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ATRC Podcast Notes

Podcast for March 9, 2007 - Episode 54

» Direct mp3 download  |  » Streamed version [wma]  |  Subscribe

Play time 59 minutes  - Program Notes

 

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."  ~Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick

Tech news: Palomar's political economy days are just around the corner, new versions of iTunes and QuickTime are available, @ONE announces a June Online Teaching conference, Windows Home Server beta is open for application, Photoshop CS3 will be out in March, CompUSA will be closing over half their stores, Bill Gates testifies on American competitiveness before the senate, FDR and Lou Reed become linked for eternity, a couple of brave congressmen take on the recording industry and attempt to roll back the assault on American freedoms that is the DMCA, Jimmy Wales says to EssJay you are forgiven, but get out of here, and our features tech book online is Windows Vista the Definitive Guide.  David's Blackboard Feature of the Week is titled "No Running the the Pool Area" continuing to describe the use and design of question pools in Blackboard.  Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment is titled "A Potpourri of Tips for Teaching with Blackboard" where he presents a checklist of good pedagogical ideas.  My Tech Talk Topic this week is how to publish to Blackboard from StudyMate.  Our gizmo this week is the new Samsung hybrid hard drives.

Technology News Briefs

  • Political Economy Days are coming soon.  On April 4-5 the Palomar College Economics, History and Political Science department will sponsor a group of distinguished lecturers speaking on a wide range of topics.  Speakers will include Dr. Thomas Patterson from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Dr. Matthew Shugart, Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and Dr. Ranjeeta Ghiara, chair of the Department of Economics at CSUSM, among many others.  Many of the lectures will be webcast, but the webcast schedule is not yet available (watch this space).  Click here for the room/time/speaker schedule.
     
  • Version 7.1 of iTunes with version 7.1.5 of QuickTime is now available for download.  The update addresses certain compatibility issues with Windows Vista (though it is still billed as a download for Windows 2000 or XP) and adds full-screen Cover Flow and new sort options.  Additionally, this version plugs 8 QuickTime security vulnerabilities and bundles in the upgrade is support for Apple TV media hub, in anticipation of the soon to be released Apple TV device which will make it possible to stream video content from your computer to TV set.  Click here for an AppleInsider report.  Re the notorious Windows Vista issues, the Apple web site says "iTunes 7.1 is recommended for use with most editions of Windows Vista, however, Apple is actively working with Microsoft to resolve a few remaining known issues."
     
  • The @ONE system has announced an Online Teaching Conference to be held June 11-12.  There are three ways to attend:
    • In person at Ohlone College in Fremont, CA (early bird registration is $75);
    • Virtually (and free) via CCC Confer sessions;
    • Virtually via downloads of archived sessions after they are held.

    Click here for more information.
     

  • It is not too late to be part of the Windows Home Server Beta.  If you:
    • Have two or more networked PCs at home;
    • Have a broadband connection and router;
    • Have a spare PC or server that can be dedicated to Windows Home Server;

    click here to apply to become part of the beta.  What is it for?  Two things, basically:  1) backup of files on your home computers; 2) playing your media on any computer from a central source.
     

  • Adobe has announced that there will be two editions of Photoshop CS3:  CS3 and CS3 Extended.  CS3 is for designers and professional photographers, CS3 extended has the same feature set but adds cross-media capabilities for working with web motion graphics, video and image analysis, and special features for architects, engineers and scientists.  Both editions will be available March 27 when Creative Suite CS3 is launched.  Click here for the Adobe press release.  Click here to download the beta of Photoshop CS3, here for the CS3 web site.

    Nearly in concert, Microsoft announced a new HD Photo file format "...for end-to-end digital photography that offers higher image quality, greater preservation of data, and advanced features for today’s digital-imaging applications" (Microsoft press release). 
     
  • CompUSA has announced that in the next 60-90 days they will be closing over half of their 225 stores.  (This is after they bought and closed all of the Good Guys stores).  Click here for a list of stores affected.  You will note that the Encinitas, San Diego, San Marcos and Murrieta stores are all on the list.  According to Roman Ross, CompUSA CEO, "Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics markets, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or nonstrategic, old store layouts and locations faced with market saturation."  In English what he means is, the Internet is eating their lunch and no one in his right mind would pay CompUSA prices when you can find it for substantially less online, and I don't mean the CompUSA web site.  A gotta-have-it-now emergency is the only reason to visit a computer store, and it would have to be a really big emergency in the case of CompUSA rather than Fry's.  It is easy to find brightly vested, underpaid employees with limited knowledte who will run from you at other outlets.  To prove that CompUSA just doesn't get it, their going out of business sale amounts to 10% off, all sales being final.
     
  • On Wednesday of this week Bill Gates testified this week before the U. S. Senate on strengthening American competitiveness.  According to Gates,   "America cannot maintain its innovation leadership if it does not educate world-class innovators and train its workforce to use innovations effectively. Unfortunately, available data suggest that we are failing to do so -- in our math and science programs, in our job training programs and especially in our high schools" (ComputerWorld).  Click here for a video (2 hrs. 2 min. - Windows media format) of Gates' testimony (available until April 4, 2007) and here for a transcript.
     
  • Sony, once the world leader in gaming, has stumbled badly since the release of the very pricy PS3.  While the Microsoft XBox and Nintendo Wii have surged ahead Sony has struggled to keep up with nothing really new except a great hardware platform--until now.  At the Game Developers Conference this week they announced the impending release of "Home,"  a new 3-D world akin to the Second Life virtual world, except with "stunning graphics" and "superior processing power."  Click here for a game video trailer from GDC.  At the conference Sony announced a large-scale beta test of Home to begin in April, followed by a Fall release.  Home will be a free download from Sony, who will make money by selling virtual furniture and "upscale apartments" to virtual residents and by placing ads in virtual public spaces.  Click here for a Slashdot article, here for the official Sony press release.
     
  • What do Franklin D. Roosevelt, Allen Ginsberg, The Lone Ranger, and Lou Reed have in common?  A flair for fashion?  Hardly.  They are all included in this year's National Recording Registry.  Each year the Librarian of Congress a number of sound recordings to include in the registry based on nominations by the public and by a panel of experts known as the National Recording Preservation Board.  Click here to view the 2006 registry, here to view the entire registry to date (it began in 2002).  You must act now to nominate a recording for the 2007 registry.  The deadline is July 1, 2007.  Not all recordings in the registry are held by the Library of Congress.  The Preservation Board provides links to the various libraries holding the original copies.
     
  • Once again, Congressmen Rick Boucher and John Doolittle have introduced a bill in Congress to restore the fair rights freedoms that have been rolled back by the hated Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  The bill (known as the Fair Use Act) is less ambitious than last year's bill, which went nowhere, but these heroes of citizens' rights continue to press the case for awareness of the punishing rights rollbacks of this legislation.  Click here to hear a CNet interview with Congressman Doolittle, and here to read the specifics of this act from the EFF.
     
  • The twin pillars on which Wikipedia are founded, trust and tolerance, met the real world this week when it was revealed that a prominent volunteer author/editor had falsified his credentials as a university professor, complete with bogus Ph. D.  Editing under the name EssJay, Steve Jordan, a 24-year old college student, had authority arbitrate disputes between authors.  He represented himself as a tenured professor of religion at a private university:  all lies and prejudice.  Mr. Jordan has "announced his retirement from the site" (BBC).  Click here for the NY Times story.  Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder, responded with kindness and humanity, but did ask for Jordan's resignation.  What, exactly, was the up side for Steve?  Being taken seriously by people who didn't know you were a fake?  Ah, humanity.
     
  • Worried about English in the age of text messaging?  U ot 2 b.  Click here for the hilarious (depending) Homophoner.  No sents of heumur?  Uz it az a pronunceyashun gyd.
     
  • Our featured Safari tech book online this week is: Windows Vista: The Definitive Guide by William R. Stanek.  "Whether you're a beginner, power user, or seasoned professional, Windows Vista: The Definitive Guide has everything you need to customize the operating system, master your digital media, manage your data, and maintain your computer -- regardless of which Windows Vista edition you're using."  Safari Tech Books Online are accessible from on-campus or with a password off campus.

  Listen to the news [mp3 - 16:31]

Training Opportunities

Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray

No Running in the Pool Area

We may have a lot of water in the Pool already, but it’s not time to have students dive in yet! After discussing various ways to get questions into pools in Blackboard, and an examination of how Random Blocks of questions can be pulled into Tests from pools, it’s finally time to discuss some strategies of pool design.

As mentioned previously, it is quite important to be certain that all questions in a pool are of equal difficulty, since questions will be pulled at random from the pool, and all questions pulled from a specific pool will have the same points possible value. So, unless all the questions you want to offer your students are truly equivalent, it would be wise to have several pools, of differing difficulty, and pull random blocks of questions from each into the test.

When you have created pools at certain difficulty levels, you should also audit your questions in relation with the other pools. For example, it would be possible to ask a question in one pool where the question text would actually contain the answer to a question in another pool. Now, if all the students were receiving the same test that might not be a problem, but if only some of the students would be given that advantage it might be time to consider re-wording one or both questions.

Another pool design issue, since these questions are pulled at random, is that you cannot be sure your students will see any particular questions from the pool. A common test design tactic would be to intersperse static questions which all students will receive with random blocks of questions from pools.

When you assemble all these components onto a Test Canvas, you would end up with static questions displaying right on that canvas (ensuring that all students will be given those questions) mixed with Random Block entries which would represent anywhere from one to many different questions that will be different for each student. Once that test is deployed you can try a test attempt as an instructor as often as you like, but the only way to feel certain that all the questions will work together well is through analyzing the Question Pools themselves.

If you are starting this process from scratch, then YES it can be difficult and will be time consuming. Some naming conventions and pool design strategies are discussed in the March 9th “Blackboard Feature of the Week” on the ATRC Podcast series, which may be of help to you.

Next up, how the deployment options of a test can help or hinder random question designs.


 		 Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 12:29]
 
See the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature of the Week" segments.

Note:  To get to David's vodcast site, click here.

Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis

A Potpourri of tips for Teaching with Blackboard

  • Create a “Website Spotlight” link in your Blackboard course (perhaps put the link in an announcement). This website exemplifies a point or issue that you will cover in that week’s lecture – or in the material your online students will cover.
     
  • Develop your Blackboard announcements in a word processor then copy and paste them into your Blackboard course. This way you’ll have an easy way to post announcements into future courses (if you simply copy the announcements from one semester to another, the announcements retain the old date).
     
  • Many instructors spend a lot of time and thought developing a comprehensive syllabus. Sadly, students often do not read it at all or read it less carefully than we would like. Create a short syllabus quiz that tests students’ understanding of the key points you want them to remember. You can provide a couple of extra credit points for completing it or even, through the adaptive release feature in Blackboard, make access to other parts of the course contingent upon them reviewing the syllabus.
     
  • What is working and not working in your class? You can answer this question by keeping a journal that records aspects of the course related to organization, interaction, etc. By keeping notes of what works and doesn’t work in your course you will be well prepared to redesign or change things that didn’t work, as well as increase things that did. One easy way to implement this idea in Blackboard would be to create an item in a content area (say in Course Documents), do not make it available to students, and have it be positioned first in the list of items in that content area. Now, when you want to make a note simply go to the content area, open the item (by clicking Modify) and begin jotting down your notes.
     
  • If you ask your online students to introduce themselves as a way of getting them to begin using the Discussion Board, print out these Discussion Board posts and keep them handy when you’re working in your course or emailing students. You can refer to some piece of relevant personal information (academic goals, hobbies, etc) when you communicate with them. This establishes a personal connection that many online students miss. If you have the students develop the homepage tool in Blackboard you can print these out – they are particularly helpful if students have uploaded a photo of themselves.
     
  • There always seem to be some online students who don’t post to the Discussion Board even though it is a course requirement. Some online instructors will allow a student to make up missed points by submitting a summary of that week’s Discussion Board posts. This summary could be submitted by email to the instructor or posted to the Discussion Board.
Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 8:03]
 
See the index of Haydn's previous "Teaching with Technology" segments.

Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray

Publishing to Blackboard from StudyMate

We have written about StudyMate a good deal (see episodes 4, 27, 30, 40, 49, and more).  StudyMate is an authoring tool that allows professors to create 10 different Flash-based activities and games (Fact Cards, Flash Cards, Fill-in-the-Blank activities, Matching, Multiple Choice quizzes, Crossword puzzles, a Jeopardy-like "Challenge" game, etc.) using four simple templates. The Flash activities can be placed on any web server or can be published directly to your Blackboard courses. StudyMate will import items from MS Word files or the Respondus Test Bank Network, making it easy to create interesting, interactive activities from existing content.  Version 2 of the product was new last December, which added a new question template (calculated questions, supporting many math functions and any number of variables), embedded audio in mp3 or wav format, and output for the small screen (i.e., the iPod, PSP, smart phone, PDA, etc. - see our article "Flashcards on the iPod,").

To get a feel for these activities, click here to see them in action on a web page.  This is a very plain web page, but it can be dressed up in any way you wish.

Any Palomar instructor may login to our StudyMate distribution point (using their Palomar login credentials - email address as username, email password as password) and download/install/register the program on their own PC, at work and/or at home.  The number of PCs on which it can legally be installed is not limited, but note that it is ONLY for PC, not the Mac, unfortunately.

Available for training we have a PDF User's Guide (78 pages) and a PDF Quick Start Guide, a set of demo movies, and various How-to guides.  On the whole, StudyMate is indeed very easy to use.  The only thing that becomes slightly confusing is how to publish your StudyMate activities to Blackboard.  There are two ways to do it.  I will describe both below.

Method 1:  Creating a Zip File and "Unpackaging" It In Blackboard

After you have input or imported your StudyMate terms and questions, you will click the Publish tab and enter the Publish Wizard.  On the initial Publish Wizard screen you will choose the types of activities you want StudyMate to generate:

Make your selections and click Next.

Now you will see a screen asking you how you want to publish or export the Flash learning object.  Choose HTML + SWF.

Click Next. 

On the next screen, enter a title for your HTML page, optional text or instructions, a save location, and choose whether to launch the file in a browser after publishing.

Note that clicking the "Save As..." button on this screen does NOT do the actual save, but simply defines a Save location and file name for the resulting saved files.  When you first begin using StudyMate you will probably want to place a check in the "Launch HTML file automatically..." box to see how your work comes out.  Once you grow familiar with the program, however, you will not bother with this.

Now click Finish.  A "creating activities for small screen devices" dialog will appear (if you made this choice) and in a moment the files will have been saved to the location you chose.

If you chose to save files for small screen devices, 5 objects will have been saved:

  1. An HTML file, which acts as the index to all activities and download files.  It will be named "projectname.html."
  2. A javascript file to launch the various activites, named "projectname.js."
  3. A Shockwave file which are the actual Flash activities, named "projectname.swf."
  4. A zipped folder containing the 320x240 images for larger screen devices, like the video iPod, named "projectname_L.zip."
  5. Another zipped folder containing the 176x132 images for smaller screen devices, like the iPod Nano, named "projectname_S.zip.

"Projectname," of course is whatever name you have given to your project.  Note that it cannot contain punctuation, special characters or spaces.

Now, select all of these files (click on each one while holding down the control key).  Right-click your selection, with your cursor over the html file.  Hover your cursor over "Send To," and select "Compressed (zipped) Folder."

The resulting folder will be named "projectname.zip."  This will contain all the other folders and files, and is the only folder you need for the rest of this procedure.

Now, login to Blackboard.  Enter your course and enter the content area where you wish to place these activities.  Click "Edit View" in the upper right of the screen, and then click Add Item.

On the Add item screen, give your item a name (required) and type any instructions you wish.  In the Content area of this page, browse to your zip file, give it a link name, and choose "Unpackage this file" from the Special Action drop-down.

Now click Submit.  Blackboard will respond with a Contents Action page asking you to define the "Entry Point" to your flash activities.  Choose the htm file that you created above:

Note that the only other choice you have to make is whether you want the activities launched in a new window or not.  If you choose No, the links to them will appear in the Blackboard content frame, but when any link is clicked, it will, of course, appear on a separate flash windows on top of the content frame.

Click submit and you're done. 

Method 2: Publishing Directly from Within StudyMate to the Blackboard Server

To publish directly to Blackboard from StudyMate, select "Publish directly to a Course Management System" from the StudyMate Publish Wizard, and choose "Blackboard 6.3-7.x as the type of system.

Click Next.  On the next screen, choose "Standard Upload - HTML and SWF file."  DO NOT choose "SCORM 1.2 package."  The first time you do this, you will not have yet defined settings for an existing server, so  select "add new server" from the Blackboard drop-down.

When you do, another dialog will pop-up saying "Pre-configured server settings may be available for: Palomar College."  they are not.  so click No, then Next.

A "Blackboard Server and Course dialog box will appear.  Follow the instructions to fill our areas 1 and 2 by logging in to Blackboard, pasting the login URL (from the browser address bar) in area 1, then entering your course control panel and pasting the URL into area 2.  Now, click the "Extract >>" button and the remaining "technical" fields in the form will be filled out.

Now all that remains is to fill out a "friendly" name for your server in the Description field and your login information in the fields provided at the bottom of the form.  Check "Remember my User Name and Password" if you work on a private computer.  If anyone else has access to your computer, do not check this box.

Note that you will only have to do this once.  On subsequent Publish operations this data will already be stored in StudyMate for you.

Click Next and enter the course and course area you wish to publish to.

Click Next, and enter any of the discretionary information you wish on the next screen.

Click Next, and the publish will occur.  A status window will inform you when the publish operation is complete.  After you see "Completed" click Finish and you are done.  After you have done this the first time, subsequent publish operations are simple indeed.

Conclusion

So which method is best?  Either will work just fine.  For simplicity, after the initial setup is done the second method is certainly the simplest.  The first method leaves a zip file and supporting files on your hard drive, however, that you can re-purpose, use on other web sites, and save as a backup.  For this reason, I prefer the first method, but it's your call.

Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 6:40]
 
See an index of previous "Tech Talk Topics" segments.

Gizmo of the Week

Hybrid Hard Drives

Samsung this week announced delivery to OEMs (with retail shipments beginning soon) of a new hybrid hard drive, the MH80.  "The latest MH80 2.5-inch hybrid hard drives (HHD) for notebook PCs will be available in 80GB, 120GB, and 160GB capacities, with either 128MB or 256MB of onboard flash memory, for caching purposes. It combines a hard disk drive with OneNand flash cache and Microsoft’s ReadyDrive software, offering faster boot and resume times, along with enhanced battery life and greater reliability as compared to traditional magnetic media technology. However since software support for ReadyDrive exists in Windows Vista only, PCs running other operating systems won’t benefit from the technology" (techshout.com).  Half the boot time on Vista is expected, along with faster standard disk access, and much improved laptop battery life(70-90% less power is needed to access solid state memory than moving part memory). 

Apple, it is being rumored, is developing a small laptop (known as a "sub-notebook") based entirely on flash (solid state) memory, rather than a traditional hard drive.  Apple will undoubtedly be beaten to market by other vendors (LG, for instance) Apple will design it right and capture the largest market share while this technology remains "semi-exotic."

Why didn't someone think of this before, you ask?  Obviously, they did, but the prices of flash memory have now descended to the point (thanks to the voracious appetites of all those iPod Nanos, smart phones, and small devices) where it is practical to use it in large enough chunks to sell a profitable computer.

Get ready for another less is more round of technology battles between drive and laptop manufacturers as this technology moves to the mainstream.

(Picture source: The Future of Things)

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 "In Your Bed" by Mercy Machine.  This album is "...an avant-pop vocal and orchestral experiment. In 2003, an assortment of prominent electronica artists remixed 'In Your Bed,' with styles ranging from dirty-techno to classic Orlando break beats."

 

"After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed."  ~ De La Lastra's Law

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