed
themselves. Before our upgrade, we had to
resort to turning off the course copy feature in instructor
control panels because it just did not work
correctly. (Bear in mind, we are an institution that
requires our faculty to copy their materials to
new course shells each semester). Then we
waited, and waited, for you to fix the problem. What is worse, it was very difficult
to get our technical services rep. to even understand the
problem in the first place. She
finally did and passed it on to an engineer for
resolution. Bear in mind, this took
months.
I know life with niche software can be an
adventure, if you can call education a "niche."
We realize the complexity of the
situation, especially in the cross-platform,
cross-browser world, but you are the ones making
the big bucks, and we are the ones paying the
big bucks--at least, by our standards--so I think we have a right to demand
a more finished product.
Our upgrade to the Blackboard Learning System
from version 7.0 to 7.1 recently is what has
prompted this outspoken letter from
someone who usually takes a very understanding
view of the difficulties inherent in such
complex systems. We discovered simple,
basic bugs, like navigation bugs in the bread
crumb trail in the discussion board, for
example, which causes
an alarming database error message to appear. There are
instances of several other bugs in the "totally
rebuilt" discussion board system which should
have been caught before the product was released
to us.
I hesitate to mention how much work we
had to devote to cleaning up our discussion
board data, which had previously been corrupted
by an earlier Blackboard upgrade, before we
could do the 7.1 upgrade. It is
only through what I would call a miracle that we got past the first
line of " technical help" provided by Blackboard
and found a truly skilled engineer who
understood the problem and wrote a custom script
to clean up our data. Without his script,
upgrade would not have been possible. We (and you) had
to devote about 3 days to the construction of
the custom cleanup script. And then we had
to devote another couple of days to testing it
and applying it to our live data. It would
not have been necessary had your updater not
corrupted the discussion board data in the first
place. That problem could have been solved
by more thorough testing on your part.
We know you have no real competition any
longer in the course management market--which is
alarming from any point of view except yours. We
also know that this is by far an easier and
better implemented upgrade than the one to
version 6.0, which was truly disastrous and made
us seriously consider abandoning you for WebCT.
An option that is no longer available.
We are not about to abandon you as a vendor.
We think, on the whole, you produce an excellent
product that can be used in wonderful ways by
our faculty. I just want you to know how
frustrating it is for us to work so hard, and
then have to deal with criticisms due to your
lack of care in delivering a quality final
product. We want to remain your customer.
We have two simple requests:
- Improve your Beta testing, so products
really are thoroughly tested in real life
environments before being released.
- Provide better first-line technical
representatives who can understand technical
issues and escalate problems on a timely
basis.
You can afford it. You cannot afford
not to take action on these requests.
Terry Gray
Academic Technology Supervisor
Palomar College
Listen to this segment
[mp3 - Play time
= 5:00]
Gizmo of the week
The iPod Boombox. Who says the iPod
only lives in the suburbs? Take it into the
ghetto with the iPod boombox. It is called the
iMove, from Memorex. "This is quite an
interesting product from Memorex. It’s a boombox
sized iPod docking system that is compatible with
the iPod Video (5th gen. with click wheel), the iPod
Photo / U2 (with click wheel), the iPod / U2 (4th
gen. with click wheel), the iPod Nano and the iPod
Mini. Everything is controlled using the wirless
remote control." It also has a built-in
AM/FM radio and a standard line-in jack for other
devices. It uses 8 (count 'em) "D" batteries,
and is operated with a wireless remote control.
Don't lose the remote! You will be able to buy
it at Walmart, but apparently not yet, because a
search of walmart.com did not show it in stock.
(Source:
Fosfor)
Music
The
music for today's show was provided by
Magnatune.com, and is used through their
Creative Commons license for podcasts. Today's
album was
Magdalena by
Jolaresa. "Joglaresa
is a well-established medieval music ensemble and
are leaders in the improvisational and
cross-cultural aspects of their repertoire."
We
used tracks 1: "Magdalena degna da laudare;"
3: "Ave
clari generis dulcis Magdalena;" 5: "Victime
paschali laudes;" 6: "Orturum virentium;" 8: "Novum
festum celebremus;" 13: "O Maria Magdalena;" 18:
"Ave plena Magdalena;" 19: "O Maria prius via;" and
23: "O Madalena ch'andasti al sepolcro."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
"Laziness is
nothing more than the habit of resting before
you get tired." ~ Jules Renard
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Podcast
for May 26, 2006 - Episode 19
