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The Chandos Portrait |
I'm back, unburied from a week off, and ready for action. I spent last
week with my granddaughter AnnE and had a ball.
On today's show we have the usual download and tech news,
news of training opportunities.
David will discuss three things in his Blackboard
feature of the week: 1) faculty reminders and his
"Tell-a-friend" campaign; 2) how to see all replies
to a post in the Blackboard discussion board; and 3)
a mention of the voice email tool now available in
Blackboard. Haydn phones his segment in, doing a
valuable remote on the topic of "How to Create an
Exemplary Online Course." In my
tech-talk-topic this week I follow up on my open
letter to Blackboard from
episode 19. Finally, the gizmo this week--since
we had midsummer's day last Wednesday--the coolest
barbecue grill ever, bar none!
Palomar Tech and Download News
-
Adobe Acrobat was updated this week to
version 7.0.8. If you are full-time
faculty at Palomar you have access to this
program on your work computers. The update
addresses bug fixes and security
vulnerabilities.
- Microsoft released their monthly update
package that addressed the latest security
vulnerabilities, this month in the MS Virtual
Machine (KB816093),
IE 6 SP1 for Win XP (KB916281),
Windows XP (KB914389,
KB917344, KB917953, KB918439) and the
monthly Malicious Software Removal Tool
(KB890830).
- Microsoft also made available a free Office
2003 add-in called the "Creative
Commons Add-In for MS Office." It
allows embedding creative commons license links
in Office documents, and allows control of the
licensing features in an easy to use and
understand manner.
To learn more about creative commons licenses,
visit
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.
The add-in allows selection of the various types
of creative commons licenses, and inserts a link
into your work back to the license type that you
have configured on the creative commons web
site. Like this:
- The
Outlook 2003 Personal Folders Backup add-in
is not new, but is so important that I wanted to
mention it here. This is a download and
install which you can configure to backup your
pst files on a scheduled basis, including that
all-important archive.pst.
Here is a link to a Microsoft article that
explains how to use it.
Training Opportunities
- Of special interest should be the
facilitated online course they are offering "Introduction
to Teaching with Blackboard 6.0" from July
24-August 11.
-
July 10 - Aug. 4 "Teaching Online" free online class from @ONE,
this is an introduction to online teaching with
emphasis on pedagogic issues.
-
July 24-Aug 18 "Internet Research Strategies"
will also be offered by @ONE.
- Microsoft is offering free eLearning on the
Office 2007 family of products through their
eLearning Portal. You can choose from
any or all of 10 different eLearning courses and
will be granted free 90-day access. Course
on the new Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote,
Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Visio, Groove, and an
overall course on the Office 2007 interface are
offered.
Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray
This week Dave covers 3 topics:
- Reminders to faculty - don't forget to make
your Blackboard courses available and if you are
having trouble with passwords, reset your
password in eServices. By the way,
TELL-A-FRIEND.
- How to see all replies to a thread in the
new Blackboard discussion board.
- How to set up student voice email, so that
students can send you audible mail.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
10:50]
Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis
Haydn's topic today is "How to Create an
Exemplary Online Course," which is a sequel from his
topic begun on episode 21. He lays out a
series of guidelines for faculty which, if followed
carefully, will result in an exemplary online
course.
Reference
How to Create an Exemplary Online Course -
CSU Chico [pdf - 163K]
Notes from Haydn's presentation [pdf with
web link - 19K]
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
6:39]
Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray
Today I would like to follow up on my Open Letter
to Blackboard from episode 19. In addition to
the open letter, of course, we communicated
privately our concerns with Blackboard, and this
week they responded in a most satisfactory manner.
Out concerns were two: 1) that we were not being
served well through their help system in that our
bug reports were being ignored; 2) Their beta
testing process sucked in that we, the paying end
user, were doing the beta testing.
There is no indication that they have improved
beta testing. Let that be said. Though
the difficulties of beta testing in a cross-browser,
cross-platform world are enormous. It is no
trivial undertaking, and the pace of change makes it
very difficult to be thorough.
I think one of the root problems here is that
Blackboard rarely has live, production data on which
to test, and the institutions they enroll as early
adopters don't actually test many things. We
propose to make available to Blackboard our live
data on which they can test (after it has been
anonymized, of course.
There is every indication, however, that they
have improved their customer help structure.
We received a call this week from Blackboard's
manager of customer support for North America, and
went over all our outstanding support tickets (bugs
that we had reported to Blackboard) one by one,
constructing a plan of action on which Blackboard
promised to take action. He also assigned us a
new technical services manger. A much needed
step.
To do Blackboard justice, I must say their
response to our complaint was very thoroughgoing and
professional. We are grateful. I hope we
can go on being a productive partner in the effort
to make it a better product for all Blackboard
customers so that the winner, in the long run, will
be our students and faculty members.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time =
3:58]
Gizmo of the week
The
345 horsepower, 5.7-litre HEMI V-8 engine powered
Barbecue. It's the Chrysler Group's
one-of-a-kind barbecue, that can cook 240 HEMI-dogs
in 3 minutes, and is covered by over 330 square feet
of stainless steel. I originally saw this in
an article about the
10 Coolest BBQ Grills at
neatorama.com.
A runner up was
Barbee Q. Piglet,
a
pig-shaped grill designed for slow cooking pork, but
selecting the Chrysler-powered grill was an easy
pick as best-of-show. If you are the outdoorsy
type--and who isn't who loves to grill--you will
lust after the
Nexo Outdoor grill ("Hand made in Denmark," no
less, which probably means unaffordable). It
deserves an honorable mention.
(Source:
neatorama.com)
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 "and the Mood Swings" by Norine
Braun. Her music is called "funk-tinged electro
pop." Whatever. We like it.
We
used tracks 1: "Frontliner Blues;" 4: "No More;" 10:
"Carefully Watch the News;" 13: "Running on the
Edge;" 9: "The One That Got Away;" 6: "One Breath;"
8: "Devil's Daughter;" and 7: "Cruel Streak."
Visit
magnatune and reward them for their generosity,
and if you like this album, buy it. Magnatune is not evil!
Thanks also to
The Pod Lounge, in Australia. They have
found us and are indexing our podcasts now.
"A good listener is
a good talker with a sore throat." ~
Katharine Whitehorn
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for June 23, 2006 - Episode 22
